044: The hills we die on
Does this title make it sound like I'm a ghost from the Civil War? š»
Hi friends,
You might have noticed some branding changes abounding recently. All I can say is that I never really ~loved~ the branding I had before and that after 23 months of writing here I have finally found a look I like. This is why you should always just start even if things arenāt perfectāimagine if Iād missed out on the last 23 months of writing with you all over something as silly as the ~branding~. Exactly.
In other news, I hope you liked last weekās interview with Elizabeth Held! Sheās great and her Substack, What To Read If, is a great resource if youāre looking for your next book to read. Our next interview comes out next Wednesday!
Also, thank you to everyone who sent me really lovely replies to my last essay. It was so kind of you to reach out and I really appreciate it.
I woke up this morning thinking about the hills we die on.
Iām not sure what was happening in my sleep that this was the conversation my brain wanted to have as I brushed my teeth. But, alas, I woke up thinking about the hills people are willing to die on and, more specifically, wondering which hills Iām willing to die on.
For those unfamiliar, āa hill I will die onā is an internet euphemism for āa thing I strongly believeā or āa value I hold dearly.ā It can be used seriously (āThe US needs a better healthcare system I will die on this hillā) or facetiously (āBanff is the best national park in the world I WILL DIE ON THIS HILLā).
Sometimes I think Iām unsettlingly dispassionateāI get riled up, sure, but I also let things go too easily. Itās hard for me to sustain any level of anger for long. Iām not enlightened, Iām tired.
But it turns out that there are hills I would die on. Maybe theyāre weird ones, but theyāre mine.
The Oxford Comma
In a list sentence, there should be a comma between the penultimate and the final item in the sentence. Without one, it leads to unnecessary confusion. If the point of writing is to convey a message, why would you deliberately make it less clear?
Case in point:
Without: I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.
This implies that your parents are Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, and if thatās the case, how did they keep that secret?
With: I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Adam Driver.
This suggests that Lady Gaga and Adam Driver are individual entities that you love, in addition to your parents.
We donāt pay enough for coffee
In true āpitch thatās been rejected a thousand timesā Collected Rejections vibes, I have been trying to write this story for years and no one would accept it. Because no one wants to hear it. Everyone thinks coffee is too expensive now, and no one wants to be told all the economic reasons why itās priced way too low. Iām here to tell you youāre wrongācoffee is cheap. Hereās why:
Youāre paying less for coffee than your grandparents did. The price of coffee hasnāt risen over time to match inflation, so it effectively costs less now than it used to.
This declining price doesnāt take into account the huge improvement in coffee quality that weāve seen over the past fifty years. Farmers and scientists understand coffee better now, and the coffee weāre producing is leagues away from what was being grown, roasted, and sold on grocery store shelves in the 1960s. Usually, an improvement in quality would lead to higher prices (see: Forever 21ās shitty clothes versus J. Crewās quality clothes.) but here it hasnāt.
While improvements in manufacturing can lower price (see: assembly lines lowering the price of cars), thatās not the kind of industrial improvement thatās happened in coffee. If anything, making coffee is getting more labor expensive because there isnāt good equipment to āreplaceā human workers. Moreover, these workers are having to get more and more specially trained to identify better coffee while itās still on the tree in order to meet the demand for higher quality coffee.
The current (and historic) price model for coffee was so low to begin with because of the horrifying amount of human exploitation that occurs at every level of the supply chain:
The raw coffee prices are set by heavyweights in the industry (NestlĆ©, Folgers, Starbucks, McDonaldās) who pay ridiculously low C-market prices so that they can roast, grind, and sell coffee at ridiculously low retail prices. They can do this because they can tell a farmer, āSell it to me for [ridiculously low price] or I wonāt buy any at all.ā Coffee is agricultural product that goes bad; farmers have to sell it. They canāt just sit on it for a year and wait for a higher bidder. But accepting such a low price means they usually canāt feed their families/pay their workers/save money. It also depresses prices across the industry, because other bad actors can then say, āWell weāre paying more than NestlĆ©,ā as if thatās some sort of accomplishment.
Slave labor and exploitative wages have, across time, served to lower wages. Think thatās a thing of the past? It isnāt! Slaves were found working coffee plantations in Brazil in 2018. Your coffee is cheap because the people that grew and harvested it were forced to against their will and without pay.
