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What I'm Into This Week, February 4, 2023

Star Wars, street toast, toe socks, and revolutionary history


I shut myself out of Twitter this morning, or so I thought. I tried to log in for some Saturday-morning scrolling and was greeted by a message informing me that Twitter had locked my account for unusual login activity. 2FA didn't work, and so I was walled out. At least, that's what I believed until I checked on my computer an hour later and discovered I was still signed in.

This presents a real dilemma for me. Twitter has been a key tool for me, keeping me apprised of what's happening in the world and putting me in near real-time touch with a group of interesting, like-minded people I'd never have gotten to know offline.

On the other hand, Twitter, like all social media, is an unmitigated mental health disaster over the long term, and that's as true for me as for anyone else. It's distills all the negative energy and distractions on the internet and funnels that ichor directly into your brain. Humans just aren't built to handle that. When I log on, the part of my mind that plays spectator to the slow-motion horror film that is digital life in 2023 is gripping the armrests and screaming: No, don't do it, don't open that door, run away! Go nap, eat something, brush the cat's fur, watch a caterpillar crawl across a leaf. Go draw a picture with your son. Anything but this. The older I get, the more I start to appreciate the importance of listening to that chorus. I'm trying to orient my life more around chasing the feeling of wellness as a whole, rather that single-mindedly pursuing any particular goal or giving into my id.

So, with your permission, I'm going to keep pretending I'm locked out of Twitter. I'll spend some time with my kid, go outside, and maybe do one of these things instead.

Andor (Disney+)

It took more than a month of hearing my entire timeline talk up Andor before I finally gave in and watched the pilot. I like Star Wars — I remember watching the special edition in the theater with my mom in 1997, and have gone to see every theatrical release since then — but I'd gotten tired of the formula.

Holy Glub Shitto, am I glad I gave Andor a shot. It breaks basically every habit the franchise has cultivated since 1979. It seems weird to call any Star Wars show "realistic," but I think this one does more to face up to what revolution really looks like. It's rarely a clean or victimless process; the people desperate enough to prosecute a rebellion in real life almost never have the security or privilege to survive without moral compromise, and they're often criminalized and propagandized into villains before the violence even starts. It's startling and exciting to see that reflected onscreen. I'm eagerly awaiting season 2, and I'll be watching Stellan Skarsgård's "I've made my mind a sunless space" monologue on loop until it comes out.

Gilgeori-toast (Maangchi)

I'm a busy person who nevertheless hasn't totally given up on eating well, so when I find a good, simple, wholesome recipe I tend to make it so much that I commit it to muscle memory. That's what's happened with this Korean "street toast" recipe from Maangchi, a site I visit so much I should probably just pop for her cookbook. A combo of shredded cabbage, carrot, onion, and egg formed into a patty and fried in butter, then folded up in toast and served with ketchup, mustard, and white sugar. It's basically everything I want from a meal — juicy, crispy, savory-sweet, and vegetable-forward. (It did take me a couple attempts to get the hang of flipping it without disintegrating it.)

After some trial-and-error, I figured out that I could make the prep even faster without losing much quality by starting with a bagged cabbage-and-carrot cole slaw mix and pre-chopping the onion. Assuming I can still find eggs, I intend to keep making this over and over again until I get absolutely sick of it and find another recipe to date.

Toe Socks (Backpacker)

For a long time, my opinion of toe socks was about the same as my opinion of toe shoes: They were a dad-fashion affectation that made a normal, functional piece of clothing more complicated while adding basically nothing to its function. I assumed that at some point, we'd look at them the same way we look at JNCOs, a bizarre fashion aberration that would eventually be consigned to history and insufferable teenage hipsters' closets.

Well, when you're wrong, it's important to admit it, and I was wrong about toe socks. A few years ago, when I started Nordic skiing, I began to get vicious, harmonica-size blisters on my heels. As I wrote in a story for Backpacker this week, nothing helped until I tried layering liner toe socks under my ski socks. They not only eliminated those blisters on my heels, they wicked away sweat more efficiently than any sock I had ever tried and even cut down on the hot spots I sometimes get on my big and little toes. I haven't changed my tune on toe shoes (yet), but these have become an important weapon in my winter arsenal.

Appreciation Post: Revolutions

I learned next to nothing about the French Revolution in school, despite it being a key inflection point in world history and a model for a century of rebellions afterward. A few years ago, I remedied that with Mike Duncan's excellent podcast Revolutions. Each season goes beat by beat through a major world revolution—French, American, Haitian, Russian, et cetera. The explanations are detailed but beginner-friendly pop history. I listened to the entire season on France during long drives back and forth from my wife's parents' house in Lincoln, Nebraska; I've since moved on to the season on the English Civil War.

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