Jaya Saxena set out to recreate the lightning-ey mushrooms from “Ratatouille” for Eater, and with the help of a variable transformer, advice from a lapsed mechanical engineer, a hacked extension cord, and some aluminum foil, she apparently succeeded:
Suddenly, I heard the faintest crackling, like a breeze was crinkling the foil. So I waited, and waited, and after about 10 minutes I started smelling hints of dirt and herb, and the crackling became louder. I peeked between the foil and saw sparks shocking the mushrooms, and some of the cheese beginning to melt. Maybe this would work!
Along with her August report from the Times Square Margaritaville, it feels like we’re witnessing the full flowering of Jaya’s long-underrated talent right now. Also Today in Food: “…delicious if you’re into fleshy gonads” (and who isn’t), “Woman Accused of Starting Fawn Fire Was Attempting To Boil Bear Urine to Drink” (and who isn’t), Pete Wells went to Eleven Madison Park and reports that the fancy beet “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint,” and The Cut has an excerpt from Claire Vaye Watkins’s forthcoming novel “I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness,” which isn’t exactly about food but is at least about… teeth.1
Today in Apocryphal Hold Steady Lyrics: At Glastonbury they pissed so much MDMA that all the eels in the river got high.
Mike Benner made a bad tweets bracket, and it’s the most complete collection I’ve ever seen of the worst Twitter has to offer. They’re all here: the Kevin Smith tweet, Ruthkanda Forever, the Woke Gator, "Stop Appropriating Daddy" (actually a Good Tweet but it belongs here anyway), and more.
Should You Longread It? Wesley Lowery has a profile of Will Smith in GQ that you should probably only read if you’re facing a long wait at the dentist. The story is fine but here it is in two sentences: “West Philadelphia born and raised, getting famous is how Will Smith spent most of his days. Now he’s 50 and has a ghostwritten autobiography coming out that won’t tell you any of the really messy stuff about his open marriage.” He also says what you’d expect a rich person to say about defunding the police, looks good in ten to twenty thousand dollars worth of clothing, and is clearly dying his hair black. It’s all pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Clubhouse tried to hold a sponsorship pitch meeting but no sponsors showed up and the show creators realized they should just be making podcasts, reports Ashley Carman. Meanwhile Vice’s Sophia Smith Galer talked to doctors that got harassed off the platform by antivax trolling. Despite now being just an ancillary feature of Twitter, in April Andreessen Horowitz led a fundraising round that reportedly valued the app at a hilarious $4 billion. Seems like it’s time to tap the sign again:
Good News for People Who Love Bad News: I am very confident that the satirical point made by crypto-trading hamster Mr. Goxx is being missed by crypto hustlers. Aaron Gordon: “The biggest difference between what Tesla is doing and what the other self-driving car aspirants are doing is that Tesla has replaced the role of paid, trained safety drivers with fans and investors.” People are going back to the office but still stuck on Zoom all day, because we are still in hell. Idiots buying up all the horse paste are forcing veterinarians to ration ivermectin, because we are still in hell. And whatever new shortages come out of China’s energy crisis (nylon? machine parts?) I’m sure we’ll discover all their unexpected downstream consequences in the next installment of “Are We Boned?”
Finally, via Intern Linda: “Murder, She Bet” is a game that lets you make a prediction market with your friends for the suspects in any murder mystery.
Today’s Song: Eels, “Rags to Rags”
~ tabs to tabs and rust to rust, how do you stand when you've been crushed? ~
Yesterday I set what I thought was an ambitious fundraising goal of $1000 for my Maine Marathon walk to support domestic violence services here in Southern Maine, and you all demolished not only that one but the hastily updated $1500 goal I replaced it with. So I have gritted my teeth and made it $2500, and if you all manage to beat that one too I will simply leave it as a testament to your generosity. Thank you so much, on behalf of a lot of people this money will help, and if you haven’t yet, get in there and make the line go up.
