Note: Since Friday is usually podcast day and there is no podcast this week, I thought it would be good to spring something from the behind the green door. For those with a paywall account, this is a repeat. For the vast majority here, this is entirely new since you have failed to sign up for a paywall account. Perhaps seeing the error of your ways, you will reconsider your decision.
Here in Greater Lagos, there are several grocery chains. The small moonbat community is serviced by Whole Foods, of course. They empty their wallets buying exploitation-free artisanal pickles. A step below that is Wegmans, which targets the same sort of shopper, but a click down the socioeconomic ladder. The Wegman’s customer lives in a nice suburb and supports most of the current fads.
The next step down is Giant, which is owned by the colossal Dutch conglomerate Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. They also operate other regional brands such as Stop & Shop and Food Lion. Interestingly, the Food Lions in Lagos are positioned near ghettos, so their customer base is the polar opposite of Whole Foods. In the South, Food Lion is the standard suburban grocery store.
After that comes the specialty shops and local players. Aldi has started to turn up, offering a warehouse experience for food shopping. In Europe, an Aldi is like a big convenience store. They are not as big as an American grocery store, but they serve the same function. The ones I have experienced in America are a cross between Dollar Tree and Walmart’s food area.
The point is we have a lot of options. I tend to go to the Wegman’s near my office because of quality and selection. It is a little more expensive than the Giant, which is across the street, but the trade-off is worth it to me. The staff is also nicer than the people who work at Giant. For some reason, the people who work at the Giant stores near me are surly and unpleasant.
Starting on August 1st, Wegman’s has stopped using plastic bags. I found this out the hard way when I hit the checkout. I use the self-checkout. All of the plastic bag holders were empty. I asked the clerk, thinking it may be some weird shortage issue and instead I got a lecture about the environment from a moron. Interestingly, she said it was a new law in the county, which I know is a lie.
That says the lecture was part of her training. She was forced to memorize the official answer by store management, which she repeated when people bitched about the new plastic bag policy. Put another way, this means the company knew their customers would hate it and they knew the policy was not defensible on its own terms, so they had to produce a justification.
The main reason grocery stores switched to plastic bags was that they are superior to the old paper bags. Plastic bags let you carry more stuff. They rarely rip. They also make useful gloves for picking up after the dog. Paper bags rip and they really show their stuff when it rains. Carrying your stuff to the car on a rainy day is an exercise in frustration with paper bags.
Of course, the cranks behind these schemes will counter that you can always use the grimy canvas sacks that have become one of their totems. They apparently believe that if there is a climate rapture while they are shopping, Gaia will be able to home in on their grimy canvas sacks. Gaia also commands them to impose their weird morality on the rest of us, so you better fall in line bigot.
What makes the Wegman’s scheme more ridiculous is the fact that they are now charging for the paper bags. Each one is a nickel. There is a ceremonial reconciliation at the end of the checkout. This is another one those clues that the scheme is driven by something other than business interests. The people behind it want you to know that they are compelling you to obey Gaia.
It was clear that the law of unintended consequences is kicking in. Because packing paper sacks is a hassle, fewer people were in the self-checkout. The lines for regular checkout were longer. This means the store will be faced with staffing up or losing business due to people not wanting to wait all day to checkout. It also means more customer hassles to be addressed by the staff.
The most obvious result will be many people going across the street to the Giant, which is there to sell food, not preach the gospel of Gaia. No doubt the people at Wegman’s will see this as a triumph. They have finally purged those hidden fascists prowling the cereal aisle of their stores. It is the price they are willing to pay for the war on white supremacy and climate change or whatever.
The whole thing is another example of how this stuff works like a religion. The people who produced this crackpot idea are not doing it to make money. They are not doing it to curry favor with a specific audience. It is a public act of piety. This is all about proving their faith because they really do believe this stuff. Rational arguments to the contrary are just seen as proof of their eternal goodness.
It is one thing, but multiply this by hundreds of examples and it is not hard to see why everyone is so salty. We live in a world where a small cadre of lunatics are trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. Not only are those beliefs insane, but they keep changing almost as if the point of the religion is to be a nuisance. The Church of the Public Nuisance now controls public life.
