Wallis and Futuna

10 January 2026 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

Plaque commemorating the attachment of Wallis and Futuna to the French Republic in Mata Utu © flickr.com - Brigitte & Heinz/cc-by-sa-2.0

Plaque commemorating the attachment of Wallis and Futuna to the French Republic in Mata Utu
© flickr.com – Brigitte & Heinz/cc-by-sa-2.0

Wallis and Futuna, officially the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands, is a French island collectivity in the South Pacific, situated between Tuvalu to the northwest, Fiji to the southwest, Tonga to the southeast, Samoa to the east, and Tokelau to the northeast.   read more…

Human Rights Day

10 December 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Paris / Île-de-France Reading Time:  3 minutes

© Predrag Staki?

© Predrag Staki?

Human Rights Day (HRD) is celebrated annually around the world on 10 December every year. The date was chosen to honor the United Nations General Assembly‘s adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global enunciation of human rights and one of the first major achievements of the new United Nations. The formal establishment of Human Rights Day occurred at the 317th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 4 December 1950, when the General Assembly declared resolution 423(V), inviting all member states and any other interested organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.   read more…

Scalopps

12 October 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Bon appétit Reading Time:  6 minutes

Scallops from London, UK © flickr.com - Ewan Munro/cc-by-sa-2.0

Scallops from London, UK © flickr.com – Ewan Munro/cc-by-sa-2.0

Scallops are characterized by offering two flavors and textures in one shell: the meat, called “scallop”, which is firm and white, and the roe, called “coral”, which is soft and often brightly coloured reddish-orange. Sometimes, markets sell scallops already prepared in the shell, with only the meat remaining. Outside the U.S., the scallop is often sold whole. They are available both with and without coral in the UK and Australia.   read more…

Bliss point

7 March 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Bon appétit Reading Time:  5 minutes

Varieties of sugar at a public market, Nice, France © Subhashish Panigrahi/cc-by-sa-4.0

Varieties of sugar at a public market, Nice, France © Subhashish Panigrahi/cc-by-sa-4.0

The bliss point is the amount of an ingredient such as salt, sugar or fat which optimizes deliciousness (in the formulation of food products).   read more…

panem et circenses and divide et impera

18 January 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  13 minutes

Portrait of Juvenal from the 'Nuremberg Chronicle', late 1400s © Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff

Portrait of Juvenal from the ‘Nuremberg Chronicle’, late 1400s © Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff

panem et circenses
Bread and circuses (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) is a metonymic phrase referring to superficial appeasement. It is attributed to Juvenal (Satires, Satire X), a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century AD, and is used commonly in cultural, particularly political, contexts.   read more…

Big Mac and Lipstick indices

30 December 2024 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

Big Mac World Map in November 2022 © CashNetUsa/cc-by-sa-4.0

Big Mac World Map in November 2022 © CashNetUsa/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It “seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible.” The index compares the relative price worldwide to purchase the Big Mac, a hamburger sold at McDonald’s restaurants.   read more…

Hanukkah ? ?

25 December 2024 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

© YB13D/cc-by-sa-4.0

© YB13D/cc-by-sa-4.0

Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE. This year, Hanukkah begins on 25 December and ends on 2 January 2025.   read more…

Hamburger

15 September 2024 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Bon appétit, Hamburg Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Ripo2007

© Ripo2007

A hamburger, or simply a burger, is a dish consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon or chilis with condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish or a “special sauce”, often a variation of Thousand Island dressing and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger. Under some definitions, a burger is considered a sandwich.   read more…

75th anniversary of NATO

15 July 2024 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

Flag Of Nato The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; French: Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique nord, OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance of 32 member states—30 European and 2 North American. Established in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949. NATO is a collective security system: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. During the Cold War, NATO operated as a check on the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The alliance remained in place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. The organization’s motto is animus in consulendo liber (Latin for ‘mind unfettered in deliberation’). The organization’s strategic concepts include deterrence.   read more…

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