Memos by Brian Swichkow

Sous Vide Cooking
Sous Vide Cooking is a method of cooking in which food is vacuum-sealed in a pouch and cooked slowly in a water bath held at a precise, constant low temperature. According to N.C. Cooperative...
AdTech
AdTech, or advertising technology, is the software and services that make up what IAB Australia calls the ad technology supply chain, which advertisers and publishers use to transact, serve, target...
Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency, also called crypto, is any system of electronic money used for buying and selling online without the need for a central bank, as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines it....
Contact Improv
Contact Improv, or Contact Improvisation (CI), is an improvised dance form that the dance journal Contact Quarterly describes as an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American...
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), that describes recognized mental disorders, specifies criteria for...
Tampa, FL
Tampa is a city on Tampa Bay in Florida that, according to the City of Tampa, owes its commercial success to Tampa Bay and the Hillsborough River. The city's history page records that Spanish...
Pepe the Frog
Pepe the Frog is a cartoon character created by Matt Furie that first appeared in 2005 in the online cartoon Boy's Club and later became a popular internet meme. According to the Anti-Defamation...
Siddhi
Siddhi is a term from Sanskrit that in yoga names a miraculous power described as imparted by the late stages of intense meditation, and in Buddhism any occult power acquired through discipline....
MadLib
Mad Libs is a word game, published as books, in which stories are written with key words left out and players supply the missing words, created by Leonard Stern and Roger Price. In Stern's account on...
LAX
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the international airport owned and operated by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), a department of the City of Los Angeles, which describes it as the...
transmutation
transmutation is an act of changing, or of being changed, into something different. Oxford marks the word as formal. Its related verb, transmute, means to change, or make something change, into...
Vicky's
Vicky's is a restaurant at 5410 West Adams Blvd in Los Angeles that describes itself as a California brasserie serving locally sourced modern Mediterranean comfort food fused with West Coast...
prompt
prompt is an instruction given to an AI program to tell it what you want it to produce; the word also names a reminder given to an actor and a sign on a computer screen, and as a verb means to cause...
endemic
endemic describes something regularly found in a particular place or among a particular group of people and difficult to get rid of, whether a disease such as malaria or a problem such as corruption....
game
game is an activity that people do to have fun, often one that has rules and that someone can win or lose. In sport, a game is a contest with rules in which people or teams compete, such as the game...
cultivate
cultivate means to prepare and use land for growing plants or crops, or to grow them, and also to develop an attitude or to try to win somebody's friendship or support. The farming senses come first...
flow
flow is the steady and continuous movement of something or somebody in one direction, as of blood, traffic or an electric current. In speech and writing, flow is continuous talk, as when someone is...
sense
sense is one of the five powers the body uses to get information about the world, and also an understanding of something, good judgement, a feeling, or the meaning of a word. The five senses are...
transcendence
transcendence is the ability to go beyond the usual limits, and existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level. Oxford marks the word as formal and illustrates it with the transcendence...
prayer
prayer is the act or habit of praying, and the words a person says to God in giving thanks or asking for help. A prayer is first those words themselves, as when people say their prayers or offer...