@Kulfy haha I would agree with that yes... of course like other things the British had been taking cuisine from India for some centuries

my knowledge of this history is poor, though I am so fascinated by it that perhaps I will find myself researching and writing about it one day, but I would claim that cuisine is quite different from objects in the Tower of London or the British Museum that ought to be returned, or from money or wealth, in that cuisine is information and so is not lost by the originator or owner when taken by (or given to) a recipient...

... and also in that cuisine is an element of culture which is a living thing that exists only in people (I say that culture is who we are and what we do and how we feel about it)

About a year ago I read Kamila Shamsie's novel Burnt Shadows and one particular passage in that (superb) book really resonated for me...

one character, an Indian Muslim who traces his ancestry to Turks, asks why the British have not become Indian, like all the other invaders and conquerors of India

> Why have the English remained so English? Throughout India's history conquerors have come from elsewhere, and all of them - Turk, Arab, Hun, Mongol, Persian - have become Indian. If - when - this Pakistan happens, those Muslims who leave Delhi and Lucknow and Hyderabad to go there, they will be leaving their homes. But when the English leave, they'll be going home.'

(perhaps what feels personal for me about the passage this is from is a later part... the passage is actually from the perspective of a British woman:

> Elizabeth [...] look[ed] around her, feeling something that was almost sorrow to think that the descendants of the English would not come to the churches and monuments of British India seven centuries from now and say this is a reminder of when my family history and India's history entered the same stream irrevocably and for ever.

but that is not really relevant to what I'm thinking about right now)

I think that the reason the English remained English everywhere we went was the ideology they created in order to enact all those atrocities, i.e. white supremacy, because it's not possible to treat people like that unless you find a way to consider them not really human

and the ideology of white supremacy is very much evident in the way white people think about the cuisines of other cultures. Soleil Ho wrote brilliantly about this in her article Craving the Other. She shares that white people, on first meeting her, would say things like "You're Vietnamese?! I love pho!", to which she would wonder if she should reply "oh you're white?! I love tuna salad!"

> American chefs like to talk fancy talk about “elevating” or “refining” third-world cuisines, a rhetoric that brings to mind the mission civilisatrice that Europe took on to justify violent takeovers of those same cuisines’ countries of origin. In its publicity materials,

> Spice Market uses explicitly objectifying language to describe the culture they’re appropriating: “A timeless paean to Southeast Asian sensuality, Spice Market titillates Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s piquant elevations of the region’s street cuisine.”

the idea that a cuisine needs to be "elevated" reveals the attitude that foreign cultures are naive and unsophisticated, an attitude which I've found so prevalent and so irritating among white people who are travelling that I now avoid other white people as hard as possible when I'm anywhere where we are in the minority (though I find that here this avoidance is reciprocated, so perhaps my assumptions are unjust)

Yet the British engagement with Indian cuisine seems to me to bear evidence not only of extractivism and exploitation but of appreciation

(In her effectively banned book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, Wendy Doniger says of the British (after, it seems at least to me, fairly adequately condemning their actions in India for two chapters) that they also loved India for the right reasons (as well as the wrong ones she has been discussing) and that is the kindest thing that might be said about us)

Importantly, I don't think that Indian food in the UK is a creation of white people, rather it is mainly a creation of the South Asian diaspora in the UK, adapting to British tastes (as well as availability of ingredients and similar factors). The British leaving India in 1947, and taking the particular hybrid cuisine that their cooks (surely, their Indian cooks) had developed for them, is one layer of the Indian food culture in the UK now.

But also Indians had been coming to the UK before that due to activities of EIC

And, probably more influentially than either of those factors, in the two decades after the war, when the UK extended citizenship to the Commonwealth and encouraged immigration because it had been heavily depopulated by the war, folks from India and Pakistan (both Pakistans, we can say - this wave of migration was stopped by changes in the law by 1971) and the Caribbean came and settled in the UK in much larger numbers than previously and formed distinct communities.

I believe that people came in the largest numbers from Bengal (either side of the line) and Punjab regions, and that is one of the factors that influences the Indianish cuisine of the UK

but, through, we might say, fieldwork, I have come to one further interesting (to me) conclusion about that cuisine

it is sometimes said that the British invented "curry powder" and while it is obviously completely wrong to say that the British invented powdered dry masalas, it is perhaps reasonable to say that the British invented a thing called curry powder which is what British people use to make "curry" at home, because this curry powder we have is not garam masala or chana masala masala or chaat masala or pav bhaji masala or any of the other dry masalas used in Indian cuisines proper

(we can buy something called garam masala in UK, but my assessment of it, based on my limited beginner knowledge of actual Indian cuisines, is that, it is not garam masala at all).