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“Of course, the cranks behind these schemes will counter that you can always use the grimy canvas sacks that have become one of their totems. They apparently believe that if there is a climate rapture while they are shopping, Gaia will be able to home in on their grimy canvas sacks”
Thanks for pointing this out Z. Those sacks are reusable but are only really safe if you wash them in the laundry from time to time. The Lovely 🥰 Mrs. has a few in the trunk of her car as Trader Joe’s charges for paper bags and ALDI near us doesn’t have bags.
“The whole thing is another example of how this stuff works like a religion. The people who produced this crackpot idea are not doing it to make money. They are not doing it to curry favor with a specific audience. It is a public act of piety. This is all about proving their faith because they really do believe this stuff. Rational arguments to the contrary are just seen as proof of their eternal goodness.”
See Electric Cars 🚗🙄
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Coal-powered cars!
You know Newsome must have lithium mining stocks up the frickin’ wazoo. Betcha he’s in on an EV IPO as well as kickbacks, er, campaign contributions from the electric company (PG&E), the toll road “investors” (EV Only Fast Lane Tolling), and the Tesla charger companies.
Did you know there already ‘only’ 80,000 charging stations in California? It’s gonna be a scrapper’s field day, I tell ya.
Move over, fentanyl, the homeless won’t have enough shopping carts to handle their new industry.
The SubscribStar thing is worth it and I’m a cheapskate. For $5 a month, you get a couple of extra posts and half hour podcast every week. What else can you even buy for $5? And with inflation these days, $5 is like $2.
Also, Z Man deserves a few bucks from each of us for huge amount of content he puts out for free.
(Z, you have my address for the commission check, right?)
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Agreed. Love the SS site with the additional podcast and commentary. Putting that aside, have a wonderful break, Z.
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Poor choice of an acronym there
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… for once I disagree with you, Z! there was a time and a place, before over abundance, when people brought their own bags to shop; as to ‘grimy’ – the world is grimy, get over it, give your immune system a chance, dirt is good, kids get dirty – they live …
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It not really the grimy sac, its the assholes and all the other ideas that go along with it
If we all used the grimy bags, how long will it take for them to find something else to lecturer us about
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I love it! This is ancient wisdom. Good on you for being so bold and telling it like it is. In defense of Z, he’s just using snark to dehumanize the effete snobs that plague our daily lives (you should see what he does to libertarians). And in regard to grimy food sacks, there is this new invention called the washing machine (see I can use snark too).
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You have the right to disagree. What Z’s saying is they force others to comply with their beliefs. Do you want to force me, a handicapped person, to OBEY your bagging desires?
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Being forced to comply with the beliefs of others is what society is all about.
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From grimy plastic bags to St. Batholomew’s Day Massacre in 3…2…
Another great example of what I call the “Crazy” that infests our daily lives. But it’s not enough to just complain and rant about the latest outrage to come down the pike. We have to fight back as best we can. But arguing with these idiots does nothing, so what is an alternative that might actually have an impact? I have found that when confronted by one of these zombie lunatics, it’s best to just stare at them with a puzzled look on your face and hold eye contact for a little too long. As soon as they start to look away I like to reach down and slyly slide my jacket to the side exposing my 9mil (legal concealed carry). That always gets a reaction that warms the cockles of your heart. And it also sends a subliminal message too, the ancient kind.
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“I got a lecture about the environment from a moron”
Just curious Z, was said moron wearing a mask?
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Maybe this kind of person instinctually fears plastic bags? Genetically, or on a universal conscious level they all know that Pol Pot used plastic bags to weed out urbanite mid wit parasites.
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Wegman’s is headquartered in Rochester, NY.
Cuomo issued an edict to ban plastic bags in NY state early in the plandemic hysteria.
So, Wegman’s is essentially imposing a NY state edict on shoppers in other states.
It probably doesn’t help that the company is currently run by sisters Colleen and Nicole. I’m guessing the edict aligns with their personal morality on plastic bags, which they are now imposing on you.
