This is a great illustration to Oakeshott’s point about general rules of conduct:
I could have made everybody’s life at work less pleasant by heating borscht in a shared microwave and eating pickled cabbage in the office. But I don’t do it, much as I love these foods.
It’s not about people not eating ethnic foods. Eat them, of course. We all love our ethnic foods. I’m positively crazy about mine. But we are all happier if we keep the particularly ethnic components away from shared spaces.
Clarissa's Blog 
Man, this brings back memories. The chinese students in my grad student lab used to microwave fish. It also echoes the ever-reliable asian american trope of “school lunch smelled weird” as a defining childhood trauma.
Urmi Bhattacharyya, the Rosa Palak of the break room.
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This is legit hilarious. 😆😆😆
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Good news:
https://x.com/i/status/2011532542718197970
Plus, our military is very occupied in the Caribbean. We are busy and can’t be bothered.
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Let’s see how long this lasts. War might be back on the menu in a couple of months, who knows.
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Not taking that as gospel. That’s from early this afternoon, and all sources tracking things like air traffic are… still waiting for action in Iran.
I think this is a “we don’t know anything yet” situation. Maybe in another three days…
-ethyl
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I’m hoping that the President is looking at the polls. There’s no support for this. There is, on the other hand, passionate support for domestic action.
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Yeah. I hope a lot of things. But I don’t think we know anything.
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I know it’s not for everyone, but… over years of getting invited to friends’ houses I learned to love the knock-you-over smells of their parents’ kitchens. Like a big sign saying “REAL FOOD HERE”. Shrimp paste. Crab soup. Sau Rieng. Colanders full of tiny fish on the kitchen table. Garlic-peeling parties.
Given the choice, I’d take those odors at the office any day over having to endure close proximity with other people’s perfume, cologne, or Tide detergent. The fish and garlic don’t give me a splitting headache.
In a perfect world, people would be considerate about all those things. But, you know, synthetic perfumes first. That’s chemical warfare.
-ethyl
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This comment made me very hungry. I want to go lick some shrimp paste and I don’t even know what it is. 😁😁
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Shrimp paste, as far as I can tell, is ground shrimp mixed with tons of salt and fermented.
I once woke up in a house in a fish market in Da Nang, to an overwhelming odor and a funny scraping noise. I got up and peered, squinting, out the window. In the courtyard outside, a man with a big squeegee on a pole was spreading shrimp paste in long even rows in the sun.
The smell was eye-watering. I could taste the air.
Those were the days. Still makes me kind of nostalgic.
-ethyl
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OK, I’m not hungry anymore, so thank you.
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😀
I recall I was dreadfully ill (for other reasons) at the time, so it didn’t make me hungry either.
But it was the smell of adventure!
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No, I get it. It’s really great to explore the different olfactory experiences when one travels.
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