"What on earth"? Nothing.

The heat’s been brutal this summer but we still gotta eat! If you’re like me, heat might suppress your appetite, and the last thing any of us want is to sweat over a hot stove and oven when it’s already boiling outside. Here are some of my favorite hot-weather recipes to keep hydrated and fed with when the weather is unbearable! (All recipes should be un-paywalled).

NYT’s best gazpacho (lives up to its name!!)

Persian cold cucumber soup (if you like tzatziki you will like this!)

Eric Kim’s cold noodles with tomato (infinitely riffable Korean flavor profile — for a creamier and less brothy take, try these cold sesame noodles too)

Vietnamese chicken and herb salad (this is an excellent time to get a rotisserie chicken so you don’t have to turn the oven on)

Radish sandwiches with butter and salt (and in a similar vein, if you dig this flavor combo you should try this Polish cottage cheese dip on some good rye bread or even crackers)

It’s still a little early in the season, but you can never go wrong with a BLT (or, if you don’t eat bacon, try this tomato furikake sandwich in its place)

Infinite iterations of pasta salad! You can use anything you got but here is a template I like.

Assorted dense bean salads. This back pocket canned salad is a weird combo of jarred ingredients but it slaps, this hoagie-inspired one is super satisfying, and cowboy caviar is a classic for a reason.

Poke bowls! Canned tuna mixed with some kewpie mayo and sriracha is a budget-friendly riff on the usual ahi and makes everything taste like a spicy tuna roll, but use whatever proteins you like, this is more of a loose template.

Potions of Hydration!

Earlier this week I mentioned putting pickle juice in my water to replenish electrolytes. I work outside in a very hot and humid area, so it was very necessary.

Since then, a LOT of people have chimed in with their favorite hot weather drinks. I want to try... all of them. I've only had a few. Many of them are similar, but I still think its cool how many variations there are for 'its fucking hot out here and I don't want to die.'

So here is the incomplete list.

ORS (oral rehydration solution) (link has several recipes)

Shrub (sharaab)

Agua de pepino

Switchel

Posca

Ayran

Straight up drinking pickle juice (small doses)

Agua fresca

Sekanjabin

Pickle lemonade

Lebanese lemonade

Salted watermelon

Jamaica/hibiscus tea

Lebu pani

Ayuvedic gatorade

Soda chanh muôi

Suero

Aam paan

Sharbat

-

These ones were given to me without names, and were just lists of ingredients, to taste:

- water and umezu

- diluted apple juice with lemon and salt

-watermelon, lime juice, mint

- sparkling water, mint leaves, lemon or lime juice, cucumber

-coconut water, lime juice, salt

-salt, lemon juice, water

-orange juice, salt, sugar, water, lime or lemon juice

-elderflower syrup and lime juice in water.

"Getting a candidate into office is only about $15 grand and the incumbancy rate is 90%, meaning you get 18-20 years out of them. In this day and age, a US Congressman is one of the best investments a corporation can make."

I'd like to be able to say the writers were baing a bit on the nose with having the bad guy say that, but I could absolutely see some AI tech bro saying that word for word.

Me before I came out, when I did pageants and modeling.

This was me the day of my junior prom. The dress weighed around 20 lbs, was the first one I tried on, and my makeup was done by someone who still thought brown lip liner looked good on white people. I spent the entire day being photographed and generally hating how I looked and wishing I could figure out why, when everything was technically perfect.

Came out in 2016, here's nine years of transformation (in reverse order, sorry)

Turns out I'm neither a Normal Guy nor a woman, but a much weirder type of faggy masc thing.

In my lifestyle lolita egg era. Somehow getting to dress like a princess gave me the will to get up in the morning

granted being a big ol goth doesn't really fit the bill of "socially acceptable heterosexual femininity" but i was HYPER feminine when i was closeted, especially in the years between when i FIRST tried to come out (age 16 - around the time of those first photos) and when i actually made the jump (age 19 - about a year after the last photo)

you can tell in that second to last photo i literally got a tattoo that said "MAD GIRL" which was an exercise in many things, including abstract self-harm, a visual reminder that i had given up on myself, and wildly underestimating the number of dudes who would misread it as BAD GIRL and take that as a cue to say gross shit to me while i was at work

anyway never kill yourself

haha yeah 🫣

consciously dipped my toes into the gender fuckery pool at around 15/16 but I was pentecostal at the time and well. took them out real quick

i tried very very hard to be “femme” for a LONG time but during covid lockdowns I didn’t have to perform for anyone and I slowly started to let it all go and now I’m a silly little man 😌

The Barefoot Contessa (1954) is the life story of a poor Spanish woman who rises up to become one of the most famous actresses in the world. The movie does not bother to give her character traits beyond that she loves to have sex and also that she loves to run around barefoot (the fetishistic connotations are inescapable). She falls in love with a count and ultimately marries him. The big twist at the end of the movie is that her new husband had his dick blown off in the war and so they can't have sex (because, tragically, he never learned how to do hand stuff). Then he murders her for having an affair.

