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I’m just back from France, where my direct experience of riots and looting was non-existent, although I had walked past a Montpellier branch of Swarkowski the day before it ceased to be. My indirect experience was quite extensive though, since I watched the talking heads on French TV project their instant analysis onto the unfolding anarchy. Naturally, they discovered that all their existing prejudices were entirely confirmed by events. The act that caused the wave of protests and then wider disorder was the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, 17, one of a succession of such acts of police violence against minorites. Another Arab kid from a poor area. French police kill about three times as many people as the British ones do, though Americans can look away now.
One of the things that makes it difficult for me to write blogs these days is the my growing disgust at the professional opinion-writers who churn out thought about topics they barely understand, coupled with the knowledge that the democratization of that practice, about twenty years ago, merely meant there were more people doing the same. And so it is with opinion writers and micro-bloggers about France, a ritual performance of pre-formed clichés and positions, informed by some half-remembered French history and its literary and filmic representations (Les Misérables, La Haine), and, depending on the flavour you want, some some Huntingtonian clashing or some revolting against structural injustice. Francophone and Anglophone commentators alike, trapped in Herderian fantasies about the nation, see these events as a manifestation of essential Frenchness that tells us something about that Frenchness and where it is heading to next. Rarely, we’ll get a take that makes some comparison to BLM and George Floyd.
I even read some (British) commentator opining that what was happening on French estates was “unimaginable” to British people. Well, not to this one, who remembers the wave of riots in 1981 (wikipedia: “there was also rioting in …. High Wycombe”) and, more recently, the riots in 2011 that followed the police shooting of a young black man, Mark Duggan, and where protest against police violence and racism soon spilled over into country-wide burning and looting, all to be followed by a wave of repression and punitive sentencing, directed by (enter stage left) Keir Starmer. You can almost smell the essential Frenchness of it all.
There is much to despair about in these French evenements. Police racism is real and unaddressed, and the situation people, mostly from minorities, on peripheral sink estates, is desperate. Decades of hand-wringing and theorizing, together with a few well-meaning attempts to do something have led nowhere. Both politicians and people need the police (in its varied French forms) to be the heroic front line of the Republican order against the civilizational enemy, and so invest it with power and prestige – particularly after 2015 when there was some genuine police heroism and fortitude during the Paris attacks – but then are shocked when “rogue elements” employ those powers in arbitrary and racist violence. But, no doubt, the possibility of cracking a few black and Arab heads was precisely what motivated many of them to join up in the first place.
On the other side of things, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise are quite desperate to lay the mantle of Gavroche on teenage rioters excited by the prospect of a violent ruck with the keufs, intoxicated by setting the local Lidl on fire and also keen on that new pair of trainers. (Fun fact: the Les Halles branch of Nike is only yards from the fictional barricade where Hugo had Gavroche die.) There may be something in the riots as inarticulate protest against injustice theory, but the kids themselves were notably ungrateful to people like the LFI deputy Carlos Martens Bilongo whose attempts to ventriloquise their resistance were rewarded with a blow on the head. Meanwhile, over at the Foxisant TV-station C-News, kids looting Apple stores are the vanguard of the Islamist Great Replacement, assisted by the ultragauche. C-News even quote Renaud Camus.
Things seem to be calming down now, notably after a deplorable attack on the home of a French mayor that left his wife with a broken leg after she tried to lead her small children to safety. As a result, the political class have closed ranks in defence of “Republican order” since “democracy itself” is now under threat. I think one of the most tragic aspects of the last few days has been the way in which various protagonists have been completely sincere and utterly inauthentic at the same time. The partisans of “Republican order” and “democracy” perform the rituals of a system whose content has been evacuated, yet they don’t realise this as they drape tricolours across their chests. With political parties gone or reduced to the playthings of a few narcissistic leaders, mass absention in elections, the policy dominance of a super-educated few, and the droits de l’homme at the bottom of the Mediterranean, what we have is a kind of zombie Republicanism. Yet the zombies believe, including that all French people, regardless of religion or race, are true equals in the indivisible republic. At the same time, those cheering on revolt and perhaps some of those actually revolting, sincerly believing in the true Republicanism of their own stand against racism and injustice, even as the kids pay implicit homage to the consumer brands in the Centres Commerciaux. But I don’t want to both-sides this: the actual fighting will die down but there will be war in the Hobbesian sense of a time when the will to contend by violence is sufficiently known, until there is justice for boys like Nahel and until minorities are really given the equality and respect they are falsely promised in France, but also in the UK and the US. Sadly, the immediate prospect is more racism and more punishment as the reaction to injustice is taken as the problem that needs solving.
