"Other signature wellness kitchen innovations include humidity controlled 'growing cabinets' for planting and maintaining live herbs and lettuces..."

"... filtered water at all taps, compacting composters and islands engineered to allow multiple cooks to chop and dice together, encouraging socializing at home... [A] high-tech gadget they recommend for coaxing kitchen gardens to grow by bathing them in magenta light and soft music is not strictly necessary. Neither are the hushed appliances they endorse for reducing noise pollution. 'If you’re in your 20s and live in a shoe box, what we recommend is, go and buy yourself a $2.99 rosemary plant... Use it in your eggs or as a garnish. When you pluck something fresh and living, it has a massive ripple effect. It resets your relationship with food.'... 'I love the fact that mental health has become a part of the conversation around kitchens'...."

From "The 1950s Kitchen Gets an Update/With today’s wellness kitchens, it’s farewell to the pantry with shelf-stabilized foods, and hail to the composter" (NYT).

I clicked on this article because I wanted to see photos of 1950s kitchens and how they might be thoughtfully renovated, but "1950s Kitchen" just refers to the homeowner's lifestyle, which used to involve more processed and shelf-stable food. So, get rid of the extra shelving and do something to help people with the problem of fresh food going bad. Then there's the idea of treating food like endless self-improvement — and not only for your body but for your mind.

Well, the truth is, I'd like a kitchen oriented to the assembling of fresh wholesome food, but I know from experience — I remodeled the kitchen, once, 30 years ago — that remodeling a kitchen is not a wellness experience. Whatever you can do with the new kitchen after it's done, what you have to do to get there is not calming or rewarding or social or meditative. 

"I think a lot about the somatics, which is how the sound feels in your body."

Said Karl Scholz, the D.J. quoted in "What’s Loud, Pink and Drawing New Yorkers Together?With his Karlala Soundsystem, Karl Scholz is using nightclub-grade audio to ensure that neighbors gather" (NYT).

Ping-ponging around the makeshift dance floor was a bearded man in flamingo pink joggers carrying a laptop. Karl Scholz, 41, was using the computer to tune the sounds coming out of each of the six hulking stacks of speakers along the street, each painted the same bold pink as his pants....

If you don't like the noise, don't live in the city.

"It is the idea that we all contain the world and the world disappears when we disappear. There’s a word for that and I can’t f***ing remember what it is."

"That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of that happening to me and every time that I can’t remember a word or something, I think, 'This is the start.'"

Said Stephen King, quoted in "Stephen King on dementia — ‘I’m afraid of that happening to me’/The bestselling author, 77, talks about why he writes every day — and says each time he can’t remember the right word he worries: 'This is the start'" (London Times).

The article isn't entirely about the fear of your own brain pre-deceasing you. It's about other fears, including the fear of AI. King says:

“I don’t really care about AI. My sons [Owen King and Joe Hill] are both writers … and they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers.... I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence.... I think that once there is a kind of self-replicating intelligence, once it learns how to teach itself, in other words, it isn’t going to be a question of human input any more. It’s going to be able to do that itself. And then … have you ever read The Time Machine by HG Wells? In it, a Victorian scientist travels to the year 802,701...

I like how he has the precise year, down to the 1, still in his mind and worth saying as a challenge to the fiend, Dementia, that wants to infiltrate and destroy.

"Even overpriced lobster salad can’t seem to make people out here feel better.... The Hamptons is basically in group therapy about the mayoral race."

Said Robert Zimmerman — some political fund-raiser, not the Robert Zimmerman.

Quoted in "From How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor? The Hamptons is basically in group therapy about the mayoral race." 

Holly Peterson, a Park Avenue and Southampton based novelist who, as she put it, owes her career to being able to skewer the “selfishness” of high society types, said she can barely find anyone on the East End who is over 40, works in finance and is “pro-Mamdani.”

That's reminiscent of Pauline Kael's immortal remark: "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him." 

"Trump is dying! He hasn’t been seen in 3 days!"/"*Spent 3 days examining security footage to see who damaged his limestone*"

Leftists: “Trump is dying! He hasn’t been seen in 3 days!”

Trump: *Spent 3 days examining security footage to see who damaged his limestone* pic.twitter.com/ylpKFAefE1

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) August 30, 2025

"Those who own land would be offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere..."

"... or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new 'AI-powered, smart cities' to be built in Gaza. Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food. The plan estimates that every individual departure from Gaza would save the trust $23,000, compared with the cost of temporary housing and what it calls 'life support' services in the secure zones for those who stay.... [T]he trust plan 'does not rely on donations,' the prospectus says. Instead, it would be financed by public and private-sector investment in what it calls 'mega-projects,' from electric vehicle plants and data centers to beach resorts and high-rise apartments. Calculations included in the plan envision a nearly fourfold return on a $100 billion investment after 10 years, with ongoing 'self-generating' revenue streams...."

From "Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population/The Trump administration and international partners are discussing proposals to build a 'Riviera of the Middle East' on the rubble of Gaza. One would establish U.S. control and pay Palestinians to leave" (WaPo).

What is the token worth? The plan says when the rebuilding is done, the token may be exchanged for a new 1,800-square-foot apartments worth $75,000 — right in this alien, gleaming place, rebuilt in the style of your enemy. Will the returnees gratefully toil in the new restaurants and hotels or will they see an opportunity for a glorious new era of destruction?