TWEETER: A roundup of tweets and furthering of thoughts
I TWEET A LOT
I tweet a lot. I know I do. I think things in the moment and I throw them out into the world. And while some of it is complete nonsense that can disappear into the nothingness of the old timeline, there are some things that I feel like regathering up and distributing in a much easier to follow format.
That’s what this is.
Twitter nonsense.
ROADHOUSE AND THE COST OF THINGS
In Roadhouse, when he bought that antenna for $5… It seems like a shockingly low price until you consider the year in which the movie was made. You could buy 10 loaves of bread for $1, or 4 loaves of “expensive” bread for $1.
So if $0.10 was basically a dollar, $5×10=$50.
Inflation is a real thing.
I mean, money itself is an imaginary construct that civilizations choose to embrace. The idea that money can be worth more or less is as real as money itself.
The causes of inflation are what deserve the hard looks.
The housing market becomes inflated by people deciding to purchase up all the available housing so as to rent it back to the community for their own profit.
Gas prices become inflated when oil companies realize they’ve successfully hampered the spread of electric vehicles and they’re the only option.
Food prices become inflated when laws are passed requiring that grocery stores and restaurants destroy food waste before adding them to dumpsters.
Water prices become inflated when drinking water is no longer free to the people and companies are allowed to contaminate the source.
It’s like at the start of the pandemic when I watched a farmer on the news talking about how he wouldn’t be able to sell his crop for the amount he planned for and it would be more financially beneficial to take the loss on insurance… And I got to watch him till his crop under.
And months later, there were shortages in all kinds of things, and the price of everyday essentials were inflated to the point of becoming economically untenable for the unwealthy.
(Not even considering that douchebag buying up all the hand-sanitizer in a price-gouging scheme.)
And those prices haven’t gone back down. They have stayed high, wages have stayed the same (if not gone lower. (Rich people really think childcare should involve a college degree while only paying $20 a day (bring your own food).)), and companies are making record profits.
POETRY BREAK
I have walked 10,000 miles,
I will walk 10,000 more,
the miles put upon these sandals,
make these sandals say ‘Nevermore.’
Splitting, bursting, breaking apart,
the material gives before the feet within,
another pair must then be purchased,
and thus a whole new journey begins.
SHAME SHAME, YOU WATER WASTERS
The fines involved should be based off net worth. These people need to learn that laws apply to them too, especially if they’re using the amount of water at their one property that an average family uses in 2-years in the space of ONE MONTH.
PEOPLE ADVISE PULLING OVER IN A WELL-LIT PUBLIC SPACE
This is a response to the story of a cop pulling a gun on a pregnant woman that was driving with her children in the backseat. He was allowed to resign from his position of deputy.
Ever since all those cops started raping and killing women, the advice has been to signal that you’re pulling over, and to continue on to a well-lit public place. If you pull over right where you are… chances are the cop is going to yell at you for making them unsafe.
To put on the brakes and pull over in the midst of 70+ MPH traffic is dangerous. So the cops don’t want you to do that. In consideration of their own safety.
Yet they can’t recognize that a history of police violence has people feeling unsafe at the idea of being shot?
Like, they only recently caught that California state serial killer because a family member used one of those family tree DNA services.
I mean, dude got away with it for decades because he was a police officer and knew where the cops were looking. He was able to access the police data base and keep tabs on the investigation of his crimes.
And, it’s like, why wasn’t the DNA and fingerprints of every single police officer kept in a database?
I hope there is a modern record kept of current and future police. I hope there aren’t serial killers currently on police forces able to get away with their crimes solely because they’ve never been added to any kind of registry. I will be so disappointed otherwise.
CONSERVATIVE FAMILY VALUES
When someone says “I’m a conservative,” I hear “I vote Republican in elections. I don’t agree with all the things they’re doing right now, and I’m voting against the interests of myself, my neighbors, and those below me in the economic caste system, but I never leave a party.”
To say that “the liberals” have tainted the usage of the word, but you’re going to continue using it to mean what you recognize it to mean… And fuck you to anyone that sees it as a term with negative connotations… Okay.
Though it wasn’t the liberals that changed the meaning.
The word conservative still means “averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.”
And sure, some people are out there just being a bunch of Luddites. (“If they create new technology… I’m going to lose my job. I can’t afford new training.”)
