Running Commentary 3/24/2025

Hello,

It's finally Spring, which, as is often the case in Michigan, means it's time for a cold snap. I've been out to check a few duck ponds but generally it's been too chilly to go much of anywhere.

Anyway...

Playing

Warframe

I have been playing the new Warframe update, but I'd like to play it a bit more before I give my thoughts on it. There's a lot here and I haven't really played most of it yet, so I'm gonna take at least another week to develop my take.

Eating...

Magnolia Beef or Pork

This recipe originated as one for “Mongolian Beef” in the third volume of a cookbook called Magnolia Table; persistent confusion of the term “Mongolian” and “Magnolia” gave my modified version of the recipe its name.

The original recipe used flank steak; I’ve found that the same sauce and technique makes a quite good pork-based dish — obviously, it will taste different depending on what you make it from, but both meats taste good.

The original recipe also had you garnish with sesame seeds. It contained no sesame oil, but I found the sesame seeds tasteless, so I omitted them from the recipe. You can still throw some on if you have any on-hand.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. beef or pork, cut cross-grain into small, flat pieces
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 6 TBSP vegetable oil
• 6 green onions, sliced and separated between whites and greens
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 tsp beef bouillon paste
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp sesame oil

Procedure

1. Toss meat with cornstarch, removing any excess
2. In a small skillet, heat 2 TBSP oil. Cook white parts of onions, garlic, cayenne, and ginger until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add soy sauce, water, bouillon paste, brown sugar, and sesame oil; stir to combine, then simmer for 5 minutes to reduce.
3. While sauce is simmering, in a large skillet, cook half the dredged meat in 2 TBSP of oil, then the other half in remaining 2 TBSP of oil.
4. Bring sauce to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook meat in sauce, coating it thoroughly, for a minute or two, until the sauce thickens.
5. Top with onion greens and serve with rice.

Bird of the Week

This week we’re going someplace new — indeed, to someplace with “new” in the name: New Caledonia. This is an island in the Pacific, east of Australia and north of New Zealand; it actually part of the same old, largely-submerged continent as New Zealand, and like New Zealand, it is home to many unique bird species, some sadly driven to extinction by the earliest human settlers, some still out there in undisturbed corners of the forest. There’s the notou — the largest arboreal pigeon in the world — and the New Caledonian crow — famous as likely the smartest of all birds — and today’s bird, the strange little Kagu.

The thing that strikes me most about the Kagu is how disconcertingly upright it is. Its posture ranges from being roughly that of a short heron, in what seems to be their relaxed state, to rearing up penguin-style, crest erect, as they do when they encounter one another.

But it’s not just their posture that’s strange. Kagus have “nasal corns”, flaps of skin unique among birds that close over their nostrils when they’re rooting around the composting litter of the forest floor, looking for worms and insects to eat.¹ Female kagus will mate with three males at a time, forming family units that, while not entirely unique, is unusual in birds.² This grouping is a possible explanation for another striking fact about kagus: cats don’t eat them; feral cats usually prey heavily on birds such as the kagu, flightless creatures unaccustomed to the presence of mammalian predators, but there’s no evidence that cat’s eat kagus.³ Kagu feathers contain markedly high levels of heavy metals, higher that those of even birds living in highly polluted environments; apparently New Caledonia is naturally high in such metals, which transfer from the soil to kagus via their earthworm diet.⁴ There’s also the matter of their blood, which has been studied rather intently. Blood samples from captive kagus have been shown to contain only a fraction of the red blood cells, but with multiple times the concentration of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, compared to the blood of most vertebrates; further study has revealed that this is only true of captive kagus, with wild birds having relatively normal blood.⁵

Such a strikingly strange bird has obviously invited a lot of attention. The Kanak people, the first to set foot on New Caledonia and the people to give the kagu its common name, an imitation of its barking call, also called them “ghosts of the forest.” While they did hunt kagus, unlike the Māori of New Zealand, the Kanaks did not keep dogs, and so their effects on the kagu, while significant, was not as devastating as the Māori effect on the moa. Dogs were eventually introduced, first by Captain Cook and later by the French, who established a penal colony on the island. While cats seem oddly harmless to kagus, loose dogs do prey on the birds. Dogs and deforestation decimated the kagu, quickly wiping out a lowland race entirely and leaving the remaining species on-track for extinction before intensive conservation programs began in the 1970s. The kagu became a national symbol for New Caledonia, its survival becoming a popular project, much as that of the bald eagle or the Philippine eagle was for other nations at that time. Efforts to preserve remaining habitat and to purge the island of roving dogs have seen the kagu’s declines reverse course in recent decades.⁶

To science, the kagu is Rhynochetos jubatus; the genus name means “long nose hairs” in Greek, which is fitting, albeit an odd thing to emphasize; the species name means “crested” in Latin, which is also fitting and more understandable a designation.⁷

I’ll close in mentioning that Henry Quinque’s account of the kagu, which he kept and studied for many years, is worth reading in full.

Curation Links

On Queuing: The Cognitive Logic Behind Lines | Roberto Casati, The MIT Press Reader

“Queuing is often a cultural marker. In some countries, it’s a point of honor; in others, any means would seem legitimate to avoid it.”

A 1.58-Dimensional Object | Ben Sparks & Brady Haran, Numberphile

[VIDEO] Fractals are infinitely recurssive shapes, so named because they are of fractional dimension (for a certain definition of dimension). Mathematician Ben Sparks demonstrates what it means to have a fractional dimension. (20 minutes)

Prizewinning Image Shows a Leafy Seadragon in Camouflage | Liz Lindquister & Jenny Stock, Nautilus

“The leafy seadragon lives up to its name: Its long sinuous back and tail are graced by a mane of frilly fins that resemble the leafy seagrass meadows where it likes to hang out. Spotted in the cooler reefs off the coast of Raid Bay, South Australia, this baby seadragon floated past a lurking school of rough bullseye fish—and into the frame of Jenny Stock, a British underwater photographer, whose image was a Close Up Photographer of the Year prizewinner."

The Murderer | Eve Morgan, JOYLAND

[FICTION] “This one woman, Rebecca, on this one July evening, did something she never did before. She fell asleep on her sofa, with a lamp on. The day had been long, and her last unspooling thought was simply how happy she was to have made it this far. A smile of fresh air cradled her, and she slept for her favorite amount of time: eleven hours. When she woke up it was with a jump, moon-eyed, choking on the thick pulse in her throat, hoping she had imagined the knocks at her door. A woman she didn’t recognize, with pitch black hair and a pitch blacker jacket, stared back at her through the peephole. Rebecca was relieved to see a woman. She opened the door. ’I’m very sorry,’ the murderer said. And she knocked Rebecca out cold.”

See the full archive of curations on Notion