Modern Vespa

This is Campbell's :




11g added sugar per serving.

Next hot take, the sugar industry is as insidious and evil as the tobacco industry.

Standard Campbell's Tomato soup > any tomato basil soup from anywhere.

Also, grilled cheese sandwiches only contain bread, cheese, and butter/mayonnaise (on the skillet side, to facilitate browning). Nothing else, especially not tomatoes. If it does contain something else, it is no longer a grilled cheese, but instead is a melt.

Well that's just weird.

Weighing in on the sandwich divide - surely it depends on whether you're using store-bought 'sandwich bread' (which doesn't really have 'crusts') or real bread made using just flour, water, salt and yeast, which will have a decent crust.

Next time you buy 'sandwich bread' (mother's Pride or whatever) have a look at the long list of ingredients...

While I don't mind crusts of almost any type of bread, I shudder to think what would happen if I suggested to my wife that regular store-bought sandwich bread doesn't have crusts, and thus she doesn't need to cut them off.

So, uh, on behalf of my wife, I am going to respectfully disagree.

If the crusts are on the edge of sliced bread, what are the the top and bottom slices called?

Crusts, Ends or something completely different?

We call them heels.

Yeah, Olde Rider is correct. In the US, the end bits are pretty uniformly called the "heel".

"English as she is spoke"...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke/Introduction

It would make more sense if one was a heel and the other a toe!

Then you'd have to use toe jam on it

Good man, Coddy, you have excellent taste.

As funny as that is, I find that particular introduction to be almost as impenetrable as the work it describes. A much better summary of the situation is found on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke

Most products that loudly proclaim "Made in USA!" are complete garbage.

To be clear, there are many quality products made in the USA. But as a general rule, they don't need to prominently feature that fact as their main selling point.

The ones that do prominently feature "Made in USA" as part of their branding, packaging, or marketing generally do so because that's their only reason for existence. They know a subset of Americans will buy the product based on that fact alone in their misguided patriotism, effectively subsidizing substandard manufacturers and incentivizing shoddiness. We (as in the United States) would be better off avoiding shitty products -- even if they are made in the USA -- in order to incentivize companies to be better or die a quick death so that they may be replaced by something worthwhile.

In other words: demand better, my fellow Americans! Don't settle for garbage just because it's Made in USA. That just perpetuates the long, slow decline of American industry.

Yes, I'm sure there are exceptions to this general rule, and I'm sure someone will respond with an example in an attempt to disprove my point.

But I'm standing by my statement.

Context

https://news.sky.com/story/southport-stabbings-survivor-launches-campaign-to-end-use-of-traditional-kitchen-knives-13370966

Ummm, Bruno got to your phone again..

We here in the UK have tried to "demand better" for years but got nowhere, we are now at the "expect less" stage.

Sounds like the US as well. Expect less in many things even more so post Covid.

Food prices seem to go up weekly.

My observation these days "Made in the USA" has shown up even more in marketing after all the tariffs.

I'm old enough that I saw the auto industry go through that. My father - as well as most everyone in six towns - worked at a Chrysler plant in Lyons, MI back in the '70s. When the Japanese cars began coming over, there was the chant of "Jap Junk Sucks" (not my words, just quoting). While it was partly true, it quickly became apparent that American manufacturers became fat and complacent because everyone was simply buying American made cars and trucks. The sad truth was our fit and finish sucked. Something the Japanese products were much better at, and their engineering and manufacture quickly surpassed ours. The Japanese quickly became the manufacturers of some of the best products on the market and remain so today. It was a wake up call that "Made in America" had to be better.

For the record, when that Chrysler plant closed down and moved to Canada, there was a huge sucking sound as the surrounding communities all collapsed and never recovered. Right or wrong we are now a global community and the toothpaste is out of the tube. Things can always change, and we can always strive to do better, but they can't be "undone".

The US auto industry is the poster child for this phenomenon. Literally decades of "Buy American" campaigns targeted at American-made cars did nothing whatsoever to improve the cars or the industry itself -- it just allowed the American car companies to keep churning out shite cars for decades.

It wasn't just the fit and finish of the cars, either. In fact, I don't blame the workers for the ails of the auto industry. My biggest gripe is with the design and engineering of the cars, much earlier in the process. Design and engineering -- separate from manufacturing -- is something that American companies have been able to excel at in many different fields, successfully transitioning the US into a post-industrial reality.

But not the auto industry. They stubbornly refused to change or improve the fundamental design and engineering of their cars to keep pace with foreign competition. For decades. Meanwhile, foreign automakers started making great cars in the US, proving that it was never the workforce that was the problem.

