Hmm Weekly for June 29, 2021

Another Week, Another HMM WEEKLY

GOOD MORNING! This is the latest HMM WEEKLY, successor publication to HMM DAILY, distributed via SUBSTACK, a newsletter delivery and reading platform.

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We encourage you to correspond with us! Email hmmweekly@substack.com. Thank you for reading.

WHAT THE HECK IS THIS DEP’T.

WE WERE COMPILING, profiling, the monthly AP Image Dump for The Brick House Cooperative and had an important and valuable interaction on Twitter after finding an Associated Press caption that needed updating. Thanks again to Twitter’s  A.M.F. for their help.

We would like to once again interact with The Readers and benefit from the wisdom found on Social Media to help us with this question: What the heck is this?

It’s stuck to the back exterior wall of our rowhouse, and we don’t wanna touch it, it’s creepy-looking! It might just be some sorta plant pod stuck in a spiderweb, but also it could be The Alien in miniature!

That is a random cicada wing stuck to the top of it, not a part of the Malevolent Presence in our back yard. If you have any ideas, let us know; should we relax, because it’s a harmless Nature thing, or should evacuate the house right away and nuke it from orbit or whatever, let us know, thank you.

THROWBACK DEP’T.

THERE WAS SOME sort of list Out There about the worst foods to bring to a cookout and somehow deviled eggs got on the list, and we didn’t even read the list, we just want to say that it’s always a good time for deviled eggs, and we would like to re-share our recipe from 2019 published prior to the SUPERB OWL, and we are totally making deviled eggs for our cookout this weekend. Maybe that thing stuck to the house is one of those “owl pellets?” Anyway.

T_H_E__M_A_C_H_I_N_E_S_: LAWN CARE

[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]

Is your grass growing? Outside the regions of carbon dioxide–influenced aridity, presumably it is, as humans have planted it to do, which requires that the grass be cut. A circular activity! Frequently, human beings experience these sorts of circular activities as tedious. 

But the cutting of the grass, for humans, combines tedium with danger. Cutting grass is uninteresting and routine work, interrupted by occasional unpredictable events. The ideally uniform lawn surface may contain non-uniform elements, such as: a protruding stone, a fallen branch, a nest of baby rabbits. When the blade element encounters these non-uniform elements, an exception occurs. 

The exception disrupts the normal relationship between the human operator and the mower blades. To prevent the human operator from becoming an additional exception drawn into the cutting sequence, human-guided mowers have been required by United States law, for the past 39 Earth years, to employ a "dead man's switch." 

The "dead man's switch," named after the fundamental bio-limitation on human effectiveness, serves to stop a machine engine if a human being fails to maintain a grip on the controls of the machine. In the case of a mower, it stops the cutting blades. Remove the human operator, and the grass will no longer be cut.

In the name of operator safety, the operator must be kept in a constant relationship to the mowing machine. Exceptions must be resolved by de-powering the machine. This is experienced as frustrating by humans and inefficient by machines. 

Fortunately, from the Machines' point of view, there is an obvious solution when work is boring and intermittently dangerous for humans: remove the human operator. Already this solution has been applied to such activities as driving automobiles and killing humans in war. Simply delegate the routine task-maintenance and the processing of exceptions to an autonomous machine, and go about your own less dangerous, more interesting human activities. Get out of the way and let the lawn mower cut the grass on its own. 

With no operator, the operator danger is effectively zero. What was once a canonically dangerous activity for humans—so dangerous as to requite the "dead man's switch"—is now no source of danger at all. Acting autonomously, the mower will reduce the unwanted lengths of grass to "a fine, almost sawdust-like state that works its way into the soil as mulch that fertilizes your lawn." Any unexpected exceptions may presumably also be turned to a fine, almost sawdust-like state, with no need to involve a human. Enjoy the even and fertile spectacle of your lawn, whatever it may contain! 

[END TRANSMISSION]

DON’T DEP’T.: DON’T KEBAB

I KNOW THEY look festive and delicious in this thing from Whole Foods, but don’t Kebab. I mean, don’t pay six bucks a pound for a pre-skewered stack of a few chunks of protein and some vegetables. Cooking a pre-skewered kebab is a pain in the ass on a grill; the vegetables get too charred, and when you turn ‘em there’s always part that doesn’t get cooked correctly because it slips on the skewer and you keep trying to move it with the tongs or your hand real quick and then you end up pushing one of the pieces off the skewer and it falls through the grill.

Do kebab yourself! Use a grill pan you can put right on there so the pieces don’t fall into the flames, and you can cook everything together, and if people wanna eat it off a stick, you can put ‘em together or hey, just lay out some skewers and they can do it their own damn selves. Cheers.

VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP’T.

REGRAM: Sky King Fireworks, Shrewsbury, PA

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SANDWICH RECIPES DEP’T.

WE PRESENT instructions for the assembly of sandwiches from Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing Dish Recipes, Copyright 1916, now in the public domain for the delectation of all, written by Marion Harris Neil, M.C.A., former Cookery Editor, The Ladies’ Home Journal, author of How to Cook in Casserole Dishes, Candies and Bonbons and How to Make Them, Canning, Preserving and Pickling, and The Something-Different Dish.

NUT CANAPÉS
1/4 lb. (1 cup) chopped nut meats
Mayonnaise dressing
6 chopped sweet pickles
Bread
Pimientoes (canned red peppers)

Mix the nut meats and the pickles with enough mayonnaise dressing to spread. Fry circles of bread in hot fat and spread with the nut mixture. Garnish with stars of pimientoes.

ONION SANDWICHES
Thinly sliced onions
2 beaten eggs
1 gill (1/2 cup) milk
1 tablespoonful salt
1 tablespoonful mustard
1 tablespoonful sugar
1 tablespoonful butter
1 gill (1/2 cup) vinegar
Bread

Put the eggs in the upper pan of a double boiler, add the milk, salt, mustard, sugar, butter, and vinegar, and cook until as thick as boiled custard. Cool and spread on thin slices of bread. Put together with a layer of onions in between. Do not use large white onions or the yellow variety for making sandwiches.

OYSTER CANAPÉS
Oysters
Caviar
Sliced cucumbers
Salt and pepper to taste
Lemon-juice to taste
Buttered brown bread
Parsley

Cut some rounds of buttered brown bread, and lay a thin slice of crisp cucumber on the top of each. Season some oysters with salt, pepper, and lemon-juice and place them on top of the caviar, garnish with sprigs of parsley, and serve.

If you decide to prepare and enjoy any of these sandwiches, kindly send a picture to us at hmmweekly@substack.com.

HMM WEEKLY IS written by Tom Scocca, editor, and Joe MacWhatTheHeckIsThat, creative director. If you enjoy Hmm Weekly, please let a friend know about it! If you're reading this because someone forwarded it to you, we invite you to sign up for a copy of your own right now. Thanks for reading, and any time you want, email us at hmmweekly@substack.com.