Transmission #57: American cheese, Nigeria, Swordfighting, Bottling Charisma and Ryu & Ken.
Design, ideas and other flotsam
Hello. Welcome.
This is Transmissions by me, Marty Brown.
What is Transmissions? It’s an ongoing, usually fortnightly newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.
I’m always keen to get your thoughts on what you make of it, and if you have stumbled across any links you’d love to share, please get in touch!
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Design
The Next Generation of American Cheese
Jaya Saxena • Eater • Link
Ostensibly a story about a company ‘improving’ American cheese, but actually more enjoyable as a wondrous excursion into the history and design of why American cheese become the ultra-processed abomination it has become, and the frisson of loving it that way.
A “better” version of a beloved but low-quality food is a fraught proposition. I think of all the elevated s’mores I’ve tasted, with homemade marshmallows and dark chocolate ganache. They’re all shit. A s’more is not just chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker; it’s Hershey’s and Jet-Puffed and Honey Maid, the specific flavors and textures of those specific processed foods together. I often balk at anyone assuring me a new, quality project will handily replace Oreos or Heinz ketchup. On some level, I don’t want them to be good.
I share this sentiment. There is a particular brand of processed Kraft cheddar cheese slices that I adore, but are strangely hard to find in supermarkets. Their relative scarcity has had me driving all over Melbourne trying to find a stockist, and when I do, I buy them in bulk.
I mean, I buy, like, an embarrassing amount of processed cheese.
I do wonder what the staff make of me at the checkout.
Ideas
Notes on Nigeria
Matt Lakeman • Link
Part travelogue, mostly a whistlestop tour of the country’s chaotic history: successive chains of dictators and coups, brief moments of prosperity subsumed by chaos, corruption, oil, and oil corruption (including the wild statistic that 95% of production at Nigeria’s main oil hub is being stolen). It is head-in-your-hands stuff: both exhilarating and utterly depressing.
Pre-Modern Battlefields Were Absolutely Terrifying
Tanner Greer • Scholars Stage • Link
The headline says it all, really. The author draws on several sources to conclude that in pre-modern warfare, there was an awful lot of running away.
Forget Hollywood portrayals, the sheer terror of fighting in-close with swords or other weapons, meant that regular retreat was necessary to recover the physical and psychological fortitude required to keep going.
He quotes:
most Roman battles the lines did sporadically come into contact, as one side or the other surged forward for a brief and localized flurry of hand-to-hand combat. The flurry of combat would end when one side got the worst of the exchange, and its troops would step back to re-impose the ‘safety distance’ while brandishing their weapons to deter immediate enemy pursuit.
Seen something you’d love to share? Drop me a note in the comments.
Other
🤩 The Secret History And Strange Future Of Charisma. Portraying the man who inspired the third reich, Stefan George, to Trump and back. What is charisma, and can we bottle it in an AI? Fascinating. Link
🥋 Searching for ROM in all the right places: an illustrated guide to how Streetfighter II creators squeezed their graphics into severely limited hardware constraints. Link
📸 This has done the rounds a bit, and is extremely cool: a ‘camera’ that takes GPS imagery, weather data and a few other bits and bobs, and uses generative AI to create a ‘photograph’. Link
🥽 Apple VisionPro review from a tech reviewer who was allowed to try it on. He really likes it. Link Some people think Apple’s announcement is essentially plowing a stake into the heart of Meta’s fledgling efforts to create a new form of computing. I think the opposite. Apple will build the category, and take the high end, but overall more people talking about AR/VR is a very good thing for Meta.
Thanks for reading! See you in a fortnight.