Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Saturday, November 29, 2025
Thursday, November 27, 2025
A Blog Mirror Post: Do it yourself, was "How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap Humility, thy name is Aldi."
Rockwell's World War Two era illustration of one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, this one being Freedom from want. This came from a March 6, 1943 Saturday Evening Post illustration although it was completed in November, 1943. Rockwell was inspired by a Thanksgiving dinner in which he photographed his cook serving the same in November, 1942. The painting has come to symbolize Thanksgiving dinners. Interesting, compared to the vast fare that is typically associated with the feast, this table is actually fairly spartan.
This is a really good article on grocery shopping.
How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap
Humility, thy name is Aldi.
I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction, but this blog post is, I'll note, really good.
And I love the kitties featured in the article.
Anyhow, it ought to be obvious to anyone living in the US right now that groceries, that odd word discovered by Donald Trump in his dotage, are pretty expensive. Less obvious, it seems, is why that is true. Again, not to overly politicize it, but the common Trump Interregnum explanations are largely complete crap. It's not the case, as seemingly suggested, that Joe Biden runs around raising prices in a wicked plan to destroy the American lifestyle for "hard working Americans". Rather, a bunch of things have contributed to that.
To start with, the COVID 19 pandemic really screwed up the economy, and we're still living with the impact of that. One of the impacts of that is that certain supply chains somewhat broke and have never been repaired. Added to that, global climatic conditions are impacting crops in what is now a global food distribution system. Weather has additionally impacted meat prices by impacting the Beef Cattle Heard in the last decade, which has been followed up upon by the visitation of cattle diseases, and poultry diseases, that have reduced head counts. That definitely impacts prices. The Administration, however, believing that the country exists in the economic 1820s, rather than the 2020s, fiddles with inflation causing tariffs on a weekly basis, which raises prices on everything. And finally the ineptly waged Russian war against Ukraine has impacted grain supplies world wide. It reminds me of, well. . . :
Then I watched while the Lamb broke open the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures cry out in a voice like thunder, “Come forward.”
I looked, and there was a white horse, and its rider had a bow. He was given a crown, and he rode forth victorious to further his victories.
When he broke open the second seal, I heard the second living creature cry out, “Come forward.”
Another horse came out, a red one. Its rider was given power to take peace away from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another. And he was given a huge sword.
When he broke open the third seal, I heard the third living creature cry out, “Come forward.” I looked, and there was a black horse, and its rider held a scale in his hand.
I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay, and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”
When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”
I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.
Not that dire, of course. . .
Anyhow, this reminded me of an agrarian topic. How can you, dear agrarian reader, reduce your grocery bill?
Well, do it yourself, of course.
What do I mean?
Well, grow it and kill it yourself.
Assuming, of course, you can. But most people can.
Now, let me be the first to admit that this is more than a little hypocritical on my part now days. The pressures of work and life caused me to give up my very extensive garden some years ago. I'd frankly cash in my chips and retire life now, but my spouse insists that this cannot be so. So, in my rapidly increasing dotage, I'm working as hard as ever at my town job.
An Agrarian's Lament indeed.
Anyhow, however, let's consider this. Many people have the means of putting in a garden, and many have the means to take at least part of their meat consumption in by fishing and hunting. Beyond that, if you have freezer space, or even if a friend has freezer space, you can buy much, maybe all depending upon where you live, of your meat locally sourced.
Given as this is Thanksgiving, let's take a look at how that would look.
I'll start off with first noting that there's actually more variety in Thanksgiving meals than supposed, as well as less. This time of year in fact, you'll tend to find all sort of weird articles by various people eschewing the traditional turkey dinner in favor of something else, mostly just in an effort to be self serving different. And then you have the weirdness of something like this:
I suppose that's an effort by our Vice President to be amusing, something he genuinely is not, but frankly, I do like turkey. I like it a lot. A lot of people do. Vance, of course, lives in a house where his wife is a vegetarian for religious reasons, so turkey may not appear there.
Anyhow, what is the traditional Thanksgiving meal? Most of us have to look back on our own families in order to really determine that.
When I was growing up, we always had Thanksgiving Dinner at one of my uncle's houses. My father and his only brother were very close, and we went there for Thanksgiving, and they came to our house for Christmas evening dinner. Both dinners were evening dinners. We probably went over to my aunt and uncle's house about 4:00 p.m. and came home after 9:00 p.m., but I'll also note that this is now a long time ago and my memory may be off. This tradition lasted until the year after my father passed away, but even at that, that's now over 30 years ago.