But others…
It’s not our fault that the term “traditional values” has changed. That the people living “the traditional life” have changed the meaning in the minds of everyday people.
Sure, it used to be that “traditional values/conservative” meant saving money and caring for your neighbor.
It used to be about saving money to retire comfortably. About being able to save up the money to buy a bit of land that you could put your home on. It was about the news giving the news, communities coming together in times of trouble, and being able to leave your car doors unlocked.
And now “conservative” and “traditional values” are terms irrevocably tied to the kinds of people that are voting against the interests of the majority.
When you side with the views of the terrible people, you can’t complain that people look at you as though you’re terrible.
YOU SHOULD WATCH PARASITE
Seriously, “Parasite” is a good movie.
South Korea is now cracking down on that basement-style housing situation. Though there is rising concern about what the correct course of action should be that doesn’t leave current residents homeless.
They don’t live in a basement cos it’s cool. They live there because it’s all they can afford.
Maybe a single guy could make that part of their “young hot dude sex pad”-mystique. But the average family is not going to CHOOSE to live in such conditions.
I believe in a UBI for every citizen.
“Well, people would spend that monthly money on groceries and paying down their debts.👿” ?
And like, if we answered a monthly survey or whatever about our satisfaction levels and what we would like to receive… that would be a fair price.
If citizens were able to go to a local doctor and receive prompt care, there would be less cases of citizens dying of easily preventable conditions five years later.
As long as cancer is caught early, it’s better.
Less cost on the economy.
And if you’re a pharmaceutical person slavering at the thought of all the sick-people-to-come… Get a grip, creepo.
There are some things you don’t futz around with. And one of those is peoples’ LIVES.
You want long-term customers, ones that tell friends your company’s great.
When the human rights violations begin to outweigh the low price point on some items some of the time…
Why are you doing human rights violations’, food or beauty/health product company?
We gave you a pass on the “no tears”-lie you told for TV generations. Shampooing babies! ☹️
Like, some of those videos involved the person scooping water and pouring it around the baby’s face. I’m pretty sure some of those babies got a full face full of shampoo water so they could catch a shot of the “baby safe” product flowing down the baby’s face.
For reals. WTF???
I believe in competent social welfare programs.
People shouldn’t have to depend on sandwiches and SunnyDs thrown out a car window at them.
“What can I possibly do with my millions and billions of dollars???”–I don’t know dude. Maybe listen to the complaints of the people.
I believe that every child in a school should receive a lunch.
It is deplorable to think of children sitting hungry in a packed lunch room surrounded by other children eating and to do nothing. To not even speak up about it. To not even raise awareness to other voters.
GLOBAL HEATWAVES ARE A CONCERN OF EVERYONE
How hot is it?
For reals: Not being totally onboard with a government doesn’t mean not caring about the people and the environment.
There’s a lot of needless suffering happening in the world today, and I’ve gotta wonder why.
There’s obviously a niche to be filled–one that is allowing shysters and questionable people to squeeze their way into positions of power they are unqualified to hold.
The environment is the environment.
It is the world in which we live, the animals of which we love, and everything in-between us and the cold dark nothing the loss of nature would open up within us.
This world is all that we have.
Regardless of what the uber-rich want to believe… We are not getting off this planet.
Maybe generations from now.
But the colonization of Mars? The point at which everyday people can think “I want to move to Mars” and hop in a flight and GO?
That’s lifetimes from now.
Why are you trashing the planet we need? We still effin live here!
Is it bleak to think that you might never experience the vastness of space? That you won’t have the awe-inspiring wonder of safe interplanetary/galactic travel?
Do you weep into your pillow at night when you think about never seeing the red shores of Krypton or the acid mines of New Reno? Do you sigh heavily to yourself whenever you remember that you will never meet aliens and have a life-changing sexual experience with a member of an alien race?
You will live and die on this planet.
And if you trust the ideas people to launch you to the barren wastes of Mars… Okay.
But do you always go around trashing the old house before moving into the new house? Or do you clean things up and do your best to get your security deposit back?
The idea that all these guys truly believe they’re going to run a fiefdom on Mars, “so who the heck cares about Earth?”, and as a result they’re burning our planet as fuel to get there?
That’s horrifying.
And pathetic. And heartbreaking. And sad. And tragic.
All the words that mean hotter than hot weather and murderous cold winters.
