the thing they dont tell you about learning to "trust the process" is that you forget and relearn it every single time you make a new piece of art. unfortunately there is no cure either
1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago
2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.
Something I think ppl who aren't used to it struggle with when it comes to ancient history is that frequently 'we do not and cannot know this' is the only truthful response a historian can give. People severely overestimate how much we actually know about Ancient Rome.
I remember talking to someone at a party once about the debate over Septimius Severus's ethnicity (whole other can of worms) and they asked if genetic testing of his remains was not a way to settle it and I was like oh. Oh okay you are under the impression we have the physical remains of Roman emperors from the second century AD alright then. (We. Do not.)
Can't stress how much of high level study of Ancient History is devoted to trying to make sense of what actually factually happened. When I was at university (10+ years ago now) the discipline was embroiled in the lengthy and ongoing process of trying to unpack not just the biases in ancient sources but the centuries & centuries of biases within the field itself. I don't imagine this process is ever going to Stop. It's not uncommon for historical accounts to be so garbled & contradictory that it's not possible to reconstruct the real events behind them.
Once in an introductory lecture one of my professors was talking about this problem and articulated it very simply as 'we know real things happened between real people, but we aren't sure what they were'. Sums it up really!!
"All the information we have about the historical event known as That Time Barbarians Kicked My Cat is the chronicle of Cattus of Catalia, titled Regarding That Time Those Fucking Barbarians Kicked My Cat. It's possible a cat was kicked by barbarians but we are not sure about the details. It might be no cat was kicked at all. Let's say a cat kicking did occur but let's remember we cannot be sure"
We also know that the kicker was sentenced to One Thousand Years of jail, at least according to the cat's testimony (or possibly later writings attributed to the cat)
angels, deciding what shape to take when interacting with The Humans: well….eye contact is important to humans, right? they find it reassuring when they can see the eyes of the person they’re talking to. so if we have LOTS of eyes, in very visible places, that’ll be even MORE reassuring
can’t stop thinking how much sense it would make if every design choice angels made was just a misguided attempt to Relate To The Humans. imagine how those conversations went
wings: “humans don’t like things they can’t understand, so if we’re going to levitate we should have wings. in fact we should probably have lots of wings, since we’re so big and impressive. humans like wings”
loud, booming voices: “fuck off Azrael the humans needs to be able to hear us.”
glowing: “no no no, it’s about visibility, right? the main human sensory organ works by detecting light, so if we emit light…”
wheels: “why the hell are you shaped like that?” “piss off, the humans are really proud of this invention”
multiple faces/eyes: “it makes me relatable” “i swear to God it doesn’t–” “i need to see in every direction” “ Azrael you are a supernatural messenger of god you do not need–” “THE HUMANS NEED TO KNOW I’M WATCHING”
multiple limbs: “humans have lots of limbs! they like limbs” “look i let you keep the wings but–” “how do you expect me to walk?” “70,000 feet is not a reasonable number of feet, Azrael!” “fuck off i’m ENORMOUS”
general gross misapprehensions of biology: “holy shit are your wings made out of eyes?” “look before you say anything i’m like 100% sure i’ve seen animals who have both wings and eyes. and you can fit so many more in this way!” “….you godforsaken googly-eyed genius”
#and this is why angels got so boring in the new testament after the Updated Guidelines were rolled out. “Four limbs???? i’m only allowed a maximum of FOUR LIMBS????? this is BULLSHIT”
#alternatively all the reported sightings of creepy ass angels was literally just the SAME angel #just the same freak who kept changing its meatsuit for funsies before god caught on
Old Testament Angels look like that because life in the ocean outnumbered life on land, so naturally when they visited earth they modeled their appearance on the most common lifeforms. Hench you get things like
radial symmetry (i.e. angels shaped like spheres) which is objectively cooler than bilateral symmetry (starfish understand this)
Very Numerous Limbs (2 is not the average number of arms in the ocean)
random glowing (bioluminescence)
just generally being objects of Absolute Terror to land dwellers
a thousand eyeballs being the Norm (have you seen scallops)
in the majority of inhabited Earth areas (i.e. anything deeper than the continental shelf) old school angels would actually pass as Normal And Relatably-Shaped Lifeforms
Everything I read about recovering from burnout is like “it takes months or even years to fully recover” and it’s like okay…. I have a weekend before I gotta clock in on Monday
"what if the creative self-expression IS the burnout though?"