Dinner at my aunt and uncles generally went like this.
Before dinner it was likely that football was turned on the television, which is a big unfortunate American tradition. My father and uncle would likely have a couple of beers. My father hardly drank at all, so this was relatively unusual. My mother would generally not drink beer and interestingly it was largely a male drink.1 I don't think I saw women really drink beer until I was in college.2 Anyhow, at dinner there's be some sort of white wine, although I can barely recall it. Nobody in the family was a wine connoisseur, so there's no way I could remotely give an indication on what it was, except that one of my cousins, when he was old enough to drink, really liked Asti Spumante, which I bet I haven't had in over a decade.3 Dinner itself would be a large roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, bread, salad, and a marshmallow yam dish. Dinner rolls would also be present.
Desert was pumpkin pie.
Pretty common fare, and frankly, very good fare, for Thanksgiving.
After my father died, Thanksgiving dinner was briefly up to me for a time, as my mother was too ill by that stage in her life to deal with cooking much.4 In light of tradition, I'd probably cook a smaller turkey, although if I had wild waterfowl I'd shot, I'd go with that. Otherwise, mashed potatoes and yams. To drink, for me, probably beer.
After I started dating my wife, Thanksgiving was at her folk's place. My mother in law is an excellent cook, and my wife is as well. Unlike J. D. Vance, I'm not afflicted with vegetarian relatives, and indeed, as my wife is from a ranch family, all dinners very much show that.
On the ranch, Thanksgiving is a noon meal. So is Christmas dinner. Noon meals are generally odd for me, as I don't usually eat lunch, but that reflects a pretty strong agricultural tradition. Big meals are often at noon. Meals associated with big events, such as brandings, always are. So it makes sense.
Thanksgiving there shares a common feature with the ones that were at my aunts and uncles, in that usually somebody offers everyone a drink before dinner, while people are chatting. Unlike my aunts and uncles, however, somebody will usually offer people some sort of whiskey.
Their Thanksgiving Dinner has a very broad fare. There's a large roasted turkey, but there's also a brisket. Both are excellent and everyone has some of both. There's salad, mashed potatoes and two different types of stuffing, as some of us likey oyster stuffing, and others do not. Cranberry sauce is handmade by one of my brothers in law, who is an excellent cook. There are other dishes as well, and there's a variety of desserts. Homemade dinner rolls are served as well.
So, that leads to this. If I were cooking a Thanksgiving Day dinner, what would it be.
It's be simple compared to what I've noted for the simple reason that I'm simplistic in my approach to dinner in general. I had a long period as a bachelor before being married, and I know how to cook, but my cooking reflects that bachelorhood in some ways.
The main entre would be a turkey, or perhaps a goose, which I'll explain below.
Two types of stuffing, for the reasons explained above.
Salad.
Mashed potatoes (but with no gravy, for reasons I'll explain below).
Bread.
Yams.
Pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie.
To drink, I'd probably have beer and some sort of wine. I'd have whiskey available before dinner.
Okay, if that doesn't meet the Walmart definition of a Thanksgiving dinner, that's because nobody should buy things at Walmart. . . ever.
So, in applying my localist/killetarian suggestions, how much of this could I acquire while avoiding a store entirely?
Almost all of it.
Starting with the meat, I always hunt turkeys each year, but I don't always get one. If I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner, however, I'd put a more dedicated effort into it. Turkey hunting for me is sort of opportunistic, and given that I do it in the spring its mostly a chance to try to get a turkey while getting out, usually with the dog (although poor dog died in an automobile accident earlier this year, he only every got to go out for turkeys). If I put in more hours, which I should, I'd get one.
If I can't get one, however, by this time of year I definitely can get a goose.
Which, by way of a diversion, brings up J. D. Vance's stupid ass comment above. If your turkey is dry, that's because you cooked it wrong. And if wild turkey is dry, that's because the cook tried to cook it like some massive obese Butterball.
Tastewise and texture wise, there's no difference whatsoever between a wild and domestic turkey. People who say there are say that because one of them, if not both of them, were cooked incorrectly.
Which is true of goose as well. Goose tastes very much like roast beef, unless the cook was afraid of the goose and cooked it like it was something else and ruined it.
Anyhow. . . I can provide the bird myself
So too with the vegetables, mostly. When I grew a garden, I produced lettuce onions and potatoes. One year I grew brussels sprouts. Of these, only the lettuce either doesn't keep on its own or can't be frozen in some fashion. I could grow yams, I'm quite confident, even though I never did.
