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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. Sure, it's not "only fast food." That's just a benchmark. It's the availability of (higher profit margin) branded and convenience foods, as just one example. My pantry growing up had a box or two of cheap store brand cereal. There were no convenience foods, really. And yes, while meat costs are higher now than they were pre-pandemic, let's look at a highly available, relatively cheap meat, chicken. Per the Fed, a whole chicken was around $1.50 a pound for a good while pre-pandemic. Now, it's closer to $2.00 per pound. Percentage-wise, that's a big increase over 4 years or so. But it still boils down to a 5 lb chicken costing 7.50 then, and $10.00 now. That's an extra $2.50. Which is not inconsequential, but recall...that's a whole chicken, with fancy breast meat and all that. You can get a 10 lb bag of dark meat chicken quarters, right now, at Wal mart for 67 cents a pound (10 lb bag for $6.70). That works out to about $1 per quarter chicken. And if you cook that and spread it out in a rice or pasta dish, your protein cost per meal is even less. I can outfit a family pantry and fridge for what is still pretty cheap. I may not be buying as NICE products as I was before (generic cereal now -- fruit circles for the win!), less white meat chicken, less beef....and I 100% get that people see and feel that, and it makes a difference. Just like it was a big deal for me back in my struggle days to eat a steak, it's a similar big deal to no longer be able to afford steak (or at least not very often). But in our petulance and emotional desire to lash out because now we can't afford a Friday night steak dinner.....we want to "burn the whole fucking thing down," we miss the fact that "the whole fucking thing" is STILL the thing that would let me fill my grocery basket with pretty damned good food, especially compared to what my parents could afford 50 years ago. The answer to "I can't afford steak" isn't "so let's destroy the system that allows me to buy chicken as a substitute."
  2. Seeing that reminded me of another aspect of the story I saw on Reddit of the gal who spent all her money on food and cookware and stuff in her first apartment. That aspect being the COOKWARE. She bought a brand new pot and pan set, brand new cookies sheets, etc., which set her back like $50-60. And clearly you need cookware. But the critiques were "why buy that new? Goodwill is your friend." And that's damned true. If I had to, I could outfit my kitchen with the essentials (pots and pans, baking sheet) for probably under $10-15. And that reminded me of something I remember from back when we did garage sales: whatever kitchen equipment I had for sale, a hispanic family (typically not even speaking english) would swoop in and clean me out of all that stuff for a couple of bucks. So what occurred to me was how recent hispanic immigrants knew how to be poor. They immediately knew to hit thrift stores, garage sales, etc. They would outfit a kitchen and clothe their family in the basics for a few bucks. That is because they often came from a place/culture where REAL poverty was ubiquitous. Compare that to Americans who - while MANY are poor - we maybe don't "know how to be poor" as well as folks from elsewhere. Our years of postwar prosperity have beaten that out of us (compare that to the perspective your depression-era grandparents had, where they didn't throw anything else, were thrifty to an annoying fault, etc.). Just an observation, which does tie into our "dissatisfaction with the status quo" that leads to people voting for the leopards. We are PISSED because a fast food combo meal is $12. But recall how most of us on this board....rarely got fast food growing up. It was a treat. Our parents were products of thrifty parents, and it showed. The idea of "I'm deprived and money is too tight" is a very different idea in 2024 America than it is in much of the world, or even America of 50 years ago. And it warps our fucking thinking. We aren't getting enough golden eggs, so we resort to killing the goose.
  3. I remember an e. coli outbreak a few years ago was from some farms in California that had a problem with feral hogs going through the fields and shitting everywhere. So, it wasn't something the farm added, it's just that the sanitation measures weren't adequate for the added shit that they didn't anticipate/realize was on the product.
  4. Godfuckingdammit. Back when I was waiting tables, two old ladies who praised my service throughout the meal left me a "tip" - it was a folded up piece of paper that said "your tip is the good news that Jesus is your lord and savior." I ran out in the parking lot yelling "JESUS DOESN'T PAY MY FUCKING RENT!" Are "Christians" the fucking worst humans on earth? Yes. Yes they are.
  5. You laugh..... @Ghost of LL had that EXACT idea the day after the stupid-ass "no taxes on tips" pitch was made. It's a fucking loophole you can drive a truck through.
  6. Good. Fucking. Luck. He may even say something like that.....but then the money will flow to him, and he'll reverse course post-haste. Wait....you mean the laws of economics will still apply, regardless of any Royal Decree from His Majesty Lord Trump? Shock and Surprise!