They should just change the name to, “Karens,” and get it over with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegmans
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A slight correction. NYS banned plastic bags shortly before the Covid hoax but then Cuomo allowed them to reappear in the spring of 2020. Because somehow they were safer than bringing your own bag? I didn’t see the logic in it either but I guess that’s the point. I think they were once again banned in early 2021.
For a brief period of time the Covid God was at the peak of the Cult’s hierarchy, but soon enough Mother Gaia resumed her rightful place.
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Whole Foods here has no self-checkout. They plump for Amazon Prime at the register.
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It’s interesting that you had this happen in Lagos this past year as well. Here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, it also happened all of a sudden in the past year. A few noon at communities have had these bans for a few years now. Then all of a sudden over the past year, it seems rest of greater Boston adopted this at once. Likely a good example of emergent behavior controlling actions versus deep state.
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* dingbat communities. Very interesting autocorrect
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I thought you were going for “moonbat”.
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On second thought, that may have been it. Years of listening to Howie Carr while driving places with my mother as a child definitely added that to my vocabulary haha.
In NJ disposable bags are illegal for grocery stores to give out now, so you mist either bring your own or buy “reusable” bags. This is statewide. I bring boxes to the grocery store for my stuff.
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Wish they would at least do the Aldi model, whose model has no bags for solely price and efficiency reasons. Checkout goes lightning fast when they just put the food back in the cart and easily makes up for the slight inconvenience of putting your items in a box afterwards.
Another fun way to skirt the nonsense is a lot of these stores have free pickup services, where they obviously can’t do the ‘bring your own bag’ model. You get the extra benefit of not dealing with morons. Downside is, morons get your food, so you have to check the produce well.
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Yeah I like Aldi and Lidl, do you have Lidl in the US
Its interesting that Aldi are pretty low tech, but the checkout lines move fast
Lidl>>>>>>>>>Aldi IMO
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There are Lidl stores in the U.S. but not remotely close to where I live. Have a feeling the hyper-efficient model of stores are going to get far more popular are food prices continue to rise.
Then there are stores going the opposite direction. The Kroger next to me, already very expensive, is installing a Starbucks coffee area, and this is not a rich area.
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I like the canvas or reusable bags. Most are made of plastic anyway. The main reason for liking them is they hold a lot more weight. You don’t have to double bag heavy glass jars and stuff. I too hate the forced morality, but damn those bags are nice to use.
I don’t hate paper either. I Tetris boxes and heavy stuff at the bottom and throw the light and odd shaped stuff up top. The do okay on the floorboard of my truck without tipping over.
Home Depot has the absolute worst plastic bags. Other than that. I use whatever. Totally agree on the forced morality tho.
Enjoy the weekend.
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Unless you launder the canvas bags each time, for me they get real nasty looking with each use to the grocery store. and I simply don’t like putting vegetables and other produce in them.
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Fair points. Usually the veggies get those small bags in the produce area. I more concerned about meat juice. Some places have the produce bags for meat packages too. Not everyone.
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There was a study back a few years ago when this started. Organic material remains in the bags and that means all sorts of critters growing in the things. You are better off licking a public toilet seat than using these things, unless you boil them after each use.
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Yes. They are bacteria and
I may have the number wrong, but I think one of those Gaia “Sustainability” Sacks has the amount of plastic and material equal to 9000 of the old plastic bags.
As usual, this religion is probably a confluence of factions coming together.
We’ve all heard the, “America needs to be more like Europe”, trope from the Soyulent Elitist trying to sound refined and on the vanguard of culture and intellectual life. It is true, in Europe, when I lived there 25 years ago I was shocked when I had to pay for my plastic grocery sack. So, they vote for this to make America more like Europe – forgetting that the unemployment rate for their youth is extremely low.
Then I am sure the supermarkets and their lobbyists are happy to pick up a few tens of pennies in front of steamrollers on some significant percentage of their customer base.
Then I am sure the plastics manufacturers industry and the Gaia packed PR firms and their lobbyists are happy to collect new revenue and probably government grants and/or tax breaks for creating a more sustainable and equitable future. Finally you probably have the law firms who always need to generate revenue by writing and enforcing new laws in on the action.
