I'm at the Boston Massacre site

I'm at the SweetGreen

I'm at the combination Boston Massacre site and SweetGreen

#just down the street from the 300-year-old Chipotle#boston

oldest commercial building in Boston! built in 1718, and once the offices of a famous publisher who worked with the likes of Hawthorne, Alcott, and Emerson

now a Chipotle

every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?

she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.

it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.

the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon

shhhh

[image description: art consisting of three pink rectangles on a white background, each with a drawing or some text in. the first is a drawing of a cat curled up asleep, with “z"s above their head. the second is underlined text reading “so soft, so peaceful”. the third is a drawing of a dog sleeping on their back, also with “z"s above their head. the drawings are line art done in red, and the text is red too. end description.]

me in argyle st greggs for my weekly steak bake

my favourite part about this post

*rubs our autisms together*

Saying “the McDonalds flag at Guantanamo Bay is flown at half mast in order to honor the anniversary of 9/11” out loud and then immediately dying of a stroke

r/brandnewsentence

I hate family vloggers so much imagine having this little respect for your adolescent kid’s privacy and personal life

Do You Know What Children Are

They don’t have jobs, nor do they pay for rent, utilities, or food. That’s the textbook definition of a freeloader.

i would gladly bury you alive

Reblog to send people who call children freeloaders all the way to hell

this is [NUGMET] and his talent is eating papaya.... with no hands!!!!!!!!

i hate seeing people now making fun of those who care about privacy online. i've seen people saying things like "well they already have your data. what are companies going to do with it" and it's like, that's not the point. it's that companies /shouldn't/ be able to have my data and sell it. am i aware they probably already have my data? yes, absolutely. but i'm still going to try and keep them from monetizing it any further, why are we defending companies selling data they shouldn't have to begin with though?

(source)

I’ve been having a lot of feelings about the downfall of quality lately.

I ordered a pair of Dickies pants because pants are hard and workwear is usually reliable. When they arrived they were the scratchiest, most papery material–I can’t actually call it fabric in good faith–and fit a full three sizes too small. A week later I found the same pair in a thrift store, dated 2017. These are actual pants. They fit, they’re not made of asbestos. They’re only separated by time.

There’s no wood used in interior design unless it’s a custom build. I have a set of wealthy relatives who live in a condo. The downpayment for it was likely more money than I will see in my lifetime. The floors and the cabinets are all still laminate. I know I will never see real wood in a building constructed after 2000. Every “apartment hack” I see online has this very conspicuous, flat appearance because of all the paint and contact paper required to make these builds look personal in any way. The only natural materials are in the furnishings.

I’ve been harping on this for years, but everything is shit, nothing is designed to work, and “growth” and “profit” are just euphemisms for cutting corners until things are unworkable.

everything is more expensive, and everything is getting shittier.

This is peanut

I'm making this about him again

Same picture

This is peanut

I'm making this about him again

is it a good idea to microwave this. slo mo destruction vids. will it blend. red hot nickel ball. 1000 degree hot knife. hydraulic press. industrial shredder. what's next for us in society

Appreciation for the humble trout.

the humble trout