You wanna get off the planet so bad that you’re willing to kill all life on Earth including the human race?
Like, you’re gonna launch your ark ship and head out into the vastness of space to start your colony.
And you can’t have the eden that is Earth left behind, otherwise most of your followers wouldn’t be going with you. The younger people that want to hang out with young people and party, not work hard so you can live like royalty at their expense.
There’s a reason most of the “sexy young cultists” are born into the cult. Regular people would realize they’re missing out and go on a “road trip.”
Media networks and movie studios being bought out by big corporations, and the resulting creations all producing pro-capitalism messages in peoples’ brains… It seems a bit suspicious to me.
Like, I guess there was once some FCC oversight, but it was one of those things Reagan dropped.
Being technically in compliance with age-rating advisories is technically correct. But it’s a moral side-eye on the scale of “What the eff are you doing, dude?”
There’s things rated for 13/14-year olds that make me uncomfortable. Like, are you really promoting teenaged sexualization to teenagers?
There’s a lot of movies and TV shows I previously enjoyed that have become veritably unwatchable now.
There will be the character I liked, the scenario and dialogue I enjoyed… Then right in the middle of it will be some awful turd of a scene.
Someone will make a throwaway comment promoting sex crimes. A likable character will suddenly take sexual advantage of someone for seemingly NO REASON. Adults will say terrible things to children for no reason other than the director seems to hate children and/or want to have sex with teenagers and damn those kids for not being a few years older.
And I get that there’s some creators that just want to push the line.
They don’t care what the line is.
They just want to push it as fast and as far as they can. To them, the ideas of adults having inappropiate relations with children is a distant and far away concept. The idea that over half the adolescent and adult population is walking around every single day dreading unwanted aggressive and sexual addresses is beyond the scope of their imaginings.
They don’t know that they’re sowing and feeding dark hungers by promoting content to young audiences that is better off unwatched by immature audiences
And like, all the hysteric people are focused on the equivalent of The Care Bears and thoughtful people are forced to defend beloved shows… while creeps are casually preying on teens and preteens.
And I get it, uber-rich dude.
You need to support mistargeting adult-content at children to ensure a surplus of sister-wives for your colony ship.
It’s the reason why women and children are soft-subjugated in the bulk of network sitcoms. Basically relegated to the position of support staff of the main character, who is often incompetent or unexpectedly aggressive and violent.
And kudos on prepping people for a lifetime of misery aboard ship.
You will work in the background and make sure everything aboard ship runs smoothly… Or the captain could slam you against a wall or spend the next 10-ship years talking crap about you behind your back and disrespecting you to your face.
(For reals: Before signing any agreements, make sure to find out if your pay is going to be given to you in Earth time, Mars time, or some yet-to-be determined space time. Being paid 12 times in 365 Earth days is better than being paid 12 times in 687 Earth days (1 Martian year).)
If your captain doesn’t abuse you, you’ll be grateful.
“Captain Cornhole hasn’t forced me to have any of his babies this year. He always makes sure that we get full-rations at Christmas time. He’s a Christian! I think he might be the greatest captain we’ve ever had.”
It sounds ridiculuos. Ludicrous. Fanciful.
But there are some people out there right now “living their best lives,” which basically means doing whatever they want at the expense of the public good. And to keep from losing their right to soft-oppress us, they have to do some side-favors.
It’s not their fault they’re helping put terrible fascist-kink people in power.
“Well, you regular people are at fault. You didn’t hold me to any standards. I have been raised with so much wealth and privilege that I am incapable of not victimizing the people around me. It’s your fault I’m the way that I am, so you should just let me continue being terrible because there’s nothing you can do about it. Look at all the people voting Republican. You all made me do the terrible things I’ve done.”
Yes, it is the fault of the regular everyday people that your parents had such a disgusting amount of wealth and wealth-related power that you ran those people over with your car when you decided to joyride while drunk. Totally not your fault at all, evil kid of uber-rich parents.
The world is all screwed up. Like, things were literally flipped upside-down when we moved to the pyramid-scheme of capitalism.
Like, people literally accepted the idea of “trickle down economics.” Old people frickin’ cheered!
My dudes: You accepted the world being turned into the personal toilet of rich people.
We are at the very end of the humancentipede.
They’re getting all the flavor, the sightseeing, and the fun; while we’re helplessly trying to regurgitate into the anus of the person in front of us as some means of communication.
