Up and At Them

Long day today -- another sleepless night, for a bunch of reasons... anyways, in addition to work, I took my car in to get an oil change, and dropped it off, because, well, where do I have to be today?  Then, of course, the toilet clogged, and I had to call the plumbers, and it took four hours to unclog -- basically, it has been two decades or since the last time it was done, so there was a healthy accumulation of material (natural in various forms, if you will) to get through.  Oi.  They barely got done before 6, so I had to run over to the car place, get the car, and then drive to Mom's to take her shopping.  Humorously, at dinner, she got the last burger patty at Wendy's.  To her this was a crisis, to which I gave my usual response about people on ventilators and such.

Anyways, I do have this sense of dread about the virus, not that I will catch it but that cases will spread and the efforts to restart the economy will fail...and we will be worse off in every way imagineable.

https://aeon.co/essays/if-history-was-more-like-science-would-it-predict-the-future
Interesting.  I've read Toynbee, and while in some ways I thought he was spot on (such as climate or how technology developments push efficiency advances in soon to be obsolete fields) but I had to caution myself that in many cases, there is simply not enough there there to make more than a broad claim.

Sunday evening I watched "The Gang's All Here," bringing me to 727 of the NFR.  It was... ok? I mean, not my cup of tea, of course, but I could see how the film was a success -- wartime film, lots of attractive women, war-related theme, somewhat implausible story... it was sort of thing that could appeal to people back home and in the field...

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/covid-19-sickness-food-supply/
I think this is largely true, but I also think that the whole point of these articles -- that we need to go back to a more localized food supply system -- is nice but also wholly unrealistic.  The fact of the matter is, we spend less on food now than ever -- and it would be a lot less (as a share of personal income) if people actually ate at home, instead of eating our or buying premade stuff at the grocery store.  We also spend less time cooking and preparing meals, which means we have more time for other things... I just think that these are good things -- go back 100 or even 50 years ago and Mrs. John Q Housewife (and it was indeed Mrs. Housewife back then!) if they wanted to spend more time and money making dinner, and see what they say...