Monday's Child is Full of Links!

1.  Admitting you were wrong is hard. That's why I never do it.

2. Notes left in parking lots.

3.  The octopus whisperer.

4.  Not clear what the crime is here. The guy chopped up his own stuff. Perhaps it SHOULD be a crime to be 34 and to care that much about your "action figures," but it's not.

5. That 402 error....

6. Reputation index software is inevitable. It's not a question of whether you want it, it's a question of how you are going to deal with it.

7.  I want to be a fan of school voucher programs.  But the evidence is pretty mixed. Or, is it?

8.  Rebel Alliance fights United Federation: Who wins the battle?

9.  Hagfish.https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/hagfish-slime/581002/ That's all, just hagfish. But that's enough.  Still, I wanted to know more about that Prius in the picture.

10. If you only read one thing about the "MAGA boys on the Mall" non-incident, read this. If you read two things, read that and then also this.

11.  Does the right need to "grow up" on environmentalism?

12.  Libertarians ready to scream at vast, empty uncaring sky when government reopens?

13. They detected an odor of vanilla on her breath....Ick. And hard to understand. Even imitation vanilla extract costs more than $0.60 per fluid ounce, and cheap vodka costs $0.40 per fluid ounce or less.

14. Toxic masculinity and the male gaze are phrases I had not even heard two years ago. Yes, that likely says I live in a bubble.  The male gaze, in particular, is obviously important and worth being aware of.

15. Jeffrey Sachs on the campus free speech "crisis."

16.  A frustrating story to read. Mistaken identity and odd sanctimony are a dangerous mix.

17.  It is interesting that middle class white leftists get all upset about inequality, whereas people who genuinely care about the poor (rightly) focus on poverty.  They are NOT the same problem.  And I'm not even sure inequality is a problem in the first place. It is unjust to treat a murderer and a prize-winning high school science teacher the same way.  Isn't it?

18.  Very interesting interview with Barry Weingast.

19.  Tamales.

20.  Pave the muddy paths.

Grand Lagniappe:  This is precisely what it would be like to play checkers with Murphy pup.

Monday's Child is Full of Links

1.  Community policing.

2.  Have the Dems gone from 7 Dwarves to 20 Smurfs? And even if they have, that still may be better than 1 Gargamel. Though Trump seems to me more like Dr. Robotnik. The question is this: Who is Snively, McConnell or Pence?

3. A pretty good description of why the Dems are going to lose the 2020 Pres election, and they just don't care. In fact, the idiot who wrote this doesn't even know.  They all just have a bunch of demands.

4. Down the fracking hole.


5.   Jeremy Corbyn finds that it's hard out here for a wimp.

6.  I missed 9 of 43. Can you do better? It's not easy.

7.  Don't understand how a suicide bomb attack means we have to keep troops in Syria.  Don't know why we are there at all. Without U.S. involvement, there would BE no ISIS in the first place. I don't mean the Iranian canard; I just mean conditions.  We always get it wrong, and make things worse. Stop doing that.

8.  Weaponized Interdependence.

9. Is it getting harder to inluence the Fed?  You have to recognize that Congress could still do it.  And if it wants to, it can.

10.  JBJ Soul Kitchen: Livin' on a prayer.

11.  "All your base are belong to us."  Original video source, here's description.

12.  Piece of evidence #39,671 that journalists don't understand transaction costs: Ugly food is "wasted" because it will be damaged or not survive shipping. 

13. Aaron Sorkin pretty much tells everyone under 30 to get off his lawn.  Just another grouchy old guy.

14. Back to the caves.

15.  What was Rudy G thinking?

Grand Lagniappe:   This image is a Rorschach for our age.  I think it is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. When I said this on twitter, a lot of people protested the young man was "provoked." But that's beside the point. Whatever else is true, this image, by itself and without context, is chilling and will be famous.  However, it turns out that the entire video tells a MUCH different story. A watershed moment: you see an image, you see the story someone else has attached to it, and you share, both the photo and emotional reaction. But there is no reason to believe the image tells the whole story, or that your outrage is justified. Here is Nick Sandmann's statement, if you haven't seen it already, about the context for the photo.UPDATE: From WaPo. UPDATE 2: The collapse of context.

Cold Today, Hot Tamales

Working on the menu for B-camp, in May, at Park City.

My previous efforts at meso-American cuisine have been okay, but my attempts to make tamales have been dismal.  Made them again over the past two days (prep time not that much, but quite a lot of time between steps).  And, delightful.  Really tasty.

Below: Still enhusked, in the steamer, and unwrapped and sauced.

They were great, among the best I've ever had (though I have usually only had tamales in restaurants, and those "Mexican" restaurants may not be very good, since they are mostly for gringos, rather than meso-Americanos verdaderos).

The innovation (for me; this may be common among home-made recipes, and I just don't know it) (UPDATE: Clearly a part of Mexcian-Jewish fusion recipes!!) was to use the chicken fat--of which there was plenty after boiling down 4 pounds of bone-in, skin-on thighs--instead of lard. Lard is fine, I don't object to it, but schmaltz is both delicious and (in this case) free and immediately available.

Recipe (if you can call it that) for dough:  1 unit masa, 1/3 unit schmaltz, 1/2 unit (or so, have to feel it) of reserved liquid to boil down chicken), plus baking powder and salt.  This scales, so an example might be 3 cups masa, 1 cup schmaltz, 1 1/2 cups liquid, one tablespoon baking powder and one tablespoon salt.

Chill the schmaltz, whisk together dry ingredients. Mix schmaltz into dry ingredients with fingers (think biscuit dough).  Should look like pebbles, pretty dry. Add liquid a little at a time, until you get the right consistency.  Work it a bit and then let it sit five minutes, then fabricate in the usual way. Don't over fill the dough on the corn husk, it's just a flavoring. This dough stands on its own well, moist and a little bit fluffy, not as heavy and greasy as one usually gets in restaurants.

(UPDATE: "real" Mexican sauces are much thinner and lighter than American chunky salsas. This one was great for tamales: three tomatillos, half an onion, and three roma tomatoes, roasted under broiler for a few minutes, then run in a blender with some comino and half a cup (!) of Tapatio. Yes, I know that Tapatio is made in California.  I love Tapatio, and it is much hotter and has less salt than comparable cheap American hot sauces.  You can get a quart of Tapatio for under $4, and the particular flavor is perfect, for me at least, for tamales.)