1. One of the most delightful moments in Airplane, the 1980 screwball parody of the outgoing decade’s disaster flicks, comes as word of a mass food-poisoning incident on board the ill-fated vessel, which has left it without a competent pilot, has hit the nightly newsdesks. The host of a made-up show called
When I’m brewing some kind of internal ethical battle, you tend to pop up and write about it extremely eloquently. I wonder why your thought processes are so on point, and believe it’s because there are very very few working class intellectuals these days. The “smart” proletarians get into tech and fritter away their poetic souls, the “dumb” ones, who didn’t get the memo that the liberal arts are intended for the kids of the wealthy, burn bright and strong, but eventually burn out as it’s impossible to make a living and compete with generational wealth. They need to, at some point commit soul murder and get a j.o.b.
All this to say I’m very very glad you succeeded. The internet is already swamped with nepo babies and their guilt competitions.
I would now like to know how Planet Fitness came to spell "judgement" the UK way. Need someone to write an investigative piece with internal emails, etc. Did they have a British employee in charge of marketing? When did they realize? Did they make an economic calculation on what it would cost to change signs and promotional materials? When did they decide that "misspelling" the word actually serves their purpose of no judgment?
"This infantile fantasy, of suckling whenever inner appetite or Pavlovian conditioning moves us, of a sort of God-given right to eat whenever and whatever we wish, a dietary manifest destiny, came together with the industrial food policy forged largely under the Nixon administration to permanently banish the once constant threat of mass hunger".
For a couple of years after it started I was heavily involved in Extinction Rebellion (I lost the drive during the first lockdown and things largely switched to online activism, which I don't believe tends to be effective - and then generally started feeling pessimistic about the usefulness of protest per se, especially pertaining to a complex systems issue).
XR has always been very careful about not proposing policy solutions (apart from protestors' chants of "no more coal. no more oil", I suppose) but I remember the outrage I generated on a message board I used to frequent when pushed on this topic that maybe rationing of certain consumer goods needs to be introduced. (Similar to the reaction I received from several other XR members when I expressed the opinion that geoengineering is/will be a necessity and the importance of championing the methods that are least likely to harm the already disenfranchised.)
In terms of how deeply important consumer choice is to people, I recollected on my substack:
"During the first action at a BP petrol station I took on the role of a public liaison officer. In short, I was the person who spoke calmly and apologetically to motorists and informed them that they were not going to be able to purchase their petrol from that particular BP station that day. In doing so, I explained that BP have a history of devastating oil spills and safety lapses, committing industrial-scale bribery and complicity in the torture and murder of environmental activists. We had deliberately staged the protest at a BP petrol station that happened to be opposite a Tesco petrol station so that car drivers would not be unduly inconvenienced by the protest.
Car drivers acknowledged and agreed that BP were corrupt. They knew about the oil spills. They said they agreed with the principle behind the protest. But, they said, they still wanted to purchase BP petrol. BP petrol was, mile for mile, cheaper than Tesco’s and they wanted to employ their freedom of consumer choice. This kind of language was used. As the day wore on and I spoke to more and more motorists it became increasingly apparent that individual consumer choice was really, deeply emotionally and psychologically important to a lot of people.
When I’m brewing some kind of internal ethical battle, you tend to pop up and write about it extremely eloquently. I wonder why your thought processes are so on point, and believe it’s because there are very very few working class intellectuals these days. The “smart” proletarians get into tech and fritter away their poetic souls, the “dumb” ones, who didn’t get the memo that the liberal arts are intended for the kids of the wealthy, burn bright and strong, but eventually burn out as it’s impossible to make a living and compete with generational wealth. They need to, at some point commit soul murder and get a j.o.b.
All this to say I’m very very glad you succeeded. The internet is already swamped with nepo babies and their guilt competitions.
I would now like to know how Planet Fitness came to spell "judgement" the UK way. Need someone to write an investigative piece with internal emails, etc. Did they have a British employee in charge of marketing? When did they realize? Did they make an economic calculation on what it would cost to change signs and promotional materials? When did they decide that "misspelling" the word actually serves their purpose of no judgment?
Yes but have you ever actually watched "Airplane" while on an airplane?
Magnificent - one of your best by my reckoning!
"This infantile fantasy, of suckling whenever inner appetite or Pavlovian conditioning moves us, of a sort of God-given right to eat whenever and whatever we wish, a dietary manifest destiny, came together with the industrial food policy forged largely under the Nixon administration to permanently banish the once constant threat of mass hunger".
For a couple of years after it started I was heavily involved in Extinction Rebellion (I lost the drive during the first lockdown and things largely switched to online activism, which I don't believe tends to be effective - and then generally started feeling pessimistic about the usefulness of protest per se, especially pertaining to a complex systems issue).
XR has always been very careful about not proposing policy solutions (apart from protestors' chants of "no more coal. no more oil", I suppose) but I remember the outrage I generated on a message board I used to frequent when pushed on this topic that maybe rationing of certain consumer goods needs to be introduced. (Similar to the reaction I received from several other XR members when I expressed the opinion that geoengineering is/will be a necessity and the importance of championing the methods that are least likely to harm the already disenfranchised.)
In terms of how deeply important consumer choice is to people, I recollected on my substack:
"During the first action at a BP petrol station I took on the role of a public liaison officer. In short, I was the person who spoke calmly and apologetically to motorists and informed them that they were not going to be able to purchase their petrol from that particular BP station that day. In doing so, I explained that BP have a history of devastating oil spills and safety lapses, committing industrial-scale bribery and complicity in the torture and murder of environmental activists. We had deliberately staged the protest at a BP petrol station that happened to be opposite a Tesco petrol station so that car drivers would not be unduly inconvenienced by the protest.
Car drivers acknowledged and agreed that BP were corrupt. They knew about the oil spills. They said they agreed with the principle behind the protest. But, they said, they still wanted to purchase BP petrol. BP petrol was, mile for mile, cheaper than Tesco’s and they wanted to employ their freedom of consumer choice. This kind of language was used. As the day wore on and I spoke to more and more motorists it became increasingly apparent that individual consumer choice was really, deeply emotionally and psychologically important to a lot of people.
And… honestly… who could blame then?"
Who, may I ask, is the Poet?
hinter.net?
I bypass all this by declaring the self an illusion. It's so much more convenient. No muss, no fuss.