A discussion about how great empanadas are led to the realization that in a Star Trek Federation of Planets scenario, the aliens' stereotype of "Earth Food" is definitely "humans put whatever inside of bread" ...
Imagine whole "Earth Restaurants" that are just poorly understood and nonsensical mashups of hot dogs, Cornish pasties and beirochs ... in one.
A turkey sandwich, but cooked like a pot sticker. And sold for twice as much by some Alpha Centaurian who thinks they can speak Cantonese but are actually speaking Welsh.
Alien hipsters who are completely baffled when you introduce them to the concept of BBQ. Then they discover Alabama white bread and ribs and it all makes sense again.
"Look! We made you some of your ethnic cuisine so you'll feel at home!"

It is uncooked bacon sandwiched between layers of rice and they keep insisting it's called a "BLT"
They pronounce it as “Blit”

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More from @maggiekb1

2 Mar
I wish stories like this would explain exactly what is wrong with these books. The zoo one, for instance, has caricatures of black people that look damn near inhuman out on display in the zoo.
The eggs one has some caricatures of Asian people that are basically set up to look weird and have (white) children laugh and point at how weird they look.
I know both these things btw, because my dad has been buying my kids all the Dr. Seuss books and none of us expected this to be in them. It was a fun surprise opportunity to have yet another talk with my kids about racism before I pitched those books. But anyway ...
Read 8 tweets
17 Feb
Friends, I assure you that your non-Texas chunk of the electric grid is also deeply flawed, aging, and bonkers in its own special way. ERCOT is a weird system, but it is absolutely not uniquely problematic.
We have very old infrastructure all over. We have ... not planned or optimized infrastructure all over. We have weird regulatory quirks and utilities that don’t trim trees all over. We have squirrels - America’s number one electric reliability threat - all over.
And as other reporters have pointed out to me, politicians in both parties have been talking a big game about the need for electric infrastructure upgrades since at least the Clinton administration.
Read 11 tweets
17 Feb
So here's the thing with making an electric grid work: You have to have an almost perfect balance between supply and demand at all times. There's a very narrow window for the margin of error. Too much or too little on either side of the scale and ... fzzt ... blackout.
Yeah, the whole thing is really that delicate and it is insane. The fact that we don't have MORE blackouts is a testament to the people who work 24/7/365 making sure the balance stays near perfect.
Read 10 tweets
16 Feb
This is a super interesting thread about experiences with the Texas electrical grid. I will say one thing here: VERY old and shoddily maintained infrastructure is not just a feature of Texas' deregulated system. Updating aging infrastructure is an issue all over.
You all might remember the infamous 100-year-old transmission line from the California Camp fire wildfiretoday.com/2018/12/10/why…
Generally, I am not sure exactly how common REALLY old electric infrastructure is ... but I am certain it is more common that you probably think. Why? Same reason there's a lot of old houses still running on their original wiring.
Read 11 tweets
15 Feb
I've been seeing a lot of tweets blaming Texas blackouts on wind power. Minnesota's wind turbines operate down to about -20. We've had to turn them off before when it did get too cold, but the problem in Texas is not "renewables are bad", it's more complicated than that ...
First off, a polar vortex is ... kind of a big deal rare event. The kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily expect a power provider in the American South to be prepped for. Some of this is just on the "yup, shit does happen" side of things.
A polar vortex is going to hit a grid that isn't used to those temperatures hard. Regardless of what you're powering it with. We uh ... we have some issues up here sometimes with freezing gas and coal plants, too.
energynews.us/2019/02/27/mid…
Read 16 tweets
25 Jan
There are sociopolitical trends that researchers can trace across countries and time as destabilizing democracies and leading to violence. Any one of these trends happening is bad. We are currently dealing with six. fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-r…
This story is not an explainer on where the specific violence of Jan 6 came from. It's about 30+ years of broad cultural trends that mean there's not a "normal" to go back to and Biden's push for unity might not be possible (or all that desirable).

fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-r…
White supremacists and violent militias are a problem. But part of the danger about them is that they aren't the only problem. There's multiple, interconnecting trends at work -- building on each other, feeding each other, and leading nowhere good.

fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-r…
Read 4 tweets

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