Have you ever wondered why bags of microwave popcorn practically scream at you not to use the “popcorn” setting on your microwave? It speaks to a mutual distrust between two classes of high-end professionals.
On one side, you have popcorn engineers: highly-trained food scientists, dedicated to understanding every aspect of how the microwave interacts with preservative-laced corn kernels. On the other lie the microwave engineers: folks who are copying a design invented in the 1950s and handed down ever since due to declining R&D budgets, whose only satisfaction in their job comes from making the brrrrr sound a little bit quieter and to add a couple more buttons to the number pad, so that their boss can ask for an extra $150 at the Walmart checkout.
You might think this exposes a little bit of my bias. It is true that I don’t really understand how popcorn is made, and so I’ve unfairly placed these humble folks (who probably came from Iowa or some shit) onto a pedestal. And it is also true that I’ve worked in electrical engineering departments, where the only remaining person on the floor who doesn’t have a substance-abuse problem is the intern’s intern.
Just to be on the safe side, I went into the belly of the beast and interviewed for a job. Wearing my least-molybdenum-grease-stained dress shirt and something resembling a tie if viewed from 25 feet away or more, I successfully negotiated my way into a near-minimum-wage job in the General Electric microwave-oven division. I couldn’t wait to figure out this mystery, and when they left me alone with a copy of the source code, I immediately did a search for “popcorn.” That set off some kind of alarm in a back room, and two goons emerged to assault me, screaming something about “fucking butter spies.”
Personally, I hope that this gulf is bridged one day. Not only does it represent the failure of Western engineering standards, but it no doubt leads to millions of dollars per year in wasted popcorn, not to mention gigawatts of wasted electricity that would be better off in our vapes. America can’t begin to heal until the average person can trust the “popcorn” button on their microwave to correctly prepare popcorn.
the more i fall in love with cycling the more i grow to resent the role cars have come to play as a tool of isolation, both from society and from the actual experience of moving over land
i watched Stalker again recently and - among other things, of course, thatâs a movie you can watch forever and notice something new every time - was struck by the role the open-top land rover plays in it
if youâve seen these opening scenes where they drive around evading guards to find the railway line into the zone you know what iâm talking about. it isnât treated as a separate space from the world but as a tool for mobility that can be entered and exited at a momentâs notice. itâs a jarring thing, almost, to see people jumping in and out of a sheet metal bucket on wheels at a momentâs notice, because itâs so outside the way we think about the role a car plays.
itâs all about how the combination of highway systems and parking lots have us think about transport. transport, which until the rise of private automobiles was (for most people) either conducted outdoors or in a public space like a train or bus. the act of entering and driving a car is totally different. itâs in the most literal sense an inhuman form of transport. you enter a space that shuts you out of the world to navigate another space that is not navigable by a human being.
the way modern cars work is key to some of the isolation. some of that is literally that theyâre better at isolating you from the sound and vibration of the rushing air and tires on asphalt than they used to be. theyâre a lot smoother too, and safer, and more reliable. so are the systems around them. chances are you donât know how a car works and you donât care to either, you just take it in at the recommended service interval and have someone else take care of it. all this is key in creating the illusion that it isnât a form of transport but an intermediate space one occupies between others.Â
it isnât healthy for your only real exposure to the outside world to be brief transitions between the space of home to car to work to car to home, but thatâs how some people live. thatâs how a lot of people live, actually, and thatâs why i like cycling as a part of my commute. itâs like streaking. youâre not wearing the suit of armor, or occupying your personal mobile space, or what have you like everyone else. youâre totally nude. you can smell things. when was the last time you smelled something in a car that wasnât an industrial stench off a river or something?
the counterargument is, of course, well isnât a train also such a space that operates as transit? sure. but you have no agency in a train, which is the problem. you cannot perceive transport that you have an active role in piloting as a space you occupy. your mind doesnât work like that, it breaks down sooner or later unless you have the capacity to hold that sort of doublethink in your mind. thatâs why texting and driving is a problem! you do it in any other intermediate space to fill time. everything about your surroundings says youâre reclining on a couch and not piloting a vehicle at several times the speed that you can
in essence youâre being sold the brand of comfort in an activity that should by no means be comfortable, and thatâs dangerous
and i say that about brands because there is is a parallel here to the difference between the way advertising used to work in, say, the 19th century and how it began to work in the latter half of the 20th century to now. itâs no longer meant to present the benefits of a product and make you aware that it is for sale so much as it is to make you identify with a brand, one that may have no relation to the product in itself. both are ways to interact with the material world through a layer of perception engineered by people whose goal is not to enhance your vision but to get your money
in short - the time you spend in transit is as important if not more than the time you spend doing anything else, everything is fucked everything sucks, and the only way out is to actually opt out. drive ancient cars or ride a bike, preferably equally ancient because this sickness is slowly making it there too. make the choice while you still can
he wasnât even there to be a contestant he joined the crew as a CHINESE TEACHER but the directors noticed his good looks and begged him to compete. poor guy made it to the finals and if he had been one of the winners he would have been contractually forced to be in a boy band whether he wanted to or not
this is the closest any human being has ever come to actually being sold to One Direction