Now, on bread, I can bake my own bread and have, but I can't source the ingredients. So those I'd have to buy. I could likely figure out how to make my own stuffing, but I probably wouldn't bother to do so, unless I wanted to have oyster stuffing. I would have to buy the oysters.
I'll note here that I wouldn't make gravy, as I really don't like it. My mother in laws gravy is the only gravy that I like. Otherwise, there's no excuse for gravy. I put butter on mashed potatoes, and I always have.
But I buy the butter.
I'd have to buy marshmallows for the yams too.
That leaves something to drink. I know that some people will distill their own whiskey as a hobby, but I'm not about to try that, and I"ve never brewed beer. If I ever lived solely on what I produce myself, mostly, I'd take it up. I clearly don't have the time to do that now.
Dessert?
I'm fairly good at making pies. I like pumpkin pie, but I've never grown pumpkins. I could give that a shot, but I'd still have to buy most of the constituents. My grandmother (father's mother) used to make mincemeat pies, but I've never attempted that. The real ingredients for mincemeat pies freak people out, I"d note, those being, according to one granola website I hit and may link in, the following:
Old-Fashioned Mincemeat Pie Recipe:
1 lb beef (I used ground beef from grass-fed cows) *
¾ teaspoon salt (I like using Real Salt)
1 ½ lbs apple, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
⅓ cup suet or tallow or coconut oil, or butter or coconut oil *
1 Tbs ground mace (or ½ Tbs nutmeg if you don't have mace)
8 Tbs (½ cup) dried currants (or substitute raisins if you choose)
Which brings up a lot of stuff I'd have to buy. Everything but for the beef, as I too have beef from grass fed cows that I knew personally.
All in all, pretty doable.
Cheaper?
Well, if you are an efficient agrarian/killetarian, yes.
Footnotes:
1. My father normally only bought beer during the middle of the summer, and sometimes to take on a fishing expedition if somebody was going along. Otherwise, it just didn't appear in your house. The only whiskey ever bought was Canadian Whiskey, and a bottle of it would last forever. We often didn't have it at all. . . indeed, normally we did not. He only bought it when I was very young, if we were having guests.
This is interesting as in this era offering a drink to guests was very common. A different aunt and uncle liked Scotch and would offer it to guests, but my father hated Scotch.
When I was young, my parents would occasionally buy wine, but it was almost always Mogan David. Clearly were were not wine connoisseurs.
2. This probably seems odd, but it's true. I saw women drink beer so rarely that it was a shock when I was a kid to see a woman drinking a beer. They just normally didn't.
Indeed, by the time I was a teenager a girl drinking a beer sort of made her a "bad girl", but not in the Good Girls Don't sense. Rather, that was in the rowdy party girl sense. Or so we thought. We knew this, but we really didn't know any beer drinking girls as teenagers.
In college things were different, but the reputation that college students have for partying didn't really match the reality, at least for geology students. As an undergraduate in community college we might very occasionally go out for a beer, and that was almost always the collection of us who had graduated from high school together when everyone was home. For part of the last year of community college I had a girlfriend and I can remember being in a bar with her exactly once, when she was trying to introduce another National Guardsman to her sister. Otherwise, that relationship was unconsciously completely dry.
At UW as an undergrad most of my friends were geology students, like me, and the discipline was so hard there really wasn't any partying. Sometimes a group of guys would go out for a beer, but that was about it. Early on I recall there being a party of geology students who had all gone to community college together in the freezing apartment that one of us had. There were some beers, but generally, we just froze. A girlfriend who was also in the department and I went to a Christmas party the year I graduated, which was a big department affair and there was beer there, but that's about it.
In law school the story wasn't much different, frankly. Indeed, it wasn't until I got out of law school, and started practicing law, that I encountered people who really drank heavily.
3. To be honest, as a person always should be, when my mother's illness began to advance dramatically, she began to drink heavily. It was a problem that my father and I had to deal with. The oddity of it was that she had never done that when she was well.
As an added element of that, when she was well she took a wine making class. The wine she made was absolutely awful and she was the only one who would drink it, but because it was so bad, she'd fortify it with vodka to make it tolerable. That acclimated her to drinking. She gave it up completely as she began to recover just before my father died.
4. While she recovered a great deal, she never fully recovered. She was also an absolutely awful cook. As my father's health declined in the last year of his life, I took over cooking from him.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 12. Don't look . . . everything's just fine edition.
November 25, 2025.
