Sunset Statements
Last night. So surreal. Shot on my two year old iPhone.
A few thoughts:
– Sunset scenes like last night’s are far too magnificent to experience in anything but realtime. Here it just slides into the uncanny world of visual clichés. A picture one might find among similarly miniaturized, mass-printed moments stacked in a postcard rack at the local souvenir shop.
– Saltwater taffy ice cream is definitely a new favorite flavor. Still not even close to genuine gelato pistachio.
– The 1 kg bag of organic, sun-dried tomatoes I ordered from Amazon.de on Friday arrived yesterday. That’s a remarkably fast delivery from Germany but likely not environmentally sound.
– No,”cancel culture” isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s probably older than Gutenburg’s printing press with movable type. It just hasn’t been as weaponized or politicized before. Thanks, Trump. Thanks, Twitter. Thanks, Facebook.
– The novel coronavirus has provided many (myself included) with formidable, unquestionable arguments to avoid socializing with people you don’t really enjoy socializing with.
– Few are talking about it, but the main reason so many Americans are getting sick is that so many of them are overweight. The “underlying condition” onto which the virus has had such a successful stronghold is indirectly caused by obesity. According to this article, the body in folks that are seriously overweight is in a constant state of inflammation – making it extremely difficult for their immune defense system to cope with the virus’s attacks. The US government’s own scientists and health experts agree unilaterally on the main reasons why 80 million Americans are obese:
- Most Americans live in an in-the-car and sit-behind-a-desk society. Daily life doesn’t involve a lot of physical activity and exercise.
- Anybody that’s been to the States knows that food is available practically everywhere. So are the many alluring messages telling Americans what to eat and what to drink – in order to be happy and to feel satisfied. Food is so readily available, it’s in places where it was never found before. Today, most gas stations have convenience stores that are open 24/7/365. Like in Sweden, the vast majority of their offering is snacks and sweets.
- Food portions at restaurants and what folks prepare at home are bigger than they used to be and most contain excessive amounts of both sweeteners like fructose (≈ sugar) and sodium (≈ salt).
- The poorer you are, the more likely it is you have to choose the cheapest options when grocery shopping. Lower prices usually mean less nutritional value and again more sugar and salt to artificially enhance flavors.