Group issues 12-point plan calling for stricter immigration rules for care workers, students and refugees
Rishi Sunak is facing demands from “red wall” Conservative MPs to slash the number of overseas care workers, foreign students and refugees allowed into the UK in time for the next election.
The MPs from the 2017 and 2019 intake, who call themselves the New Conservatives, have issued a 12-point plan to cut net migration to Britain from 606,000 to 226,000 before the end of 2024.
A cap of 20,000 on the number of refugees accepted for resettlement in the UK.
Caps on future humanitarian schemes such as the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong schemes should the predicted 168,000 reductions not be realised.
Implementation of the provisions of the illegal migration bill, which it is claimed would lead to a reduction of at least 35,000 from LTIM.
A raise in the minimum combined income threshold to £26,200 for sponsoring a spouse and raising the minimum language requirement to B1 (intermediate level). This should lead to an estimated 20,000 reduction in LTIM, the MPs claim.
Making the migration advisory committee report on the effect of migration on housing and public services, not just the jobs market, by putting future demand on a par with labour requirements in all studies.
A 5% cap on the amount of social housing that councils can give to non-UK nationals.
Raising the immigration health surcharge to £2,700 per person a year.
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“One of the things that helps define Latino identity is this sense of having a history but also not knowing the history.”
The post Héctor Tobar on “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino’” appeared first on Public Books.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at a bill-signing event this month.
Writing Latinos is a new podcast featuring interviews with Latino authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.
The post Natalia Molina on “A Place at the Nayarit” appeared first on Public Books.
In a democracy one might, naively, imagine that political deliberation would involve the presentation of the arguments that people think bear on the question at hand. That is, if someone is in favour of a policy they would present the arguments that they believe support it and if someone is against it they they would do the opposite. One of the surreal aspects of British parliamentary debate on refugees and asylum is that neither the government nor the opposition do anything of the kind, and nor, for that matter do the media do much to improve things.
Consider, that everybody knows that Rishi Sunak’s harsh denial of the right to claim asylum of those who arrive “illegally” is motivated by the fact that the base of the Tory party and a sizeable chunk of “red wall” voters are strongly anti-immigration and that Tory strategists are concerned about the “small boats” issue, both because they are worried that a lack of border control gives off a sign of incompetence and because they want to expose Labour as “weak” on “illegal immigration”. In the Tory press, refugees and asylum seekers are constantly demonized as freeloaders, economic migrants, and young male invaders who pose a threat both of sexual predation and terrorism. (The European far-right, including Italy’s Salvini, France’s Zemmour, and the German AfD, in praising the British policy, do so explicitly as keeping the brown hordes at bay.) Labour, on the other hand, while they have a poor record of support for refugee rights, at least stand for maintaining the current human rights framework and upholding the right to claim asylum as set out in the 1951 Convention.
So far, however, in Parliamentary discussion of the issue, the Tories have posed as the real humanitarians, concerned about the most vulnerable and desperate to stop people from undertaking dangerous journeys. Labour, on the other hand, have said little about the basic immorality of the policy and have focused on the claim that the proposed law will be ineffective and that the boats will still come. Neither Sunak nor Starmer stand up and articulate the real reasons why one proposes and the other opposes the law. In Sunak’s case one imagines the primary motivation for this conduct is a debating tactic; in Starmer’s a concern that a proper defence of human rights and the refugee framework would be electorally costly.
Somewhat paradoxically, then, it is in the unelected chamber, the House of Lords, where we are most likely to see a proper debate that approximates the democratic ideal, as the Lords, not facing election, are free to articulate the reasons they think most relevant to the policy. We can be sure, for example, that Lord Dubs,someone who escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, will say all the things that Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper are too cowardly to.