  7. Fortunately, we just elected a freedom and liberty-loving POTUS who stands for individual rights, and not letting the government overreach by stealing your property without due process. Oh, sorry about that.....I mean we elected just the fucking opposite (see his position from his last term):
  8. A few weeks ago, saw a random Reddit post from someone who had been homeless, and finally was in their first apartment. They showed the food and cooking supplies they had bought, and were lamenting that they spent so much on that, they only had $18 to last the rest of the month. And, based on what she had spent, she could really only eat one meal a day anyway. Some actually kind-hearted folks responded, breaking down the food purchase choices made. There were a LOT of "convenience" items on her counter -- things like pre-shredded hashbrowns, pre-cooked chicken fajita slices, etc. It was clear that she really didn't have any idea how to cook or put meals together. Folks broke down for her things like "you spend $3 on a 1 lb bag of shredded hash browns that you'll get three servings out of. For $2.50, you could have bought a 5 lb sack of whole potatoes that you can bake, mash, roast, etc. You bought pre-cooked chicken, 12 oz for $6. You could have bought 3 lbs of chicken leg quarters for less than that. Roast them, and you have 5 meals." Poverty itself is a poverty trap. One thing goes wrong and you get a $50 late charge, then you can't afford groceries next week. And you spend too much on groceries because NOBODY ever taught you how to actually cook and use whole, simple ingredients. It struck me at the beginning of the pandemic, when certain things were hard to find....I went into a Dollar General that was near my barber shop. I was able to get TP, in a 4-pack. I was able to get a single container of bleach wipes. First, because panicking suburban women with money weren't swarming the store and buying 4,000 rolls of TP at a time. But also because the kind of people who shop at Dollar General do NOT buy "in bulk," because they can't afford to buy in bulk. They have $75 a week to spend on groceries and necessities. So, they buy their TP 4 rolls at a time. Which ultimately costs MORE. It's the old Terry Pratchett "boots" theory of socioeconomics: To bring it back to this topic, so many of the people who suffer on the economic margins don't realize that the very people they just voted for are those who most support the most predatory economic model possible. MORE fines, MORE late charges, MORE "free market" to fuck over and extract every possible penny from the poor, because while they don't have MUCH money, a little money from 100 million people added together is a lot of fucking money. And yes, the Democratic party's failure to face that phenomenon head-on in recent decades has made them a less attractive alternative. People picked the Leopards Who Will Eat Their Face as opposed to the Leopards of Indifference. It's dumb as hell.....but the Leopards of Indifference are not without blame.
  9. So….you’ve HEARD of Donald Trump, right?
  10. True story: many years ago, had lunch in Paraguay at a place that gave off MAJOR Nazi vibes (the Hotel Tyrol). Turns out, Mengele barely escaped the Nazi hunters there once, jumped off a balcony seconds ahead of em. Pretty country, though. Great mate.
  11. Knew I shouldn’t have cut it from the original 8-hour run time. Had to take out the whole segment on how fucked Paraguay is.
  12. Survival is for beta cuck soyboys. Did you not get the memo? You must not be extreme and hardcore.
  13. It is the dominant, controlling institution in North Korea. Seriously, anything and everything comes second to the People's Army. If the country has only enough food for 1.3 million people....then the army will eat, and everyone else will starve. It is involved in all economic/commercial ventures (yeah, even those cross-border deals they had a while back were projects of the People's Army).
  14. Active duty Estonian military size is under 8,000 troops. Tallinn is less than 150 miles to the border. Even if the Russians come in on buses and Ladas, they'll easily reach Tallinn within a day or two.
  15. Yes. The Baltics simply don't have enough ground resistance to ward off even large meat assaults. They would count on NATO air power to respond. Which, when the US simply opts out of responding, the rest of NATO may well decline to play as well. The rest of NATO's air power strategy depends on US participation (in-air refueling, arming the birds, etc.). Putin has the green light to take any weak country that he can. Poland is probably safe. The Baltics are almost certainly screwed. Glad I went and saw Estonia when I did.
  16. Putin plans to invade the Baltics. He will be given a green light to do so by the new administration. After all, they are really just former soviet republics, Russia is just taking back what was theirs. Mark it down, it's pretty close to a lock at this point.
  17. And if you'd like to see how this goes, check out the Stalinist approach of staffing bureaucracies with loyalists who knew fucking NOTHING about the actual function the enterprise needed to perform. Fucking polemicists in charge of major agricultural initiatives, that kind of stuff. It's a system that is very, very well suited to keeping authoritarians in power. And very, very poorly suited to actually performing the actual missions of enterprises. And yeah yeah, we hear you MAGAs, the government doesn't do anything useful, blah blah blah. We're all about to find out how many ordinary, bland, workaday things that functional government agencies and the like play a part in. It's actually been one of the foundations of American prosperity over the past century, running mostly in the background. Take it away, and....FAFO. When grandma doesn't get her social security check on time is an easy one to think of, but when applications for certain financing mechanisms fall into black holes, or regulatory approval of quite necessary (and quite necessary to regulate) items get held up for months/years, delaying projects, adding massive costs, costing people jobs, etc., that's when we're going to be able to trace it to a collapse of systems because Trump appointed Catturd to oversee government office X or Y.
  18. This. Rogan is a fucking idiot. Put a pin in this: “He’s got to unite people. He’s got to not attack the left, not attack everybody, let them all talk their s**t, but unite." Within 30 days of Trump going fucking apeshit on his revenge and retribution tour, Rogan will follow up with "he had to do it, you really can't blame him, I'd do the same." Rogan is a weak, small-minded simp. He's good at one thing, and it just so happens to be the same thing Trump is great at: feed the masses the pablum they want. He's a good huckster, a gifted one. That's it.
  19. What you need to understand is that baby was making furtive movements. We should all be grateful the officer got home safely to his family, that's the headline here.
  20. I presume there's a way to filter your Twitter feed so you only see accounts that have "pu$$y in bio" posted somewhere.
  21. Yeah.....about that....go ahead and read through the Sermon on the Mount. Here's some of the fun stuff that is the pure antithesis to the current American ethos, particularly the one we just elevated with glee a coupla weeks ago:: You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,[h] let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[n] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.[o] “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. I mean, for fuck's sake. Every single part of that has been loudly denigrated and rejected by the current dominant political movement. Irony is fucking DEAD.
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