Wait! Don’t forget Proctor and Gamble and their plethora of brands of soap and anti-bacterial rubs so you can kill the cultures growing in your Sustainability Sack!
Tie it up with a bow the armies of “well-educated”, urban elite who get enormous satisfaction imposing these costs on themselves and others knowing that thanks to them, Gaia and their ever poorer progeny will be safe on earth until Bezos can build their off planet birth center and transport all humans off of the planet to preserve it forever. They probably don’t know the fate of our planet when our Sun begins its long, slow death. They are too busy indulging themselves with their vanity and fact checking anyone who dares challenge their Science to protect Our Democracy and Mother Earth. Macaroni Doodle!
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oops. “the unemployment rate for their youth is extremely HIGH”
Not all bacteria is bad for you. The human body consists of about 30 trillion cells (and they are very large cells comparatively). In addition, we also host about 50-100 trillion symbiotic bacteria cells that reside within the gut and on our skin surface. These bacteria need us to stay alive in order for them to stay alive, so they have evolved as defense force protecting us from many types of foreign attack from the environment at large. This is known as the microbiome, and you need to keep it healthy if you want to stay healthy.
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On the plus side, after a few months you can probably throw that cloth bag in a big pot and have a nice 3-month stew made from the random stains inside of it.
Delicious.
Lawsy, Massa Z! Liz Lincoln Cheney gonna free Food Stamp and take him to de Promise Land!
Bah. The Mar-a-Lago stunt, like the Jan 6th dud before it, are just the scriptwriter’s excuses for the media to keep chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” like barking seals.
I say it’s a conspiracy hatched in the dark bowels of the Church of the Public Nuisance!
Gah, I would have loved to get your 2 cents on the Gavin Mciness arrest Zman. I suppose I’ll have to wait a couple days though, such is life.
I just heard about it a few minutes ago. I still know nothing about it other than he was dragged off the set of his show mid-broadcast.
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Yes I also first heard about it only an hour or two ago.
I guess the Regime is returning to the Proud Boys boogieman. Maybe some management class cubicle borg remembered McInnes on Joe Rogan and couldn’t take the irreverence.
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Agreed.
This is going to keep ratcheting up until November. Hand-in-hand with stories about the “red wave” dissipating.
Make the steal less obvious. Wish I could say I cared, but Republicans are so worthless it’s difficult to get very upset about it.
Unfortunately, the jack-asses in our state did ban the use of plastic sacks unless you pay for them, usually 5 cents each. I just realized while reading this that the way around it, and to show your contempt for this crap, is to buy a box of regular plastic garbage sacks and keep it in your car. Then take a bunch of them with you into the store when you shop and use them to bag your groceries.
The banning of plastic sack is stupid. Everyone I know uses them as trash can liners at home. We even had a place where we put all of our “used” grocery sacks so they were available to use as trash can liners in our home. I’m sure everyone does this. So all these bans on use of plastic sacks at checkout only doubled the sales, and use, of plastic sack.
The Gaia people are and always have been stupid.
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There is an active market for plastic grocery bags now. You can even buy them with amusing word printed to tweak the Gaia worshippers. Cheap too and they come with dispenser box.
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What is this ‘grocery store’ you speak of? Just kidding. Sort of lol.
Part of this comes down to this basic human need for struggle. Black people don’t have this gene by the way. Their struggles are unintentionally created just by existing. It’s the same reason some people who were raised in affluent suburbs move to some urban condo and take public transportation. The bum urinating on the light pole makes them feel edgy and sophisticated. You wouldn’t appreciate the city life. You wouldn’t appreciate the overpriced bento box for lunch. It’s more authentic than your plastic way of life.
One thing about those marketing VALS surveys is that they’re pretty darn accurate. We’re tribes of consumers, and our consumption habits are virtue signals to other tribal members. In modern life, we pay to belong, we buy to belong, we consume to belong. About 20-30% of the people in my grocery store are still maskists. They’re not wearing the mask because of the unmasked but the other masked. Many have graduated to the five layer M95 (the beak one). Notice how the five cent face diaper doesn’t hack it anymore. Everyone needs the beak one! In 1956, in a more honest society, it would have been buying the Buick over the Chevy and keeping it parked in the driveway to show your Chevy driving neighbors.