Meanwhile the press and broadcast media do worse than nothing to explain to the democratic public what the issues are, who the refugees and asylum seekers are, what is the relevant international humanitarian law, what is the history of refugee protection, and so on. Rather, the “small boats” issue is presented as an immediate crisis that needs urgent resolution lest the asylum system and indeed the entire country be “overwhelmed”. Rare indeed is the press report that informs the public that “illegal entry” without penalty is explitly provided for in the 1951 Convention. Those who clamour most loudly for the “people” to decide on migration issues are also most concerned to mislead the public about the facts: the false and insincere debate in Parliament is mirrored by a narrative where the “concerns” of a ignorant public need to be pandered to.
In the past few days, the substance of the issue has also been pushed to the background by a secondary debate about whether the impartiality of the BBC has been compromised by Gary Lineker, a former footballer and sports presenter, who compared government discourse around asylum to Germany in the 1930s. Cue a bunch of ministers invoking Jewish family members to argue about the offensive nature of a comparison between their “humanitarian” concerns and the Nazis. Yet comparisons with the 1930s are actually very much to the point, in the following sense: many Jews fleeing the Nazis were refused asylum in countries including the UK, and many travelled through “safe countries” to try to get here. Rishi Sunak is not Hitler, but Sunak’s policies, in denying the right to claim asylum on UK soil, would, if applied in the 1930s have prevented many from finding sanctuary. One of the motivations behind the postwar refugee framework has been “never again”. But it seems never does not last forever.
[Update: under government pressure, the BBC has forced Lineker to “step back” from presenting Match of the Day.]
The UK is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, along with a number of other international instruments providing for humanitarian protection. The Convention provides that someone who is a refugee – a status that they have on the basis of their objective circumstances, having a well-founded fear of persecution on specific grounds and being outside their country of citizenship or habitual residence – must be granted certain protections by signatory countries. The most important of these is that they not be sent back to a place where they are at risk of persecution. The weakness of the Convention is that people cannot usually secure recognition as refugees by a country unless they claim asylum on its territory. Accordingly, wealthy nations seek to make it the case that those wanting protection cannot physically or legally get onto the territory to make a claim. That way, states can both vaunt their status as human rights defenders (“we support the Convention”) and nullify its effect in practice.
Today, ostensibly as a response to the “small boats” crisis, which has seen tens of thousands of people from countries such as Afghanistan and Iran arrive in the south of England after crossing the channel, the Conservative government has announced new plans to deter refugees. Those arriving will no longer be able to claim asylum in the UK, as the government will not try to find out whether they are refugees or not, they will be detained, and then they will be removed to their country of origin or to a third country (potentially breaching the non-refoulement provision of the Convention). The plan has been to send them to Rwanda, although because of legal challenges nobody has actually been sent and, anyway, Rwanda lacks the capacity. Even the plan to detain arrivals in the UK runs up against the problem that the UK lacks the accommodation to do so. In addition, people who cross in small boats are to be denied the possibility of ever settling in the UK or of securing citizenship. So as well as being a stain on the UK’s human rights record and a measure of great cruelty, the plans appear to be practically unworkable.
The government, echoed by the Labour opposition, blames “evil smuggling gangs” as the “root cause” of the small boats crisis. But, of course, the real root cause of the crisis are the measures the UK takes to evade its obligations under the Refugee Conventions, measures that make it necessary for anyone wanting to claim asylum on the territory to enter without the authorization of the UK government. People at risk of persecution, whether Iranian women protesting against the veil, or Afghan translators who worked with the British government, are not granted regular visas to hop on a flight, nor will they be able to get to the UK by road or rail. The UK has sealed these routes, making those who want to cross turn to the boats as a solution.
This has suited the UK government because it wants to weaponize asylum for domestic political reasons. The UK now has large numbers of people who have waited for years while their claims go unprocessed, all living on a pittance (around £5 a day) and, since COVID, crowded into hotels in large numbers, thereby providing a focus for local resentment and far-right campaigning, which demonizes victims of persecution as potential terrorists and sexual predators. The regularly televised arrivals of boats on the south coast also generate a sense of perma-crisis that fuels popular concern and resentment. This too has political value, unless it makes the government look weak and out of countrol, hence the latest tightening of the screw.