Meanwhile, in consuming countries, most hourly workers arenāt paid a living wage. In the US, baristas are classed as ātippedā employees which means that their bosses can legally pay them below minimum wage. (I put tipped in quotations because most of you arenāt tipping your barsitas.) The idea behind this legislation was that instead of having the owner of a restaurant or cafe pay their servers, that cost is passed on to you, the consumer. Which is ridiculous because covering costs is why we pay forā¦ everything. When you pay for clothes or groceries, your money goes toward paying for the supplies and workers that made that product available. That lobbyists ever got this law passed for food & bev is a feat of persuasion that I canāt comprehend because it runs directly counter to how the rest of the US retail economy works. What it means in practice is that people are pissy about tipping, so they donāt tip because they think thatās taking a stand. But the only person hurt by you not tipping is the barista; the boss is fine. The bossās salary and the cost of the cup of coffee were included in that listed price you paid. In many states and cities, servers and baristas can be legally paid $2.13 per hour.
The aforementioned declining price also doesnāt take into account the spread of coffee plant disease nor the ongoing climate crisis, both of which result in less coffee being available. Itās wildābasic macroeconomics teaches us that lower supply should raise prices, but people are so up in arms about their $3 coffee that suppliers wonāt raise prices. Technically your coffee should cost more today based on scarcity alone, but I guess it hasnāt gotten āreal enoughā yet to impact the market. Meanwhile, there are people living on coffee-producing farms in Central America who have never tasted their own coffee because they have to sell all of it just to survive.
Ashley Rodriguez, over at BOSS BARISTA, wrote a much better version of this article than I could ever hope to. Check it out:
You šš¼ arenāt šš¼ paying šš¼ enough šš¼ for šš¼ coffee.šš¼ I will give this lecture in person to anyone who complains outloud in my presence.
That story about Dakota Johnson locking people in Blue Bottle? Fake.
As hilarious as it is to picture Dakota Johnson locking people inside a Blue Bottle and the guests and baristas having to wait for passersby to let them out, it just doesnāt bear scrutiny.
First of allāalmost all food businesses have to have two entrances/exits. This is as much for fire safety as it is for food safety. (In the event of a fire in the kitchen, you donāt want workers have to go through the fire to get to the only exit at the front.) A lot of cities donāt allow you to take trash or recycling out through the front door during operating hours, including New York City. (I think the logic is because removing waste this way runs the risk of contaminating a guestās food? Thereās even a joke about it in a Friends episode, so you know itās true.) So the Blue Bottle in question has to have a back door that leads to a trash/recycling space. Even if Dakota Johnson really had locked people inside the Blue Bottle with the rope she carried in her purse (???), any of the baristas working that day could have simply gone out the back door, exited the building, and untied the rope. The idea that they would have to wait for passersby to do it is ridiculous.
The whole rumor reads like it was started by someone who has never worked in food and bev.
Second of allāI worked at Blue Bottle and even if no one there reported this story to TMZ, they would have told other coworkers. That story would have been passed through the national rumor mill. The fact that no one I know who works/ed at Blue Bottle (and many people do work there for years and years) remember hearing about this tells me itās fake.
And finallyājust look at the Twitter account that started the rumor. Itās all memes and jokes.
All La Croix is bad
Iām sorry, but it is. It all tastes like someone ate fruit then coughed on soda water and in the year of our lord 2022 I am not drinking something that a stranger coughed on.
Also I just constitutionally cannot drink something with a French name that is so mangled. (It should be pronounced āla khw-ahā!) And Iām not sorry for that!
Currently Reading
As part of my research for Unruly Figures, Iām currently reading Wallis and Edward: Letters, 1931-1937. Iām actually doing something fun and interactive with this book, and Iād love for you to join in!
In the Threadable app, groups of people can read books together and comment in the margins, holding discussions. It brings all the fun of a book club into the palm of your hand. Right now, Iām hosting a reading group to read a selection of letters Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII exchanged in the days before he abdicated the throneāa heady time in English history to be sure.
To join, download Threadable in the app store. (I believe itās only available to iOS users right now.) To join our Unruly Figures Reading Circle, use code 03701. Iāve even recorded a quick little video to show you how to join the group and leave comments.
If you have any questions, shoot me an email or leave a comment, Iāll get it and respond ASAP!
Tell me: What hill would you die on?
I keep these newsletters free by not worrying too much about typos and flow. But if you want toĀ you can tip me, as a treat.Ā
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You made it all the way to the end! Congrats! Hereās a funny tweet:
Also, the aforementioned Friends clip with Larry the Health Inspector Guy:
Start at 2:59 for the joke Iām referring to.
Re: Readable - I joined the group and started reading from chapter 10. My questions: How can I familiarize myself with the preceding chapters and relevant discussions? For how long will Chapter 10 be in my disposal, now that I joined the circle only today? Could you please give any links to navigation rules at Threadable? - I am using an iPad, and seem to have no readily available access to their Support. BTW, the link to a video tutorial isn't working.
Hills I will die on:
- yes, you can absolutely use soap on your cast iron (but please, SEASON IT, oil it, love it).
- pineapple belongs on pizza