I agree, partly. Tim Cook recently made a statement about why Apple manufactures in China. I'm sure you saw it. The engineering is there. It wasn't ALWAYS the case.

But I can say for a certainty that it is a combination of the two. I've worked in automotive manufacturing since 1987. What I have seen personally is the general apathy of the hourly worker. Those with the best work ethic eventually advance out of those hourly positions. The hourly assembly workforce that I have witness over the last 30+ years lacks the personal drive toward excellence. Pride in their work is not foremost on their agenda. I wasn't one of those workers and it didn't take me long to figure out I wanted more. So I went out and got more.

I could tell you stories about the utter disgust I felt when I was sent to our customer's plants. Most of them union shops. This is not a dig on unions, it is a statement on the general attitude of the workforces I have witnessed. The attitude of "that's not my job" is pervasive. When the GM plant here in Grand Rapids closed in 2009, I remember the news stories about the "poor workers" that were bemoaning the fact they were losing their jobs. There was no lateral move for them. I distinctly remember watching the news story showing an assembly line where people literally sat on a stool all day, screwing two little nuts onto a part as it passed by. These people were making $40+/hr in 2009. They had absolutely no marketable skills that would transfer anywhere else.

My ex worked for Yamaha here in town. making saxophones. For a Japanese company that was UAW because they make things with wheels. I told her to take advantage of any education and training she could get because it was not going to last. I even put together a resume for her so she could preemptively seek out other work. The plant closed and she lost her job and her house because she was too lazy to better herself.

This wasn't going to be a rant, but it's turned into one.

There are a lot of reasons for the attitudes of workers. You could blame it on management, society, bad parenting, food additives, whatever you want. But when workers have no motivation to do a job beyond what is absolutely necessary ... they won't.

And, for the record, some of the absolute worst prints I ever had to deal with were Japanese Honda prints. Absolutely terrible drawings.

Rant over ... I guess.

Carrots are, in fact, food. I didn't think there would ever be a need to clarify that, but here we are.

Also, this post is unrelated to the one above it.

The internet is a wonderful thing. Maybe the most wonderful thing that has been invented in my lifetime.

It's also a terrible thing. It's almost certainly the most terrible thing that has been invented in my lifetime.

At the moment, though, I can't really decide if the internet caused all this mess, or if it was just a catalyst.

(This post is probably related to the previous two posts above -- if for no other reason than the fact that this message reached you through the internet. But maybe for other reasons too).

Which particular mess are you refering to?

And why the need to state the obvious with regards to carrots?

I feel far more enlightened with the Internet, in a kind of Red Pill way.

I'm not sure if I'd take the Blue Pill though if given the chance.

That steak used to taste mighty fine!

Am I the only one totally confused on the messaging of the last few posts?

Stop by this thread for a bit then come back. It will all make sense.
[NSR] Whatcha Drinkin Tonight ? (Post 2735645)

No you are not the only one.

OFG

"Quantity has a quality all its own."
Joseph Stalin

There has been information interchange since the time hominids learned to communicate symbolically with each other. It had always been limited both by distance and bandwidth until the internet, even if continually expanding through the written word, the printing press, etc. There were always intermediaries. Just the unfiltered, unedited mass availability of everyone and anyone's messages has altered not only the quantity of the communications, but has created, just by this factor, a new quality as well.

Any previously closely-bounded message has the possibility of becoming a mass communication, which then changes its meaning from a person-to-person message to a broadcast potentially influencing both masses of recipients and untargeted, unintended recipients who may act on the message in ways not intended nor imagined by the original sender.

It also allows nefarious senders cover for the harmful actions of anonymous recipients that the sender was quite aware of as a possibility but the effects of which they can then disown.

Seems perfectly clear to me.

When eating cheese (or anything) with crackers, the salted side of the cracker is actually the bottom. This way the saltiness of the cracker contacts your tongue first, thus enhancing the flavor of whatever you have on top rather than being covered by it. Anything else is wrong.

This.

Good to know!

You should also eat pizza upside down.
So you can fully appreciate the pineapple.

Pizza is boring after the first 3 bites as every bite is the same taste, it's like just having a bowl of soup!

A ploughmans lunch on the other hand delivers many different flavours and textures.

To paraphrase Professor Elemental, if you're tired of pizza then you're tired of life.

I like pizza and soup.

Turns out I'm perfectly OK with being wrong.

If one could be always right 51% of the time, he could get incredibly rich in the stock market.