#convenience

[fortuneaday]

[transport-methodology-101]

1952 motorhome, custom-built in aluminum for Howard Hughes, an American aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor.

The vehicle was reportedly offered by Paramount Studios and built on a Chevrolet chassis for actress Mae West in 1931, before being acquired by Hughes, featuring a unique, streamlined Art Deco design of the era.

Internally ncluded amenities such as a stove and an icebox. It has also been referred to as a "housecar" rather than a typical camper. Features unique design that includes a retractable roof section for increased interior height and a spacious cabin. This coach has been retrofitted with a Detroit Diesel 4-71 engine and an Allison automatic transmission.

PLEASE NOTE:- vehicle at the bottom is a conceptual 1952 Hughes Torpedo 7 Camping, a design study that resulted in the above 2 pics/photos.

We’ve also posted the GMC Scenicruiser from 1955, that “merged" with the General American Aerocoach (Aerotech) of 1949 to form a triple-story behemoth that can sleep atleast 2 dozen humans ⬇️ ⬇️

Post by @transport-methodology-101 · 9 images

💬 0  🔁 1  ❤️ 4 · Peacemaker Bus | Twelve Tribes · GMC Scenicruiser, bus dating from 1955, "merged" with the General American Aerocoach (Ae

[mockva]

Life of a stewardess

[soukokuforthesoul]

soukoku who live together, and it’s just another random day, chuuya’s opening a window to let in the cool night air, dazai’s laying on the floor fiddling with chuuya’s phone (his own stopped working a while ago). it’s one of the rare nights they finish work at the same time, but they’ve lived together long enough that they work through their own routines just fine either way. chuuya’s starting to wrestle himself out of his waistcoat as he starts towards the closet for more comfortable clothes. dazai, who was swiping through chuuya’s pictures, stops on one where chuuya caught dazai asleep in the bathtub, something he hadn’t known existed in chuuya’s camera roll. he looks up at chuuya for a moment. chuuya, feeling eyes on him, turns as he pops the final button out.

“mm?”

“chibi, are we married?”

somehow, chuuya doesn’t even flinch. he just raises an eyebrow, completely used to dazai’s bullshit. “no, not legally,” he says slowly. he’s already caught onto dazai’s train of thought, probably glimpsed the picture. “why?” he asks anyway, more of obligation.

“we live together,” dazai starts, turning the phone off. “we have been for forever. we’ve been ‘not dating’ forever, too. we know each other more than anyone else, probably. we trust each other more than anyone else.”

“we’re not dating?”

dazai hums. “we never officially said anything about it.”

“then how are we married, if we’ve never officially said anything about that either?” chuuya tosses the waistcoat into the basket for laundry, starting with his shirt. he turns away from dazai, going back to scouring for clothes.

“so we’re married!” dazai concludes, sitting up.

“since when?”

“since now!”

chuuya makes a noncommittal noise in response, taking out a hanger from the closet and, satisfied, slips the shirt off of it and puts it on the bed, hanging the hanger back up. he finds a pair of shorts to go with it, then finishes undressing.

dazai watches with a pout. “chuuya, let’s say our vows now, ‘kay? i promise to love— wait. okay, never mind,” he says, mostly to himself.

chuuya snorts and pulls the shirt on—oh, it’s dazai’s, which feels like more proof that they should be married—before turning to dazai. “changed your mind?”

“nuh uh.” dazai struggles up to crawl over to him, clinging onto his bare legs. he hooks his chin up, resting on chuuya’s waist, as he gazes up at him with something like the love he’d just refused to speak of. “we can be married without words. without legal documents.”

“thought you were tryna be a good person now,” chuuya teased, ruffling his hair.

“since when was illegal marriage a bad thing,” dazai muttered, nuzzling into chuuya’s stomach. “is that even a thing?”

“dunno. get off me, mackerel, i gotta put my clothes on,” chuuya huffs, trying to tug him off. dazai resists, conjuring impossible (for him) strength from nowhere simply to latch onto him like a koala.

shaking his head, chuuya bends over, flailing slightly until he snatches up his shorts from the bed. then, looking down, he flicks dazai’s forehead. “off, you little leech.”

dazai whines and snatches the shorts from chuuya, scooting back enough to hold them out to his feet. “ill dress you!” he declares. chuuya rolls his eyes but steps into them anyway.

with little care, dazai pulls them up to chuuya’s waist, only for chuuya to complain about them being on backwards. dazai grins and stands only to tackle chuuya onto the floor, making him yelp and instinctively flip them over so dazai’s the one tumbling down instead.

“oh, my god, you fucking idiot,” chuuya groans, sitting up, glaring at dazai.

dazai, from the floor, smiles innocently up at him. “chibi should mess up his hair more often!” he states, tugging chuuya down by the hem of his shirt, mussing up the auburn locks.

chuuya grumbles but leans down to press his face to dazai’s chest, breathing softly. “fine, we can be married. only if you promise not to make this a problem.”

