I haven't enjoyed many of The Korean Vegan's recipes to date, but maybe my expectations were too high, you know how that can go. Yesterday I made an adapted version of her doenjang jjigae and it's great.
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doenjang jjigae.
INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp gochugaru
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 green onions, greens and whites separate
5 large shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 substantial sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 tbsp doenjang
2 tbsp soy sauce
500ml vegetable stock, I used mushroom
400-500g firm tofu, Nguyen-d and cubed
METHOD
Need to write.
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I've owned two or three copies of this cookbook over the years, and today I decided that it just might have aged better than almost any other multiple-cuisine cookbook I own.
Hear me out: I'm not comparing it against bibles like Marcella or Madhur Jaffrey; I'm saying that for a 1990s "Asian fusion" cookbook, most of the recipes are still pretty viable. Here's one:
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mushroom risotto with snow peas, shiitakes, and crispy ginger.
INGREDIENTS
7 dried shitake mushrooms
½ cup cold sake
¼ cup light olive oil (do not use virgin or extra-virgin)
1 cup chopped onions
¼ cup chopped shallots
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons best-quality curry powder
1½ cups Arborio rice
6 cups mushroom stock
Peanut oil, for deep frying the ginger
2 heaping tablespoons julienned fresh ginger
4 ounces snow peas, trimmed
NOTE: this recipe originally called for 250g shrimp, am rewriting.
METHOD
1. Soak the dried shiitakes in the cold sake for 1 hour. Drain, reserving the soaking liquid. Remove and discard the stems and cut the caps into thin slices.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onions, shitakes, shallots, and minced ginger and cook, stir-ring, for 5 minutes. Add the curry powder and stir for 1 minute. Add the rice and cook, stirring, for another 3 minutes. Add the reserved mushroom-soaking liquid, then raise the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring continuously, until the liquid evaporates, about 4 minutes.
3. Slowly stir ½ cup of the simmering stock into the rice. Reduce the heat to low and keep at a simmer. Cook the rice, stirring frequently to keep it from sticking to the pan, until the stock is absorbed. Continue adding more stock, ½ cup at a time and stirring frequently until it is absorbed and there is 1 cup of stock remaining, 15 to 20 minutes.
4. While the risotto is cooking, prepare the fried ginger. Pour peanut oil to a depth of 1 inch into a small skillet and heat to 375° F.
Add the ginger and cook until crisp, about 2 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove to paper towels to drain.
5. Stir the shrimp into the risotto, and continue adding the remaining 1 cup stock, ¼ cup at a time, for 10 minutes. Stir in the snow peas and salt to taste. Cook until the shrimp is cooked through and the rice is creamy, but still slightly al dente, about 5 minutes more. Divide among 6 serving bowls and garnish with the fried ginger.
SERVES 6
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It looks like we're going to be conducting our first gluten-free experiment in a while, here are some targets.
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OTTOLENGHI
Baked mint rice with pomegranate and olive salsa.
Baked rice with garlic confit, tomatoes and cinnamon.
Ginger egg-fried rice.
Pasta with yogurt, peas, and chile.
Pasta with feta, tomato, and fennel seed.
Baked rice with garlic, curry leaf, and saffron.
MEERA
Workers' curry.
ANNA JONES
Corn risotto.
Brown butter new potatoes.
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This worked pretty well as something to put on a witte puntje so as not to slit ones wrists due to boredom.
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sloppy go.
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp gochujang
2 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp honey
1 small onion, diced small
200g plant-based ground meat, unflavored
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Since the royal we is having a sober summer, here's a NYT recipe that just crossed my path, this makes a lot.
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phony negroni.
1 medium navel orange
1 cup dried hibiscus leaves, 30g?
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 pinch ground cloves
½ cup sugar
1 liter water
2 (12-ounce) cans tonic
1 cup unsweetened grapefruit juice
Ice, for serving
Orange wedges, for serving
Use a vegetable peeler to peel the orange, avoiding as much white pith as possible. In a small saucepan, combine the orange peel with the tea bags, peppercorns, cloves and 1 liter water. Bring to a boil over high heat.
Add the sugar and cook, stirring, until dissolved, about 1 minute. Cover, remove from the heat and let cool completely, about 2 hours. Strain the tea and discard the solids. The cooled, brewed tea can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
To serve, in a large pitcher, stir together the tea, tonic water, grapefruit juice and about 1 cup ice. Divide among rocks glasses filled with ice and garnish with orange wedges.