We’re screaming as loud as we can, but all they hear is muffled “woke words” they’ve been primed to filter.
- the environment
- animals going extinct
- birds going extinct
- butterflies going extinct
- governments dumping sewage into the sea
- governments throwing their hands up and not dealing with nuclear leaks
- forever chemicals contaminating soil
- corporations causing global catastrophic damage and paying a pittance in compensation without rectifying the still spreading damage
Life is becoming harder than it has to be due to the greed of a small amount of people.
We are on the precipice of the destruction of all that we love and all that we need. And those guys are throwing celebrations and planning the design of their palace-city on Mars.
Where the underpaid workers will slave away in the silence of those that have adapted to conditions on Mars and can no longer survive on Earth.
Where young people are married against their will to the elites of Mars and every bit of their education will tell them it’s proper and right. That the babies of the important people they’re surrogating for are worth more than their own lives.
And it’s like, dude, enjoy your fantasies and daydreams about how awesome it will be to be a king on Mars someday.
But at the same time, help clean up the Earth. Help protect and heal the environment.
The world is on fire. Stop throwing gasoline on the flames.
Because what if you never go to Mars?
What if this is all there is?
Why would you give up a whole lifetime of leisure and comfort and joy to try to grasp at more… when people are so angry and rightfully jealous?
Louis and Marie Antoinette thought they were hot shit too, and look what happened to them. And every other person even remotely in the same class as them. And tens of thousands of people that showed even the tiniest sliver of sympathy for them.
We’re in a modern age. Rich people have already spent money gathering the analytics data of the public so as to push their own agendas.
Take that data and use it to consider the reaction of a public primed for aggression and individualism. And don’t forget to account for the concept of “mob mentality,” which turns a whole crowd of people into basically one individual.
It just seems kind of pathetic to me that some people can be so schemy and evil and so stupid about it.
You already have monopolies. You are already sucking in more money in a day than normal people are seeing in a lifetime.
That’s why people are so upset.
That you are grafted onto the lifeblood of our country like a bloated tick on someone’s knee. You’ve made yourself so itchy that scratching is no longer enough and the person has pulled up their pant leg and now there’s visual confirmation of your existence.
And all the other ticks sucking away.
Near and far, people are recognizing the ticks grafted onto the public coffers. The global threat that some of these people are becoming with their complete lack of morals and empathy.
We’ve felt helpless for so long. Ignored as we beg for help, for answers to simple problems everyone is ignoring due to dissidents targeting the education of children because a bunch of them are horny for children.
They are raking in record-breaking profits while regular people are unable to afford housing and the poor are starving on the street because the benches all have attached deterrence appliances.
Climate change is killing people.
It is going to kill a lot more people due to humanity as a whole choosing not to address the rising issues. And in-between all the human deaths, whole species of flora and fauna are blipping out of existence.
Humans are not a cancer or a virus. We’re worse than that.
We have the higher consciousness to recognize the damage we’re causing… and members of our communities are choosing to make things worse in return for perceived profits.
They are so bedazzled by the gem of their greed that they don’t see the reflected light setting fire to the trees.
Every being has a carbon footprint, humans more so than other species as we are cognizant of the flaws in our own creation.
We are born carrying the debt of our births, and our debt only grows as we live each year of our lives. And there are things we can do to offset our debt, to lighten the load we’ve created on the structure of the environment. But the people before us were careless and cruel. They wasted resources at an untold rate and destroyed whole fundaments of the natural world on the whims of the moment.
Some of them lived “blessed lives” of wealth and pleasure. Others were struggling through each day.
Whatever the dramas of their personal stories, we are the ones burdened with the remainder of their debt to the Earth. From the masses of garbage they’ve left behind to the misinformation they spread to their children and their children spread to their children’s children.
We are the ones facing a future ecological cataclysm if action isn’t taken soon.
And as we’ve seen, when presented with information in all its ugly truth… Rather than fund solutions to the problem, they have chosen to falsify the reports and double-down on the destruction of the Earth we need to live. In return for record-breaking profits.
Some choices raise eyebrows for various reasons. Some point to moral failings, moral crimes, moral lessons with sinister overtones and long-term harms unresolved.
- They chose to buy gas-powered USPS trucks because
- they had stock in fossil fuels/they owed favors to people with stock in fossil fuels?
