February 10, 2023

Consider the white supremacy of requiring cooks to switch from gas to electric.

I'm reading "Will most chefs ever trade gas stoves for induction? It’s complicated" (WaPo):
The art of Chinese stir-fry cooking is difficult, if not impossible, to replicate with induction burners, even those specifically designed for woks, in part because heat transference occurs only when the pan is in contact with the electromagnetic cooktop. The way flavors are developed — such as oil singed as flames lick up and around the pan — are virtually unique to stir-fry cooking, especially those dishes that call for wok hei, a kind of charred quality that occurs when ingredients are tossed in a well-seasoned wok. For these reasons and more, chefs who specialize in stir-fry cooking will probably never surrender their high-Btu gas burners.... 'It’s kind of like asking, "Why can’t a guy doing Texas barbecue just use an electric stove instead of a wood fire?" Well, that’s not going to happen because that’s really the essential part of the flavor of the dish'...."

Disparate impact. 

51 comments:

D.D. Driver said...

Consider the white supremecy of keeping guns "off the streets." I've never seen a gun lying on "the streets." Seems like "the streets" is just a euphemism for some kind of people. But what kind of people do "the streets" describe?

White supremecy only matters when they say it matters. Which is the ultimate privilege when you think about it. You can just flip your concern switch off and on when it suits you.

gilbar said...

won't there be Special Exceptions, for People of Color to be able to continue to use gas?
Isn't this rule, Just for white people? (like all rules?)
BUT! Are asians actually People of Color? They do good at school, at don't do much crime..
Are you SURE that these asians aren't white people?

R C Belaire said...

"You will consume raw crickets, and you will enjoy them." -- Klaus Schwab, WEF.

MadisonMan said...

When the French Laundry starts serving Gavin Newsome food that isn't cooked with gas, I'll start to think that this idea is about something other than Democrats trying to look like they're doing something, anything.

Caroline said...

#whenliberalpietiescollide
The same people who shout and rant on about imperialism nevertheless want to export the rainbow flag, vaccine obsession and The Pill to every benighted 3rd world country. Meet the new boss! Same as the Old Boss!

tim in vermont said...

"The way flavors are developed — such as oil singed as flames lick up and around the pan — are virtually unique to stir-fry cooking"

What bullshit, French cooking depends on developing flavors in the same way. Then again, a good working definition of "virtually" is "not really."

AlbertAnonymous said...

Women and minorities hardest hit!

Kate said...

Did WaPo call out white supremacy in the article, or is that strictly the Althouse addition?

It's perfect. I doubt the paper recognized its own cultural bigotry.

Chris said...

Ha ha ha ha ha!!! I knew it. I knew that eliminating gas stoves would be considered racist! Man my bingo card is full.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

The fake-green killjoy authoritarian left want to ruin everything...

Everything. It's for your own good.

The universe laughs... with universal laughter.

re Pete said...

"But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain’t the time for your tears"

Balfegor said...

The issue isn't really a racial one, but when trying to persuade people with a fundamentally racist understanding of the world, I guess you have to speak to them on their own terms.

That said, while there's crossovers between environmentalist progressives (who are the ones pushing for gas stove bans) and race progressives, I don't think environmental progressives approach the world from the kind of reductionist race-first perspective that race progressives do. Yes, there's rote recitation about how climate change will harm women and minorities most or whatever, but the remedies proposed (e.g. banning combustion vehicles, carbon taxes, etc.) would almost always hit non-Asian minorities harder than Asians or Whites because they're usually poorer than Asians and Whites, and also less advantageously positioned to make money off the spending required to implement those kinds of policies. You hear those tensions between progressive factions creep in when people complain about how we spend all this money keeping national parks pristine but very few Blacks visit. So I think rhetoric about helping minorities by pursuing environmentalism is pretty much the same as this -- an attempt to appeal to those progressives who see everything through the lens of race by trying to use their own framework of values and morality.

Kind of an uphill battle if you lead with Asians, though.

Breezy said...

Not white supremacy, climate change cultism, which includes people of all stripes who want the rest of us to just do without any of the things that bring us joy or improve our quality of life.

Dave Begley said...

The future of planet earth is at stake. Sacrifices must be made.

alanc709 said...

When they start serving cricket-based meals at the White House for every meal, without exception, maybe I'll start to believe in the sincerity of the left. How on Earth can anyone take the imbecility of these people seriously? Europe moved away from coal and gas toward "renewables", and as a result, wood-burning furnaces and stoves have become very popular there, because people don't like freezing and starving in the cold. So, the green agenda is literally devastating the forests of Europe. I'd call it an unintended consequence, but why would I give the left the benefit of any doubt?

hombre said...

