free parking
Sommeliers
Advertising
Marketing
[ I'm oddly OK with branding. ]
These are a few of my least favorite things.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Some things I dislike:
Some things I dislike:
free parking
Sommeliers
Cops those who, in a position of authority and privilege, use it to escalate violence and harm those they should protect
Advertising
Marketing
[ I'm oddly OK with branding. ]
Republicans Fascists
These are a few of my least favorite things.
free parking
Sommeliers
Advertising
Marketing
[ I'm oddly OK with branding. ]
These are a few of my least favorite things.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wait, what's wrong with free parking?
ReplyDeleteIsn't Marketing basically Advertising + Branding?
ReplyDeleteSommeliers are artists
ReplyDeleteHow could anyone hate free parking?
ReplyDeleteIs it maybe that when parking is free more people use their cars when they don't need to? Also, if parking is free then fewer people get the opportunity to use the space because no-one is in a hurry to vacate it.
ReplyDeleteI figured it was the Free Parking controversy with Monopoly, Rabbit Stoddard...
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Yeah, that was similar to my thinking. Though that feels kind of like hating a symptom more than hating the problem.
ReplyDeleteActually, yesterday I was walking to Home Depot, and estimating how many baseball fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, and performance spaces could be placed in the parking lot.
ReplyDeleteAnswer: A lot.
A six-lane road (i.e. standard "We need cars for this shopping area" artery) is wide enough to play soccer on... and thus could be repurposed to soccer fields laid end-to-end for as many miles as the road goes.
"Free" parking is not free to society. It's a tragedy of the commons.
parking lots also tend to be massive flat nonreflective black surfaces with minimal vegetation: they increase local temperatures.
ReplyDeleteLarry Lade Scam artists, yeah.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Oh, probably. In my mind Branding is things like COKE: ALWATYS THE REAL THING on a coke bottle, while marketing is that but on a building. One I find much more aggressively gross. So, like, that my sweater is branded is ok but seeing that brand name unassociated with the product is gross to me.
ReplyDeleteAs for the big one: Free Parking isn't free.
ReplyDeleteFree parking:
- Destroys neighborhoods
- privileges cars over pedestrians
- kills people (width of road is a huge factor is likelihood of death of pedestrians and others)
- isn't free, as Tony pointed out
- Is prime real estate we should actually fucking charge for the use of. Instead, we give it over to the car-having elite and remove it from the people who are not so privileged
William Nichols will point out that the car having poor, of which there are many, would be seriously hurt by having to pay to park at the grocery store, for example.
ReplyDelete... Point out if we don't have free parking (and a host of other car-centrc nonesense), then they wouldn't need cars.
ReplyDeleteThat kind of feels like saying "If things were better, things would be better." While those things you are listing about parking may (probably, I don't really know) be true, removing free parking isn't going to change much of anything. Removing free parking benefits the elites who have money to pay for parking without caring, it benefits people who don't have cars but live in places with good public transport systems, it benefits people without dependents that need cars to get around, it benefits people who don't regularly have to carry more than a couple of bags of groceries. So... sure, it benefits car having "elites", but not having it will benefit the elites as well.
ReplyDeleteYou are kind of expressing hate for the bit that doesn't benefit you, but whose removal would hurt a lot of people who aren't as privileged as you. If you dealt with free public parking without first dealing with food deserts, the cost of housing that prevents people from living close to their jobs, the on average horrible US public transport system, etc. then you will make life worse for poor while benefiting the rich.
Edit to add...
I think, ultimately, what you are hating is car culture in the US and it's overall poor system of public transportation and layout of urban spaces. And that's cool, I don't disagree. It's just that free parking is a symptom, and focusing on that one symptom has a lot of roll on effects for the working poor and middle class.
Matt Johnson Getting rid of free parking also moves the costs for all that land back to the people who're using it: car owners.
ReplyDeleteThat is: Right now, free parking is a tax on non-car owners. That's bullshit.
And, as others have pointed out, a real bad use of land.
