Category: digestable

Things I originally wrote for Lena Greenberg’s newsletter at digestable.substack.com

The Faux-Op

Impulse Buy There’s a shop down the block from my house that I’m in an interesting relationship with. It’s called The Source Bulk Foods, a franchise of a zero-waste food store in the UK and Ireland. I go there often for staples and dry goods: oat milk, muesli, rice, lentils, oil, vinegar, etc. It serves… Continue reading The Faux-Op

When Chad Met That Girl

The Once-Over Love is in the air so let’s talk about a match made in the internet’s hetero-hellscape: Chad and That Girl. Content warning that this column talks about sexual relations and sexism so if you’re not up for that please scroll-on-by! According to fashion youtuber moderngurlz “That Girl” is a TikTok aesthetic like cottagecore… Continue reading When Chad Met That Girl

Neon Bible

“See that silver shine” Arcade Fire’s debut album Funeral ends with the soothing image of a backseat nap. “I like the peace in the backseat / I don’t have to drive, I don’t have to speak / I can watch the countryside, I can fall asleep.” But where Funeral is driven by the urge to… Continue reading Neon Bible

Milk Hacks

First Glance A consistent source of entertainment for me is seeing what videos YouTube decides to slap on my homepage. I do my best to lock down my data online and preventing Google from keeping my search history or any of my cookies has completely bamboozled YouTube’s already shitty algorithm. Alongside off-the-wall recommendations like “Doctor… Continue reading Milk Hacks

Imagined Academia

First Glance I had a big chunk of thesis to get to my advisor last week and by Friday I had fully fallen into the paper-writing fugue state that continues to dominate my academic writing process. Sometimes these panic/focused sessions are aided by a white noise generator or a pomodoro timer but this time it… Continue reading Imagined Academia

Egress

First Glance My desk is on the top floor of one of those sprawling 1970s university buildings. A big brutalist block with offices, classrooms, lecture halls, and two museums. Buildings like this are pretty universally reviled, everyone at my college talks about how my building was supposed to emulate the hanging gardens of Babylon, but… Continue reading Egress

Escaping the Silo

First GlanceWhen I graduated from college in 2017 I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let myself do the same thing for more than 4 years. As this column demonstrates, I have some wide ranging interests and the idea of devoting myself to one thing to the extent that I can’t also explore… Continue reading Escaping the Silo

Commodity vs Reality

First GlanceLast week BBC Radio 4’s podcast Farming Today ran a story on the rising price of cooking oil, triggered by the abandonment of Ukrainian sunflower crops and wartime trade disruption. In the piece, agricultural commodity expert Dr. James Fry explains that pressures on Ukraine are only one factor in a network of events that… Continue reading Commodity vs Reality

Shaping Our City

First GlanceIPUT, the Irish Property Unit Trust, is the largest owner of office space in Dublin and one of the wealthiest real estate developers in the nation. Walking around the south side of the city where I live, you see the name everywhere on new high-rise office buildings and construction sites for future offices. Dublin… Continue reading Shaping Our City