2023-08-23
The Sicilian Revolution, the first one of the many revolutions of 1848, was kicked off by a single person putting up flyers in the name of a revolutionary committee that didn't exist.
You could argue that if something this small could kick off a revolution, then it was going to happen anyway... and yet, what if no one else had thought to do it?
Via The Rest is History.
2023-07-11
One of my favorite stories of the year. From Vice:
Comparatively, according to a representative from the Royal Thai Embassy in DC, there are just 300,000 Thai-Americans—less than 1 percent the size of the the Mexican-American population. Yet there are an estimated 5,342 Thai restaurants in the United States, compared to around 54,000 Mexican restaurants; that’s ten times the population-to-restaurant ratio. So, why are there so many Thai restaurants in the US?
The Thai government has created a company, the Global Thai Restaurant Company, to make it easier to start and run Thai restaurants. If I understand correctly, they aren't quite franchised (as in sharing a brand name), but effectively provide a pre-planned out restaurant. More from the article:
The Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Export Promotion, most likely run by bureaucrats rather than restaurateurs, drew up prototypes for three different “master restaurants,” which investors could choose as a sort of prefabricated restaurant plan, from aesthetic to menu offerings. Elephant Jump would be the fast casual option, at $5 to $15 per person; Cool Basil would be the mid-priced option at $15 to $25 a head; and the Golden Leaf prototype would cost diners $25 to $30, with décor featuring “authentic Thai fabrics and objets d’art.”
Why go to the trouble? To increase exports and travel to Thailand through gastrodiplomacy.