I had to deal with this recently after years of labouring on a manuscript and stressing about criticism and backlash (because writers get loads of negative attention now) and had to basically drop this project and not write for several weeks because that was causing the burnout.
I floundered for a while.
I figured making things with my hands was probably good. As was learning things and exploring new stories by watching movies I'd never seen before, learning about parts of movie history I had never known--found some really good documentaries on exploitation films, 80s horror, nudity and censorship in film, drive-ins--and generally just trying to take a vacation from my profession--which, I realise now, I have never done before in all my 20+ years of writing.
I think the solution to burnout is a vacation. A real vacation. A leave-your-phone-behind, don't-post-about-it vacation. Even a weekend would help. If you can go somewhere else for a weekend, do it. If you can't, well, put your phone away and go to the movies, or just watch an old movie at home. If you can walk, go on a walk around your neighbourhood and explore like you might have if you were a kid. Ride bikes. Roll in the grass at a park. Go to the thrift store and find something you can fix up or decorate and make it yours--we found a little bookcase and painted stripes on it and now it holds all our board games, as an example. If you have a yard, go mess around with it. If you don't, find some containers and put dirt and flower seeds in them--even dandelion seeds, which are free and everywhere! Draw on the wallpaper with sharpies, or get some acrylic paint from the craft store and paint an old bedsheet and hang it up if you rent.
Engage with the world that materially exists and do something that only benefits you, that only you know about--don't post about it! Try not posting about your life for a while, not scrolling. Put the phone down and change your environment a little.
I started really throwing myself into this lately, and it helps.
I think burnout is talked about like some big scary monster that can't be solved by regular people suffering it (because who the fuck has the money to do nothing for YEARS on end???). But I truly think burnout is just what happens when you don't take a vacation regularly.
You don't need a lot of money to take a vacation, you can do it with your regular days off. My mom used to take us on random vacations on weekends. She didn't know where we were going, we just started driving and she would keep turning toward things that were interesting to look at, until we were in Solvang or Idyllwild or somewhere and she would see a neat little motel and we'd stop and stay there for saturday night, and on sunday we'd wander around and go places that looked interesting in that little spot, and then go back home. This was back when gas and motels were a lil cheaper, but the idea is you don't have to plan a vacation and it doesn't have to be very long to be good and fun.
Shake out of your routine of drudgery and play. That, in my opinion, is the solution to burnout. Play. Humans are not meant to live lives without recess.
(PS beans and rice combine into the perfect protein. Nice cheap way to keep your nutrition reasonably intact)
How to Treat A Bean Right, Because Recession
There is a whole wide world of different beans and legumes, from the humble navy bean stewed down to maximum heartiness to the elegant black lentil tossed in a lemon and dill vinaigrette topped with poached salmon. Unfortunately I see a ton of people just dumping some beans out of a can onto a plate and wondering why their McDonald's cued palates can't stand them. My dudes, beans are a staple in nearly every culture and they didn't get that way by unseasoned tinny chalk balls. Here's how to bean.
Selecting Beans
Beyond skipping over the canned when you can, not all dried beans are created equal. While they have a super long shelf life in regards to safety and not inculcating anything that would give us a food born illness they have a shelf life of about one year max in terms of quality. This means that the dusty bag on the bottom of the shelf in a suburban grocery store full of non bean eaters might do you wrong unexpectedly. Cooking will take longer, they may never actually get creamy, you may have a lot of withered "floaters" that never soften. Your best bet (in the USA) is to hit up stores that cater to Hispanic populations or vegetarians. Bulk bins are a great sign but not 100% necessary. A Mexican grocery store near me has bulk bins of pinto, black beans, and occasionally mayocoba as well as fresh(!) chickpeas on occasion. A trip to whole foods or a natural food store will net me cannelini beans or great northern beans and a whole rainbow of lentils that even when buying fancy pants organic are still cheaper than almost any other food staple. Have an Indian or Ethiopiangrocery store near you? Stock the heck up, and grab spices while you are there. More on that later. The only beans I really buy at big box supermarkets are ones that have them stocked near the middle height of the shelf (spots reserved for higher turnover items) and bags of 15 Bean Soup.