Tip: To make one serving, fill a rocks glass with ice. Pour in 1 ounce of grapefruit juice, 2 ounces of the tea and 3 ounces of tonic water; stir to mix. Garnish with an orange wedge.
Recipe in progress.
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risotto with daikon or sweet potato and miso butter.
INGREDIENTS
3 tbsp sesame oil, separated, possibly less, or actually use this amount
6 scallions, whites and greens separated
1 tbsp microplaned ginger, possibly twice this? version 1.0 did not taste remotely of ginger
1 cup shortgrain rice
3/4 cup sake or white wine
2 cups porcini or dashi stock (1 cube)
1 tbsp miso
2 tbsp butter
300g daikon or sweet potato, obviously two very different choices
250g chestnut mushrooms, halved or quartered
METHOD
Heat oven to 200°C.
Toss daikon and mushrooms in 1 tbsp sesame oil. Roast daikon and mushrooms for 35 minutes, turning halfway through.
In a medium ovenproof saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add onion and ginger and cook, stirring until translucent, 5 to 8 minutes. Add rice, and stir until grains are shiny and well coated with oil, about 2 minutes more. Add wine, and continue cooking and stirring until liquid is absorbed, 3 to 5 minutes.
Add stock, stir to combine. Cover saucepan; transfer to oven. Bake until almost all of the stock is absorbed, about 25 minutes. While it's baking combine miso and butter to make, you guessed it, miso butter. Take the rice out, check for doneness, it should still be barely inedible. Add roasted vegetables, return to oven. After 6-8 minutes, remove from oven, add miso butter. Serve immediately, topped with the scallion greens or your choice of garnish. Furikake? Togarashi-spiced Rice Krispies? Crispy onions is the easy answer.
Serves 4, sometimes less.
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Made it 4 times so far, it's solid.
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mushroom bourguignon.
INGREDIENTS
6 tablespoons butter
450g mushrooms, quartered
250g shallots or sweet onions (one big onion is fine)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 thick winter carrots, cut into coins
1 parsnip, possibly 2 if you like them, cut into whatever shape you like
3 garlic cloves (2 minced, 1 grated to a paste)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
1½ cups dry red wine
1½ cups beef, mushroom or vegetable broth
2 tbsp tamari or soy sauce, plus more to taste
3 large fresh thyme branches or ½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 rosemary sprig
2 bay leaves
optional
Smoked paprika, for serving
Polenta, egg noodles or mashed potatoes, for serving
Finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, for serving
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METHOD
Add 2 tablespoons butter or oil to a large Dutch oven or pot and set it over medium heat. When hot, stir in half the mushrooms and half the shallots/onions and throw in the rosemary sprig. (If it doesn’t all fit in the pot in one layer, you might have to do this in three batches, rather than two.) Without moving them around too much, cook the mushrooms until they are brown on one side, about 3 minutes. Stir and let them brown on the other side, 2 to 3 minutes more. Use a slotted spoon to transfer mushrooms and onions to a large bowl or plate and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat with another 2 tablespoons butter and the remaining mushrooms and onions, seasoning them with salt and pepper as you go. Finish by removing the last batch of mushrooms and onions from the pan.
Reduce heat to medium-low. Add another 1 tablespoon butter or oil to pan. Add carrot and parsnip and sauté until lightly golden and everything starts to soften, 5 minutes. Add the 2 minced garlic cloves and sauté for 1 minute longer. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Stir in flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute, then add wine, broth, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, thyme and bay leaf, scraping up the brown bits at bottom of pot.
Add reserved cooked mushrooms and onions back to the pot and bring to a simmer. Partly cover the pot and simmer on low heat until carrots and onions are tender and sauce is thick, 30 to 40 minutes. Taste and add more salt and soy sauce if needed. Stir in the grated garlic clove and saute for 2 minutes. Serve over polenta, noodles or mashed potatoes, topped with minced parsley and a tiny pinch of smoked paprika if you feel like it.
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The most adult mac and cheese possible.
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sage and blue cheese mac + cheese with hazelnuts and red grapes.