- they had stock in delivery and shipping concerns?
- they were sabotaging mail-in voting by making the USPS unreliable?
-
They dumped sewage into the sea because
- whoops?
- it was one-last FU?
For some reason, even though 90% of people want to fix a problem or hate a decision, we’re expected to live with the consequences of other people “living their best lives.” (Which largely seems to involve them being gigantic aholes in public while selling out the welfare of the Earth for a fancy parking spot, their own bar, and a mansion in a gated community away from the plebes they’ve screwed over.)
I’ve said it before: I am a simple person.
I would like simple commonsense solutions to difficult problems. And there are currently unqualified people in offices of authority.
They scream about “cancel culture” in the face of people raising real concerns about real world problems effecting real people and the real environment.
It’s a disgusting waste of resources.
And in some different, better universe, where competent people are holding positions of authority, regular people don’t have to wake up everyday afraid they won’t have a home, clean water, heathy food to eat, AC in the summer, and heat in the winter because those are all “Of course every person has those”-things.
And consumers can focus their minds on other things. Important things we’ve all been backburnering.
Commonly available consumer goods should all be of biodegrable/compostable materials. At the very least, components should be recyclable so as to get a second, third, or fourth use out of them rather than everything ending up on a mound of trash. (Like, our old garbage handling countries have blacklisted us because we don’t even do the minimal level of processing, i.e., rinsing out food containers.)
At this point in time, I should be able to walk into any grocery store and purchase essentials at an affordable price, and I should be able to discard them without adding to the environmental catastrophe.
Thinks like:
- compostable dental floss
- compostable food handling gloves
- compostable parchment paper
- environment safe toothpaste tablets
- environment safe solid shampoo
- compostable “plastic” silverware
- compostable “plastic” plates
- compostable “plastic” straws
- compostable food packaging
Even if someone doesn’t have a place to compost at home, their trash being added to the giant piles of trash doesn’t have to damage the environment. Whether someone sorts the compostables out of the mess, that trash won’t be there for the next 10,000,000 years, degrading into the soil and the gullets of wild animals.
It doesn’t have to be a hopeless, unsolvable “We might as well just give up now” situation.
They just want us to think it is, so we’ll focus on the now because we’re all going to die anyway. Why bother fixing a problem if we’re not going to be here to enjoy the results?
I mean, if we’re rich, we’re all going to be on Mars, right? Living the high life under the gentle radiation of our biodomes, worrying about the new and unfamiliar cancers the unfamiliar environment will unleash upon our Earth-adapted bodies. We’ll be praying the first plague doesn’t wipe out all the smart science-types before they find a cure for exploding penis syndrome.
(Almost seems like it would be worth it to save Earth and the human race with all its scientist-type problem solving people.)
THE WORD “IDIOT” COMES FROM “IDIOTUS”
I found out the word “idiot” comes from “idiotus,” a person that doesn’t vote.
Take that as you will.
I mean, I would rather that some people not vote rather than just ticking next to names they vaguely remember from somewhere.
You’re not taking a survey, numbus. You’re choosing the person decided when to send you to war. That could widen the scope and width of recruitment.
You’re not telling some rando what drink or food texture you prefer.
You’re deciding the person that will decide which gets get lunch or not. The people that will waste money on stupid shizz, fire necessary workers, give each other raises, and say No to healthcare for YOU.
I don’t even know where to start. But YOU (smart people You, not Ancient Earther you-guy) need to use some of your smarty pants educations to band together and fix local laws. And help other people understand their laws.
There are places where you can be jailed for spitting.
You really want to vote in politicians that are working like those fiduciary guys are supposed to.
People required BY LAW to work in the interests of the people.
That they are allowed to have stock interests and businesses listed on the stock market and…? No.
My favorite CLex stories would involve good!Lex becoming President to HELP THE WORLD. And he divests himself of his monetary interests (though Clark begs a car out of him in one) because that’s just what you do.
Your future is tied to the country. To do good for the people.
There are careers you go into for the money. And there are careers you go into because you have a genuine consideration for human life.
If you’re a nihilist, there are just some jobs you don’t need to sign up for. Like, if you don’t want to face backlash, avoid these jobs:
- doctor
- lawyer
- nurse
- teacher
- childcare provider
- any political or PTSA positions
- food service
If you’re a nihilist, you need the kind of job where you can keep yourself on an even keel.
