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Writer Andy Sturdevant put together a booklet of active cafeteria menu hotline numbers throughout the USA. It’s a sort of zine and I consider it to be a true work of art. I like to keep a copy in the studio within an arm’s reach. When I hit a roadblock, I like to pick a number at random to call and check out what’s being served at some hospital canteen. Having been doing this for a while, you notice little things– the voices in the background, a burst of laughter, odd pauses, the mood of the thing. Really though, it’s an anodyne list of daily food options in different places where life unfolds in overlooked ways, which is oddly nice to listen to, like a prank phone call without the cruelty. As an aside– this zine pairs nicely with Letters To Wendys – a book of poetry by Joe Wenderoth. I guess I just like stuff involving bland food.
Nov 22, 2023
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I have a lot of cookbooks but I never cook out of them, people give them to me because they think I will like them. I have never even attempted a recipe out of this book but I love it a lot. Brooks is the chef behind NY fav veggie spot Superiority Burger, and he cut his teeth for years as one of the cities great pastry chefs. I love this book because it’s extremely readable. In between insane Michelin-level recipes, he’ll have stories about his band Born Against (a band I enjoyed in high school!) touring across the world, or just Brooks letting one of his employees share a recipe for biscuits instead of making it all about him. It’s not taking a cookbook deal as the opportunity to change his life and become the next Ottolenghi, he basically made a hardcover zine about his story and how he got to where he is. If you have someone in your life who grew up around punk music and is now old, get them this book. They’ll form a bond with it, even if they don’t know what a Kouign-Amann is. Also, the photography and graphic design are refreshingly honest.
Mar 9, 2021
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One of the few books with an even better audiobook 👨🍳
Jan 7, 2024
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That catalog scratches every wrinkle of my brain that likes finding niche fixes to anything I own
RIP Bourdain I wonder what he would think of the various Mr. Beast food products
Jan 19, 2025
Top Recs from @daniel
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Open access and the preservation of digital artifacts are causes I can get behind, so I’m going to give The Internet Archive some appreciation here. I spend quite a bit of time browsing their offerings, some of which have made their way into my art projects. You’ll have to take your own trip with it, but some of my personal highlights include: a complete archive of Mondo 2000 magazines, a collection of K-Mart background music from a former employee (recently denoised by another IA user), and the Noise-Arch collection which pulls together many gigs of underground tape cassettes from the 1980s-90s. Recently I started using a ChatGPT Chrome extension and put it to work reading entire PDFs, searching for keywords, summarizing etc. Pretty awesome library school / digital hoarder / subvertainment stuff, if you like that sort of thing.
Nov 22, 2023
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Growing up in a Russian household, you become acquainted with the ritual of evening walks after dinner. Beyond its obvious health benefits, there’s a spiritual dimension to the act itself— believe it or not, with my headphones on and my sneakers laced up I’m a biomechanical contemplation machine. A heightened awareness of the landscape and my place in it overcomes me, I might occasionally notice great and strange things. The more aimless the walk is, the better. Getting your steps in is good, but not everything in life needs to be about self-improvement. I find that the longer my walks are, the weirder and more hypnotic they become. The gratitude I feel when I finally return home is really a nice feeling too. For a walking shoe, I recommend Mephistos which feel like gliding on air. Happy trails.
Nov 22, 2023
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What else could I possibly need? Maybe a nice pair of winter socks. Some people like merino wool, but I prefer warmer, more durable alpaca, which feels great, if not better. The use of alpaca wool as a textile has its origins in the Andes thousands of years ago, where the Incas revered and even deified alpacas. Often depicted as gentle and giving creatures, alpacas are emblematic of the Andean landscape, I’d love to see it in person one day. Knowledge about the animals and how to care for them was passed down through generations, which is pretty much a non-factor when browsing for socks on Amazon. So be careful you’re not getting ripped off with synthetic ones claiming otherwise.
Nov 22, 2023