INGREDIENTS
2 handfuls seedless red grapes
olive oil
flaky salt
8 sage leaves
2 tbsp salted butter
50g mascarpone or cream cheese
75g blue cheese
(these cheese amounts are approximate, you want a sauce that mostly tastes like salty blue cheese but is also creamy like mac and cheese)
zest and juice of one lemon
2 tbsp hazelnuts, skinned and coarsely crushed
1 Belgian endive, coarsely chopped
1 small handful arugula
200g dried lumache rigate (medium-sided ribbed macaroni)
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METHOD
Roast grapes for 20 minutes at 220, turning halfway through and checking often to make sure nothing's burning. Sauté sage leaves in butter on low heat for 10 minutes, careful not to burn the butter. Nutty brown butter is OK.
Melt cheeses in a small saucepan. Add lemon zest and juice and hazelnuts to melted cheeses, salt to taste. If sauce is a little thick you can add some pasta water during the next step. Cook pasta.
Toss the pasta in the cheese/nut/lemon sauce, add sage butter, ladle into plates and garnish with grapes, arugula and endive. Sprinkle with flaky salt and freshly cracked black pepper.
Serves 2.
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I just listened to someone outside on the street try to open a bag of Doritos for roughly 90 seconds. I looked outside after the first 30 seconds because the clarity of the sound itself was so incongruous, like why can I hear that like it's happening inside my room and yet I do not have a bag of Doritos. Weirdly, thankfully, I could not hear the triumphant crunches afterwards, but also, if it took you that long to open a bag of Doritos, wouldn't you just Tasmanian Devil fistfuls of that shit for the world to hear.
But let's focus on the small lessons first.
1) If you have a good bakery in your neighborhood, support them. Don't buy shit nutritionless crap that was made 45 minutes away in an industrial warehouse or factory. If you have a good anything in your neighborhood that's owned and operated by people you can actually see and talk to and the vibe is good, spend your money there.
2) Stop trying to impress or prove yourself to people you just met. None of the people you admire/respect did this when you met them.
3) The sooner you can get comfortable with silence and inactivity, the better. Filling up your mind with serotonin-jacking distractions will not lead you anywhere, unless that distraction is a creative endeavor, in which case you are one of the luckiest kind of people there is.
4) There is nothing inherently wrong with routine, for many things this is the only way they can be done. Baking bread, exercise, sobriety, for example.
5) Work on your flexibility, like yesterday.
6) If you have never made your own croissant and egg sandwich at home with a great croissant from your local non-industrial bakery, you are missing out on something important.
7) If you have stage fright or performance anxiety, invest some time in getting over it at the earliest age possible. Being afraid of expressing yourself in front of other people is not going to lead to a more satisfying life.
8) Addiction is difficult. Try to cut yourself some slack if you are one of the afflicted.
9) Learn how to give up on things, unless your tendency is to give up on everything, then learn how not to.
10) Accept that the end is coming, and live your life accordingly.
like the song says:
As if i needed a reminder
ohhh that I do only what i wanna
So I go through with this
I knew happiness when I saw it
https://youtu.be/weL8HTY1NJU?si=fd7NXIwFaL-Xsl4V&t=235
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I think I made half of this last time, it was perfect.
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green cabbage kimchi.
INGREDIENTS
1 about 3.5 lb (1.5 kg) green cabbage
6 tbsp Korean coarse sea salt divided
2 cup (480 ml) water
1/2 - 1 cup (120 -240 mll) extra water for kimchi brine
1/2 small onion diced
4 cloves garlic
1/2 inch piece ginger chopped
3 tbsp vegetarian fish sauce
2 tbsp cooked white rice
1 red apple, cored (optional?)
2 tbsp water
4 fresh red chili diced, optional
7 tbsp Korean chili flakes (gochugaru)
1 tbsp sugar
3 green onion chopped
METHOD
Cut and dice the cabbage into 1-1/2 inch pieces. Try to separate the cabbage layers. Rinse them well and place them in a large mixing bowl.
Mix 4 tablespoons of salt with 2 cups of water until the salt dissolves. Pour it over the cabbage and toss well. Sprinkle the remaining salt on top, pressing down gently. Let the cabbage soak for 1 hour, turning it once halfway through.
To make the kimchi paste, combine the onion, garlic, ginger, apple, fish sauce, cooked rice, and about 2 tablespoons of water in a blender to help the blades run smoothly. Puree them until very smooth. Add the fresh chili and pulse a few times to finely process the chili but not pureed completely. Pour the mixture in a bowl and add the gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) and sugar; mix well.
Once the cabbage is wilted, rinse it twice and drain well. Place it in a large mixing bowl, add the green onion and kimchi paste, and, wearing plastic kitchen gloves, toss everything together to coat the cabbage evenly with the seasoning.