Free parking disappears rapidly once land becomes scarce (and folks are less scattered and thus car dependent). The only large free parking lots I know of in the more populous areas of the twin cities are attached to libraries or courthouses.
ReplyDeleteIf rural areas, or even just more-distant suburbs were to start charging for parking, lots of folks would suddenly have to think very carefully about how often they get to visit the library or grocery store. And those area often have just...empty space, not worth the price of developing.
Kelley Vanda weird! I can see free parking from the apartment. That is, free parking in a pretty dense area.....
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don’t like car culture, but this is blaming a leaf for the taproot. I’ve never year seen charge parking lessen congestion in a city- just make life harder for poor people.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say you can see free parking, is it literally publicly owned free parking? Like it's a city/county/etc. lot that is free and serves no alternative purpose?
ReplyDeleteWhere I live (Pittsburgh PA) that's just not the experience I've seen. The only free public lots are the ones attached to the bus ways that are there to encourage people to use public transportation. Hell, it's not even free to park at the hospitals here. I mean, sure if you are admitted to the ER they validate your parking but that is because they charge you and arm and a leg for being at the hospital and your insurance ends up covering it. Library have paid lots. The county buildings (court etc.) all have paid lots.... well, if they even have lots. Most of it is just trying to find a public pay lot nearish to the building you want to go to.
There are free lots at stores, but those lots aren't /free/. They are being paid for by the stores as part of their rent and those lots are monitored to make sure it's the people who are using the stores that are parking there (at least until you get farther out into the suburbs and then there are bigger store lots and they don't pay as close attention because there is just less need). Possibly it's being subsidized by tax incentives or something, but they aren't just publicly paid for lots. Even street parking around here is regulated with permits. Often it's allowed to park for free for a few hours but if you are parking all day or over night without a permit you'll be ticketed. So residents who park there are paying fees for those permits. I have to pay a fee on top of my rent to park in my apartment's lot.
I think that is part of my confusion here, our "free" parking experiences are just super different.
I remain surprised that it is the parking line that folks latched onto.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I find it easy to understand the rest, and agree with most. I don’t have beef with sommeliers, but that one seems understandable.
ReplyDeleteDitto to what Rabbit Stoddard said - with the added oomph that I know a sommelier? She's a small business owner (of a restaurant, with her chef husband) and works her ass off and uses her skills and position to bring attention to small, underappreciated wineries (frequently Greek, since that's her heritage), and I think she's awesome. But it's a small sample size and I don't know any other ones.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised at you being surprised. Like Rabbit said, other than the sommeliers thing none of that seems terribly controversial. As for the sommeliers I don't have a particular opinion. But free parking effects me regularly.
ReplyDeleteThe profession of sommoleier is, essentially, a mirror of our terrible society: some really hard working people at one end, being manipulated and robbed by the hierarchy. That master-class sommoleiers cannot, after some food coloring, distinguish red and white wine, I find to be ridiculously damning of the profession.
ReplyDeleteI mean, sure, that whole thing is ridiculous, but I think it's the connections to the vineyards and infustry that's the most important part? The sommelier's job is to pair wine with food, not put on wine tasting magic tricks.
ReplyDeleteNot that there aren't wine tasting idiots who think that's the point, of course.
ReplyDeleteAgain: They cannot discern white from red in a blind taste. If wines are indistinguishable, then pairing doesn't seem to make sense, either.
ReplyDeleteDoes not being able to tell a red from a white mean that all wines taste alike? I don't drink much of anything, so it all tastes like "bad" to me but people who like wine seem to indicate there are tones to the flavors and stuff.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson Yep, we think that. I even think reds give me headaches and whites don't. My wife keeps threatning to do a blind taste test to see if there's really anything in the reds. I'm pretty sure I'd fail it.
ReplyDeleteSo... (tongue in cheek) do you hate Sommeliers because they are leaders of a global century spanning conspiracy to make people think there are nuances to wine that really are all in the minds of people who view wine as an upper class and refined drink that only "elite" palettes can detect?