It may be good for YOU to interact with children, but is it good for THEM?
There may be a sense of pride when announcing “I am a [whatever career],” but there is more to a person than the job they do day-to-day.
When you have a bad day in your office or workspace you have the solitude to calm the fuck down.
But when you’re a dentist drilling teeth?
When you’re a doctor dealing with personal drama? Or a lawyer facing their own divorce at home?
That they’re saying “My husband is a normal member of the community like you and me” to excuse racism and violence and just a complete disregard for public safety or happiness…
Like, I don’t even get what these people are sitching about.
They currently have the freedom to gather in one place. Shoot their guns. Purchase their guns. Display their guns in their homes. Run around in the woods playing war.
We all have that freedom, brah. Calm down.
We have the freedom to do so many things. To experience so many awesome and cool experiences.
Like, you don’t have to vaccinate your kids if you don’t want. For reals, you can just decide to never take your kid to the doctor or the dentist or anything. Freedom!
They’re even widening the law so that some rich guy can pay off all your debts in return for marrying your child.
And like, they’re just widening a law that already keeps those under the age of 18 from seeking divorce. (It’s a serious concern, man. Get on it.)
We have so many freedoms.
And I don’t understand why these people are voting to take them away. I mean, I get the “I will do anything to defeat my enemy”-mentality, but dude: You’re no longer role-playing. You’re voting in real aholes that really want to kill you. WTF dude?
They are deciding what books your children can read in school. And not in a “No more ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in the middle school library”-way, but more a “Take out all mention of vaccines and slavery and the achievements of a whole group of people”-keep the populace ignorant way.
And I just don’t get it.
My dudes: You have the freedom to buy a chunk of land and create your own communities and towns on your private property. You might have a highway run through it if it’s big enough, but you have the right to have it.
You can be Lord of the Manor.
So I don’t understand the need to make everyone else suffer under the yoke of your belief system.
You don’t want non-involved people to have fun because your kid might look and become jealous? That they will see other people their own age having a good time?
And like, you can legally raise your child in complete ignorance of the modern world. That is freedom!
So I don’t understand why some of these people are pushing so hard to have religious groups push into schools. And that a lot of them don’t even have children that attend the school or they don’t even live in that town.
Many wacky hijinks are taking place, and they’re having a real and negative effect on the population.
Like, they captured everyone’s analytics to use in programming their AI, the ever vaunted Algorithm. Al for short.
That Meta-thing probably gathers your eye movement data.
Haven’t you ever watched “Blade Runner”? That machine you look into and it can tell if you’re lying or telling the truth?
That’s old tech, man. People are willingly putting on devices that gather eye motion data while feeding the user audio and visual stimuli and is likely able to access temperature and blood rate.
It’s terrible if they give all that data to the authorities to use against people. Maybe a bit worse if they share all the information their devices gathered through microphones and cameras. Definitely worse if that data is hacked due to shaky cybersecurity.
The world has become a scary and horrible place, and rather than focusing on solving the problems… We are forced to deal with the rising tide of religious zealotry (it’s still a religion even if you’re an atheist. That is your religion and I’m sure you tell everyone about it).
Generations of people met and bonded on MyFace. Groups of horrible people found their fandom and they’re sticking to it. No matter how unpopular and hated they’re becoming, they’re sticking to it.
Not even realizing that they are a group gathered and facilitated by Al.
Search results have ceased to be curated by actual human beings. As a result, Al has no problem feeding real human children into a blackhole of racism and spite they never would have been introduced to without SEO scamming.
COMMUNITY AID PROJECTS: FARMERS MARKET
It would be a great community project to crowdfund “farmers market scholarships.” Like, a bunch of people could band together to raise money to pay the fee for people to be allowed to sell at the farmers market.
The community all fundraises together and everybody gets paid for.
Nobody gets singled out for needing to be paid for. Whether they paid $1 or $200, everybody’s fee is paid for.
It’s the starting out that’s the hardest part. When you have to buy all the supplies and make/grow what you’re going to be selling.
Any excess money gathered by the group could be rolled over toward the next year’s market. (Put in a high-yield savings account; fiduciary; account manager; the kind of banking where the money is insured and can’t be lost while still earning interest. Maybe thru a credit union.)
There could be lessons in safe food handling and how to handle the local taxes.