Many years ago when I first started trying to make curries, I found that the single thing that most strongly signified Indian food to my palate was methi seeds (fenugreek)

Later, using Indian cookbooks, I realised that there is something odd about this, because methi seeds are used in relatively few Indian dishes

Of course, there is one very popular dish that they are used in and that is sambar...

and usually we make sambar with lots of sambar powder, just like we make curry in the UK with lots of curry powder

in fact, (one of my first jobs was in a fish n chip shop) chip shop curry sauce is made of only flour, water and curry powder

so I realised that the ancestor of the curry powder we have in UK and even the humble chip shop curry sauce...

(I don't know how you think of British cuisine, but when non-British people think about British cuisine, and when British people think about British cuisine, one of the first things that comes to mind is the fish n chip shop, where pieces of fish are dipped in batter and deep fried, and potato pieces are deep fried, and doused with salt and vinegar, and served with small portions of mushy peas (a very bland dal of dried green peas), gravy...

(a mixture of water, flour, salt and brown food colouring) or curry sauce (flour, water, and curry powder)) is sambar itself. The clue is that this curry powder is sometimes called Madras curry powder.

What I have said here is probably full of inaccuracies as it's based on my own impressions rather than on any kind of careful research

I should apologise for the deluge... I can talk about food all day long!

P.S. when I mentioned paratha, you said you're only getting sambar. Later I recalled a proof that these need not be mutually exclusive... a couple of months ago I went to a dandiya party with my Rajasthani friend here in Chennai. Afterwards we ate dinner in a paratha shop. The parathas came with a pot of what seemed to be a thin yellow dal with sweetcorn in it. "What is this?" I asked my friend. "Sambar" she told me. XD

@EliahKagan That is, the $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$ form of set-builder notation succeeds at naming a set (i.e., the set exists) even when $a,b \in S$ with $a \neq b$ such that $f(a) = f(b)$. Another way to say this is that two or more (i.e., arbitrarily many) members of $S$ may contribute the same member to $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$.

(The sentence $a,b \in S$ is short for $a \in S \wedge b \in S$ and it should not be confused with $(a, b) \in S$.)

@EliahKagan ooooh I love things like this

@EliahKagan this looks so much better than the unicode symbols :D

I might keep vanishing like yesterday

@EliahKagan The reason there is such a set -- I mean, the reason we can prove there is such a set, when we start with some set $S$ and use the $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$ form of set-builder notation -- is because modern set theories have axioms that permit replacement. This is analogous to how, the $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$ form of set-builder notation succeeds due to axioms that permit restricted comprehension, which is also called selection and specification.

(Actually, some instances of the $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$ form of set-builder notation require both replacement and comprehension/selection/specification, depending on exactly what axioms one chooses.)

One of the reasons I've avoided being specific about ZFC so far because there is more than one way that it can be and, in practice, sometimes is axiomatized (i.e., more than one choice of axioms that have exactly the same power, i.e., from which all all the same sentences can be proved). Of course I do intend soon to show the details!

@Zanna There's also one for Unicode called shapecatcher. (It's also linked from the Detexify page.)

@Zanna That's no problem.

@Zanna You should try it!

I don't think you've yet posted any chat messages, at least in this room, with TeX in them!

@EliahKagan In much the same way that the $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$ form of set-builder notation facilitates mechanically producible existence proofs via comprehension*/*selection*/*specification, but may be considered a special case of the $\{xRy \mid Fx\}$ form, which does not (and some instances of it succeed at referring to a set, while others do not)...

...the $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$ form facilitates mechanically producible existence proofs via replacement, but it may be regarded as a special case of another, more general, form that I had not yet shown: $\{f(x) \mid Fx\}$. As usual, $Fx$ need not literally be an atomic formula with a unary predicate or even any atomic formula; it can be any formula (or at least any formula in which $x$ is free).

This form does not guarantee existence because, if we wish to use these techniques in a way that ensures they succeed at referring to an actual set, we have to start out with a set, which $x \in S$ always achieves but the more general formula $Fx$ does not. For example, $f(x)$ could just be $x$, and $Fx$ could be $x \notin x$, and then $\{f(x) \mid Fx\}$ would be $\{x \mid x \notin x\}$, the "Russell set" of Russell's paradox.

