H.D. Miller

In honor of St. Patrick's Day... eccentricculinary.substack.com/p/the-curse-of…

@CyberPunkCortes Follow that guy on instagram. It's a wonder he's still alive. Only a matter of time.

This is what it’s like to be Slavic.

@BestNashTransit @meriwetheracdmy @NWSteury I was hoping to make it, but I had to be in NYC for my daughter's college graduation.

@meriwetheracdmy @NWSteury @hdmillr Was hoping Howard would be at the event tonight.

How the liberal arts and critical thinking give students the upper hand later in life. @hdmillr

@AtomicEconomics @KevinEspiritu If you know, you know.

@KevinEspiritu Pfft... Mint's for beginners. Want a real workout? Put horseradish in your garden bed. LOL. I grow in a large pot: Never need to replant, those fine roots will take off with out any struggle at all. Not my pic.

Every time I read about a diving accident, I remind myself that early divers were insanely brave. Early aviators get all the glory for being brave, but people knew what falling from a great height would do to the human body. People didn't know that you could die in so many ways other than drowning. In fact, modern divers are still inventing new and more unexpectedly gruesome ways of dying.

Q: “What could go wrong?” A: A lot.

I don't understand people who go diving with their families.

The funniest thing is that AI will do exactly the same thing to you. Give AI a piece of your creative writing and ask for feedback. Then tell it that the piece was actually written by a famous writer and watch it back pedal in real time.

@dioscuri The hilarious thing is that AI does exactly the same to us. Give it a piece of your prose and ask for feedback. Then say that it was written by a famous writer and watch it backpedal in real time.

This user posted an actual Monet, said it was AI, asked people to explain what made it inferior. They obliged 😂 Tracks with research showing people systematically downgrade their aesthetic assessments of art when told it’s AI-generated. See — nature.com/articles/s4159…

@HarveyBarker5 Agreed.

@hdmillr The real problem with Troy was the exclusion of the Gods. The Iliad is not a secular story. Athena matters in the epic. It is still better than whatever dumb shit Nolan is making.

I remember thinking that Troy had excellent fight choreography, but that it was mid overall. Also, that Brad Pitt was miscast. ("Sing, oh muses, of the rage of Achilles", but Brad Pitt was too chill to do rage. The role required peak Russell Crowe.) Now, Troy looks great.

@Fullantho @DisgracedProp It goes back even further than that. Los Angeles was pro-Confederacy in the Civil War.

@DisgracedProp @hdmillr Chinatown has a scene of protagonist having a confrontation with the "Okies"

people who don’t get what’s happening in LA right now don’t get that LA is a fundamentally southern city. It will never be milquetoast peaceful socialist like northern cities. People mistakenly think of it in same category as globohomo “western Europe” type cities, which include New York. It’s actually never been that. In its soul it wants to be a lawless outpost with hot weather values. Like South American cities it is meant to be in a constant state of flux between fascists and communists. It’s nothing like New York or San Francisco. It belongs to the equatorial world.

Auspicious day: I just saw the first firefly of the summer.

@BBDaybreakEU That account is a classic, the standard by which all African travelogues should be judged.

This here is an absolutely fantastic travelogue which I finished reading yesterday. It's over 50,000 words but to summarise: - Belgian couple take a Toyota Landcruiser and drive across the Congo. They cover 3000km in 39 days. - It's an unbelievably hostile environment. Everyone in the country, from the police officials to village children, is trying to make money from them. With a few exceptions, most of the Congolese they encounter are utterly terrible people. - Despite this, they have a strict 'no bribes' policy, which extends to not giving any money to anyone begging for it (which is constant). This pisses everyone off. They have to persuade every policeman and official to let them through wherever they go, and they have to tell villagers that they will not pay them when they 'offer to help'. - Most of the roads are mud and almost impossible to traverse. The car is very robust but it gets knocked about a lot and faces frequent mechanical issues which somehow have to be resolved in the middle of nowhere. - Wherever they can, they seek refuge at Catholic missions in villages along the way. The clergy are some of the only people they can remotely trust. - Their presence as White people in the villages, and on road, is a complete spectacle. Hundreds of villagers crowd around their tent when they sleep. Everyone is staring at them, asking for money, and laughing when some kind of misfortune befalls them. - There are a couple of instances where they brush closely with angry villagers wielding machetes and sticks screaming about Whites and money.

@CSandbatch Sedona, Arizona Marfa, Texas

1. Appalachian Mountains 2. Taos 3. New Orleans 4. Mount Shasta 5. The Everglades 6. The Black Hills 7. Devil's Tower 8. Hill Country 9. ???

I have a theory that there are in fact *eight* sibyls at any given time in America, representing different locales, and the ethereal darkness of that part of the country is because *one is missing*, which would make the perfect nine. Eight of course is a generally evil number, and America is cursed in part because our Sibyl is missing.

@jameszimmermann I'm old. Tuck your shirt in, boy!

Settle this debate: I was inclined to tuck but I sent Mrs. Zimmermann both pics and she liked it untucked. Who’s right?

@DisgracedProp Cava is for white women of all ages who have aspirations and disposable income.

Cava is worth twice as much as Burger King and 10x more than Carl’s Junior. How did this happen. Has anyone ever had a craving for Cava? No.

@Tom_Rowsell @NadineMaren @bunburyoudoujp By 1880, there were 15,000 Western style restaurants in Japan, where diners dressed in western clothes ate meat with a knife and fork. Katsu is a transliteration of "cutlet".

@NadineMaren @bunburyoudoujp Yes. Highly influential on Japanese cuisine and American

Why the UK and Japan Are Basically the Same Country - Constitutional monarchies - Island nations - Unique food culture - Suck at foreign languages (because island nations) - Had empires - People are mad at them (because empires) - Tea

@CowboyGospeler Needs an E Clampus Vitus plaque.

Native Californians lassoing a bear.

Off I-40 somewhere between Memphis and Little Rock is the Louisiana Purchase State Park. Driven past it a thousand times. Finally stopped there last weekend. This is place of great power. It's very small park that consists of an elevated walkway leading you through a headwater swamp to a stone monument. The stone marker sits on the spot where the 5th Principal Meridian and the Baseline survey lines intersect, the initial point from which all surveys of property acquired through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 originated. It was only after this point was established that land grants could be issued, settlers, prospectors and ranchers could stake a claim, or towns could be platted. The point was lost to time until 1921 when during a resurveying operation of the three Arkansas counties it intersects, surveyors discovered marked "witness" trees from the initial 1815 survey. Realizing the significance of the spot, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected the commemorative stone marker in 1926. An informational plaque in front of the marker reads, "Here the settlement of the American West began."

@StuckeyStop Need to bring back the Seven Keys Coconut Toast Spread.

I remember! I even bought the company back to keep the log rolls rolling 🙌

Very good piece on Eric Rohmer by my friend Charlotte Allen.

@DrGregLittle2 I live on Browns Creek and wrote about the stone box grave in my basement. eccentricculinary.substack.com/p/the-grave-in…

The remains of the 12-acre, palisade-walled mound site known as Old Town near Nashville, Tennessee. In 1100 AD it was a large trading center on the old Natchez Trace. Brown's Creek, adjacent to the site, had nearly 100 stone box graves along its bank.