There's an episode of Friends that nails the fundamental silliness of foodie culture. Phoebe is nostalgically reminiscing about grandma's cookies, Monica is trying to techbro-reverse-engineer it from Phoebe's description. Turns out to be nestle-tollhouse wrapper recipe.
-
Show this thread
-
Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Annie Zak
What makes the joke funny is the idea that an industrial mass-production process that strives to squeeze out all local variation might produce its own terroir. Which as it happens, is true. Cf: green-bean casserole.https://twitter.com/annie_zak/status/1065732910106333184 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
2 replies 2 retweets 17 likesShow this thread -
There is an interesting tradeoff between excellence and tastefulness. Excellence requires consistency, to be well-posed. You need a reference ideal to go all six-sigma on anything. Tastefulness otoh requires constantly evolving variety, the leading "aha" edge of an essence.
2 replies 4 retweets 23 likesShow this thread -
You could reverse this. Excellence requires experimentation (trial and filtering of the results) to find anything of sufficient worth. Six-sigma mediocrity isn't excellent. Tastefulness requires that you don't make big blunders, which are common in experimentation.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
I think that's more a concern for consumer-connoisseurs than producers. I haven't yet quite figured it out. Last stab at it:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/10/22/distinctions-and-differences/ …
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.