The consolidation of the meat packing industry, which we've long complained about here, hits home, again:
And the Federal Government gives a boost to the technology that's going to 1) take all our jobs, and 2), kill us.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity. Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.
This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century. The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization. We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing. The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership.
Sec. 2. Establishment of the Genesis Mission. (a) There is hereby established the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
(b) The Secretary of Energy (Secretary) shall be responsible for implementing the Mission within DOE, consistent with the provisions of this order, including, as appropriate and authorized by law, setting priorities and ensuring that all DOE resources used for elements of the Mission are integrated into a secure, unified platform. The Secretary may designate a senior political appointee to oversee day-to-day operations of the Mission.
(c) The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) shall provide general leadership of the Mission, including coordination of participating executive departments and agencies (agencies) through the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the issuance of guidance to ensure that the Mission is aligned with national objectives.
Sec. 3. Operation of the American Science and Security Platform.
(a) The Secretary shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing, in an integrated manner and to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with law:
(i) high-performance computing resources, including DOE national laboratory supercomputers and secure cloud-based AI computing environments, capable of supporting large-scale model training, simulation, and inference;
(ii) AI modeling and analysis frameworks, including AI agents to explore design spaces, evaluate experimental outcomes, and automate workflows;
(iii) computational tools, including AI-enabled predictive models, simulation models, and design optimization tools;
(iv) domain-specific foundation models across the range of scientific domains covered;
(v) secure access to appropriate datasets, including proprietary, federally curated, and open scientific datasets, in addition to synthetic data generated through DOE computing resources, consistent with applicable law; applicable classification, privacy, and intellectual property protections; and Federal data-access and data-management standards; and
(vi) experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
(b) The Secretary shall take necessary steps to ensure that the Platform is operated in a manner that meets security requirements consistent with its national security and competitiveness mission, including applicable classification, supply chain security, and Federal cybersecurity standards and best practices.
(c) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify Federal computing, storage, and networking resources available to support the Mission, including both DOE on-premises and cloud-based high-performance computing systems, and resources available through industry partners. The Secretary shall also identify any additional partnerships or infrastructure enhancements that could support the computational foundation for the Platform.
(d) Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall:
(i) identify a set of initial data and model assets for use in the Mission, including digitization, standardization, metadata, and provenance tracking; and
(ii) develop a plan, with appropriate risk-based cybersecurity measures, for incorporating datasets from federally funded research, other agencies, academic institutions, and approved private-sector partners, as appropriate.
(e) Within 240 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall review capabilities across the DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities for robotic laboratories and production facilities with the ability to engage in AI-directed experimentation and manufacturing, including automated and AI-augmented workflows and the related technical and operational standards needed.
(f) Within 270 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall, consistent with applicable law and subject to available appropriations, seek to demonstrate an initial operating capability of the Platform for at least one of the national science and technology challenges identified pursuant to section 4 of this order.
Sec. 4. Identification of National Science and Technology Challenges.
(a) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify and submit to the APST a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains consistent with National Science and Technology Memorandum 2 of September 23, 2025, including:
(i) advanced manufacturing;
(ii) biotechnology;
(iii) critical materials;
(iv) nuclear fission and fusion energy;
(v) quantum information science; and
(vi) semiconductors and microelectronics.
(b) Within 30 days of submission of the list described in subsection (a) of this section, the APST shall review the proposed list and, working with participating agency members of the NSTC, coordinate the development of an expanded list that can serve as the initial set of national science and technology challenges to be addressed by the Mission, including additional challenges proposed by participating agencies through the NSTC, subject to available appropriations.
(c) Following development of the expanded list described in subsection (b) of this section, agencies participating in the Mission shall use the Platform to advance research and development aligned with the national science and technology challenges identified in the expanded list, consistent with applicable law and their respective missions, and subject to available appropriations.
(d) On an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall review and update the list of challenges in consultation with the APST and the NSTC to reflect progress achieved, emerging national needs, and alignment with my Administration’s research and development priorities.
Sec. 5. Interagency Coordination and External Engagement.
