(no subject)

[zenolalia]

Capitalism is hell and I shouldn't support businesses like uber that seek to destroy the lower class by disrupting our likes through massive exploitation and the destruction of stable income as well as necessary infrastructure, but also I can't really leave the house without nearly dying due to a cacophony of illnesses and this stupid fucking grocery delivery service instant-cart that they just got in town is legit saving my fucking LIFE so like.

Shit, man, I'm the fucking edge case for which it was designed.

Like, I get massive, visually distorting migraines if I'm outside during the daylight for more than about 40 minutes, but everything is at least 20 minutes drive away, there's not enough stable bus infrastructure in town for me to get anywhere by bus in less than an hour, shopping makes me so dizzy, shake, and vertiginous that I sometimes pass out inside the stores (those poor cashiers don't know what to do with me, which in fairness, I do try to do it in the bathrooms so they don't have to worry but it's not always within my control so like).

The ability to carefully hand craft my grocery list to match my budget and massive dietary restrctions over the course of like 6-8 hours while sitting in my chair in the middle of the night in the dark and the quiet of my own home, knowing that my food will be brought to me without my needing to render myself literally bedridden for the following 20-72 hours is so good, like. It's so good.

God I wish it didn't have to be done by a shitty fucking "disruption" startup in the fucking uber vein. Goddamnit, I fucking hate that. This is a service I legitimately NEED because the alternative has been, in no undertain terms, KILLING me. I have literally been told multiple times by multiple professionals to STOP GROCERY SHOPPING and that's never been realistic until now but like

Ugh.


Capitalism is a little bitch and I hope it dies.

Anyway use this referral link: https://inst.cr/t/ABCzhvFDr to try the delivery groceries for free if you're into that and live in a modest to robustly populated area, and if you like it I'll get $50 in sweet fucking food money, which is great because I'm getting a real hardcore ass runaround about whether or not the government wants to give me, an unemployed, disabled, fucking battered-spouse-runaway some FUCKING FOOD PLEASE. "We will contact you in 17-10 business days" my plush round ass.

Comments

[zenolalia]

Oh, that's a good idea!! I will try that out asap, thank you. I do tip cash whenever possible, but I get very easily confused about alternatives to the gig economy entirely.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Somebody who works on an on-call basis (like as a babysitter, freelance photographer, etc) is still participating in the gig economy (ie their work is a series of irregular "gigs" which do not inherently provide the security or benefits that a stable job would), but I would imagine there would be plenty of people (like teenagers with cars looking for decent side cash, or people who are already doing assorted work) who would be willing to be like "yeah, you can have me on call and I can pick up groceries for you for a fee." Especially since that sort of arrangement with somebody is better for them than having to rely on the more unpredictability of corporation-allocated gigs.

[zenolalia]

Certainly, certainly, but I do think there's a very real and meaningful difference between an organized system that exploits other people's need for assistance for profit, and individuals willing to offer the labor for pay directly.

If nothing else, a thriving assumption that it's safe and normal for teens and work from home types to do a "grocery route" the same way they might historically have done a paper route or sold Avon could actually build community services and relationships instead of stress and ultimately break them. It might not necessarily, but it has the potential to do so.

I do wonder, in a way, if this sort of thing also ties into not only the decreased economic welfare of the average person in the area (I live in the US), but also in the massive increase in individualization that has overtaken every aspect of US society in the last 30 years, with everyone outside your immediate family being increasing degrees of "other," and community building falling away along side infrastructure and union action.

But, then, Uber and Co require capitalism, capitalism requires the state, and the state requires compliance that is easiest to gain from a tired, fractured and fearful people, I suppose.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Ideally, entering the gig economy is for people who are super successful/confident in their trade, who feel limited by industry. But because having a regular job is no longer enough to survive, more and more people have been moving into the gig economy in an attempt to supplement their wages. But then lack of gigs pressures people to sell their services for less and less. And corporations realized they could capitalize on that by taking one of the many middle men out of the gig economy. Because a typical freelancer has to do their own finances, scheduling, repairs, advertising, client checks, etc, so these corporations are actually making it easier, in some sense. Except the establishment of that corporation sets precedents which individuals outside of them cannot match, not to mention companies like uber undercutting their own bottom line in order to starve out (unionized!) taxi companies (much like amazon undercharging for books until it overtook the book industry).