Of course the government and its media supporters claim that many who come are “bogus” and that “genuine refugees” would stop in the first country they passed through that was safe. But none of this survives scrutiny. The presence of people who are not refugees on boats does not detract from the rights of those who are, and the Home Office ends up accepting that most people from a range of countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea etc) are refugees. There is no obligation under the Convention for refugees just to stop and the first “safe” country, and people may have very good reasons to choose the UK as their destination, including historic links to the UK, family connections, or speaking English. Moreover, the Convention is not just about “safety” but about providing people whose citizenship has been rendered ineffective by persecution with a means to remake their lives as members of a new political community. The UK government seeks to thwart this. A shameful day.
Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from deceptive business practices, issued an advisory titled “Keep your AI claims in check.”
When it comes to marketing, “false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy are our bread and butter,” wrote Michael Atleson, an attorney with the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices.
Artificial intelligence is a on everyone’s lips at the moment, “and at the FTC, one thing we know about hot marketing terms is that some advertisers won’t be able to stop themselves from overusing and abusing them.”
Given the renewed interest, “for companies where AI was previously No. 4 on the list of proof points, machine learning capabilities should merge into the main hook of the announcement,” advises PR strategist Camilla Tenn.
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“If AI-related coverage can get a new, unknown brand into its target publications today, it could help get the brand’s pitch deck in front of potential investors or partners tomorrow,” she writes in TC+.
Tenn recommends imitating major players like Google and Samsung, which have dedicated teams that release a steady stream of material about “ongoing projects” tied to prevailing tech trends.
“Even if those projects don’t see the light of day, the PR team has strategically positioned the brand as ‘innovative,’” says Tenn. “With this precedent, startups should not feel abashed to use any means necessary to get their name out there.”
Good advice for marketing mercenaries, but keep those pitches straight — reporters know when we’re being sold to, and the FTC isn’t messing around.
Thanks for reading — and for making this TechCrunch’s fastest-growing newsletter last month!
Have a great weekend,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist
Image Credits: Juanmonino (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Many devs rely on donations and crowdfunding to monetize open source projects, but with the proper planning, teams can leverage their work for commercial clients who’ll put them in a higher tax bracket.
Offering users customer support or consulting services are common revenue streams, according to product development consultant Victoria Melnikova, who also says devs should form partnerships and use platforms like Reddit and Hacker News to reach potential paying customers.
“To find your path, talk to your clients and understand their goals and pains.”
Image Credits: Liang Wendong/VCG / Getty Images
Tapping the ocean for energy led to disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which released nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Today, wind power and wave action are just two technologies leading investors to take a closer look at ocean conservation technology, reports Tim De Chant.
To learn more about the opportunities they’re chasing and discover how climate change is shaping their investment thesis, he surveyed:
Image Credits: Gable (opens in a new window)
Remote workspace platform Gable raised a $12 million Series A to scale up its operations, which currently serves more than 5,000 workers in 26 countries.
“Making the business of shared workspaces easier for startups certainly has its challenges, but it’s also a large and growing market,” writes Haje Jan Kamps. “Gable weaves its story together with ease.”
Here’s their 21-slide Series A deck:
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie,
I started working for my current employer on STEM-OPT, but I’ve lost out in the H-1B lottery four times. Thankfully, my employer transferred me to an international office, and I am now coming back to the U.S. on an L-1 visa.
I’ve heard many complaints from my classmates about not being able to switch employers on an L-1 visa. I don’t see myself staying at my employer for six more years, which is the estimated time until I can get a green card based on my employer’s internal policy.
What are my options for changing my immigration status so I can work at a startup in the U.S. within a year or two?
— Tenacious Transferee
Image Credits: SomeMeans (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
No one needs a mega-influencer like Serena Williams or a Kardashian to build buzz for their startup — an evangelist with just a few thousand followers can push qualified customers into your product funnel.
But before hiring a TikTok or YouTube personality, brand marketers should brush up on the laws that govern how influencers operate, and the risks associated with failing to comply.
“Novel legal issues and risks have emerged for both influencers and brands,” says Nicholas Sandy, a litigator at Pryor Cashman.
