Emchap's Shit from the Internet 10/19/22 🍠
We’re two thirds through October, and the temperatures are finally beginning to drop in Portland. To even it out, fire season is still carrying on somehow, and the air quality is bad enough that I’m trying not to open the windows even though that’s all I want to do. (And of course I’m better off than folks in Seattle, where the AQI is in the 300s.)
We should hopefully, finally, thankfully see rain this weekend, but I will be out of town for it, which makes me sad, because I no longer believe that the hot weather will ever actually fully end, and so I am assuming that this rain is the last we’ll see for a month.
I’ve been hearing about global climate change my whole life, and moving out to the west coast has made it starkly apparent that the horse is out of the barn in my day to day life. The part of the south that I grew up in has always had challenging weather (pollen, humidity, it’s hot all the time, it rains all summer), and as a result I grew up fairly insulated from the outside—I always had central air, because it’s always been hot there. Since moving to the west coast, I haven’t, because a huge portion of the housing stock on this side of the country doesn’t have it, because it only started getting really hot here in the last few years. Having “smoke” as a weather option is the tradeoff for not having any mosquitoes in my day to day. (Also the non-zero chance that the earth will swallow us all whole, I suppose.)
I’m crossing my fingers the fires are done soon, and the heat drops, and we finally get rain, and I might maybe even have something like the fall I was anticipating instead of 85 degree days in a pumpkin patch parking lot.
Shit to read
None of the people who work at this company should ever know a moment’s peace.
The piece (on mountain goats beating out bighorn sheep for resources) is good; the comments are better.
An incredible correction piece to a deep dive on an early viral internet video.
Bless Paul Newman and his incredibly horny marriage.
On the right not to be pregnant. Increasingly, it seems like this is the correct framing.
Last week my boyfriend asked me about something pretty in the night sky while we were in bed, where I was wearing no corrective lenses. I thought he was making fun of me, until I realized he genuinely had no idea how nearsighted I am. So I found this article on increasingly nearsighted children interesting, as someone also more nearsighted than both of my parents.
Shit to eat
Slice an apple into thin slices. Put it in a bowl.
Add walnuts.
Add chunks of something that looks like parmesan but isn’t, according to the fine folks at Whole Foods.
And arugula.
Toss it all together.
In another container, mix a quarter cup balsamic vinegar, three quarters of a cup of olive oil, 2 tablespoons honey, two pinches of salt, several grinds of black pepper, and a chopped-up clove of garlic if you’re fancy or a quarter teaspoon dried garlic if you’re not.
Shake shake shake.
Pour the dressing in, toss everything.
On a plate, lovingly drape strips of prosciutto.
Put a pile of salad on top.
Serve, to the enjoyment of your loved ones.
(Adapted from this balsamic vinaigrette recipe and a tiktok that I can no longer find.)
Shit to listen to
CRJ talking about Tinder is a bop?
Shit to buy
I just bought this packable sunhat from baggu so I stop burning myself outside. It fit my giant noggin.
Also this fetching mustard fanny pack.