ReplyDeleteWhat you say as tongue in cheek, I say with conviction: The occupation of Sommelier is a centuries-long ponzi scheme.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols It seems a little more nuanced than that, but ok: newyorker.com - The Red and the White | The New Yorker
ReplyDeleteIt is absolutely astonishing the things you can convince human beings to sincerely perceive, by appropriately preparing them to expect to perceive those things.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an expert, but what I've been told by experts is "Whatever limits you intuitively think there are, you are likely laughably wrong. There are limits, but they are waaaaaay out beyond what you imagine. I can, easily, prepare you to perceive hot as cold, light as dark, and up as down, and you will."
"Wine has different tastes"? If sommeliers are con-artists (no personal opinion other than that it's plausible), then they're underachievers. Have some moxie, folks, at least convince people that drinking wine makes colors more vivid, or something. "Yes, this fruity dessert wine is the perfect complement to a viewing of Van Gogh."
Tony: As you don't know, do you know how much a bottle of wine can cost? It's astonishing.
ReplyDeleteCheap wine is pretty great tho.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Like, I have a general idea, and given that I have no illusions that I could tell any difference whatsoever between an expensive bottle and two-buck Chuck, it always strikes me as pretty bizarre.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that the industry, as a whole, isn't raking in money. I guess I'm just disappointed that people could realize the ability to fundamentally mess with global perception, and think only "This is a way to get rich." This is why we have no really proper supervillains.
Rabbit Stoddard Precisely. TJ's makes some damn fine wine, and some fine prosecco.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure I can taste the difference between, say, a still white wine and a prosecco because of all the bubbles.
I can taste the difference between a reisling and most other wines because it's super sweet by comparison. I cannot tell the difference between a $10 reisling and a $100 reisling. And 2 buck chuck tastes better to me than some pretty spendy cabernets. So from that view... yeah.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I /have/ had a meal where the wine was well paired with the food- exactly one. The experience was transcendent. I don't expect it will happen again anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteOh, and wiki suggests it is about as clear as I originally thought:
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Blind wine tasting - Wikipedia
... wine studies students can't tell red from white in a blind trial.
Unless you found a link to the original study and they indicate there that they are "Wine students", the wiki just says Undergraduate Students from the University of Bordeaux. Which is a regular school, not a wine-studies school.
ReplyDeleteIt's also probably of note that the way people describe wine (and other alcohols as well, like beer or whiskey) use a lot of descriptors that don't have a real firm meaning. It's much more art than science.
Links are at the bottom of the page, Matt. :-)
ReplyDeleteDianne claimed it was wine students. I've taken to believing her when she says she's done the research.
So I was pondering and I think what gets me about this list, more than the potential merit of sommeliers, is that you gave cops the benefit of the doubt by specifying what it is you don't like, but gladly threw all sommeliers under the bus. I think that's what got under my skin.
ReplyDeleteYeah. That was a bit of pro-active weaseling. I didn't want to deal with a pro-cop contingent. I didn't want to have to ban a bunch of people who go "cops are good" or even -- and I shudder -- "blue lives matter".
ReplyDeleteSo, I weaseled out and cited one specific behavior. One common specific behavior that I see cops do fairly regularly, even in Arlington.
As for Sommeliers: I figure there's a better chance of rescuing many of them than cops. That more of them are able to find another line of work than cops, who seem to make it a matter of personal identity.
So, in short: I agree. I was being a bit of a weasel.
William Nichols Firstly... Who is this Dianne you speak of?
ReplyDeleteSecondly... ah, I see I somehow manged to read the "[16][17]" citations as "[15][16]" and was just like "Those are blank citations....".
Matt Johnson "Dianne" is Dianne Harris, and one of my decisions in 2018 was: Believe Women.
ReplyDeleteDid... she post in this thread and I can't see it?
ReplyDeletenah. She's been following along at home. You're not, like, blocked or nothing.
ReplyDeleteI was just confused at the random name and was trying to figure out if that was a researcher mentioned in the article or something... oh... wait... (looks closely at her picture)... Is Diane your wife? Context makes the name drop much clearer.
ReplyDelete