“i’ll always be your problem,” dazai says affectionately, then squeezes chuuya into a suffocating embrace.

“fuck you,” a muffled retort from a squished chuuya, the words tickling dazai through his clothes. he hums and it vibrates against chuuya’s cheek, and despite himself, chuuya smiles, escaping from dazai’s not-quite death grip.

he bends down to bait dazai into a kiss, only to knock his forehead against dazai’s. “go change, you idiot. i’ll start dinner.”

“chuuyaaaaa!” dazai whines, hurrying up after chuuya to catch his kiss, a frown gracing his lips when he isn’t quick enough and chuuya’s already at the door. “how dare you deprive your husband of your affection!”

“you just wanted to call yourself that, didn’t you?” chuuya laughs, voice echoing slightly in the hallway.

“chuuya’s huuuusband!” dazai calls after him.

he falls back down onto the floor as he listens to chuuya’s footsteps make their way to the kitchen. then, to himself, he says, “and now chuuya’s my husband. hehe.”

“i heard that!” chuuya shouts from wherever in the house.

a smile brightens on dazai’s face. “chuuya’s mine, now!”

he gets indignant complaints back, but he tunes them out, turning chuuya’s phone back on and quickly typing in the password just to gaze at the wallpaper—a picture taken a couple years back, of the two of them on chuuya’s motorcycle, dazai clinging for dear life onto chuuya’s waist as chuuya laughed with the widest smile ever. dazai smiles back at it, and proceeds to stare until the phone automatically fades to black. he taps it back on. chuuya keeps smiling at him until the battery runs out and dazai’s forced to put it to charge. still, it’s engrained in his mind, and he thinks he would be happy if it was the last thing he ever saw.

he stands and wanders down to his chuuya now, slipping his arms around chuuya’s waist like he had done in the picture. he’s met with an indifferent greeting, and he leans down to kiss chuuya’s head.

“i love you, chuuya,” he says brightly.

“hm. love you too,” chuuya murmurs, mixing some vegetables into a pan.

dazai smiles. maybe he’ll be fine living a little bit longer. for this.

[unbfacts]

In the U.S., takeout, drive-thru, and delivery now make up nearly 75% of restaurant orders.

[dispelzine]

Walls / Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, Ontario.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

No, “convenience” isn’t the problem

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Using Amazon, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or Doordash, or Uber doesn't make you lazy. Platform capitalism isn't enshittifying because you made the wrong shopping choices.

Remember, the reason these corporations were able to capture such substantial market-share is that the capital markets saw them as a bet that they could lose money for years, drive out competition, capture their markets, and then raise prices and abuse their workers and suppliers without fear of reprisal. Investors were chasing monopoly power, that is, companies that are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

The tactics that let a few startups into Big Tech are illegal under existing antitrust laws. It's illegal for large corporations to buy up smaller ones before they can grow to challenge their dominance. It's illegal for dominant companies to merge with each other. "Predatory pricing" (selling goods or services below cost to prevent competitors from entering the market, or to drive out existing competitors) is also illegal. It's illegal for a big business to use its power to bargain for preferential discounts from its suppliers. Large companies aren't allowed to collude to fix prices or payments.

But under successive administrations, from Jimmy Carter through to Donald Trump, corporations routinely broke these laws. They explicitly and implicitly colluded to keep those laws from being enforced, driving smaller businesses into the ground. Now, sociopaths are just as capable of starting small companies as they are of running monopolies, but that one store that's run by a colossal asshole isn't the threat to your wellbeing that, say, Walmart or Amazon is.

All of this took place against a backdrop of stagnating wages and skyrocketing housing, health, and education costs. In other words, even as the cost of operating a small business was going up (when Amazon gets a preferential discount from a key supplier, that supplier needs to make up the difference by gouging smaller, weaker retailers), Americans' disposable income was falling.

So long as the capital markets were willing to continue funding loss-making future monopolists, your neighbors were going to make the choice to shop "the wrong way." As small, local businesses lost those customers, the costs they had to charge to make up the difference would go up, making it harder and harder for you to afford to shop "the right way."

In other words: by allowing corporations to flout antimonopoly laws, we set the stage for monopolies. The fault lay with regulators and the corporate leaders and finance barons who captured them – not with "consumers" who made the wrong choices. What's more, as the biggest businesses' monopoly power grew, your ability to choose grew ever narrower: once every mom-and-pop restaurant in your area fires their delivery drivers and switches to Doordash, your choice to order delivery from a place that payrolls its drivers goes away.

