Elsewhere for January 19, 2018

You should read this for 1/20/2018:

Books, Writing, and Language

Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
How to Keep a Zibaldone, the 14th Century’s Answer to Tumblr
The Fascinating History of 10 Extra Letters the English Alphabet Used to Have

Food and Drink

It’s Time to Stop Picking Stouts Over Porters
The History of Texas Sheet Cake Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and often, with pecans and coconut. Here’s the Library of Congress opining on the origins of Texas Sheet Cake, a recipe from Texas Monthly and an interesting vintage recipe for an intriguingly related sheath cake
Switzerland bans boiling lobsters alive I think pithing them or using a knife is a lot more humane.

History and Archaeology

11,500-year-old infant remains reveal ancient population “This is the first genomic evidence that all Native Americans can be traced back to the same population that migrated using a land bridge.”

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Experiment Is a Success Here’s the gist:

that wages in Seattle are up, low-wage employment increased in the city, and the number of hours worked increased. They reported earlier this year that the wage increase had “near zero” impact on restaurant employment. And this week, in their final study for the city, the Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team released a reportproving prices at restaurants and grocery stores haven’t increased because of the minimum wage.

For more data, see this piece about the study.

Science and Technology

Those frozen NC alligators have thawed out and they are really grouchy now “A video posted earlier this week of the alligators frozen in place – with only their snouts above the ice – got hundreds of thousands of views across the world, and raised questions about how the alligators survive. ”

Society

Mike Pence Turned Beet Red During MLK Service as Black Preacher Went Off About ‘Shithole’ Remarks
Jennifer Mendelsohn is a free-lance journalist and spare-time genealogist who has been calling out anti-Immigration public figures by pointing out their own family history of immigration. Meet The Woman Confronting Public Figures With Their Immigrant Histories “Jennifer Mendelsohn uses census records and ship manifests to put anti-immigrant hypocrisy on blast with #resistancegenealogy”

If you know anything about American immigration history, every single generation looks down on the last generation of immigrants and insists that these new immigrants are inferior and can’t possibly become American. It’s just exhausting to have to point this out over and over again. That these same people who see themselves as such quintessential Americans, their ancestors were at one point exactly the kind of newcomers who they’re now saying have no right to be American, aren’t going to fit in in America, aren’t up to snuff. It’s just ridiculous.

One of the current catch phrases in the GOP is “chain immigration.” That’s a dog-whistle reference to the historical and universal immigration process where one or two family members immigrate, establish themselves, and then help their other family members immigrate. It’s the way human immigration has always worked (including Neolithic farmers in Ireland). The people decrying immigration are generally here because of ancestor immigrants and chain immigration. It’s related to the larger trend of people essentially thinking “I got mine” and not worrying about the rest of humanity.