Costco Chili for lunch! Wife bought the smallest size, which means we have to have it three times a day for a week or it’ll go to waste. It’s not bad - a bit too sweet for my tastes, but it has the proper bean-meat ratio. I did not add hot sauce. I am not one of those people who say “I put that (blank) on everything” because, as I think I have said before, that indicates that you have the palate of sandpaper and have to perform the sauce equivalent of perforating your tongue with a nail gun to taste anything. I love hot sauce and I understand the nuke-and-pave aspect of hot food, but at some point you have to realize you’ve destroyed your capacity for appreciating the nuances of things.
You know, like the nuances of Costco Chili.
Well, I’ll have it again tomorrow. I might add some pepper jack cheese. I don’t even know what Jack Cheese is, but I say “pepper jack” like I know how the first word informs the second. It sounds like an insult - you don’t know jack cheese or that ain’t jack cheese, man or don’t give me none of that jack cheese.
Oh! It’s named after Mr. Jack.
He’s the one who first brought it to market.
But that is clouded by controversy:
There are competing claims to the origin of the name "Monterey Jack" cheese, including one by Domingo Pedrazzi of Carmel Valley, who argued that his use of a pressure jack gave the cheese its name.
Uh huh.
I love this detail - it’s the stuff of boys adventure novels.
After several years working as an army contractor in Brooklyn, where he reputedly met Captain Robert E. Lee, Jack read about the 1848 finding of gold in the Sierra Nevada. In November of that year he sailed with an artillery regiment to California, arriving in San Francisco in April 1849. Having invested in revolvers Jacks made a $4,000 profit upon landing in San Francisco.
You do wonder if there would be a modern-day equivalent.
After several years working as a systems administrator in New York, where ehe reputedly met Bill Gates, Jacks read about the 1997 founding of an AI company in Northern California. In November of that year he drove across country with some venture capitalists. Having invested in THC derivatives, Jacks made $40,000 profit upon landing in San Francisco.
Doesn’t have the same snap.
Hurricanes are worsening because you have a fridge.
What, you need an explanation?
Last week, I think, the Discourse on Xitter (and I really don’t like that term, particularly if I use Aztec pronunciation) was about the need to get rid of domestic appliances, and move towards communal manual labor. A degrowther decided to lay out his vision of our sustainable future. (Blurred because someone might tweet him a disagreement and then this would be Harm and I would be sending Legions of Abusers)
The author of the tweet was ridiculed for his “radical alternative ways” of doing laundry. You know, going down the river and beating the shirts with rocks. Why, it would be just like going to the gym! And it could be done communally, too, because these guys love their communal activities:
When it comes to preparing & consuming food, communal kitchens would eliminate the need to have refrigerators, stoves, ovens, & other kitchen appliances in each home. They would reduce the consumption of materials & energy, & also food waste, by a lot.
Okay, well, we do have communal eating establishments now, and we call them restaurants, so there is some proof people would go there. But as a day-in / day-out experience? No. People like to eat at home alone with their families. And I’m sure that’s because we’ve been brainwashed by the single-family-home construction industrial complex and also patriarchy and other bad things that produce an instinctive aversion to any social arrangement that deemphasizes privacy and apartness. We are slaves to our stoves and do not realize that there is peace and freedom to queuing up with a tray and a bowl for gourd slop.
Collectivists like their privacy and apartness, but yours is a problem.
Before advocating for each household to have appliances & gadgets that have only proliferated in recent decades, please think of how we could greatly reduce our dependence on such technologies. Here are two low-tech alternatives for the basic tasks of washing & cooking.
Of course those who prefer to do it at home are free to do so.
Deucedly sporting of the fellow to allow this option, but of course the types that make such accommodations make up the second wave of wrong thinkers who get marched to the basement room with the sloped floor and the drain.
There are so many simple ideas we could implement before giving in to extractivist, colonialist & ecocidal techno-modern approaches.
Washing machines are colonialist. No, worse than that: extractivistic colonialist. Oh, soft hands type such hard things.
Of course they require a radical reorganization of our societies & a shift of values, especially from individualism to collectivism.
I love the way this is posited as an obvious precondition that can be accomplished with relative ease once everyone’s on board. No: it has to be implemented by force. Someone has to come to your house and take your appliances and drag you to the communal dining hall. That’s the only way it works.
We’d also be wise to start preparing for a time likely within our lifetimes when we or many in the world will not have (reliable) electricity and/or devices they run.
We will not have reliable electricity because of the de-growth policies that prioritize “green” energy over nuclear.
Some people have said to me that we should first focus on eliminating the extravagant consumption of the wealthy rather than criticizing degrowth scholars' vision to provide such household appliances to everyone.
But I think making people aware of the injustices involved in producing even what we now consider basic household appliances may inspire the public to create pressure to eliminate excess wealth & consumption.
The injustices involved in making a refrigerator.
It's revealing that the people trolling & making disparaging remarks in this thread are Westerners who have long been accustomed to modern comforts built upon extraction & colonialism & cannot imagine alternative arrangements.
Oh, I can imagine them, and they suck.
These folks are idiots who think that our high tech modernity will last the onslaught of the climate disruptions and social-ecological upheavals that have only just begun.
If you don’t think you need to give up your fridge, NOW, you suck. You're so stupid you don't know to defer to people who say things like “social-ecological.”
Have we forgotten anything?
And of course, it's unacceptable for men to exploit women to do work that should be equitably shared. Abolishing the patriarchy is a must.
Also, #FreePalestine#
In related news:
It’s a wonder all those planes don’t run into each other. This is the end of civilization, because of the emissions of the planes. Also, Americans are parochial because they don’t have passports.
Finally:
The despoiling of civilized, delicate, lovely spaces is the point. Obviously. So you can assume that the people who believe this is just brilliant would want the same idea applied elsewhere, because beauty - however ordinary or mannered - is the thing that’s really offensive.
This is the position of a madman. This is the position of someone who would paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel dun brown. It is repellant to 99.9% of the population, and yet we’re expected to nod at this and say “interesting, don’t agree, but I do see what effect he’s trying to make.” No: it’s necessary for it to be hooted down whenever it appears. Someone proposes this, you show them the door. When someone defends this in an art journal or newspaper review, you fire them for gross incompetence.
The end result is this room turned into a communal barracks, its exquisite furniture chopped up for firewood, and confrontational challenging artwork spilling out of a cold fireplace like the shit of a dead elephant.
Degrowth is not enlightenment. Degrowth is spending your life never moving 30 miles from your birthplace and going to bed when the sun goes down, your back aching from the laundry chore, your ears ringing from the din of the communal dining hall.
It’s 1904.
“USA Today putting an ad on the front page is an affront to the nation’s fine tradition of newspaper reporting unsullied by commercial interruptions”
Uh huh.
COMPLETE LINE OF COFFINS.
The newspaper is telling you right off the bat that you’re not exactly going to be submerged in a flood of dispatches from around the nation and the world:
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Well, yes, and no, and then yes / maybe, and then no |
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I’m not sure I would be happy with a newspaper that grates.
This is just like today's remaining papers offering the Washington Post weekly digest, or some such arrangement. The same arguments are made.
If I was living in the sticks, you're damn right I'd want the World. |
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How language evolves, pt. 4,934,854
How language evolves, pt. 4,934,855
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The obligatory social column concludes our visit. There really wasn't very much in this one - at least to modern eyes. |
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That'll do. Next for you: 1957 gas!
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