Monopolists don't just have the advantage of nearly unlimited access to the capital markets – they also enjoy the easy coordination that comes from participating in a cartel. It's easy for five giant corporations to form conspiracies because five CEOs can fit around a single table, which means that some day, they will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

By contrast, "consumers" are atomized – there are millions of us, we don't know each other, and we struggle to agree on a course of action and stick to it. For "consumers" to make a difference, we have to form institutions, like co-ops or buying clubs, or embark on coordinated campaigns, like boycotts. Both of these tactics have their place, but they are weak when compared to monopoly power.

Luckily, we're not just "consumers." We're also citizens who can exercise political power. That's hard work – but so is organizing a co-op or a boycott. The difference is, when we dog enforcers who wield the power of the state, and line up behind them when they start to do their jobs, we can make deep structural differences that go far beyond anything we can make happen as consumers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

We're not just "consumers" or "citizens" – we're also workers, and when workers come together in unions, they, too, can concentrate the diffuse, atomized power of the individual into a single, powerful entity that can hold the forces of capital in check:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

And all of these things work together; when regulators do their jobs, they protect workers who are unionizing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And strong labor power can force cartels to abandon their plans to rig the market so that every consumer choice makes them more powerful:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

And when consumers can choose better, local, more ethical businesses at competitive rates, those choices can make a difference:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/10/view-a-sku/

Antimonopoly policy is the foundation for all forms of people-power. The very instant corporations become too big to fail, jail or care is the instant that "voting with your wallet" becomes a waste of time.

Sure, choose that small local grocery, but everything on their shelves is going to come from the consumer packaged-goods duopoly of Procter and Gamble and Unilever. Sure, hunt down that local brand of potato chips that you love instead of P&G or Unilever's brand, but if they become successful, either P&G or Unilever will buy them out, and issue a press release trumpeting the purchase, saying "We bought out this beloved independent brand and added it to our portfolio because we know that consumers value choice."

If you're going to devote yourself to solving the collective action problem to make people-power work against corporations, spend your precious time wisely. As Zephyr Teachout writes in Break 'Em Up, don't miss the protest march outside the Amazon warehouse because you spent two hours driving around looking for an independent stationery so you could buy the markers and cardboard to make your anti-Amazon sign without shopping on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

When blame corporate power on "laziness," we buy into the corporations' own story about how they came to dominate our lives: we just prefer them. This is how Google explains away its 90% market-share in search: we just chose Google. But we didn't, not really – Google spends tens of billions of dollars every single year buying up the search-box on every website, phone, and operating system:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Blaming "laziness" for corporate dominance also buys into the monopolists' claim that the only way to have convenient, easy-to-use services is to cede power to them. Facebook claims it's literally impossible for you to carry on social relations with the people that matter to you without also letting them spy on you. When we criticize people for wanting to hang out online with the people they love, we send the message that they need to choose loneliness and isolation, or they will be complicit in monopoly.

The problem with Google isn't that it lets you find things. The problem with Facebook isn't that it lets you talk to your friends. The problem with Uber isn't that it gets you from one place to another without having to stand on a corner waving your arm in the air. The problem with Amazon isn't that it makes it easy to locate a wide variety of products. We should stop telling people that they're wrong to want these things, because a) these things are good; and b) these things can be separated from the monopoly power of these corporate bullies:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

Remember the Napster Wars? The music labels had screwed over musicians and fans. 80 percent of all recorded music wasn't offered for sale, and the labels cooked the books to make it effectively impossible for musicians to earn out their advances. Napster didn't solve all of that (though they did offer $15/user/month to the labels for a license to their catalogs), but there were many ways in which it was vastly superior to the system it replaced.

The record labels responded by suing tens of thousands of people, mostly kids, but also dead people and babies and lots of other people. They demanded an end to online anonymity and a system of universal surveillance. They wanted every online space to algorithmically monitor everything a user posted and delete anything that might be a copyright infringement.

These were the problems with the music cartel: they suppressed the availability of music, screwed over musicians, carried on a campaign of indiscriminate legal terror, and lobbied effectively for a system of ubiquitous, far-reaching digital surveillance and control:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

You know what wasn't a problem with the record labels? The music. The music was fine. Great, even.

But some of the people who were outraged with the labels' outrageous actions decided the problem was the music. Their answer wasn't to merely demand better copyright laws or fairer treatment for musicians, but to demand that music fans stop listening to music from the labels. Somehow, they thought they could build a popular movement that you could only join by swearing off popular music.

That didn't work. It can't work. A popular movement that you can only join by boycotting popular music will always be unpopular. It's bad tactics.

When we blame "laziness" for tech monopolies, we send the message that our friends have to choose between life's joys and comforts, and a fair economic system that doesn't corrupt our politics, screw over workers, and destroy small, local businesses. This isn't true. It's a lie that monopolists tell to justify their abuse. When we repeat it, we do monopolists' work for them – and we chase away the people we need to recruit for the meaningful struggles to build worker power and political power.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/#or-give-me-death

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en