Like, for reals: I’m happy to help you with your home business, but if you’re selling things like food, essential oils, baby products, lotions, skin products… There’s no messing around.
Like, boil your equipment and containers. Which means making sure you are using human grade containers and not just some random jars you found in the trash.
I remember watching that DIY modern homesteader show and the young couple made and sold maple syrup. And it raised concerns in my mind.
They didn’t have a large pot, so they used a recycled sink(?) they found at the junkyard. They created fire underneath it that was hot enough to simmer the maple syrup within.
Like, they burnt the maple syrup due to lack of stirring level of heat.
They jarred the syrup.
And they sold their maple syrup to tourists at $20 a jar, which was enough to pay to fix their truck or whatever it was they immediately needed money for.
No food handling certification. Made in an old sink in their backyard on their homestead that doesn’t even have a well.
And yeah, I’m all for giving people a chance and helping them out and all.
But if you can’t meet the minimum basic requirements for preparing and selling cooked/canned foods… You should make jewelry. You should make fishing lures with the feathers from your chicken, but not sell the meat/eggs of your chicken to others.
You should not be making and selling food.
If they had made that maple syrup and ate it themselves, I would’ve still been eyebrows raised, but I wouldn’t have been so troubled.
You are fully allowed to make and eat questionable food.
You shouldn’t give it to other people.
- They’d never made maple syrup before.
- He gathered the xylem sap himself.
- They cooked it in an old sink(?).
- They burnt it while cooking it.
- They stuck their fingers in it to taste how good it was.
- I never saw either of them ever wash their hands.
And they sold all of it. They didn’t keep a single jar for themselves.
And it’s like, “Do you not trust your own cooking? You won’t even eat it yourself, but you’ll sell it to other people.”
Maybe I’m a hippie-skeptic and that’s why I’m automatically like “That’s suspicious.”
Seriously: Modern hippies are not the same as hippies from the 60s/70s.
It’s a fashion statement. A fashionable lifestyle choice.
It has nothing to do with morals and education and commonsense. It is the kind of POV that says “Acquire resources. Colonize your environment.”
So yeah, the group should include lessons in food handling, tax handling, how-tos, all the things someone would need or want to be successful selling at the farmer’s market. And maybe transportation could be arranged. And tables rented from like a party supply store.
I BOUGHT THAT: TOOTHPASTE TABLETS
I bought toothpaste tablets. => Amazon ADLINK: Denttabs <= And I basically chose the brand based on whether they contained fluoride and whether the packaging was recyclable/biodegradable. Plus the price per tablet ($11.91 for 125 tablets in this case).
The packaging is a green “plastic”-looking bag that is actually made out of cornstarch. And from the reviews, I am lucky in that none of mine were broken (I guess some people have been getting bags of dust).
I tried to check figures for my cost/benefit analysis, but some of the math results were screwy. Like, all the answers for my search turned up results from the same website… with different answers.
By their information, a 3.4 oz. tube of toothpaste can last you from as short as 7 days to as long as 40 days.
At least with the toothpaste tablets I know I for sure have 62 days worth of brushing twice a day. 41 days worth if I brush three times a day.
A tube of regular toothpaste costs from $3.50 to $4.49 at the grocery store. So that means two tubes is from $7-8.58. With sales tax that’s about $7.60-9.30 for two full-sized tubes of toothpaste. And if one tube only lasts for 40 days, two tubes will last for 80 days; which makes that one package of toothpaste tablets the equivalent of a tube-and-a-half’s worth of tooth brushing.
So from that perspective the toothpaste tablets are only a little bit more costlier than the tubes. Plus there’s no waste.
And, you know, when there’s more demand for a product and more people are making the same or similar products, the price will go down.
Without the cost of the plastic, the special injection machinery, or a dozen and a half other costs of manufacture, toothpaste tablets should, by their very nature, be cheaper to make and sell than tubes of toothpaste.
Most brands seem to have theirs in little recyclable glass jars. And, like I said, the Denttabs are in a biodegradable cornstarch package. And some people have theirs in cardboard tubes with an unfoldable distribution spout.
If enough people buy them, then toothpaste tablets will be the normal, everyday thing we want and need.
We just have to make sure there’s some social policing of the ingredients, packaging, and the usage advisories.
Like, I chose the Denttabs because they contain fluoride.