Transfer the kimchi to an airtight container. Pour the extra 1/2 to 1 cup of water into the kimchi mixing bowl, swirl it around to collect any remaining kimchi paste, and then pour it back over the kimchi.
Cover the kimchi with the lid and let it sit on a counter for 1 day and then, store in the refrigerator for 3-4 more days for better fermentation.
The nameplate on the kitchen door said "Magazijn", which basically means "Office" or "Stockroom" in Dutch, and yep that's what it is most like: it is most definitely not anything like a kitchen.
What it is most like is a depressingly fluorescent-lit office cubicle where someone should be seated in a not-quite-comfortable swivel chair, stapling printed-out expense reports or purchase orders into 3-ring binders a la 1995, making several unnecessary phone calls and wishing they were somewhere, anywhere else.
There is one rectangular window about the size of a large cutting board, and it looks out on the leafy green thoroughfare of Pieterburen's west end, the Hoofdstraat. Since there are only 3 other storefronts in town and we are the last business on this side of the street, this window view has never featured anything other than backpack-wearing tourists loping blandly towards the "center of town": they'd somehow found a place to park and were now on the prowl for something to do/eat/drink. During the summer months this window is also how we let all the flying/stinging insects in.
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One of our worst shifts ever was the day a busload of tourists showed up unexpectedly at around 11:45, forty cranky old people in various stages of disappointment/evolution/potential immobility, all shuffling and stumbling with excruciating slowness through our decidedly obstacle-laden dining room and all needing something to eat within 30 minutes before their bus left again.
There was absolutely never any fucking way this was going to happen. In our defense, I've been to very few cafés in this country where this had any chance of fucking happening at all, more due to the nature of Dutch hospitality/restaurant service than anything having to do with actual food, IYKYK.
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But I digress. I don't remember exactly what was on the menu the day the busload of tourists showed up except for our tomato fennel soup, which I remember only because one diner said upon hearing what the soup of the day was, nearly spitting with incredulity, "Tomato? And......fennel? Together????????????????"
We were not set up for serving a horde of incredulous, spitting people without advance notice. Inside we could seat 22 credulous, non-spitting people comfortably, and if the weather was nice you could probably add 12 or 14 to that, and at this point in our arc I think we were only printing out 5 or 6 menus a day so as not to be wasting a shitload of paper. So, already, a logistic snafu (by the time we called it quits these seats were filled from 11:30 to 14:30 most days, but at the point in our arc when the busload showed up we were still pretty empty before noon).
Then, the menu itself, the logic of which is perhaps best explained by continuing to describe the kitchen. The longest side of the kitchen, where the window is, features a stainless steel countertop with two or three €59 Ikea portable induction burners, 2 or 3 because sometimes one of them was moved to the opposite wall to create a "soup station". You could potentially have all 3 burners going at the same time, but then you had to keep them all below "setting 7" or a fuse would blow and you'd have to go out into the dining room to reset it.
I had never successfully used an induction stovetop before, and after this experience I no longer think of cooking in terms of low, medium, or high heat; I think of setting 1 (almost nothing happens); setting 4 (active, reliable medium heat cooking), setting 9 (do not take your eye off the pan because what happens heat-wise here is both wildly variable and barely comprehensible, very difficult to predict the outcome). At a certain point we added a tosti press to the arsenal which kind of mostly worked ok but was a hit on counter space and visual processing cycles so it eventually had to be relocated out into the front of house, more on this later.
The last important piece of equipment in the office/kitchen is an upright baker's oven almost 2 meters tall and able to realistically hold a maximum of five cakes if you were to use a creative mix of round and loaf pans. Four if you're only using round springforms.
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The upshot of all this moaning about kitchen size/layout/equipment is that, operating at peak capacity, you could still really only be firing a maximum of 3 pans' worth of dishes at any one time. Some could be executed with more than one dish to a pan, so, for example 6 tostis (8 if you include the tosti press). Realistically 3 pav bhajis, possibly 6 if things were going well (toasting the buttered buns correctly only worked on a griddle, not in the oven). At a certain point we added pancakes to the menu and, while people loved them and they were a very handy solution to things like gluten-free diets and children's meals, they could also absolutely bring the kitchen to its knees.
Anyone who has ever failed to make a pancake can probably immediately understand why. Pancakes need a predictably, consistently hot cooking surface. In order to get our pancakes coming out of the kitchen looking and feeling beautiful, the pan needed to be preheated for 3 minutes at setting 5.
