Any #nyc tips in the next few days, accounting for bad weather and travelling with teenagers? Considering MOMA, Met, Staten Island ferry, … other ideas?
@moritz Highline early in the morning before it gets crowded, end the walk with a meal at Chelsea Market (my favorite spot is Los Mariscos — superb Mexican — but there’s something for everyone). In the same area, https://littleisland.org is very nice. If you’re interested in soup, https://www.ramenishida.com is the best ramen I’ve had outside Japan. The Met is like the Louvre, you need to choose a subset because there’s just too much. Consider the Museum of Natural History!
Sometimes, and today on one of those times, I feel like we got some parts of the good future. In particular, I’m seated comfortably in the quiet car of a train going 200+ km/h through the German countryside while reading poetry on an e-ink tablet and listening to one of my favorite jazz records.
German trains should be faster, serve better food, have better WiFi, &c, but this still feels rather like civilization.
On the record in question: ‘Roach and Mingus were given “a lead sheet that just gave the basic melody and harmony”, plus a visual image described by [Ellington]. One example was, “crawling around on the streets are serpents who have their heads up; these are agents and people who have exploited artists. Play that along with the music”.’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Jungle
I’ve been bingeing on Wislawa Szymborska’s poems. She’s amazing, and somehow until recently I didn’t know her work at all. https://poets.org/poem/nothing-twice
When I moved to New York City in 2003, I was shocked to find that — despite it being a mega-rich megapolis — the best, most expensive bakeries in town produced bread of a quality you’d expect from a chain bakery in a German train station.
Memory triggered by eating a Kruste from Märkisches Landbrot this morning:
@OskarImKeller I have tried all of these, plus Domberger Brot-werk, Endorphina, Maison, Sironi, &c. Soluna is good at what they do, but I wouldn’t call it Italian (it’s heavier/denser). Speaking of heavy, my fave from B&L is actually their heavy Roggenbrot with seeds 😆
What I like about the Hausbrot at Albatross is that it’s lighter and higher risen, with larger holes, more in the typical French style. YMMV!
@nikitonsky Ancient Near Eastern cultures counted to 12 on one hand by moving the thumb along the pattern of red numbers I’ve added to this image. To count higher, they’d add 12/finger on the other hand, which got them to 60 using both hands. Mesopotamian mathematicians codified this into a base-60 number system, which is why we have 60 minutes/60 seconds/360º (6 x 60), &c. (The one-handed 12 is also why the first Egyptian sundials had twelve divisions, so we have 12 hours/day.)
@nikitonsky They could have counted many ways — to 9999 on two hands like this image from the 1400s, for example — but this is how they did it.
360: they did maths differently (all fractions, division via multiplication by reciprocal, &c) using pre-computed tables and a “squared circle” approach for trig-ish things (no angles!). 360 was both precise enough for surveying and easy to use with their system.
There’s also an Egyptian astronomy tie-in, but that’s another story…
@TodePond “I live on Earth at the present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe.”
— #BuckminsterFuller