(a) The APST, through the NSTC, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies to:(i) assist participating agencies in aligning, to the extent permitted by law, their AI-related programs, datasets, and research and development activities with the objectives of the Mission in their respective areas of expertise, while avoiding duplication of effort across the Federal Government and promoting interoperability;
(ii) identify data sources that may support the Mission’s aim;
(iii) develop a process and resourcing plan in coordination with participating agencies for integrating appropriate and available agency data and infrastructure into the Mission, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, including methods under which all agencies contributing to the Mission are encouraged to implement appropriate risk-based security measures that reflect cybersecurity best practices;
(iv) launch coordinated funding opportunities or prize competitions across participating agencies, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, to incentivize private-sector participation in AI-driven scientific research aligned with Mission objectives; and
(v) establish mechanisms to coordinate research and development funding opportunities and experimental resources across participating agencies, ensuring agencies can participate effectively in the Mission.
(b) The APST shall coordinate with relevant agencies in establishing, consistent with existing authorizing statutes and subject to available appropriations, competitive programs for research fellowships, internships, and apprenticeships focused on the application of AI to scientific domains identified as national challenges for the Mission, to include placement of program participants at DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities, with the purpose of providing access to the Platform and training in AI-enabled scientific discovery.
(c) The Secretary, in coordination with the APST and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, shall establish mechanisms for agency collaboration with external partners possessing advanced AI, data, or computing capabilities or scientific domain expertise, including through cooperative research and development agreements, user facility partnerships, or other appropriate arrangements with external entities to support and enhance the activities of the Mission, and shall ensure that such partnerships are structured to preserve the security of Federal research assets and maximize public benefit. To facilitate these collaborations, the Secretary shall:(i) develop standardized partnership frameworks, including cooperative research and development or other appropriate agreements, and data-use and model‑sharing agreements;
(ii) establish clear policies for ownership, licensing, trade-secret protections, and commercialization of intellectual property developed under the Mission, including innovations arising from AI-directed experiments;
(iii) implement uniform and stringent data access and management processes and cybersecurity standards for non-Federal collaborators accessing datasets, models, and computing environments, including measures requiring compliance with classification, privacy, and export-control requirements, as well as other applicable laws; and
(iv) establish procedures to ensure the highest standards of vetting and authorization of users and collaborators seeking access to the resources of the Mission and associated research activities, including the Platform and associated Federal research resources.
(d) The APST, through the NSTC, shall, to the extent appropriate, identify opportunities for international scientific collaboration to support activities under the Mission.
Sec. 6. Evaluation and Reporting.
(a) Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing:
(i) the Platform’s operational status and capabilities;
(ii) progress toward integration across DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research partners, including shared access to computing resources, data infrastructure, and research facilities;
(iii) the status of user engagement, including participation of student researchers and any related training;
(iv) updates on research efforts and outcomes achieved, including measurable scientific advances, publications, and prototype technologies;
(v) the scope and outcomes of public-private partnerships, including collaborative research projects and any technology transitions or commercialization activities; and
(vi) any identified needs or recommendations for authorities or interagency support to achieve the Mission’s objectives.
Sec. 7. General Provisions.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(d) The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Energy.
DONALD J. TRUMP
THE WHITE HOUSE,
November 24, 2025.
$$$
Related threads:
Nebraska Ranchers to go into Meat Processing
Last edition:
Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 11. The blistering ignorance edition.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Friday, November 14, 2025
Meat loves salt, but does the Freedom Caucus love Wyoming?
Meat loves salt, but does the Freedom Caucus love Wyoming?: A proposal to prohibit using SNAP to purchase sugar, spices and condiments reveals the far right's appetite for cruelty, writes guest columnist Lindsey Hanlon.
This is, I'd note a somewhat ironic caption. The answer is clearly no. Freedom Caucusers are largely carpetbaggers to begin with, or strongly influenced by them, and are in love with pre civil rights Alabama.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Friday, October 31, 2025
Friday Farming. Um. . .large farmers.
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N.C. Wyeth, The Farmer. 1911.
On Friday, this blog tries to post something about farming, but it often lets everyone down by failing to do so, posting instead on various other inanities, such as a legislative committee passing a goofball ignorant bill on chemtrails.
Och!
Anyhow, we've been watching the news as first soybean farmers, and then later cattle farmers, have come on the news and stated, effectively, "we didn't think leopards would eat our face!" after Donald Trump took the tariff club and beat them upside the head and then decided that the Golden Arches could serve up Big Mac's with carne molida rather than ground beef.
What a bunch of amadán breallach. Oh well, it's hard to feel sorry for them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Put that in your Happy Meal, bucko.
But this thread isn't on that.
Rather its on this.
We admire farmers and ranchers, as is rather obvious. It's our true vocation, even if an unfulfilled one. And we are familiar with actual farming, not the Green Acres/Hallmark/Homesteading type of agriculture.
But we're also agrarians.