Since the 1970’s and 80’s we need more spirituality to our consumption behavior, since we’re not getting it anywhere else. Certainly not at church! That’s why the vaccine was a custom made secular, liquid communion host for the modern consumer. The modern day blood of Christ…
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Off topic but still relevant-I had the blinding light moment yesterday when I finally realized the Internet was slowly disappearing. It’s like the paragraph in the book The Running Man where Ben Richards slowly experiences pattern recognition when he realizes he’s being hunted. I was searching on Yahoo for some subject and no matter how many times I clicked on “next” it only kept returning the same 10 or so websites. I was reminded of the opener to The Outer Limits “sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear”. The ISP’s are happy enough to take your money for access to their customers by by G-d if you don’t fall in line you will be relegated to (wait for it-) The Outer Limits, unless you actually know the web address of the site you are looking for. Is there a yellow pages directory?
Try yandex. I’ve had a lot of success with that site. It’s not as good as google for most stuff, but you get all the hidden results.
no related to the thread, but I’m sincerely amaze by the quantity and the quality of your work 5 days/week, every week. Since years.
(Of course, I don’t agree with all (especially french history) but that’s a litte detail. In politics, nobody agree 100% with anybody)
Do you still work on a private company ? I hope no, would be the path to nervous breakdown with all this work.
Anyway, thanks again for your work 🙂
PS : I have asked this simple question on 4 sites, never get a serious answer : for God’s sake : what means “GN”‘ ? I see this expression everywhere, everytime
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The elders had banned plastic bags here in the D.R. of The C’ago. Too many were ending up in the big lake and local lagoons. But we must not speak of the grotesque numbers and volume of worthless face masks that are floating here, there and everywhere.
Quietly, plastic bags have returned and they represent environmentally sound policy because . . . now we have to pay a fee to use them, so it’s smart, right and proper. The big lake and lagoons are now becoming littered with BOTH ineffective face masks and plastic bags. Our Wokeandan Religion sayeth it is good.
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The war on plastics is all to fight something we are not part of. All the plastic in the ocean and the alleged ‘plastic island’ (caused allegedly by currents) is coming from Africa and India. Almost none of it is coming from the US.
Of course, they always do what makes the least sense. Why not force the soda companies to go back to making bottles with steel or aluminum caps? A single 20oz soda bottle and cap weighs more than all the plastic bags I used to get in a month combined. They have outlawed disposable plastic bags in Philly, but not soda bottles.
I commented on this back when you first posted it to Subscribe Star. I have half a dozen of said grimy sacks – all for free from various health food/supplement stores and Aldi when they first opened. I used to bring them, filled with plastic bags from other grocery stores, when I shopped at Aldi. Useful for carrying larger amounts slung on my shoulder. Since I generally find I buy more (and often non-grocery items) than I anticipate there, I now just use a quarter and the grocery cart. Then I sort and plastic bag things (some goes in the cooler chest, etc.) back at my car. The plastic bags always get used and reused until they rip. The ones used for meat become garbage bags for the meat’s tray and wrapping. Garbage can liners, carry sacks for bringing things I’ve bought for others, etc. There are a million uses for plastic bags.
I’ve also decided to go totally plastic for our upcoming move – no cardboard boxes and tape. I realize cardboard will be useful when/if we get a greenhouse and build planting boxes, but in the meantime they attract bugs, rodents, and moisture. I’ve bought dozens of lidded plastic totes to fill with clothes, dishes, knick-knacks, and smaller quantities of books and papers. Better for long term storage, which we’re going to need a lot of, since we’re significantly downsizing houses (but gaining multiple acres and a few outbuildings).
I am going to need seriously adjust my grocery shopping, moving from the plethora of store options in the DFW ‘burbs to a 20 minute drive to the closest small town. And more like 45-60 minutes to the nearest Walmart. There’s a local grocery chain and I learned there is an Aldi in one of the larger towns with a Walmart, but I’m sure there will be differences in what they stock. I’m spoiled for choice right now, and lately it’s a constant balance between getting a better selection and availability at a better price here, but then needing to pack it up for moving up there.