Selected Posts from Facebook from January 2020

I try to delete my posts from Facebook periodically, and archive some before doing so.

Jan 2

I was thinking, “there’s a lot of decent chicken in Montebello,” and found the thread that seems to verify it.

Jan 5

Why do so many Americans eat casserole, but it’s not served at restaurants?
quora.com
The most popular question I’ve asked on Quora, in a long time. 1500 views in three days:

Jan 5

I like Bernie. But to people organizing for him, also know it’s essential to organize people around particular campaigns and issues. So when he wins, or if he loses, we have built a constituency who are willing to keep fighting for economic justice, such as fighting for tenants justice and healthcare rights, etc. and workplace democracy. This belief that we all need to just support Bernie in all our organizing is short-sighted and frankly, a bad idea. Also, I do like Warren, but just like Bernie Bros (which is real honestly, denying that is dumb) some die-hard Warren supporters are kidding themselves about her electoral strategy, let alone her plans once taking power. And just like one can find a Bernie Bro, I’ve been bumping into Warren supporters who are just as frustrating to talk to. In the end, they have a lot in common, especially in the online space.

Jan 6

How California Is Redefining Rent Control | WSJ
youtube.com
You know rents are bad when the official bourgeois media is trying to do an even handed overview of rent regulation.

Jan 7

I just made some fakey “Turkish coffee” for myself. OMG. It’s so good. I used really shitty old beans too.

Is there a local coffee bar that does Turkish coffee? It might also be called Armenian coffee, because, you know.

Jan 8

Interesting trend: people are increasing their interest in taco seasoning recipes more than a few other topics

Jan 8

Follow-Up: The Reasons People Don’t Return Their Shopping Carts
blogs.scientificamerican.com
The people who leave carts behind think they are “job creators”. The people who actually retrieve the carts do other jobs, and wish the job didn’t exist. Screw these job creators.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/follow-up-the-reasons-people-dont-return-their-shopping-carts/

Jan 9

Imagining a World Without Capitalism
commondreams.org
Kind of unusual idea from Yanis Varoufakis: people as accounts with capital, and and end to tradable shares of companies.

Jan 12

I just made some thick, unfiltered coffee, with a pinch of cinnamon, and added a defrosted cranberry with some extra cranberry pulp. It was delicious. It’s also good with some sweetener.

It tastes like an acidic black coffee. If you like acidic blends like Peet’s, you might like cranberry in coffee.

Couldn’t find any recipes like it, but did find a video of a “food dare”.

Jan 17

(Poster of James D Phelan)

In the 1910s, California had a racist senator.

Jan 20

I think the system of private property in housing, and real estate is going to change in the next 20 years or so.

Homelessness is the reason. Right now, we’re creating a generation of people who know being without a home, or know someone who has been unhoused.

I don’t mean know about it. I mean, it seems like everyone knows someone who has been unhoused, lived in a garage, lived in a car or RV.

It’s not just knowing, but the fact that so many people know.

These ever-intense real estate bubbles are creating the social conditions for change.

Jan 24

(East of East)

I might need to pay full price for this if it doesn’t get picked up as a book college students are forced to buy.

Jan 25

Why do people see diseases as “enemies” or “adversaries” to “fight” rather than a problem internal to oneself?

Jan 26

Unusual Candidates Running for President:

Vermin Supreme – we know and love him.

Richard Meyers – AIP but should be in some other party.

Mosie Boyd – Democrat but could be in AIP.

Zoltan Istvan – a more technocratic Andrew Yang, with a scary appearance. Could be comic book character.

David Rolde – I kind of like how his campaign reads like the Indymedia newswire.

Jan 26

MMT foos or fans might enjoy reading this. It’s about when China implemented the Single Whip Reform, and shifted from collecting taxes of goods, to collecting taxes in cash, silver.

Jan 31

This is interesting. These bikeshare (and scootershare) companies consolidate a large number of workers to do repair and logistics. So it’s feasible to form a union. (And AB5 might help — companies like Bird and Lime outsource much of their logistics, to recharge and move scooters to areas of higher demand, to independent contractors.)

I found this because I was looking at the latest LA Fed email, and it touted that a lot of union communications people went up to FB to learn how to use social media to boost their message.

That’s good, but, not if it turns out that FB is involved in any labor dispute. Silicon Valley companies are notoriously anti-labor. The Transportation Workers Union is in the AFL-CIO federation.