“Key, recurring issues relate to copyright licensing and infringement, disclosures and statements in endorsements, compliance with securities laws, and defamation.”
Interested in speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt this September in San Francisco?
Submit a title and a description for the topic you’d like to talk about before April 21.
Selected applicants will have a chance to lead a roundtable discussion or participate in a breakout session followed by an audience Q&A.
TechCrunch+ roundup: Ocean tech investor survey, AI and PR, L-1 visa options by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch
Education secretary says UK ‘should be very proud of’ university sector, amid briefings with Suella Braverman
Gillian Keegan has signalled that she disagrees with the Home Office’s plan to cut migration by targeting overseas students, adding the financial boost from international students to British universities was “hugely valuable”.
The education secretary has said the university sector is something Britain “should be very proud of”, amid briefings that the home secretary, Suella Braverman, is considering looking at cutting the number of international students coming to the UK, or changing the terms of their stay.
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As January draws to a close, our favorite stories this week included a stirring critical essay, a paean to the world’s greatest boxed meal, a rethinking of psychedelics’ impact on the planet, a profile of a craftsperson at his peak, and an eye-opener about how humpback whales use air in some unexpected ways.
Ken Chen | n+1 | 11,542 words | January 25, 2023
After Corky Lee passed last year, the photographer and community organizer was memorialized in his hometown’s most conventionally prestigious outlets: The Times offered a sizable obituary, as did Hua Hsu in The New Yorker. This week, on the first anniversary of Lee’s death, Ken Chen rendered an altogether different kind of portrait in n+1. Much of the same biographical information is included, as are a number of Lee’s iconic photographs of Asian Americans in New York throughout the last six decades. Yet, when Chen writes about his encounters with Lee, and about the 14 photographs he selects to represent Lee’s work, the grief that suffuses his words isn’t solely about Lee, but about the many atrocities visited upon the Asian American community, up to and after Lee’s death. Chen’s critical acumen here is reason enough to read: “His images lack a charismatic subject,” he writes of Lee. “Those whom capital dismissed as surplus, he saw as beautiful. He commemorated the multitude, the striking waiters and seamstresses whose unruly abundance crowded away any beatific composition.” But he brings a similar understated poetry to the social conditions Lee’s work served to illuminate — and with violence against Asian American elders and others seemingly unending (including a horrifying recent attack in my own hometown), that juxtaposition makes Chen’s piece nearly as indelible as the images it contains. —PR
Ivana Rihter | Catapult | January 19, 2023 | 2,261 words
I only discovered Kraft dinners later in life after moving to North America revealed the cult of Kraft to me. A stable lurking in every cupboard; I admired the respect that something so impossibly orange had managed to garner. When Ivana Rihter finds KDs, though, they are much more; cooked for her by her baba, they are inextricably linked to her immigration story. She describes the process of boiling the pasta and adding the sauce with reverence, the memory mixed in with her love for her baba and appreciation for the economic hardships her family struggled through to start their new life. Her baba teaches her to put feta on top, and with this “secret little piece of the home country mixed in with all-American shelf-stable cheese” it remains a food for life, and — consistently sitting at about a dollar a box — one that carries on seeing her through hard times. I found this an unexpectedly beautiful essay, more about memory and belonging than cheesy pasta. Food can transport you back in time, especially if, as Rihter describes it, it “is soaked with memories of [an] origin story.” —CW
Amber X. Chen | Atmos | January 16, 2023 | 3,196 words
In this piece, Chen explores what the current psychedelic renaissance means for environmental activism, and how synthetic drugs like LSD and MDMA and psychoactive plants like ayahuasca and peyote can stir change within individuals — and ultimately galvanize social movements. This all sounds incredibly positive on the surface, but not everyone who dabbles in such mind-altering journeys is transformed for the better; psychedelics also fuel right-wing movements, too. (See: “QAnon Shaman.“) The decriminalization of psychedelics is a step toward making their therapeutic benefits accessible to more people, yes, but as Chen notes, it increases the threat of deforestation, and — with today’s psychedelic movement being largely white — it also takes power away from Indigenous people, who have harnessed the healing power of these sacred plants for thousands of years. (See also a Top 5 essay I picked last year: “The Gentrification of Consciousness.”) I appreciate Chen’s exploration here, and the questions posed that I haven’t stopped thinking about, like: “How broken is Western society that we think we need drugs in order to facilitate mass climate action?” —CLR