So, a table of 4 comes in, two parents and two kids, the parents order something "easy" like quiche and a tosti and soup, and the kids order pancakes (for this example let's say sweet ones, because the savory ones usually required another burner to warm up the fillings, and kids would almost always have sweet ones anyway).
Burner 1: soup with bread.
Burner 2: pancake 1.
Burner 3: pancake 2.
Tosti press: tosti.
Burners 2 and 3 each take 3 minutes to heat up, then 2 minutes to cook each pancake.
Tostis took around 10 minutes.
Quiche/galettes took 10 minutes in the baker's oven.
Salad for the quiche would be prepped/tossed while the quiche was in the oven.
This particular order could go OK! But also this is just one table of 4 and already the kitchen is kind of disabled for 15 minutes. Yes more quiches and soup could be served, but anything that required contact with a hot cooking surface was on hold until these first orders could be sent out.
So, like the nightmare scenario for any lunch service was two equally-sized parties arriving at 11:45. If one of them was a table full of women this could be survivable because that table would mostly be soup and quiche, sorry for the generalization ladiesss but my experience has shown this to be mostly true. If, however, there were any men or kids at the table, there was no telling what would happen, order wise. Also, by 11:45 we generally hadn't sent any lunch orders out yet, so if there were kinks in the day's lunch prep to be discovered, they generally hadn't been discovered yet. And then if you're already in the weeds by 12 noon it's going to be a looooonnnnng fucking lunch.
We served a lot of tartines to try to address these logistical problems: the bread could be toasted either in the oven or a toaster, and the fillings/toppings for toasts were primarily room-temperature or could be heated quickly in a small sauté pan that didn't really obstruct any signal path for anything else. But then this is a lot of task switching for the inexperienced restaurant cook: soup with bread; pancake, pancake, tosti, tosti, toast, toast filling/topping, put 4 pieces of quiche in the oven, make/dress 4 salads (which I ratcheted up the complexity on by using a lot of freshly cut fruit and herbs that couldn't be pre-cut and also making stupidly small batches of homemade dressing). Five different cooking methods with different timers and temperatures, etc. Maximum output! But this math kind of means that the chef could be making 12 or so dishes at once, all in the space of a large hotel bathroom.
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The busful of old tourists were, as you might imagine, not especially empathetic to our plight. They didn't care that our (scarce!) menu was very small because there was no grocery store in town and we were striving to be a waste-free vegetarian cafe at the end of the world and our kitchen was in a broom closet. They just wanted something familiar to eat. I'm sure almost none of them wanted to be at a vegetarian cafe, and most of them would've preferred the food at a highway gas station, at least there would've been familiar options. Our Google Reviews rating (4.9/5.0!) survived that day only because none of those customers knew what a Google Review was.
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P.S: We also had no garbage service! So at the end of the night after either prepping for the next day and/or processing all of our leftovers, then cleaning, we would throw our bag of garbage into the back of Marge the Cargo Van and bring it home with us. And all of our recyclables.
Whaaat a fukken life: a warm cozy apartment, 3 laptops, 2 phones, legal weed, prescription sleep aids, a giant industrial fan from the 50s, homemade vegan 'nduja, mozzarella, hot water, plumbing, homemade kimchi, a great mattress, streaming media, ok one actual mouse, but really, what are we complaining about. We being me.
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'nduja.
75g home-dried tomatoes
or just sun-dried tomatoes, which NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR but bear with me: if they're not herbed or treated in anyway or packed in oil this can still be a good ingredient, you just want 100% unfuckedwith dried tomatoes
1/4 cup hot water
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp gochugaru
1 tsp crushed dried red pepper, the hot kind
1 tsp fennel seed or possibly 1.5 tsp
1 tsp coarse sea salt
Blend to a chunky spread. I threw a dried apricot in there the last time and it might have made a positive difference in terms of structure and sweetness. I also made a 'nduja butter out of it which is, as you can imagine, better.
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Editor's Note, Sept 2025: So much literally incredible bullshit has happened since this post that none of it is worth commenting on anymore.
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I'm sure we're probably not. But we ("we") have reached yet another breaking point in this finite yet far too long series of breaking points. What do we call a series of points again, a line? If a line is one-dimensional and has no depth, sounds about right. I guess a curve is also a line, but this is kind of my point: what is wrong with us? Why can we barely express a complete thought. "We".
