Driven by Cheese

I’ve decided that my new thing is going to be watching Murdoch Mysteries. There’s just so much of it. 18 seasons - so far! It’s filmed in Toronto, and all around Ontario. Apparently former PM Stephen Harper had a walk-on role?

In the first episode “Miss Toronto Electric and Light” is murdered by electricity. Irony!

Yannick Bisson (Murdoch) has a real John Reardon (Hudson) quality that gives me high hopes for this as a very Canadian sort of “why do they continue to go there!” murder mystery show. Like, why do people keep going to the Hudson and Rex version of St. John’s? It is so small and there is literally a murder a week now. They used to do more kidnappings but lately it’s all just murder. Murdoch is murder right off the bat!

Wish me luck in my new journey to become an afficianado of Canadian crime shows.

The most bizarre thing I think I’ve seen so far popped up. A giant cradle for your cranky wife!

I found this great write up about it on Tumblr:

The Hen-Pecked Club’s Peace Box, a “patent cure for a cross wife”. The Hen-Pecked club was an organisation which encouraged men to do more household tasks to take some of the pressure off their wives. The ‘Peace Box’, also known as ‘the wife tamer’, was invented by a club member called Harry Tap in 1862. If a wife was nagging her husband too much, the husband could put her inside the box, which could be rocked like a child’s cot in order to send the wife to sleep. While she was sleeping the husband would perform all the chores then release his wife who would hopefully have calmed down.

— Write up via Victoria Fan Guide on Tumblr, and look at Fiona Bruce inside it in this old article about the Roadshow episode.

Is it wrong that I would absolutely eat this?

Chef Alessandro Pipero says he doesn't begrudge Heinz for selling a creamy spaghetti in a can. But he wouldn't call it carbonara.

"I'm a Roman man and I love the real carbonara," Pipero told *As It Happens* guest host Tom Harrington.

In a press release, Heinz billed its new canned spaghetti carbonara as a "fail-proof" version of the traditional Italian dish "that comes with absolutely zero drama."

But it's already causing quite a bit of drama among foodies and high-end restaurateurs. A chef in London called it "a disgrace," and a BBC presenter suggested it could mark "the end of culinary civilization."

The controversial culinary creation hits shelves in the U.K. this month, but it will not be coming to Canada.

Carbonara in a can? This Italian chef thinks it’s ‘genius,’ but he’ll never eat it | CBC Radio

What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images

This article in Quanta magazine was really interesting to me! I’m aphantasic, and I always thought things like “counting sheep” and “visualize it” were just metaphors. I remember discovering the concept of Aphantasia in 2016 or so, and it blew my mind that there were people that could actually visualize things when they were told to imagine a concept.

Saw the apple? Shomstein was confused. She didn’t actually *see* an apple. She could think about an apple: its taste, its shape, its color, the way light might hit it. But she didn’t see it. Behind her eyes, “it was completely black,” Shomstein recalled. And yet, “I imagined an apple.” Most of her colleagues reacted differently. They reported actually seeing an apple, some vividly and some faintly, floating like a hologram in front of them.

That is me. I imagine the apple, but see nothing. But I do dream in images! I just can’t conjure an image. Apparently, this is normal for aphantasic people!

Because many people with aphantasia dream in images and can recognize objects and faces, it seems likely that their minds store visual information — they just can’t access it voluntarily or can’t use it to generate the experience of imagery.

I also have a pretty weak autobiographical memory, particularly for things like day to day memories of high school; and a terrible sense of direction. Turns out, these things are related!

They found that people with aphantasia indeed tended to have weaker autobiographical memories and less activity in the hippocampus, which helps encode and retrieve such memories.

Overall, just a really interesting article.

What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images

Oh look, my actual nightmare!

When two American astronauts blasted off on a test mission to the International Space Station on 5 June, they were expecting to be back home in a matter of days. But things didn’t quite go to plan. In fact, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are still there, floating high above the Earth nearly two months later.

They went to space for eight days - and could be stuck until 2025

Famous Paintings Recreated using Emoji via waxy.org

To celebrate its stateside debut, KFC will transform its restaurant at 242 E 14th St. in New York City – the pizza capital of the U.S. – into a one-of-a-kind “Chizzeria” pop-up where customers will get to try Chizza before anyone else for free.** The KFC Chizzeria offers one menu item only, hot & fresh Chizza, in a KFC-ified, modern take on a classic pizzeria. The world’s first Chizzeria (probably) opens its doors for a limited time, Friday, Feb. 23-Feb. 24 (1-9 p.m. ET), but don’t worry, Chizza is available to the rest of the country starting Monday, Feb. 26.

Found via this random post on Bluesky and frankly KFC is not doing its job because that should not have been the first place I learned about this. Yes it’s only in the states but I HAVE A CAR, KFC.

via exocomics by Li Chen on Bluesky, which I can link to now because Bluesky is out of beta! The twitter replacement is real and viable, y’all, get on board.