I really like the lens of community, though, and I do think there's something to be said about places where you hire a service to mow your lawn or pave your driveway vs places where you ask a neighbor. And I think establishing neighborhood means of communication might be a good way to undermine corporate alienation from community. My hometown neighborhood had a facebook group where people would discuss local issues, organize to petition for needed town maintenance, advertise babysitting services and yard sales, etc. And being able to become familiar with the people in my neighborhood by sheer virtue of seeing their presence in the group made them feel more like trustworthy people, as opposed to somebody who might take your grocery money and run or try to skim off the top by lying about prices or pick out unquality merchandise.

And I think the online example I gave is acting in place of in-person sociality that would have been more possible some number of decades ago. For example people work more now, so they have less time to try to go making friends with people who they don't necessarily have to see all the time (unlike coworkers), because they're home less. And cooking as a cultural practice has fallen by the wayside because of food costs and the time commitment and the convenience of other alternatives, which deincentivises potlucks. And many neighborhoods don't have like parks or other free public communal spaces in which to gather, and it's simply more convenient for individual families/units to seek out their own recreation at one of the many specific recreation establishments than to try to organize a block bowling party at the local alley.

[zenolalia]

In regards to cooking in particular, cooking itself was never really as much of a "home made" thing in the sense that people think of it as being. It's legitimately only within the last 4-5 generations, basically since WWII in the US and WWI in much of Europe, that this idea of a nuclear family with a nuclear set of mealtimes has really taken off. Prior to that, the wealthy had a cook and staff, the staff ate what the cook made, and the poor ate whatever was being made by whoever was cooking for the building or the street that day. Those big old apartments with only one bathrooms and one kitchen, well, they only had the one kitchen.

The modern equivalent would, functionally, be "home cooking" about 1-2 nights a week, and eating out the rest of the time, but of course that is not financially feasible in today's markets unless you happen to be able to digest wheat products without getting a massive allergy, and that's assuming you're willing to deal with the obscene sodium intake of modern "outsourced cooking."

But, yeah, in as much as a person was expected to cook on a regular basis rather than for special occasions, they only did so maybe a few times a month. That's why you get all of these bizarrely involved, over the top historic recipes like, "carefully extract the egg from its shell without shattering the shell, then scramble it with cheese and spinach to a custard consistency, pipe back into the shell, and bake until solidified." And you think, "who the FUCK had the time to do that every morning???"

Well, no one. But people had the time to that like two mornings a month.

Or, if someone was especially talented and especially passionate, they became exclusively a Person Who Cooks, and it was their entire like. Thing. And they were not expected to do anything else. They just did the cooking.

This idea that people should plan meals, shop them, make them, clean them, and then do that again every single day--different meals every day because if you repeat too often you're failing some arbitrary standard of "healthy variety"--is very novel. And it's also basically impossible.

There's some emerging research on the subject, actually, but basically, it's impossible to cook for your own family the way western culture wants you to believe you should. You just pretty much have to hire it out, if you want to try to do that kind of thing. That's the only way to succeed at the concept of the modern "healthy, home cooked meal plan." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504214545755

Otherwise, you need to adopt meal styles more in keeping with other cultural models: either communal cooking, where you create meal variety by just having entirely different people cooking every night, or if that's not possible, you eat basically the same thing most of the time with minor variants.

[leahandillyana]

Most of human history is eating whatever possible, happy that you have anything to eat. Prior to the 90s, all kinds of food were in constant shortage where I live, so people just grabbed what was avaiable, and even the wealthy were only ensured access to basic food items.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Nice. I was already aware that it's impossible to make daily meals from scratch and that a lot of nostalgic housewife-who-cooks-all-day imagery fails to account for cookbooks and instant/processed meals/food products, etc. But all that's nonetheless interesting.

One thing I think is kind of cool is discourse about services like blue apron "selling" you the fantasy of being able to live up to impossible standards of home cooking... when actually it's really neat to have a recipe and quality ingredients for them without having to worry about excess waste, but still getting to do some level of preparation which makes you feel in touch with the cooking process and develops your kitchen-ing abilities so you're more prepared to cook without the service on other days. Like my grocery store has store brand frozen vegetables which are just like... two or three cups of chopped broccoli or chopped onions or chopped peppers, etc, and it's branded as like "recipe basics" or something and it's really neat because each bag is only a dollar and you get a whole bunch of ready-to-use frozen vegetables! And it takes me forever to dice onions (I usually devote a chunk of time to doing it in bulk and then store a big container of diced onions in the fridge for easy grabbing) plus the fumes are obnoxious, and the broccoli size is just right for mixing into a pot of mac and cheese (as opposed to other frozen broccoli, which is massive), and it's actually a good value, so like. I dunno, seems like a cool way to ease the individual burden of cooking without alienating people from the process entirely.