I don't even just mean "we" anymore, I think I mean the actual we, as in all of us. Certainly one problem can be called something like patiencelessness when it comes to finding solutions for things, very much like the patience I just ran out of while considering how to start talking about this. To myself.
Let's start over with a couple of basic modern challenges that, when combined, can very easily create the illusion of an impenetrable, oceanic wall of doom, at least for this writer. Off of what passes for the top of my head these days:
1) Dopamine, the "firehose of pleasure" that being online offers us, the constant buzz of harmless, idle consumption...addictive enough to impair us from being creative our own selves in any meaningful offline way, more on that in a bit.
1b) The satisfaction of knowing anything immediately. This is a subcategory of dopamine addiction that makes us unprecedentedly susceptible to new problems like reasonably realistic misinformation, see below.
2) The lowered bar to content creation means that "anyone" can create "compelling" content, instead of having to learn a skill that doesn't involve a phone and an app and some kind of AI...just download a free app that does everything for you. One result of which is that our content keeps getting more homogenous, because everyone is using the same or very similar tools; and said content is generally less complex and "more stupider," because that's the whole concept of these tools...requiring as little skill or intelligence as possible, the less the better.
2b) I think that unless your profession or serious creative outlet involves expressing complex thoughts to an audience of listeners or readers on an extremely regular basis, your ability to express yourself is probably undergoing some kind of atrophy, because all you do is consume other people's gradually stupider content.
3) The fact that getting offline is still a minority position at this point, and probably seems like a comparably "lonely" undertaking, although there's considerable evidence that our being online all the time is not making us less lonely at all. Point being, "how can anyone survive offline!?!?!??!"
4) The disillusionment of discovering that people are generally not as good or as smart as we once somehow thought they were, a position we originally arrived at through a simple lack of evidence to the contrary, combined wish wishful thinking/optimism. Now there is plennnnnty of evidence and no legitimate reason for optimism.
4b) The fucking plague of Comments sections and the resulting decline of polite conversation and general interpersonal etiquette. This is partially my fault. I helped put the internet in everyone's home, which hurts me almost every day. But before 1995, when your average Archie Bunker type used to watch the news and get angry about, well, anything at all, they used to just complain to their spouse if they were fortunate to have found someone insecure or stupid enough to tolerate their stunted worldview, or maybe they would complain about it to a like-minded colleague or two at the steel mill or the slaughterhouse or whatever, or hey probably even the advertising agency if we're talking about pre-Reaganite yuppies. But their circle of toxicity was limited by their lack of transmission technology and the fact that in person someone can knock your teeth down your throat if you say something offensive enough. Then computers happened, but you still needed to have some kind of intellectual horsepower to be able to post content, and access to consuming that content was still very limited. Turns out this was a better, saner model.
5) The plague of misinformation. This is probably going to be the end of us, because: we're addicted to being online; it's making us stupider; the stupider we are, the more susceptible we are to misinformation. And the more evil among us are going to use this to get ahead of the less evil among us, because it's easy. Combine this with our increasingly insatiable need to have the answer to any possible question at our fingertips and well buddy you've got yrself a veritable powderkeg of something. Sorry, still shaking off the atrophy.
My dark dark habit of reading the conservative "news" site National Review revealed this strikingly un-selfaware tidbit today entitled "The Television Age Is Over":
Television maintains certain presuppositions about authority, expertise, and credibility. Anthony Fauci’s Covid pronouncements, “51 former intelligence officials” declaring Hunter Biden’s laptop a Russian dupe, and “fact-checking” debate moderators are all natural products of a televisual culture. They assume certain things about the way information is produced, verified, delivered, and defended.
If televisual forces (network executives and anchors, newspaper editorial boards, etc.) seem more and more defensive, it is because they are now in the position of conducting rearguard actions against the digital culture that has overtaken them — and that operates on altogether different premises. Joe Rogan and Walter Cronkite occupy entirely different roles in their respective information economies. If the basic question of television news is: Who said it? Do I trust them?, the basic question of digital news is: How does it map onto my prior beliefs? How does it make me feel? Indeed, what constitutes “news” in each economy will be different. The salacious rumor is digital. Proclaiming it bunk is televisual.
They say this without any acknowledgement that this is a serious problem, it's "just the way it is now", breaking their arm patting themselves on the back for realizing "we're in a digital age now". OH ARE WE?
ETA: This seems relevant.
