So, culture aside, there are some other aspects to consider. One is simple economics; if you make the dish at home, you are somewhat or even very much less likely to go buy it at the restaurant. Someone has either invented or adapted a very nice dish that you liked, and you're cutting them off from the benefit of your own business. If we want practitioners of the craft and art of cooking to keep doing it, it's good to support them financially.

Whether it's Indonesian food in Amsterdam, Southeast Asian food in Paris or Central American food in the USA, the pattern of colonial cultures extracting now intangible resources from invaded and colonised peoples continues.

There are also relative power dynamics at stake. When your country has invaded and colonised another, extracting resources and labour over centuries, there is a particularly vampiric quality to appropriating culture from the people there, too. The fact that formerly colonised people often migrate to the metropole, and that migrants often set up restaurants with their home cuisine, confounds the issue.

Again, there's a big difference between making food for yourself at home and selling it to others.

But there are ways to appropriate culture even if you're not selling it. I mentioned in replies the practice of publishing recipes in blog posts, either naming the restaurant or just the dish. Even sharing the recipe with friends and family is performative. Making the food for dinner guests can be, too.

A good story about reverse engineering is the Portland food cart where the creators literally spied on Oaxacan women making tortillas to learn their secrets.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/portland-burrito-cart-closes-after-owners-are-accused-of-cultural-appropriation_n_5926ef7ee4b062f96a348181

I mentioned in replies that as a member of the Palestinian diaspora, I make our food for friends and colleagues when they come to my house, but I don't normally give out family recipes. Those are for my kids, niblings, and future generations.

I recognise that this is different than running a restaurant. And that not all diaspora cultures hold onto recipes this way. Palestinian food culture has been particularly plundered in a conscious campaign of erasure, so it's a very sensitive one.

First and foremost is cultural appropriation. Food culture is an important part of retaining culture in diaspora communities, and different communities have different standards for sharing that culture outside the community. Especially when dishes are part of a cohesive whole, decontextualizing and commodifying those dishes can feel disrespectful and appropriative.

Wow, what a poll! Thanks to everyone who responded or replied. I thought about this topic as I was reverse engineering the blueberry pancakes from a cafe in Halifax that I really liked. My answer is yes, but. I'll give my reasoning.

Is it OK to reverse engineer the recipes for restaurant dishes so you can make them at home?

#EvanPoll #poll

We watched the first season over the last couple of weeks. It was a really fun watch; I was completely unspoiled, so it was completely fresh.

Most of the time was spent absolutely howling at the TV. The Faithful have only one possible path to success: forming coalitions and voting in blocs. Waiting until the Round Table to make decisions within the bloc is catastrophic; the bloc has to come to the table with a decision and stick with it.

This was a crazy one. Many of the replies assumed that "AI" meant a cloud based consumer LLM, and there were concerns about providing your friends' and colleagues' posts and profiles as training data without their permission.

Is it OK for people to use AI to analyze their own Fediverse data like their home timeline, friends, and followers?

#EvanPoll #poll

@julian @FediTips @andypiper I agree. I wonder if there's an onboarding flow that's like, "First, find out if you already have a server you can be a part of. Second, set up a server for a group you're in (either by hosting it yourself or getting one from a hosting provider). Lastly, try one of these..."

@julian @FediTips @andypiper it may be easier if you can connect an instance to existing user databases, like Google Workspace, Slack, or Discord.

@julian @FediTips @andypiper

One key might be to stop encouraging people to join barely-memorable servers with which they have no real-world affinity, and instead encourage people to launch their own servers for a group which they have a real connection to, like their employer, university, city, family, church, club, or similar.

I don't forget my work email address because I know where I work.

It's a lot harder but long-term retention will be better.

@jon @Vivaldi Thank you for it! It means a lot to the Fediverse to have your support.