“The website enables many comparisons that, once seen, can no longer be unseen,” he said. For instance, humans outweigh wild animals 10 to 1, a fact that surprised Dr. Ménard. (“In my experience, most people expect the opposite.”) But we weigh only half as much as the livestock herds we maintain to eat. Perhaps more ominously, humans use 100 times their own mass in plastic.
Update: As noted in the comments and in my inbox, it should probably be “humans outweigh wild mammals 10 to 1”.
As much as I would hate to see su filindeu fade away, I understand why Abraini doesn’t want to teach it to any Canadian or Greek chef who calls her out of the blue. Sure, after several years, she may succeed in passing on the skill, but as she told me, when you take something that is so intertwined with a specific place, a specific event, and a specific pastoral code, and you present it in a different context, “it’s no longer the threads of God; it’s just pulled pasta.”
“There are only three ingredients: semolina wheat, water and salt,” Abraini said, vigorously kneading the dough back and forth. “But since everything is done by hand, the most important ingredient is elbow grease.”
Abraini patiently explained how you work the pasta thoroughly until it reaches a consistency reminiscent of modelling clay, then divide the dough into smaller sections and continue working it into a rolled-cylindrical shape.
Then comes the hardest part, a process she calls, “understanding the dough with your hands.” When she feels that it needs to be more elastic, she dips her fingers into a bowl of salt water. When it needs more moisture, she dips them into a separate bowl of regular water. “It can take years to understand,” she beamed. “It’s like a game with your hands. But once you achieve it, then the magic happens.”
Then Comes The Body is a great short documentary from Jacob Krupnick about a Nigerian man who taught himself how to dance ballet from watching YouTube tutorials, the ballet school he started in Lagos, and the students who are branching out into the rest of the world.
There’s no ballet here in Nigeria. There’s no one to look up to. There are no theaters. There are no productions. There are no ballet schools at all. The only thing you have is yourself and the internet.
The founder of Leap of Dance Academy, Daniel Ajala, was inspired to learn ballet after watching the 2001 American film Save the Last Dance. As there weren’t any ballet schools in Nigeria, he taught himself by watching YouTube videos. Determined to provide his community with opportunities he hadn’t had, Ajala established the Academy in 2017 and offers classes for free, explaining that he doesn’t want anyone “to have an excuse for not following your passion.”
They audition all-comers: an uproarious business in which weird randoms show up with a tendency to destroy others by using a flame-thrower or rocket-launcher for no reason at all while the production is being explained to them.
They end up performing the play all over the city, “this is Shakespeare on a billion dollar budget,” not sticking to the amphitheater. The trailer looks great.
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