In Succession, status is signalled by what characters eat – or don’t eat. When Cousin Greg brings along his arriviste date to Logan’s birthday party – the one with the “ludicrously capacious bag” – Tom Wambsgans quips that she’s “wolfing all the canapés like a famished warthog”. Tom occasionally reveals his own middle-class greed and snobbery through his irrepressible excitement about fine food, as in the scene where he introduces Greg to the pleasures of eating deep-fried ortolan. Later, when he’s threatened with prison time, the first thing he frets about is the “prison food” and the logistics of making “toilet wine”. By contrast, the Roys, the billionaires atop the Waystar Royco media empire, seem to barely eat or drink anything at all.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/62371/1/why-dont-rich-people-eat-anymore-ozempic-extreme-fasting-supplements
Category Archives: kitchen
Apple Explores Home Robotics as Potential ‘Next Big Thing’ After Car Fizzles
Engineers at Apple have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the skunk-works project is private. The iPhone maker also has developed an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around, they said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/apple-explores-home-robots-after-abandoning-car-efforts
Study found consumers are more prepared for automated vehicle delivery than drones or robots
Northwestern University’s Mobility and Behavior Lab, led by Amanda Stathopoulos, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, wanted to know if consumers were ready for robots to replace delivery drivers, in the form of automated vehicles, drones and robots. The team found that societally, there’s work to do to shift public perceptions of the near-future technology.
“We need to think really carefully about the effect of these new technologies on people and communities, and to tune in to what they think about these changes,” Stathopoulos, the study’s senior author, said.
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-11-consumers-automated-vehicle-delivery-drones.html
The Community Grocer
A scalable non-profit community market, resource, and education center advancing food justice and health equity through EBT accessible meal solutions. See how food, education, and community development intersect under one roof.
https://www.thecommunitygrocer.org/about
Inside Whirlpool’s ambitious plan to reimagine the refrigerator
Current refrigerators have walls that are five centimeters thick. SlimTech shrinks that down to two centimeters. And because the insulation is sealed in a steel structure, it can have straighter lines and sharper angles than the molded plastic that forms the inside of the typical refrigerator, Allard explains, increasing capacity from 17 cubic feet to more than 21 cubic feet. “It’ll be a big improvement in being able to use the space in your kitchen more efficiently,” Allard says.
Bitzer says this new form of insulation is as much a product innovation as a manufacturing one. Whirlpool Corporation has spent years trying to figure out how it can produce these new kinds of refrigerator doors and cabinets in factories that have long been optimized for the old and time-tested way of making refrigerators. “It’s not just a technology. I’ve got to change the factories,” Bitzer says. “It’s just a different production methodology.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/90980960/inside-whirlpools-ambitious-plan-to-reimagine-the-refrigerator
Could weeds be the future of food? This urban forager thinks so
“I think that these particular plant foods may be the key to the future of agriculture on a changing planet,” Stark told TMRW by phone in late October. “Right now, they volunteer between rows of plants on farms and on sidewalks. But as the climate changes, our current commercial agriculture and crops will suffer (and) won’t thrive as well. We’ll be faced with difficulties with how to feed the growing population on the planet.”
https://www.today.com/tmrw/could-weeds-be-future-food-urban-forager-thinks-so-t196786
The Growing Politicization of Sustainability
At a time when political factions are decrying corporate efforts to operate more sustainably by protecting the environment, it may come as a surprise to learn that most Americans, regardless of party, income level, geographic location, age, or gender, want to purchase sustainable products.
Our research at NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business (CSB) has found that not only are sustainability-marketed products growing twice as fast as conventionally marketed products, but they are also selling at a premium of 28%, on average. We also found that certain sustainability messages will drive significant increases in purchase intent, across political parties, age, income level, and location.
https://fortune-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/fortune.com/2023/10/17/politicians-war-sustainability-new-research-us-consumers-gen-z-boomers-opposite-directions-retail-whelan-kronthal-sacco/amp/
We’ve Hit Peak Beverage
The refrigerated aisle is out of control, and I am a moth to the fluorescent flame. Picking up a “fun drink” (aka, not just water) as a little treat doesn’t just require gauging my cravings but also my physical and metaphysical aspirations and needs. Want better hair? Crack open a collagen water from Vital Proteins. A less screwed up stomach? Get a pre/probiotic power-up from Poppi or Olipop. Lowered anxiety? Opt for Recess or Vybes with CBD, or Moment, which offers a literal “meditation in a can” with adaptogens like ashwagandha. (Whether the drink offers the same proven long-term benefits as meditation is another story.) The “edgy” CBD water of days past has been replaced by a pharmacy’s worth of promises and a boutique “shoppy shop’s” aesthetic appeal.
https://tastecooking.com/weve-hit-peak-beverage/
Artificial Nose
The Artificial Nose experiment is a smart device trained to recognize a variety of smells. With a simple gas sensor and a micro-controller, you can build an AI nose that can identify the smell of bread, coffee, and more.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-lab-artificial-nose
Our home is a narrative system
Our home is a narrative system. To develop effective speculative design strategies we must understand the relationship between design, meaning, and use. To cultivate sustainable systems we must consider how any specific design requires a shift in habits that can be constantly impacted by changing externalities.
As part of the Culture Mapping workshops I share with students and clients, we map these evolving meanings to understand how our design must anticipate changes that provide better investments and direction of resources.
By mapping the evolution of our design as a system of language we can uncover narrative codes. Our homes offer a corpus of language embedded in the evolving design of how we live. The concept of “a machine for living” today is something quite different than it was after WW2. Our desire to be closer to food systems is one obvious example. Today’s “machine for living” is a home that learns and adapts to a changing world with fewer resources and an increasing ambiguity between home and other spaces in our world.
#culturemapping #home #designthinking #semiotics #speculativedesign #foresight
Analyzing Trends 