Elly Fishman | Chicago Magazine | January 17, 2023 | 4,177 words
Recently, in his late 60s, my dad decided to learn how to play the violin. I respect the choice to try the impossible, especially something as delicate and timeless as bowing a stringed instrument. (My parents’ cats, who endure the scratching out of notes from beneath the couch or bed, seem to have a different opinion.) After reading this lovely profile, I think perhaps my dad, a skilled carpenter, should also try apprenticing as a luthier. I, someone with zero skills at playing an instrument besides an egg shaker, who curses putting IKEA furniture together, was mesmerized by the descriptions of how John Becker, perhaps the best violin restorer on earth, practices his craft. Elly Fishman’s profile has a musical quality: It sweeps readers through chapters of Becker’s personal story and dwells in long, lyrical moments when, with the surest of hands, Becker repairs some of the most revered instruments on the planet — namely, Stradivari. There are just 650 of the violins left. What makes them so extraordinary? Musicians and scientists may puzzle over that question forever. In the meantime, Becker works — quietly, meticulously, instinctively. “We are caretakers of these instruments,” one of his clients tells him. “We move on, but these instruments continue to the next generation.” —SD
Doug Perrine | Hakai Magazine | December 20, 2022 | 1,500 words
It’s well known that many animals use tools to aid feeding and other tasks of life. Think: otters floating on their backs, cracking shells with rocks. You’d think it would be hard for whales to use tools, but as Doug Perrine reports at Hakai Magazine, humpbacks use what’s available to them — air and water — to form bubbles for a variety of activities. “I’m tempted to describe the air in a humpback’s lungs as a Swiss army knife because I’ve seen whales do so many different things with it,” he wrote. “It is not actually a tool collection though, but a storehouse of raw construction material with which the whale can fashion a variety of tools. Lacking free fingers and opposable thumbs, whales are unable to create and use tools in the same way as humans, but reveal their intelligence through the manner in which they utilize other body parts for tool production and use.” —KS
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What can rotting teeth reveal about the experience of growing up with generational trauma? It turns out, quite a lot. Tali Perch’s deeply personal essay about her childhood, family, and relationship to pain is organized around a series of dental appointments:
Mama called a Russian friend to find a cheaper dentist. The friend had recommended “Uri” mostly because he worked where he lived: he didn’t have to pay rent twice and could pass those savings on to his customers. “Smart businessman,” Papa said.
Dr. Uri buzzed us in and opened the door to his apartment. “Come in, come in,” he said, using the formal Russian you and smiling through small, stubby, very white teeth. He was a stocky older man with a helmet of coarse salt-and-pepper hair and matching bushy eyebrows. His apartment was empty and felt as cold as a meat locker; the kitchen had been converted into a treatment room, no cookware in sight. He motioned for me to sit in a dental chair next to his stove. Mama stood in the corner.
Dr. Uri rooted around in my mouth. “The lower left molar is decayed,” he told Mama in Russian, whose word for “molar” roughly translates to critical tooth. Or drastic tooth. Or native tooth. A tooth to preserve, to repair. Or, if too wounded, then a tooth to cajole slowly, gently, carefully by its root, leaving the gums and nerves healthy for a stronger tooth to grow there. But to Dr. Uri, my molar was merely a baby tooth. “Not worth fixing.” He yanked the tooth quickly, with no novocaine, as if he had only seconds to extricate the tooth or the decay would live there forever.
This is a surprisingly poignant essay about growing up with Kraft dinners. Ivana Rihter manages to make a cheap pasta dish sound beautiful, but it’s not about the food, it’s about the memories of family and heritage that it conjures up.
More than twenty years later, the sound of dried pasta tubes sliding across cardboard soothes me like a rain stick. Kraft was the first meal I ever truly loved, the first one I attempted to cook on my own, and the first food I could not live without. There are four boxes tucked into my pantry as I write this.
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