Bean Prep
Once you have your beans look them over a bit before you cook them. A quick rinse in a large bowl of water to get any dust or dirt off, make sure there are no small stones mixed in, and toss any withered up floaters you see.
I have taken a lot of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's great research and food science to heart and he and Daniel Gritzer have a pretty exhaustive bean guide up on Serious Eats if you want the chemistry but the short take away is you only need to soak thicker skinned beans, soaking can take away some of the quality variability if you don't know if the beans are fresh, soaking can leach away flavor and nutrients of thin skinned beans like black beans, and you should cook your beans with salt.
If you are soaking you want to put your beans in a large container like a bowl or a Cambro, and cover them with cold water that is about twice their height. If you have an inch-thick layer of beans you want two inches of water above them. Let them sit 8 to 24 hours then cook them up.
Don't add acid until after cooking, and if your tap water has a low pH to where you find beans don't seem to get tender you should cook them with a smidge of baking soda. Start off with half a teaspoon per pound of beans in order to not effect the flavor too much, and adjust as needed to figure out hour much you need depending on how hard or soft your water is. (Most people will not have to adjust their water pH though, this is just outlier troubleshooting.)
Bean Cooking Methods
My Granny knew what was up with pressure cookers. And now that they are improved so much with new model stove top ones and electric ones like the Instant Pot where the risk of blowing beans into your ceiling is negligible it's one of the best investments for any home cook, even outside of the bean diet. If you don't want to get one though you will need a large pot with a lid on the stove or a dutch oven in a 250F oven with the lid slightly offset
Pressure cooking lets you skip soaking without consequence more than any other method, even with older beans. You don't have to worry about evaporation while cooking. It gives you the maillard reaction throughout the liquid unlike a dutch oven which only accomplishes it on the perimeter (and not at all with the slow cooker), and it's fast. With an electric one you automate the entire process as well.
Pressure cookers allow less evaporation so you will want your bean to water ratio to be less than other methods but soaking comes into play. I'm about 900 feet above sea level. For soaked beans I cover them with one inch of water above the level of the beans, for unsoaked I cover with two inches of water. If you are at a higher altitude unsoaked beans might require more water. For pots and dutch ovens two inches over soaked beans and three inches over unsoaked will be adequate.
Timing will depend on the bean and the method. Smaller beans cook faster, soaked beans cook faster. They're done when they are creamy inside and firm outside with few exceptions such as red lentils. THe best way is to just check the package or google what type of bean for which method you are using
Bean Seasoning
Here's the real rub for me and my real inspiration for writing this. Y'all under season your beans. Entire wars weren't fought for spice trade routes just so people could
forget what a bay leaf was. Your basic template for flavors is going to be Aromatic + Cooking Liquid + Acid. I know it sounds like a lot going on, but frequently one ingredient can cover multiple elements and just two our of three elements will take you far.
Aromatics
• Charred onions or caramelized onions • Mirepoix or trinity • Minced garlic and/or ginger • Fennel • Herbs such as bay leaves, rosemary sprigs, thyme sprigs, sage, cilantro, parsley, oregano, epazote, tarragon • Spices such as cumin, cloves, cardamom, turmeric • Spice blends such as garam masala, Cajun seasoning, Indian curry powder blends, BBQ rubs, Berebere • Chilis. Jalapeno, serrano, dried guajillo, canned chipotles in adobo, hatch chilies, canned diced green chilies. Just chilies.
Cooking Liquid
• Stock or broth is bare minimum. Get Better than Bouillon or a similar concentrated stock paste if you don't want to make your own but if you ever buy a rotisserie chicken you should really try making your own. l've used miso paste before when I had nothing else on hand. • A few shakes of Liquid Smoke. • Canned diced tomatoes (with or without chilies) • Some shakes of Fish Sauce AKA Nam Pla • A bit of Worcestershire • A glug of wine • Some beer (maintenance mode)
Acid
Once it's finished cooking a little acid can go a long way. A splash of vinegar, a squeeze of lime or lemon, hot sauce buffalo sauce, and suddenly the dish has new heights and depths.
