S01:E11 "Maybe They're Just Poor"

Behold! The great squaring is upon us! Repent and cease your worship of The Consumerist Mindset and learn to live, laugh, and love.

Behold! The great squaring is upon us! Repent and cease your worship of The Consumerist Mindset and learn to live, laugh, and love.

This episode of I Have No Idea What I'm Doing is sponsored by:

Our Goodstuff Patreon Subscribers and listeners just like you! Support your favorite podcasts directly to get exclusive unedited episodes and more.

Aaron’s Great Squaring

Circular stuff: get out of my fridge and cupboards
All the great Cambros
‘Tajín Is a Lifestyle’: An Appreciation of the Mexican Seasoning Mix - The New York Times

Remember Lucas?
Turn out ™ it was banned for lead? Did I eat a lot of lead?!

Toxic Candy Still Being Sold - Deseret News


Subscribe to LIMEBOX™ today!

US Women’s National Soccer

The U.S. women’s national team is an American treasure. Pay them a bounty. - Washington Post

Just imagine how that record-setting 13-0 victory over Thailand will play at a jury trial. It’s going to be a lot of fun watching lawyers for the soccer federation try to justify why the U.S. women’s national team, with their air rifles for legs, are paid 38 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts and had to sue for fair wages. It’s going to be pure entertainment listening to federation president Carlos Cordeiro stammer out an explanation on the witness stand of why this team, which is nothing short of an American damn treasure, isn’t worth equal coin to a men’s squad that can’t beat Jamaica.

You think Nike committed $120 million to USA soccer back in 1997 because of a men’s team that finished 10th in the Atlanta Olympics with a 1-1-1 record? Or do you think the company’s interest had something to do, just maybe, with Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy and Michelle Akers commanding an audience of 90,000 at the Rose Bowl and 40 million on TV?

Every dime of largesse that the American soccer federation now enjoys can, in some way, be traced to the apple-seeding done by the women’s team.

The U.S. women’s unreal 13-goal World Cup win, by the numbers - Washington Post

Cease Praying to the Consumerist Gods

2019 is the year all brands war with each other till capitalism implodes
@TaylorLorenz, June 14, 2019

Folks…. this is bad
Who is this for?
THE CONSUMERIST MINDSET: A Capitalism Brain Worm

We ought to get way more cynical about any movement based mostly on individual actions
Ex:// green lifestyle changes, boycots, etc.

These all take the spotlight off the powerful interests whose systems are what, ultimately, need defeating.
It puts the onus on average people who are already stressed from daily concerns
If Capital can blame and make examples out of individuals (“why do environmentalists take planes then? Hypocrites much?!”) then they can get people tied up in fruitless debates.


BUT: Don’t use this as an excuse to make bad choices.

John Stewart Is Not The Messiah: An Opinion

Jon Stewart Blasts Members Of Congress During 9/11 First Responders Hearing
Q:// Is there some takeaway from the liberal reaction to Jon Stewart’s testimony?
Q:// What are the limits of A Really Good Speech™?
Q:// Do we put too much faith in rhetoric at the expense of action?
Q:// Does the fact that Aaron was cloistered from media during the buildup to Iraq preclude him from understanding the adoration for Stewart?

I’m not a regular cop, I’m a COOL cop!

Anthony Johnson, Ohio’s “Dancing Cop,” Investigated After Punching Man In Face

An Ohio police officer who went viral in 2015 after dancing with kids was caught on video this weekend punching an unarmed man in the face who was standing and shouting at another officer, prompting outrage and a police investigation.

Live Laugh Love, or: the banal nature of commoditized decor/Pinterest culture

Live. Laugh. Love. Why? - The Outline

Following the 2007 recession, DIY decoration became increasingly enticing, propelled in part by the growing number of affordable home supply and home furnishing options. Millions lost their jobs and could no longer afford to spend big on extraneous home goods; stores became more conservative with stocking inventory. A “word art” trend — inclusive of prints, posters, and cutesy signs with textural platitudes, phrases, and sometimes just single adjectives or verbs (“blessed,” “dream”) — resulted in décor that was both cost-friendly and attainable. Consumers got inventive; word art, in particular, combined individual tastes with easily marketable inspirational catchphrases.

Some kind of tenuous connection to Striving?
See also: fast fashion
Aaron literally has an ongoing thing were a he and his friend text each-other pictures anytime they spot a LLL in the wild.
Q:// What is it about LLL that’s so obnoxious?
Q:// Am I bad for finding it so stupid?

Confederate flags are just “live laugh love” signs for white trash dudes
@Aimee_B_Loved, 10 Jun 2019

Thought Technology: Maybe They’re just Poor

Alternatively, “Maybe they’re just suffering a mental health crisis”
The idea is to stop when you see a meme which is based on mocking a person (maybe for their style or weird behavior) and ask yourself: is this really about them being a bad person, or could this simply be the result of them being in a very bad spot?