I believe in fluoride for tooth care. I have side-eye feelings about fluoride in the tap water. (You’re not supposed to ingest your toothpaste because of the fluoride. Yet they put it in the drinking water. The kitchen water that people are using to cook with and do whatever household tasks with. I mean, I don’t even know if there are substances that adversely react to contact with fluoride! I don’t trust it.)
So one of my search parameters was toothpaste tablets with fluoride. (I still had to back out of several brands that didn’t really contain fluoride.) And I wanted ones that came in recyclable packaging. And even then I looked at the reviews to see what people had to say, and there were some complaints of the cardboard tubes being wrapped in non-recyclable plastic.
My dudes: You can recycle your toothpaste tubes.
If you look on the side of a plastic toothpaste tube, you will see instructions on what to do with the lid, and otherwise the tube can be recycled in your bin.
And if your local recycling company does not handle toothpaste tubes… Why is all the city’s budget going toward military weaponry for police? You can’t even afford modern recycling facilities! Reallocate your budget smarter.
The summers are gonna get hotter, the winters are gonna get colder, and in-between our fruit and nut trees will be suffering life-shortening damage.
We, as a species, must use our big human brains to both protect the environment and heal the damages that we have done.
We are balanced on a precipice, and some members of our species are trying to knock us all off in the belief they’ll go to a wondrous afterlife.
And it’s like, dude, have a little doubt in your soul.
Doubt that there is an afterlife.
Doubt that there isn’t an afterlife.
Doubt that you’ve done good.
Doubt that you’ve done good enough.
This Earth might be all there is for you and I.
There will be no greater singularity in our futures.
Which means we have a responsibility to protect the planet and the life upon it. From the flora and fauna to the resources we are digging up, cracking, and destroying.
There are some that want to discard our sense of history.
They don’t want children to realize that their parents’ generation has done wrong. That their great-great-great–great-great-grandparents’ and every generation in-between has done wrong.
They want to colonize new communities, new countries, new PLANETS. They want to put their mark wherever they are, no matter how garish and vulgar the mark they leave behind turns out to be.
They want to make real money by bitmining imaginary numbers, and they’re leaving the cost of their gain to be paid by future generations that lack clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, clean food to eat, and safe shelter to sleep in.
Humans survive by a rule of threes:
- 3 minutes without air
- 3 days without water
- 3 weeks without food
And these are three things that people in positions of authority REFUSE to acknowledge as being NECESSARY to human life, and thus an unalienable right of their own citizenry.
And it’s like, back in the day, they widened the scope of a property’s resources. And they went from being able to sell the mineral rights, to being able to sell the water rights, to being able to sell the air above a property. So there you are, buying a house without owning the land below it or the air above it, and you had no recourse when the fracking taking place miles away collapsed your home into a sinkhole.
The world has become a darker, crueler place due to the machinations of humans unable to view other humans as people.
Basking in their own selfishness as they pollute the world around them. Squandering the resources of thousands to keep up an appearance of wealth and privilege.
While people cough on air they can’t breathe. Become parched with water they can’t drink. And starve without healthy food to eat.
And so maybe me pushing the idea of recyclable toothpaste tubes or biodegradable packaging for toothpaste tablets and shampoos and health and beauty products might not be much…
But if enough of us use our power as consumers, as the people in our households making the monthly grocery purchases, all push for companies to pivot to being less wasteful and terrible, they will have no choice but to listen.
Because while the concept of money is based on a collective belief that an imaginary construct has real value… To companies and the people they fund, money is their food. And without it, they will die, pecked away by their competitors and the panicked stockholders desperate to get their share before it’s gone.
~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
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P.S. The toothpaste tablets are easy to use, though I can see why some people might not like them. There is texture.
What you do is chew a tablet between your teeth, wet your toothbrush, and brush your teeth. Don’t swallow the toothpaste.
The tablets are about the size of a plain white aspirin pill. They provide their own grit.
I would think, depending on the ingredients used, someone out there could come up with a recipe to grind toothpaste tablets and mix them with beneficial ingredients.
By themselves, there is a slight mint flavor, but it’s not as noticeable and strong as the paste version. I also imagine that a lot less sweetener is used.
The first day I brushed with the toothpaste tablets, I did think “there’s not enough flavor!” but as I’ve become more used to them the mint and faint sweetness seem like enough.