[ HEADS UP FROM ALT TEXT ADDER: DO NOT ADD ACID WHEN COOKING IN A CAST IRON POT. It will react to the material and make everything taste nasty. This includes tomatoes! ]
Bonus
A bit of chorizo. Nduja. Some thick smoked ham, or even a bone from a smoked ham. A few sausages. A smoked turkey leg. Tasso. Andouille. A few slices of diced bacon. If it's meaty and salty and you don't have enough to make a meal of it use it as a flavoring agent in beans,
Storing Cooked Beans
Fridge 'em for 5 or 6 days without issue in a covered container or freeze them. Beans freeze wonderfully and you can bulk cook these, put some in a quart ziplock bags and freeze them up to 6 months. This is a great way to cycle through different flavors or types if you are getting burnt out.
Bean Flavor Combos
• Black beans + bell peppers, onions, garlic + bay leaves
• Black beans + onions + orange peel + all spice
• Black Beans + cumin and onion + cilantro + lime
• Pinto beans + onion and jalapeno + cumin and epazote
Reblogging the Alt Text version and adding two links I took from other reblogs:
The first is an FDA advisory basically saying that you shouldn't use a slow cooker on beans because they won't reach a temperature high enough to break down natural toxins found in some beans. They also state that dried beans should be soaked for at least 5 hours before boiling for at least 40 minutes (to neutralize the previously mentioned toxins).
The second link is the reddit source:
I also recommend going into the reblogs because there are a bunch of recipes and tips, including ones for people on digestive restrictions.
it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.
I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.
As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:
The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.
Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)
Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)
Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.
The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.
Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?
Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.
If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.
If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.
There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."
Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.
"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.
Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.
"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.
"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.
"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.
"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.
I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.
"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.
A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.
But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.
If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.
Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.
As someone with corn based issues my sickness levels are a recession indicator.
I can tell when companies are cost cutting because they start using corn sugar or maize starch as a bulking sweetener and it makes me incredibly fucking ill. Are they kind enough to put a "new recipe" label on it? Sometimes! Only fucking sometimes. A bunch of times I discover it when my stomach is trying to exist my body in aggressive, stabby maneuvers. It sucks.
And people will literally laugh at it and pretend it's no problem that they don't know why every yoghurt in the shop has cornflour in it rather than real fruit. Or their meat is all preserved with corn to make it look good for longer.
People have no idea what is in their food unless they have to have.
And even that can end up down weird pipelines of "crunchy mums" and conspiracies about plastic rice. It's so tiring man.
Oh man, I fucking hate the "unlabeled new recipe" bullshit. I am so grateful that my wife is ever-vigilant and realized that our old go-to brand of molé sauce no longer had the tiny text reading "gluten-free" where she was used to seeing it on the front of the jar, because they'd changed their recipe and put wheat flour in it.
She literally clocked the change in the label — it wasn't marked as changed, she just noticed that the "gf" label was gone — and that was enough for her to flip the jar over and check.
I gotta say that the most infuriating recipe change I've had to deal with was when a company started using "barley syrup" instead of their previous HFCS, which is how I suddenly started sweating and whimpering from drinking frozen lemonade.
"Lemonade is always gluten-free, it's stupid for them to label that shit!"
[ID: a screenshot of a comic speech bubble. The black text in it reads "No matter how open-minded, socially conscious, anti-racist I think I am, I still have old learned hidden biases that I need to examine. It is my responsibility to check myself daily for my stereotypes, prejudices and, ultimately, discrimination." /ID end]
antiracism is a constant process. i was raised in a racist village and it's not easy to get rid of it. i moved away over 10 years ago but those ideas are still haunting me.
also keep in mind that shame + guilt are not conducive to growing as a person. when it comes to "checking yourself" it should be a non-judgemental process. it's not about flagellating yourself for every bad thought or trying to purify your mind of all corruption. it's only when acknowledging your own racist thoughts doesn't fill you with dread that you can really progress past the white guilt of it all.
radical self-acceptance & genuine self-critique are not opposites. they need each other. do not let obsessive-compulsive behaviors colonize your desire to grow as a person.