Rutger Bregman: ‘Poverty is not a personality defect. We need a basic income’ - The Big Issue

There is an entrenched idea on the right and left that poverty is just a personality defect. As Margaret Thatcher once put it – a lack of character. And what I am trying to prove with this book is that it’s actually just about a lack of money. There is an extraordinary amount of research to back this up. The left usually says, “We’ve got to help these people – we’ve got to give them the right advice.” While the right say, “No, we simply have to teach them some responsibility.”

The assumption there is the same – they both assume that there is something wrong with the poor themselves. There is now some really exciting new evidence that shows poverty is really just about the context. Yes, it’s true that if you’re poor you are more likely to make poor decisions – you smoke more, drink more, raise your kids worse, take out more loans you can’t afford. But the evidence shows that we would all make the same decisions if we were living without money. If you lift people out of poverty then they start making much smarter decisions.

The Cost of Financial Precarity

We consistently find that financial precarity undermines people’s ability to perform across a variety of tasks and contexts. When people are worried about their personal finances, it hinders their ability to be productive and perform. …

What is to blame for the status quo, in which workers experience persistent worry about paying the bills? … The underlying assumption is that if people only knew better, they would not be so prone to financial precarity. …

The assumption that deficiencies in individual prudence are the primary driver of financial precarity negates the unique economic context of the United States. … In the United States, the design of the social system depends largely upon employers’ discretion to provide critical social safety nets such as health insurance and retirement savings, as well as other welfare-enhancing benefits such as paid sick days and parental leave.

No Money More Problems: The Relationship Between Poverty & Black Mental Health - Ourselves Black

It is obvious that poverty limits access to mental healthcare, but what is overlooked is that all too often poverty creates the need for that care in the first place. Mental illness, like many health problems, typically strikes when biological vulnerability is coupled with exposure to a stressor. Poverty, simply defined, is when a household has insufficient resources to reliably meet its basic needs. This constant threat to one’s very survival most certainly qualifies. Poverty in and of itself is traumatic, especially during periods of brain and identity development. It also creates vulnerability to additional traumas – both inside and outside of the home. For example, families with limited resources can get stuck in neighborhoods with high rates of community violence and disproportionate contact with the criminal justice and foster care systems. Additionally, financially dependent poor women and their children are especially vulnerable to perpetrators of domestic violence and child abuse. Staying means ongoing abuse. Leaving means risk of hunger and/or homelessness.

**

When poverty creates the need for mental health care and then limits access to it, untreated mental illness shapes lives.** … Poverty threatens mental well-being and as such, black people are exceptionally threatened. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2016 22 percent of black people and 30 percent of black children lived below the poverty line.

Why Is It Still OK To ‘Trash’ Poor White People? - NPR

Like other slurs, there has been some reclamation of “white trash” — songs and cookbooks and T-shirts that celebrate white-trash culture. And plenty of people unabashedly refer to themselves as white trash.

But no matter who uses it, the phrase itself reinforces some pretty insidious ideas about the meaning of whiteness (and, by reflection, blackness — we’ll get to that in a minute). By accepting the idea that white trash exists, people are tacitly accepting that there is another, different kind of whiteness. Normal white people — the ones who aren’t white trash — embody all the things white trash can’t: They’re hardworking, educated, classy, kind and good.

Anyone who doesn’t conform to those values can’t ever really be fully white. Hence, white trash.

Growing Up in Poverty Doubles Risk of Psychosis Disorder Later - Futurity

Researchers, who followed nearly 4,000 families for more than three decades, say the results suggest that intervention through social policies and investment in neighborhood improvements, as well as identifying those most in need of help by observing certain child behaviors, could prevent future debilitating illnesses and the societal and personal costs associated with them.

“One important message to take from this study is that the stresses and chronic day-to-day challenges of living in under-resourced or impoverished communities can undermine the well-being of individuals whether they seem to have a vulnerability or not,” says lead author Paul D. Hastings, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Why don’t they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, HUH?
Q:// Who benefits from this culture?
Q:// How do we oppose it?

Empathy?
Solidarity?
Pointing the attacks in the right direction?

Power Talk

Bitcoins now suck up as much energy as Las Vegas - Grist

It’s the Currency of the Future™.
Groundbreaking Report Gives Us a Glimpse of the US Military’s Gigantic Carbon Footprint

Q:// What if we didn’t need a bazillion aircrafts carrier? 🤔

A Very Important Announcement

Expanding the IHNIWID Apparatus: we’re starting a think tank

Name brainstorming

Council at the Institute of the Center for Politics and Society
IDEA: The International Delegation for Energizing Action-stepsn
The Wooloo Institute at Old Town Road
The American Center for America and Planet Earth


Aaron is CEO, Andrew is president

Both have large salaries and no responsibilities