Think #9

Vine

• In the Golden Ages of social media (which is what I like to call 2014-2016 because Instagram didn’t have reels, Twitter was still called Twitter and wasn’t overly political or ransacked by bots, and Snapchat was actually fun to use), a “video hosting service” and app called Vine featured a library of looping 6-second video clips and changed the world.
• The beauty of Vine stemmed from the video duration limit. Because creators only had 6 seconds to entertain their audience, they were much more likely to come up with memorable dialogue, wear absurd outfits, and do slightly dangerous things. There are many, many Vines that went viral because of their signature catchphrases, including, but not limited to “What’re those???”, “Eyebrows on FLEEK,” and “Merry Chrysler.”
• I used to be obsessed with Vine. I couldn’t drive past a “Road Work Ahead” sign without saying, “Uh yeah, I sure hope it does.” For my birthday one year, a friend of mine got me stickers with iconic Vine quotes that I’ve protected through several interstate moves. Love and miss u sm, Vine. RIP.

Postnasal drip

• Is a yucky and not fun thing to have.
• When I was little, I used to have terrible postnasal drip with colds because I hated blowing my nose at school- my snotty classmates and I would run out of Kleenex so fast and the toilet paper in the school bathrooms smelled terrible, so I didn’t like using it. I ended up swallowing a lot of my snot. It was bearable when the snot was watery, but once it got thick and slimy, it often felt like I was choking on it.
• Postnasal drip is one of the most common causes of a persistent cough and sore throat because it irritates the pharynx. Cough drops are a bandaid in this case- you gotta figure out why the postnasal drip is there in the first place. Is it an upper respiratory infection? Allergies? Opioid withdrawal? Fix the underlying problem so all that nasal mucus will stop trickling down your throat and making you hack up a lung.

Chickpeas

• AKA garbanzo beans, Egyptian peas, and channa. They’ve been around for at least 10,000 years.
• There are 2 main types of chickpeas: black/Desi chickpeas (most common in South Asia, Mexico, and some parts of Africa) and Kabuli chickpeas (most common in the Middle East and Europe). When chickpeas are mentioned, most people in the Western world think of Kabuli type.
• 1 cup of cooked chickpeas has about 270 calories and 15 grams of protein, which is around the same amount of protein in 1 cup of cooked black beans, or pinto beans, or kidney beans.
• Chickpeas are extremely versatile. Cooked chickpeas are usually eaten whole or blended into dips. Dried chickpeas can be ground up into chickpea flour that’s used to make crepes and pasta. The water that chickpeas are cooked in, called aquafaba, is also useful- it’s a well-known vegan egg substitute.