Laura Muir cruises to 1500m victory at Anniversary Games | Sport | The Guardian

“It may have looked easy, but it wasn’t,” Muir said afterwards. “I didn’t realise I ran a 57-second last lap and I’m so, so happy about that. The girls are really strong and I know that my advantage is in that kick, so I just sat in there and tried to take it easy. It was all about winning today and I did that.

Source: Laura Muir cruises to 1500m victory at Anniversary Games | Sport | The Guardian

School District Threatens Foster Care on Parents in Lunch Debt – “Level 21 in Hell” for the letter writer and some boardmembers.

The school district is trying to collect a little over $22,000 in lunch debt, in a county where 14 percent of families live below the poverty line and where the school district “qualifies for enough money to provide free lunches to all students for the upcoming school year,” per WNEP.

Source: School District Threatens Foster Care on Parents in Lunch Debt

How dare a woman breastfeed her baby on a plane! She might offend the bigots | Nell Frizzell

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When Dutch airline KLM says it may ask nursing mothers to cover themselves if passengers object, misogyny is winning

Well, I for one welcome the news: as of this week, anybody asked to cover up while breastfeeding on a KLM flight can now walk, bare-breasted, across the plane, milk firing into the air, their baby howling at their shoulder, and immediately hand that screaming, hungry, suffering child to the person who made the complaint, who must then look after that baby for the entirety of the journey while the previously breastfeeding passenger lies back, watches a film, reads their book, has a glass of wine or enjoys a much-needed nap.

Because, my friends, that is precisely what I would do if someone asked me to cover myself while breastfeeding. This week, the Dutch airline KLM garnered a lactic tonne of deserved criticism after it put out a tweet stating that “to ensure that all our passengers of all backgrounds feel comfortable on board, we may request a mother to cover herself while breastfeeding, should other passengers be offended by this”. This was itself a response to one customer’s complaint, posted on Facebook, that she had been asked by a flight attendant to cover herself with a blanket – you know, like an actual fire – while breastfeeding her baby because someone else on the plane had complained.

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Donald Trump is the archetypal far-right charismatic leader. But his magic won’t last | Paul Jackson | Opinion | The Guardian

The appeal of Trump will ultimately be dimmed by his own failures to achieve his mission, which is ridiculous and unattainable. This will lead his supporters to lose interest, when he can no longer appear as the magician figure they thought he was. We are not at this point yet, though, and it is difficult to known how long his “magic” will last and what further damage will result.

Source: Donald Trump is the archetypal far-right charismatic leader. But his magic won’t last | Paul Jackson | Opinion | The Guardian

Vínarterta

Handmade vínarterta at the Hnausa General Store in New Iceland, Cnada.

Vínarterta is a traditional, multilayer Icelandic cake made by alternating thin layers of buttery shortbread with a cardamom and dried prune filling. It was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century in Iceland, but is hard to find there today. However, for the descendants of Icelanders who immigrated to North America, the white and dark purple cake is more than a coveted treat. It’s a potent symbol.

Vínarterta has its origins in Vienna (the name is Icelandic for “Viennese torte”). In the late 1700s, layered cakes made with almond flour and dried fruit were highly popular in Austria. In the 1790s, an Austrian recipe for the cake was translated into Danish. The recipe became the height of culinary chic in Copenhagen, and in the elite circles in Iceland (which, at the time, also meant Danes, as Iceland was then ruled by Denmark). The scarcity and cost of ingredients would have put it out of reach for Icelandic farmers and fishermen. Even for the upper classes, most of the ingredients were luxuries: Goods shipped to the small island were limited. The original recipe was tweaked as a result: Dried prunes, for example, were shipped to Iceland, so they became incorporated into the Icelandic recipe. 

In 1875, a devastating volcanic eruption caused such a strong economic downtown that it sparked an exodus to Canada. By the late 1890s, some improvement in imports were a small victory at a time when Iceland as a country was still struggling economically in many other ways. As ingredients such as flour and sugar grew more accessible, vínarterta became widely popular. Still, waves of emigration continued until the turn of the century. When Icelanders arrived in Canada, they brought the fancy dessert, or, at least, the aspiration to make it. In their new home, it was a symbol of wealth and success.

While it has fallen off the radar in Iceland, to this day vínarterta is a popular treat in Icelandic Canada. (Though people like to talk about how labor intensive it is, and tend to make it for special occasions.) In New Iceland, as the region in the Canadian province of Manitoba where Icelanders settled is known, residents are committed to preserving vínarterta. Twists on the recipe are usually met with contempt. According to Canadian historian Laurie Bertram, an expert on immigration and vínarterta, for even fifth- and sixth-generation Icelandic Canadians, the cake is “both a powerful and culturally significant way of connecting to the Icelandic past and asserting that identity in the present.”