Anyhow, I can't help but note this, even though its rude.
The spokesmen for soybean farmers have, at least on some occasions, been enormously fat.
That's a bad look. They're huge. And they're not huge in the way that some large people are who are pretty fit, and I've known more than a few. Indeed, I've known some outdoor employed people, both blue collar and in the sciences, who were really big, but quite fit. You could tell that what was at work with them was genetics. But many of these farmers, or at least the snipped I've seen, are just flat out fat.
This isn't the case with working ranchers.
I guess that shows us the extent to which mechanized farming has become, well, mechanized. At least one of these great big farmers has been interviewed in his farm machinery as he and it are working in his fields. And that's just not conducive to living well. Ranching is still a pretty physically active line of work.
With these guys, I suspect, but of course don't know, that they're still consuming a farm diet that developed prior to the 1980s. Say, perhaps, before World War Two. Big breakfast, followed by heavy activity, big lunch, followed by heavy activity, and a lighter dinner. . .sometimes followed by heavy activity. Now, however, you can omit the heavy activity.
Which gets us back to, I guess, the state of the world in general. Our technology is, frankly, killing us. We really weren't meant to live that way, or much of the way our technological world is having us live.
And, as a minor fwiw, you really can't come on to television seeking sympathies for farmers if you look like, to use an analogy, a fat cat. You guys have obviously been eating well. Yes, that really shouldn't matter, and its not a moral failing, but it doesn't look good in the presentation.
Saturday, October 31, 1925. Subpoena for Coolidge?
Billy Mitchell's defense was considering subpoenaing Calvin Coolidge.
It was Halloween, and the Mills Tavern was having a party, with lots of elk.
That's a real curiosity, as generally it'd be very difficult to find a restaurant in Wyoming serving elk now. Hunters can't have their elk served in restaurants, and market hunting as well as game farming is illegal in Wyoming. Market hunting was illegal in Wyoming at the time, and in fact by 1925, was pretty much everywhere in the U.S.
An oddity of advertising in Casper appears here, I'd note. At the time, advertisers routinely failed to note their addresses. Where was the Mills Tavern, other than in Mills?
It's actually a little hard to find out.
The tavern seems to have opened, or reopened, in 1924. It was operating as a restaurant, and it had private dining rooms. By 1930 its focus may have changed, as it issued cigarette books with illustrations of scantily clad women on the jackets, although that was quite common at the time and at least into the 1950s. Early on, however, it emphasized nightly dancing and chicken dinners. Apparently the bands were good enough that a band appearing in Glenrock noted that it was "from" the Mills Tavern.
The focus may have changed sometime prior to that, actually, as it was hit in a prohibition raid in 1926, although only a small amount of alcohol was found. Given that the amount was small, not too much can be presumed.
When the tavern opened in 1924, it noted that it was in the former Mills Hotel. That provides a pretty good clue as to its location. An old hotel building still exists in Mills, no longer used for that purpose. That was likely the location, and would explain why it had private rooms.
The new Ajax was out:
Ajax automobiles no longer exist, of course. Neither does the town of Salt Creek.
Ajax was made by Nash and was offered only in 1925 and 1926.
And, well, Coolidge looked safe.
It was a Saturday.
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Friday, October 30, 1925. Not Guilty.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Thursday, October 29, 1925. No Free Speech.
Free speech didn't work as a defense for Bily Mitchell.
Not to tread where we shouldn't, but the advertisement above for Kotex surprises me.
So does the item on constant pain from pimples.
And the one on credit score. This is really before I thought there was a credit score.
And you don't need to add bran to Oatmeal.
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Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Mitchell challenges Jurisdiction.
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Friday, October 17, 2025
Egg and Smoked Salmon Sandwich (1920) on Sandwiches of History
This looks pretty good. Frankly, it would have been a really good option for Fridays for Catholics, and well it still is a really good option for Catholics on Fridays.
I think I'll give this a try.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Tuesday, October 7, 1975. Lunch.
Congress overrode President Ford's veto of the Federal school lunch program by an overwhelming majority.
Let's look at a couple of things not on the lunch menu.
I'll be frank, I'm quite indifferent about bologna.
Having said that, when I was a kid, we always had "cold cuts" in the fridge, in case you wanted to make a sandwich, which I rarely did. I preferred thin sliced ham, which Safeway had, and would eat that quite a bit, often just eat it. No sandwich.
I've discussed government assisted school lunch here before, but the interesting thing here is the overwhelming popularity for it. I dare say, if it came up today, it'd be voted down.
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