IT WAS MAY 1945 when what would become one of America’s most ubiquitous home-cooking techniques first entered the English lexicon. In her cookbook, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, 55-year-old Chinese immigrant Chao Yang Buwei described a process common in her homeland, wherein cooks would cut meat and vegetables into small bites and tumble them rapidly together over heat. The Mandarin term for the technique, ch’ao, “with its aspiration, low-rising tone and all, cannot be accurately translated into English,” Chao lamented. For short, she decided, “We shall call it ‘stir-fry.’”
The term soon burrowed its way into the American vernacular and has since taken on a life of its own. Nowadays, stir-frying isn’t just a method— “stir-fry” has become its own category of recipes. Yet most home cooks have never heard of Chao, despite her lasting impression on the way Americans talk about food.
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Data Blockers- Overturning Roe didn't just bludgeon abortion access. It sabotaged science, too.
Overturning Roe didn't just bludgeon abortion access. It sabotaged science, too. In early May 2022, reproductive health researcher Liz Mosley was at a dinner celebrating her first day as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine when the news broke: A leaked draft of the Dobbs decision revealed the Supreme Court’s plan to gut abortion rights in the United States—the “worst-case scenario,” as one dinner guest put it.
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40 Acres and a Lie
We compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land-only to have it returned to their enslavers.
The Conversion Therapist Will See You Now
The counselors once discredited for their "ex-gay" theories have rebranded. And now they're coming after trans kids.
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A decade after Elliot Rodger's horrific massacre, his mother is on a quest to help threat assessment experts-and other parents-prevent the next tragedy.
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SAVED
Finding self-love after Christian conversion therapy
WHAT WE ARE OWED
Technology and genealogy have made the case for reparations specific-and undeniable.
PARADISE STOLEN
Black families were cheated out of their land on Skidaway Island. Now it's a wealthy white enclave