Savour, to a point

Earlier this week, as we traded off our containers of ice cream, T chided me for leaving all the brownie pieces as I uncovered them, reminding me to eat and enjoy them.

I do this often: trying to draw out and savour some food or other time-limited experience. Sometimes, as when I “save the best bite for last”, it’s harmless—that bite will almost definitely be great. But other times, it actually compromises the quality of the thing I was trying to savour, as when I leave a special box of cookies or chocolate too long.

Our storage room has a few jars of tomatoes in it, part of an annual allotment I received from my Nonno and Nonna. I’d always use the jars gradually throughout the year. By the year after I’d gotten these specific jars, my grandparents had decided they wouldn’t make them anymore. The jars took on a new symbolism, so I further slowed my usage of them. Now, though, they’ve been there many years, long enough that I’d hesitate to use them, and they sit more as visual reminders of what’s changed than as something I’d happily reach for and cook with.

It’s a bitter irony, but one worth learning from—sometimes, delaying enjoyment can actually deny it. Time to enjoy some of that chocolate we brought back from Denmark.

---

• Charlotta Kronblad shares her experience of suing over the use of an algorithm for allocating children to schools in Gothenburg. An excellent example of why automated decision-making systems must be legible not only to those who operate them, but those impacted by their operations.
• Mandy Brown shares an excerpt from a decades-old book that resonates well with our present moment, on the nature of the economic elite and that elite’s attitude toward everyone else.
• Recently spoke with a friend about what you can learn by doing multiples of handwork (pottery, woodworking, etc). Chris Schwarz echoes this with his set of prioritized “jobs” for craftwork—arguing that quality is not job #1.
• Simon Collison documented a week on the moors, in the Peak District. I enjoy how Simon capitalizes the names of the different bird species he saw and heard throughout the week.
• Wholesome story of a Winnipeg woman who fell into and was rescued from a hole.
• Last week, I mentioned XOXO Explore. Turns out, there’s even more to it than I’d realized, with a website archive for each year’s announcement, line-up, and schedule micro-sites. Andy Baio describes the effort required to archive all these sites, each built with different web technologies over the 12 years XOXO operated.

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas