The Hateful Cyclist

Jerry Brown Vetoes SB 910

He did it. He folded under CHP/AAA pressure and he vetoed it.

I haven’t been that hateful of a cyclist recently, but now I’m pissed. Fuck you, Jerry Brown. Fuck you very much.

Shoddy Imitation of Luxury

distorte:

Similarly with the plongeur. He is a king compared with a rickshaw puller or a gharry pony, but his case is analogous. He is the slave of a hotel or a restaurant, and his slavery is more or less useless. For, after all, where is the real need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They are supposed to provide luxury, but in reality they provide only a cheap, shoddy imitation of it. Nearly everyone hates hotels. Some restaurants are better than others, but it is impossible to get as good a meal in a restaurant as one can get, for the same expense, in a private house. No doubt hotels and restaurants must exist, but there is no need that they should enslave hundreds of people. What makes the work in them is not the essentials; it is the shams that are supposed to represent luxury. Smartness, as it is called, means, in effect, merely that the staff work more and the customers pay more; no one benefits except the proprietor, who will presently buy himself a striped villa at Deauville. Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want. If the nonsense were cut out of hotels and restaurants, and the work done with simple efficiency, plongeurs might work six or eight hours a day instead often or fifteen.

— Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

So true, so true. Think also about the daily commuter in his car. Sitting in traffic. Wasting money in faux leather seats. If the nonsense were cut out of commuting, you’d live in a simple flat near work and ride your bike there.