Sam Sifton (NY Times newsletter)
I wrote this recipe for Chinese roast pork with garlic bread back in 2020, when I really believed you needed to make the pork — the sweet-salty Cantonese barbecued pork known as char siu — yourself. You don’t. You can buy a small container of the meat from the Chinese restaurant that’s on the way home, and then put the sandwiches together for dinner in about 20 minutes flat. It’s a taste of the Catskills, delicious in the extreme.
(That would be in the Catskills of Grossinger’s, The Concord, et al.?)
*
Maybe you have a taste for other pork:
Amazing, the fake costs much more than the real!
*
Perhaps you’re looking for something other than food to buy.
How about a teddy bear?
£4,000 for a teddy bear?! How cuddly toys became luxury items (1)
Or maybe you’re concerned about oral hygiene:
Dyson launches £420 toothbrush that films ‘live cleaning footage’ inside your mouth (2)
You might be looking for fashion tips. There’s a Swedish fashion brand called Acne Studios. And the NY Times suggests, “This Fall, Consider Dressing Like Your Living Room.”
You, of course, would want to place your purchases in a shopping bag:
*
I purchased food from a Chinese restaurant the other day and received two fortune cookies. One had three fortunes inside, but the other was blank. What does that bode for me?
Speaking of the future, The New Yorker had a clouded crystal ball back in 1955 when it proclaimed that “it would probably take another Battle of Bennington to exorcise Republicanism from Vermont.”
Justin Bourne plays it safer writing on the sportsnet.ca website about the Toronto Maple Leafs' prospects for the new season:
As I figure it, Bourne means that the Leafs can be better than last season, or worse than last season, or be about the same.
*
Three Questions, One Answer:
Can I Question My Partner’s Moose Sighting? (NYT)
Would Jesus like Waymo? (WaPo)
A woman in Belleville, Ontario, the birthplace of [Paul] Theroux’s grandmother, considers Americans “a fearful people,” and points to the fact that they have so many guns. She asks Theroux what Americans are so afraid of. “That’s obvious,” he says. “They’re afraid of other Americans with guns.” (3)
*
Hard Luck Story:
“A brain surgeon dropped part of my skull on the floor” (4)
*
Language silliness:
Some company claims to be an “Official transformation partner.”
McVitie’s, a famous British snack and biscuit brand, lays claim to “true originals.”
And then there’s “tokenized.”
*
Hazardous Pastime (1953)
*
Real Life Dramatic Dialogue (The New Yorker 1955)
"But you get so tired with nothing but scenery all the time."
"Yes, but you get even more tired and bored without any scenery."
"Well, I guess. But I like it better when there's mostly landscape and not so much scenery."
"Well, I guess. But then most of the scenery was gone when we were there. There were just mountains and things.”
*
And finally, for those who are in fear of our coming AI masters:
1) New York Times
An elite Wall Street law firm has apologized to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence, including “hallucinations” that fabricated case citations. (5)
2) AI Overview (Google)
Vernon Duke (born Vladimir Dukelsky) composed some of the most famous and sophisticated popular standards and Broadway songs of the 20th century, working with legendary lyricists like Ira Gershwin, E.Y. Harburg, and Ted Latouche.
(The problem is that the lyricists on the song “Taking a Chance on Love” (1940) were named John Latouche & Ted Fetter.)
***
(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/books/review/true-north-paul-theroux.html
(4) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/25/experience-brain-surgeon-dropped-skull-floor
(5) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/nyregion/sullivan-cromwell-ai-hallucination.html
No comments:
Post a Comment