@Zanna It is also much more pleasant to write than the Unicode symbols! With that said, if you experience performance problems, or you find you're unable to use the plugin in various contexts where you wish to read this, then I am willing to back to Unicode.

There are other forms of set-builder notation, though they are usually intuitive given these, and they are increasingly likely to be regarded as informal.

(Some people regard all but the $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$ form, or all but the $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$ and $\{f(x) \mid x \in S\}$ forms, as informal. Some people regard all forms as informal, since they are expressible with definite descriptions, and likewise regard any use of symbols like "$\cap$", "$\cup$", and "$\subseteq$" as informal.)

(Some people regard definite descriptions as informal, as a full formula that uses them is always equivalent to some formula that uses only quantifiers. There are other notable positions about what one's formal language ought to be considered to be that are not covered by these parentheticals, too. :)

Another form of set builder notation, which I have used already here, generalizes the $\{f(x) \mid Fx\}$ form to $\{f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n) \mid F x_1 x_2 \ldots x_n\}$. For example, I defined the Cartesian product by saying: $$A \times B := \{(x, y) \mid x \in A \wedge y \in B\}$$

(Given any sets $A$, $B$, the Cartesian product $A \times B$ does always exist, but the proof of this cannot be obtained by mechanically processing this very general form of set-builder notation. After all, it depends on the meaning of $(x, y)$, which depends on how one constructs ordered pairs. In practice, the proof works by using an axiom that says that every set's power set exists.)

Note that the $\{f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n) \mid F x_1 x_2 \ldots x_n\}$ form reduces to the $\{f(x) \mid Fx\}$ form in the special case that $n = 1$.

You may even see the further decorated form $\{f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n)Ry \mid F x_1 x_2 \ldots x_n\}$ (where $R$ is a binary relation or binary predicate used in infix position), almost always with $\in$ for $R$, i.e., $\{f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n) \in S \mid F x_1 x_2 \ldots x_n\}$. In fact, you have, as that's what I was doing there. This is why I'm covering these various forms of set-builder notation now...

...rather than waiting to elucidate the axioms to which I've been referring to nebulously whilst covering them. I've already been using this notation, and thinking you followed it, which I think you largely did, but that was still not a good reason for me to refrain from actually saying what it meant.

What I was saying in that message, which I think may make more sense now, is that, much as there will always be such a set as $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$ given a set $S$ and a unary predicate $F$ (and in fact, it is more general: $Fx$ may be replaced with anything said about $x$), so too is there always such a set as $\{(x, y) \in A \times B \mid Gxy\}$ given sets $A$ and $B$ and a binary predicate $G$ (and in fact, it is more general: $Gxy$ may be replaced with anything said about $x$ and $y$).

Even though, unlike the term $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$, the term $\{(x, y) \in A \times B \mid Gxy\}$ is not written in a form of set-builder notation from which an existence proof can be mechanically produced (more precisely: one's algorithm, to be able to do so, would need to be equipped with far more special cases), $\{(x, y) \in A \times B \mid Gxy\}$ can be re-expressed in terms of $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$, with $A \times B$ for $S$.

For an ordered pair $z$, we know $\exists x\, \exists y\, [z = (x, y)]$. That is, every ordered pair has a first coordinate (also called a first projection), which I've used $x$ for there, and a second coordinate (also called a second projection), which I've used $y$ for there.

Define $\operatorname{pr}_1$ and $\operatorname{pr}_2$ to mean "the first coordinate of" and "the second coordinate of", respectively. Formally, $\operatorname{pr}_1 z \,:=\, ɿx\, \exists y\, [z = (x, y)]$ and $\operatorname{pr}_2 z \,:=\, ɿy\, \exists x\, [z = (x, y)]$.

Then $$\{(x, y) \in A \times B \mid Gxy\} = \{z \in A \times B \mid G (\operatorname{pr}_1 z)(\operatorname{pr}_2 z)\}$$ and the right-hand side of that equation is of the form $\{z \in S \mid Hz\}$, with $A \times B$ for $S$ and with $G (\operatorname{pr}_1 z)(\operatorname{pr}_2 z)$ for $Hz$.

(In case it's not clear: by further trivial substitution, the form $\{z \in S \mid Hz\}$ is the same as the form $\{x \in S \mid Fx\}$; I've just changed the letters so it's easier to verify the correctness of the nontrivial substitution.)

I hope this has the effect of clarifying the goal and significance of what I was saying in the messages from there to there.