there are a NUMBER of folktale Woman-Creatures like selkies who exist to make the inherently coercive nature of heterosexual marriage explicit and to externalize male anxiety about how if your wife had actual autonomy she very well might disappear and you might never fucking hear from her again
which is a FASCINATING category of Woman-Creature imo
someone said it's also a cautionary tale about mistreating your wife and I think that's spot on especially for other related types of stories e.g. the crane wife. like I think these stories are very much Husband Anxiety Stories. the Woman-Creatures are black boxes whose interior experience it is impossible to know and who have strange and often seemingly arbitrary rules that you must follow or else they will disappear. idk. like. that's why I think that any empowering-to-women-ness qualities of these stories is incidental. I think they're externalized anxiety about coercive societal heterosexuality and the inability to truly Know one's wife in such circumstances.
you also see a variant of this formula a lot (generally at the more literary end of the fairy tale space) where it's not a creature you capture, but a magical lady who picks you for seemingly arbitrary reasons, bettering your fortune enormously with her magic and wealth and second-hand status.
and then, for reasons usually at least slightly less arbitrary, fucks off again.
the husbandly anxiety here is more about not having access to coercion as an option.
was just talking to Story about this and he told me about one folktale where a guy meets a beautiful woman at a lake and she brings a bountiful dowry of like one million fat cows and such and she is of course a fairy so she's like "my one requirement in our bargain is that if you strike me three times I will leave" and in many versions of the story the husband doesn't ""actually"" strike her -- each time it's something like, one 'strike' involves her forgetting her gloves inside and he walks out and taps her on the shoulder with her gloves, but she tells him that counts as striking her. this sort of thing. which is TRANSPARENTLY like "whoa wouldn't it be fucked up if your wife could enforce consequences for behavior she said was harmful, even if according to your cultural norms it was fine, and you didn't see it as a big deal?" like... lol. what if women could actually be the ones who decided whether or not any given action their husbands took against them was harmful? IMAGINE... PREDEY SCARY....
to be clear you SHOULD buy that cast iron pan and you SHOULD buy that knife set and you SHOULD buy that fancy rice cooker and you SHOULD buy that novelty mug. high quality kitchenware is always worth it you’re literally gonna be using that almost every day
“Everything above reduces to four rules you can run in about two minutes, standing in the aisle:
Look up the owner, not the name. The name is the cheapest part of the company to preserve. If the ownership trail ends at a private equity firm or a licensing group, assume the product and the reputation are no longer aligned.
Read the warranty before the reviews. Its length is the company’s own estimate of how long the product lasts, and its exclusions are a list of the ways they expect it to fail.
Buy bare metal where you can. Cast iron, carbon steel, plain stainless. No coating means nothing that dies at cycle 40 and nothing to rebuy in eighteen months.
Distrust a name that’s on everything. When the same brand appears on your pan, your knives, your toaster, and a box fan, nobody who owns it makes anything.”
remember kids, the moral of "Irish and Italians weren't even considered White yet!" isn't "because in those times people were so ignorant they didn't think the Irish were white". the moral is "because white is an unreal category created to justify slavery and ongoing hoarding of power and wealth". It's not that you know better about Italians. It's that the boundaries of the higher caste have changed.
headcanon that a ferengi tradition is putting your new baby up for sale at a ridiculous price to show how valuable they are to you (everyone has to be polite and not actually buy them or hands will be thrown, people will be sued, etc etc)
So, this is related to a headcanon I have. There's a kind of ritual sale of childhood goods as part of the Ferengi coming-of-age, which was featured in an episode of DS9. The ostensible purpose is to raise capital for the young Ferengi male. But, like, if the Ferengi were approaching this in their usual capitalistic mindset, you wouldn't really get much from what's basically a glorified garage sale
My headcanon is that it is the accepted practice to buy those goods at much higher prices than you would normally pay, serving as a culturally acceptable way of effectively giving financial support
Oh I love these, especially because of the spoken and unspoken meta-traditions around the tradition! Maybe they work similarly to the “speak now or forever hold your peace” thing in human marriage ceremonies. Everyone at a human wedding understands you’re not actually supposed to say anything at that point, it’s just a formality—but you see characters do it all the time in literature and entertainment, because it makes for such a juicy plot twist.
I bet “newborn gets purchased by evil jealous ex-business partner” is a classic plot hook in Ferengi soap operas. It’s their version of getting sold to One Direction.
I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
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