In 1978, Ina Garten bought a specialty food store that, for some unfathomable reason, someone had already named The Barefoot Contessa after this movie, which in 1999 became the title of her bestselling cookbook, which was then followed by a popular Food Network show. Now all of us need to deal with there being a TV cooking show called The Barefoot Contessa as part of the background radiation of our lives.

I never really realised how much difference it makes until I went to England and realised that here the change of seasons is an obvious, visible, physical change in the world. Like, everything REALLY IS orange and foggy in autumn! In spring there are flowers EVERYWHERE, so much more than any other season, and the trees really do have all blossom and no leaves. Even if it doesn't snow, in winter there's frost all the time and the trees are bare and the sky is visibly greyer all the time. You don't need to be told "this date is the first day of spring", you can SEE IT (although this is getting way messier and less precise due to climate change).

By contrast, most places in Australia the seasons we're taught feel like arbitrary categories - and is it any surprise considering they're colonial constructs? Orange-leaved autumn and blossom-covered spring is a cartoon stereotype with no relevance on a continent where ALL NATIVE TREES ARE EVERGREEN!! Snowy winters are a joke in the desert, and even sunny summers don't ring particularly true considering that much of the country is in the tropics, where summer means monsoons - not that I've ever seen the concept that WE HAVE A MONSOON SEASON taught at an Australian school.

the 4 season model as you and i know it is a european invention, though 4 season models aren't unique to europe! most notably china has the same type of season subdivision.

Tags passing peer review, gonna share.

William Shatner: Leonard was so brilliant and thoughtful and striking and intense, you don't even know half of it, he was incredible but also funnier and sillier than you'd guess and so striking and such a genius and kind and not exactly Spock but kind of reserved in the same way, he did define the character, and very caring. They say we used to compete but I don't really remember it because he was just so... I remember laughing together and... anyway

Haha, yes!

FWIW, there are a lot of documented examples of both of these uhhhh characterizations, but since this is suddenly getting more notes, the specific ones I was most thinking of:

From Nimoy—

Bill is the only actor with whom I have that spark, that chemistry—to anything like the extent I have it with him. When we step into a scene, I always know—something’s going to happen. Just amazing. Just amazing the tremendous spark of some kind that he would set off. You remember, Bill, what used to happen in the makeup department in the morning. You’d come in. We’d have these screaming, yelling, laughing discussions. Walk out of there exhausted, exhausted— [...] You know—how can I do a day’s work? I’m aching from laughing. Just amazing. Just amazing the kind of spark that he would set off. And I think, as I really think about it, the idea of working together again on STAR TREK—it’s that thing that I would look forward to most. That happening again. I have no doubt in my mind that it would. Amazing spark that I get from him.

From Shatner:

I miss him. Even when we weren't in close touch, he was always in my life. And when I think about Leonard and all the adventures we had together, I remember his own lust for life; I remember his desire to explore and experience life in all its infinite wonders. I think of his spiritual side, in which he never stopped searching for answers he knew he would never find. I think of his generosity and his commitment to fight for equal justice for everyone. I think of his never-ending passion for the arts and his quest to nurture creativity in young people. And I think of him standing in front of me, his palm held high, his fingers separated in the Vulcan salute, smiling knowingly. Fifty years is a lifetime that passes in an instant. I can close my eyes and see him, young and handsome, tall and taciturn. He's there, in my mind; his light step, his sardonic humor, his passion for his work. I hear his voice in all its richness, infused with an endless curiosity, and the sounds of his unhappiness as well as his laughter.

The Rust Disciples.

worn axes left to rust and rot in the forest sometimes become these strange creatures when fungi colonizes their handles. if you meet them in the woods, mind your business. if you are cruel they'll hunt you until you either leave their territory or are caught and chopped to bits. if you linger near them too long you might feel compelled to follow them deeper into the woods. you'll hike deeper and deeper with a growing group of the creatures until you get to a small pile of ancient burnt wood and crumbled stone in a clearing so off the beaten path that whatever was there before has almost completely returned to the earth. you will kneel down on soft mossy ground beside the beasts and mourn and laugh and cry and sing until you grow too tired to move. you will then wake up alone, feeling disoriented but content.

you will never find out what god you were grieving.