@Zanna Apart from the activities of EIC, I read on Wikipedia that when India got independence from British, the passport holders of British India were given choices to settle down in India, Pakistan or UK. The earlier two choices were available for all people but the option to opt UK was for passport holders which were very less at that time. This, I think, also encouraged immigration.

@Zanna By both Pakistans, did you mean present day Pakistan and Bangladesh? (Bangladesh was established because of cultural differences between west Pakistan(present day Pakistan) and east Pakistan(present day Bangladesh) and forcing Urdu on Bengali People and many more factors).

@Zanna Yeah because these were the people who actually suffered.

@Zanna My thoughts: Since British royal family was busy in expanding the Empire and was less worried about the future of the Empire. And I believe as a consequence UK suffered many crisis after WWs

@Zanna When I hear UK's cuisine or US's cuisine all I can imagine is non vegetarian things since the meat consumption there is relatively higher than here.

@Zanna Dandia is a Gujarati thing. Dandia party in Chennai with Rajasthani friend. Diversity!!!

Sambar Samabr Sambar everywhere. -_-

I should better go back to north :/

Sorry @EliahKagan for interrupting you in between.

There wasn't more that I was going to say at this time. However, even if I had been in-between messages, or even amidst editing a message, there would still have been no interruption. I hope you don't feel you must wait for a lull in my messages before posting! :)

Honestly, I waited for a while and wrote the messages in notepad :D

That is certainly not necessary on my account! :)

The nature of this room is that large numbers of messages may be moved here from the Downboat at any time, so interruption, in the sense of messages being posted that are unrelated to existing Island conversations, must be tolerated anyway.

However, as I see it, the situation is even more benign than that, as in this case there is no interruption, and would not have been even if your and my recent messages had been interleaved rather than separate: after all, each of us has, where beneficial, used replies to anchor our messages to the earlier messages to which they relate.

Furthermore, I am interested in the discussion you and Zanna are having, even though I have not said anything relating to it myself (and even though I might not be informed enough about the topic to contribute much to it).

These meta-messages from me right now are surely more distracting to you than anything you've posted has been to me. :)

I don't think so.

Well, nothing you have posted has distracted me.

@Kulfy That reminds me: did you ever try WSL2?

You're an US citizen, right? Is Uber walking buddy in US? [Reference: This photo I got from internet]

@Kulfy yes, that's what I meant, because during the period of immigration in the 50s and 60s to the UK from the Commonwealth, Bangladesh was East Pakistan

@EliahKagan Not really. Actually as of now WSL2 is available only to Windows users enrolled in Insiders program. And I don't trust MS people, therefore, I only use stable versions.

I'm not in the insiders program for Windows either.

I'm not familiar with Walking Buddy, but that doesn't mean we don't have it. (There's lots of stuff I'm not familiar with, and there are lot of businesses and services that are available in some areas but not others, both in the sense of being available in some states and not others, and in the sense of being available in some parts but not others of the same state. For example, even Uber does not operate everywhere, often due to regulations prohibiting it.)

@Kulfy royal family?

@EliahKagan I'm searching the web for "Walking Buddy" and it seems like it may be a joke. I am not really clear on this. It seems like something that actually could be useful in some situations, though.

@Kulfy yes, most people in UK eat non veg literally every meal except breakfast (although the famous traditional English breakfast is mostly fried meat items, most of the time most English people eat sweet processed cereals and milk, toast, fruit and maybe yogurt for breakfast)

@Kulfy ikr

@Kulfy Is Uber walking buddy a thing in US?*

@EliahKagan Yeah, similarly in India, it's available in big cities only.

@Zanna The king and queen.

@Zanna I sometimes mixup English breakfast with Italian bakery.

Yes but the royal family did not have much power in the 19th century and became merely constitutional during Victoria's reign, so I didn't think that their interests were very important

@Kulfy It's a joke -_-

@Zanna Is it? I wasn't aware of this.

The queen now has no political power as such at all. The government writes her official speeches

I'm somewhat aware of Queen's role in this century but didn't know about that in 19th century.

Well history isn't at all my strong point but the power of the British monarchy started going downhill in the 17th and 18th centuries afaik. Victoria was really a figurehead. She didn't control the state

@Kulfy do you mean what we call "continental breakfast" of coffee and croissants and other pastries?

@Kulfy yeah :(

@EliahKagan I meant to say, "about which n sets it should be regarded to relate."

@EliahKagan I meant to say $\{(x, y) \in \mathbb{R}^2 \mid x^2 + y^2 = 1\}$. (That is, I left out "$\in \mathbb{R}^2$". Recall $\mathbb{R}^2 = \mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}$.)