Ecology a la Carte

Hot on the heels of my menu donation to the New York Public Library comes this intriguing news story about a team of ecologists using Hawaiian restaurant menus to reconstruct long-term changes in local marine populations. The menus provided the evidence needed to...

Sewer Watch

The past week has brought two intriguing updates from London’s subterranean infrastructure of excretion. In a triumphant press release, Thames Water announced the removal of the world’s largest fatberg — a sewer-blocking, bus-sized lump of congealed...

Feed Lots

IMAGE: “Coronado Feeders, Dalhart, Texas” (2013), Mishka Henner (archival pigment print, 102x122cm). British photographer Mishka Henner’s most recent work shows the astonishing and terrible beauty of two of Texas’s most valuable landscapes —...

Depressed Cakes

IMAGE: Misfortune cookies by Miss Insomnia Tulip. Miss Cakehead, a publicist specialising in edible stunts (why didn’t that job exist when I was in school?) has organised a network of pop-up Depressed Cake Shops, which will take over bakeries around England in...

Oenosthesia

Jo Burzynska, aka Stanier Black-Five, dropping her hydrophone into a wine barrel. Photograph from the Stanier Black-Five website. Jo Burzynska is a New Zealand-based wine critic who also happens to be an experimental sound artist working under the name Stanier...

Starbucks Urbanism

This is too much fun not to share: Slate is challenging its readers to identify world cities purely by the geographic pattern of their Starbucks locations. In the interest of not spoiling your fun, I won’t post any of the answers, but I will say that if you know...