A bunch of links I've been meaning to post for too long:

FX Cuisine documents the well-funded culinary adventures of a French-speaking Swiss man. While I envy his photographic setup and his travel budget, I have to give him credit for being much more of a journalist than most travel or food bloggers. Check out in particular his photo essay on Japanese bladesmiths, but they're all pretty good.

I'm fascinated by the story of what happened to Hannah Upp, who apparently suffered from dissociative fugue. I find the mix of symptoms of this awesomely-named disorder to be amazing: 1. Forgetting your identity 2. Wandering and making no attempt to figure out who you are, even actively avoiding being reminded 3. Somehow mostly managing to survive, i.e. eating, while brazen enough to jump into the Hudson river 4. 'Waking up' with your whole identity coming back to you, but with no memory of your time in the fugue state.

If it had a different final explanation this would make a great Sherlock Holmes story. It also reminds me of difficult software bugs where the cause is simple (i.e. some rewiring in the brain) but the outward effects are complex.

These two via Kottke

The Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods. So awesome that this exists, and a good thing it's on Google Books, as a hard copy costs $280. Via gothamist's preview of the new Fatty Crab restaurant.

How politics works. We can't let drug users out of prison! Then the prison guards upstate would lose their jobs!