March 8, 2017
“The Waffle House Index... is an indicator of how complex and long supply chains are—for food, for fuel, for power—and of what it takes to plan around infrastructure that can be fragile in unexpected ways.” The Waffle House Index tells us much more than just how badly an area is affected by a disaster: The restaurant’s hurricane plan is a master class in emergency preparedness. / FiveThirtyEight
According to his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Waffle House co-founder Joe Rogers Sr. was inspired to provide good, cheap food to the tired and hungry by a humble meal he shared with an elderly couple who invited him and his fellow National Guardsman in out of the cold in 1937. / ajc.com
“At that moment, I understood the appeal of the Waffle House and all its embodiments at remote interstate exits all across the country. They allow us to stray as far from our homes as we can and yet never feel lost... The Waffle House stops the world from spinning.” This 1997 paean to Waffle House is possibly the best thing ever written about a fast-food restaurant. / Nashville Scene
“It’s not really a contest. We’re not even sure it’s a ‘tournament.’ What the ToB has been and will be, as long as we’re putting it on, is a month-long conversation about novels and reading and writing and art that takes place on weekdays in March.” In case you’re new to this, here’s a primer on how the Tournament of Books works. / The Tournament of Books
This is the sound of a death metal rooster. / YouTube
Related: This is the heavy metal T-shirt we made for Junot Díaz one year, as explained in Angela Chen’s “A Brief History of the Tournament of Books.” / Facebook
The latest goofy promo video from our terrific presenting sponsor, Field Notes, for their new “Utility” edition. / fieldnotesbrand.com
Today, International Women’s Day, is being celebrated in the States as “a day without women,” as a one-day demonstration of economic solidarity. / womensmarch.com
In a play organized by NYU professors Joe Salvatore and Maria Guadalupe to discuss gender in politics, an actress portrays Donald Trump and a man plays Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential debates. / nyu.edu
Boris Epshteyn, Eric Trump’s college friend, berates and belittles correspondents backstage based on their race, gender, and dress. / Politico
French bookstore Mollat does a nice job of matching customers with its titles. See more from its Instagram feed. / Instagram
Maybe AskJeeves wasn’t so bad after all. Google’s “instant answers” feature gets a lot of common questions, like “how to bake a cake,” totally right. But for less-commonly-asked questions it pulls from increasingly shady sources, ultimately answering “what is antifa” by quoting from Australian white nationalists and “why are firetrucks red” by falling for a Monty Python joke. / theoutline.com
“To my mind, there are pretty limited suspects who would have both the capability of exfiltrating from a Top Secret CIA network and who would want to boast about it and damage the CIA by releasing to Wikileaks.” A summary of the CIA’s no good, very bad, totally awful Tuesday. / Lawfare
Bodybuilding began just as men’s labor was beginning to be replaced in the factory, its leaders urging American men to keep their muscles even if they couldn’t keep their jobs. “Bodybuilding arose because the people interested in making money off of other people’s labor began to eliminate the kinds of work that embodied these characteristics.” / Jacobin
Some new work by painter Winston Chmielinski, from his show “Choose Your Own Adventure” at Stuttgart’s Galerie Thomas Fuchs, March 17-April 28. / galeriefuchs.de
EMI left “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” off Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, believing they’d maximize profits by splitting them off and selling them as a double A-side. / mirror.co.uk
In case you never saw it, too late: Malta’s Azure Window collapsed into the sea today during a storm. / BBC
Try out Determinism Snake (snake controls itself), Pessimism Snake (can never reach target), Postapocalyptic Snake (landscape littered with debris), and more. / pippinbarr.github.io
Elephants in the zoo typically sleep for four to six hours a day, but some wild elephants only sleep two hours a night, making them “the most sleepless of any known land mammal.” Scientists can’t explain why. / Washington Post
Gideon’s Promise is a growing network where overworked public defenders share their stress, anger, and frustration with people who understand it best. / Pacific Standard
“Guitar Shorty mentored the Beatles and Elvis. He played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. When he wasn’t working as a musician and farm labourer, he was a policeman, a minister, and an FBI agent. Or so he said.” The life of Guitar Shorty, aka “Put On My Clothes and Look Like Somebody Else,” by Sarah Bryan in the annual music issue of The Oxford American. / The Oxford American