craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

we basically need a world government willing to impose and enforce environmental taxes

a rising tide will hopefully cover all plutonium dumps, kiu icecaps

xp lol

maybe after we get a world govt able to stop i dunno genocide, famine and the simon cowell, but cmon now

simon cowell is actually our best hope for creating and running a world government iirc

cowell/michael o'leary/abramovich hot ticket in 2015

not badly priced, but the corncob pipe fits right into the "how much authenticity is too much?" discussion

http://absoluteclassicmasterpieces.us/shop

you don't usually see the words "leisure accessories" and "philadelphia, pennsylvania" in the same sentence.

it's nice that they are Felt fans though.

IIRC, the original corncob pipes were designed to be disposable.

And it's the concrete ashtray that really gets me.

Ditto.

Those just, um, don't even look that well-crafted? Or at least not well-designed.

a concrete ashtray doesn't seem very useful, it's heavy and hard to flip and you can't shake it without threat of getting carpal tunnel

Concrete's actually a bit lighter than glass. But $150 for an ashtray is rough.

there was a nyt article about 20-somethings all becoming portland food truck vendors and the 'sell stuff' economy, but I can't find it now

ah here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all

this is the guy who wrote "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" which iirc was about how going to princeton (or whatever) made it too hard to talk to his plumber

"But hipsters, who’ve been around for 15 years or so, appear to have become a durable part of our cultural configuration. " = line of the week imo

haha hasn't that exact article been written every three months since 2002?

lol that guy was my professor :/ he fights the good fight in general

yeah at least w/r/t academia in general he seems to. do you know why he left yale?

t/f when he was writing this article he was thinking about dayo

he got disillusioned by the politics of the ivory tower, he actually believed all the stuff the pr office puts out about yale

being a force of good in the world &c

it seems like a place where the old guard is firmly in charge

otm:

Tara

Japan

November 13th, 2011

11:22 am

You're seeing all of the symptoms but misdiagnosing the cause. "Affability is a commercial virtue, but it is also the affect of people who feel themselves to be living in a fundamentally agreeable society." No. Affability, and the commercially-acceptable facade we Millennials put on, is an act of desperation. We must be perpetual salesmen because there is no such thing as job security, because there is so much competition in finding new employment; in short, because we know that any boon we get is bound to be temporary, and liable to be ripped away at any moment.

It's the same reason why so many Millennials develop "small businesses" outside of their main jobs, too - because they know they can't rely on an employer. We have no sense of security. Anything could happen and tomorrow we'll be out of a job, with no health care, and maybe if the Republicans get their way, no support to help us through tough times.

I have to agree with grovewest, #9 - our affability IS largely disingenuous. It's a survival trait, not our true selves. I love the term Generation Sell, though - that sums it up pretty well. We (and everyone else these days) must constantly sell ourselves.

t/f when he was writing this article he was thinking about dayo

― iatee, Monday, November 14, 2011 10:42 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lol I have undergone a lot of change since then

this is the guy who wrote "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" which iirc was about how going to princeton (or whatever) made it too hard to talk to his plumber

lol, i'm well-educated and i think i know more about plumbing than my handyman does!

exactly why you shouldn't hire handymen who went to dartmouth

http://vimeo.com/31175652

(profile pic nsfw but vid is ok)

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/

^ more or less my point from earlier in the thread

kinda stopped reading halfway through cuz I didn't accept half a dozen of that dude's assumptions, sorry

But implicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a “relocalized” food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming.

I don't think this assumption is implicit at all, for example

he seems to dismiss out of hand the idea that people like Remy, who want a pineapple but live in a region where pineapples are not grown, may simply have to forego pineapples. instead dude assumes that the local pineapple demand would be met by trying to grow them in South Carolina or wherever. which is insane.

also trots out hoary old chestnuts about how there are SO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED while glossing over the fact that there's actually plenty of food for everybody - the problem is distribution, not production.

and yes I know distribution gets us back to carbon emissions but duh there are multiple angles to this problem - maybe developing modes of transportation that are less carbon intensive figure into this as well etc

kinda stopped reading halfway through cuz I didn't accept half a dozen of that dude's assumptions, sorry

It seems like he's assuming that a locavore system would mean trying to grow all crops everywhere, as opposed to relying more heavily on what grows well locally (which I thought was, in fact, the idea).

It's bizarre to suggest that the current agribusiness model is somehow the most efficient, least carbon intensive model there is

xp

It seems like he's assuming that a locavore system would mean trying to grow all crops everywhere

yes, this is exactly what he's saying

which naturally leads to "conservative" yet still altogether bonkers "back of the envelope" calculations

otoh a commenter raises a good point about train vs. truck transport, namely that a train can haul stuff halfway across the country with about the energy input that it takes for a farm truck to drive like 50 miles to the farmers' market.

great let's build some more high speed rail then oh wait conservatives hate that too

I'm all for more trains! let's have 'em!

the fact that remy lives in a region where pineapples are not grown does not mean that the total emissions involved in getting him a pineapple is gonna be higher than something 'closer' that has a less efficient distribution path* / is going to create more emissions to begin with. pineapple from across the world vs. local beef.

across the board privileging of the 'local' is absurdist and simplistic. transportation costs should be incorporated into the math, they're just not as big as you'd assume ~in the big picture~, esp w/ enormous int'l shipments.

* (= people move to dense areas which will lead to inherent transportation efficiencies w/ basically everything they do or buy)

xp

this guy isn't a freakeconomics dude, he's an environmental/agriculture econ grad student at berkeley who happened to write an article that got posted on this

I have this vision of railroad commerce where each car has a catapult and as the train passes by a destination the catapults just shoot the produce at the station and giant nets catch it and the train never has to slow down and so much energy would be saved

There are a lot of bizarro things with transportation costs, subsidies, and supply chains that aren't worked out.

Let's take apples for instance. Parts of the midwest used to grow lots of apples for local consumption, but it's difficult to harvest, not as much of a cash crop as others, and other regions of the country have longer/different growing seasons that make apples more economically viable there. During a certain time of the year, apples in midwestern grocery stores are mostly local, but not in all chains and some varieties might be from distant areas.

If local agriculture was prioritized, there would be more local apple orchards, all the in-season apples in stores would be local, and the neighboring non-apple-growing regions could import them from neighboring states rather than California or Mexico. As it is, due to the contracts and distribution of the supply chain, it may be easier for a store in Illinois to buy apples from California than Nebraska, even in season.

Course since the train doesn't generally go to one's supermarket, it has to wind up on a truck eventually anyway.

http://www.goodplanet.info/eng/Zones/Agir/Bonnes-Pratiques/Monoprix-takes-the-train/(theme)/275/(secteur)/1197/

america should just invest in a giant, cross country pneumatic tube system