You’re describing a few decades out of almost a thousand years of feudalism, in Europe specifically, and it wasn’t ever universally true.

A lot of things contributed to that. Not the least of which is the difference between what we’d consider a day off and what they’d consider a day off. Not to mention how they paid taxes and what was actually required of the medieval peasant.

Taxes could be paid in labor or produce. The guys doing the manual labor building a castle were likely to be paying taxes. They did that for up to a third of the year. The rest of the year was theirs to do with as they pleased, and the majority of that time would have been spent growing, gathering, hunting, or maintaining. Guild artisans had the closest thing to jobs that we’d think of them. Coopers made barrels, ropers roped. You had masons and blacksmiths and carpenters sure. Most people were growing and raising food, and maintaining their home. A day off was likely spent doing those things. They had so many partially because that time was needed intermittently.

They worked harder than we do. Every part of their life was harder, required more energy, and took more time.

Taking a day off to relax would have been exceedingly rare and probably maddeningly boring. Though they did party hard.

So way back during the 2016 election, I was finishing up some mandatories for my trade degree. The teacher made a pretty relevant point about how the upcoming president would have a large impact on this particular subject, as there was a lot of federal fingers in that particular frosting.

Someone made an outrageously stupid, but harmless comment about changing the subject before this turns in to another (recent school shooting).

About 10 seconds later there are police in the room. We were sent out for a break while the police talked to that guy, and ultimately walked him out of the building, and they sent us home for the night.

And then he was back at the next class.

I mean you only have to shoot to where it will be half way, moon will take care of the rest

Just banks and federal employees.

You will of course be required to be in the office that day.

Only one way to find out.

I’m not normally an advocate for violence, but calling for a peaceful resolution and compromise with a person who wants to eradicate people from existence is idiotic.

A person calling for violence against others invites violence against himself.

I’m not sure but I’m sure someone can help.

So anyway when you stop by, let him know that Jonathan Gregg wants to box. 10,000 dollar charity match.

The US in 6 months: “fuckin watch me.”

Oreos are 3 cookies to a serving.

Frequently servings are fairly close to 1 ounce. Oreos are a little over an ounce for 3 cookies at 34 grams.

This isn’t necessarily a serving suggestion. They’d actually very much like it if you ate an entire sleeve in a sitting, 3 times a day.

It’s only there so you can calculate with excruciating detail exactly how many grams of sugar you just swallowed when you stuffed the middle of 4 cookies together.

They think this is a culture war. They believe they are at war with ideas they do not like.

They will not give ground until forced to do so. They will only do so begrudgingly, and insincerely, waiting for the day they can claw it back.

They see you as an enemy, and they give themselves rage chubbies at the thought of refusing to negotiate.

Absolutely, if you hear this nonsense, call it out, but be prepared for it to escalate.

Let’s return to a time when saying that crap out loud was enough to end a career. Make them afraid to be bigoted in public again.

She’s smoking corporate cock, just like the rest of Congress.

Lmao buddy. Ignoring the people to the left is how you literally just lost an election

Uhh… 335 million Americans, 260 million voting age Americans. With 63% turnout.

The market is not the economy.

The market is a measure of how much wealth is being extracted from the working class.

If that’s what the economy is then it will never matter how good it is, because the working class people still can’t afford shit.

Yeah people just care about bread on the table and the roof over their head. Telling 150 million voting Americans to care about the world is falling on early 100 million deaf ears.

75 million don’t care, or actively dislike anybody outside the US.

Another 38 million only care as long as it’s convenient. And right now it’s not convenient.

Maybe 10-15 million are anti Republican because they’re lgbtq+.

Of the 150 million voters, 80 million are voting on a single issue. And for many of them, it’s either for or against abortion.

We’ve been supplying the West with a military for decades. We put more in to our ministry, and by extension every NATO member country’s military than the rest of NATO combined. We don’t have social programs, no healthcare, no child care, under funded education, no paid sick leave, no parental leave. We have a big shiney military.

People can’t afford to take a day off for the flu and they’re supposed to care about Europe?

Big ask mate. People here care about how they’re doing today and tomorrow. Not Ukraine 6 months from now.

You can disagree with that guy. That’s fine. But you need to understand that your attitude mirrors the attitude of the democratic party, and it literally just cost them the election.

Ignore the people who want change, assuming they’ll vote for you anyway is a great way to get them to vote for someone else.

Reform or fail.

Obama got people excited about healthcare reform. Biden got people excited about student debt relief. Clinton tried to get people excited about a female president and Harris centered her campaign around running against Trump.

Social programs get people excited.

Shit I was saying when Biden was still running and I got crucified for it.

As you shift to the right you leave your base behind, ignoring a growing, left swinging faction within the party is going to lead to outcomes like this. Working class people all have the same problems, and one party says they’ll do something about it. They’re lying, people who are generally smarter and paying attention know they’re lying, but that’s not most people.

The other party has had a chance, and failed to do anything to alleviate the concerns of the working class. Regardless of the circumstances, or their actual ability to affect change. And they spent the entire election cycle trying to curry votes from a dedicated base instead of getting voters excited about something.

Swing left, swing hard. Become the unhinged leftist the other side is already accusing you of being.

Pucker up, Omaha is going to be a tight race. And next year they’re going to try again to go to winner take all here. Lines hours long for early voting in areas that traditionally have never had lines.

Cross your fingers for Vargas and Osborn too.

I think you said it better than I did. Dude just wanted to educate and people just can’t let something be good. It has to be correct.

I blame Alton Brown.

Hear me out.

Alton Brown is undoubtedly a legendary figure and he did a lot of good for the modern state of culinary entertainment. His scientific, experimental approach was authoritative. He came up with what was scientifically the best way to do a thing, demonstrated why, and did it in a very entertaining way.

But with that, came scores of fans who saw “this is the best way to do a thing” and interpreted that as “this is the only way to do a thing, fuck you you’re doing it wrong.”

Alton wasn’t doing what other TV chefs were doing. Emeril and Julia presented really good recipes, they’d add some flare and say hey, this is how we do it around here. Bourdain explored the world and showed off a lot of great ways to cook. He was reluctant to criticize and clearly just loved the food.

But Alton Brown, for all the good he did, opened up authority to fans who didn’t know shit about fuck. He spoke with confidence about how his method was the right method.

Right about the time the Internet was coming in to it’s own and arguing about nonsense online became a hobby a person could have.

Now, there’s a culture of being right about cooking online. People who log in every day just to bitch about how somebody else cooked something.

Obviously it’s not exclusively Alton’s fault, and Alton is as open to new and interesting ways to cook things as Bourdain was, a fact you’ll discover if he ever happens to visit your home town and read what he says about the food there on his Facebook page.

But there is a through line there, and it starts at Good Eats.