It is no longer surprising that the leftmediaswine seize on every bit of lunacy and strive to perpetuate it. Nothing is crazy if it might further the agenda, preferably the Chicken Little nonsense.

Gas stoves? Really? The loons may even lose my Portlandia son, who cooks with gas indoors and outdoors, with this latest BS.

As for the "white supremacy" angle, isn't the climate change hysteria almost entirely a white folks' phenom?

rhhardin said...

Calvin Trillin accounted for the NYT food critic not liking Trillin's favorite Kansas City barbecue house by figuring out that the counterman was so impressed by the food critic's austere demeanor that he served his ribs with tongs instead of his hand, and all the flavor is in the counterman's hand.

Achilles said...

Climate Change is a cult.

It is an evil group of people who want to inflict misery and suffering on as many people as possible.

They have corrupted "science" on a wide scale turning "research" into propaganda and confirmation bias. They destroy the careers of any scientist that dares question the dogma of the cult.

They are incompatible with a free society.

Bob Boyd said...

When we're talking about what this or that part of the new central-planning, climate regime is going to look like, we've already lost.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Climate change politicians are forgetting who is master and who is servant. Government is the servant of the people who are master. The people choose what form of energy, heating and cooking they want to use, not the servant. These DEMOCRAT politicians are nothing but fascists and neobarbarians, but I repeat myself.

mongo said...

Gilbar said, "BUT! Are Asians actually People of Color? They do good at school, at don't do much crime.... Are you SURE that these Asians aren't white people?"

That is a real problem for the grievance industry, and so they created a special category - "White adjacent" - for Asians so that they won't get to share victimhood. See also BIPOC, meaning Black and Indigenous People of Color, again designed to exclude Asians from victim status.

It's important to keep up with these things so you can avoid giving offense!

planetgeo said...

Pretty obvious that those who reflexively toss around "supremacist" accusations are the very ones who exhibit supremacist tendencies and impose autocratic dictates. Thus the cancel culture, restrictive speech codes, and crazy elimination of real energy options by the "woke/black/LGBTQ/environmental supremacists".

tim in vermont said...

"The way flavors are developed — such as oil singed as flames lick up and around the pan"

Side note, this produces MSG, which is not some frankenchemical invented in a lab, but a naturally occurring substance that was first isolated from seaweed, in an attempt to understand "Flavor #5," so a workaround would be to simply add MSG to the food. Hmm....

tim in vermont said...

There are even blog posts out there about how to cook without producing MSG. That's because the world is full of nuts.

Duke Dan said...

Maybe the problem is named wrong. It is actually government Karen know it all supremacy that is the real problem.

AZ Bob said...

"It's complicated."

I bet it is.

Yancey Ward said...

Funny how it is just a conspiracy theory about how the Left plans to take away gas stoves, but we are now getting a spate of stories from the Left about how to get around opposition to taking them away.

ronetc said...

Taxpayer Funded says,"The universe laughs... with universal laughter." That gives man way too much standing in the universe and is a good time to post

A Man Said to the Universe
BY STEPHEN CRANE

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

tim in vermont said...

I am surprised they haven't taken the tack that cooking with gas tends to produce MSG in foods, and so must be banned for health reasons. I shouldn't give them ideas.

BIII Zhang said...

I would remind people that the White House uses gas stoves.

But then again, they still had black people fetching white presidents the coffee through Bill Clinton's term.

MayBee said...

When I lived in Tokyo and China, we had gas stoves. Many homes only had a gas hob, because they didn't really use an oven for their traditional cooking.

This push to make Americans change seems very suspect to me.

Sebastian said...

"that’s not going to happen because that’s really the essential part of the flavor of the dish"

Well, that assumes we have a right to flavors. We don't. Just as under prog rule we don't have a right to free speech, bearing arms, keeping our own money, protecting kids from mutilation, and driving ICE cars. Rights are privileges. Our overlords decide.

Michael said...

Infuriating that we are even discussing this.

ALP said...

Isn't most BBQ done outside? Bad analogy.

We have the best of both worlds: electric indoors, gas outside.

Ann Althouse said...

"Did WaPo call out white supremacy in the article, or is that strictly the Althouse addition?"

Strictly me.

Ann Althouse said...

Must credit Althouse.

n.n said...

A progressive consensus (PC) with albinophobic braying.

Ann Althouse said...

Unless you think it's implicit in the text I quoted. Then I took it to the explicit level.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Stop Plate Tectonics! It is tearing the globe apart.

Joe Smith said...

"The fake-green killjoy authoritarian left want to ruin everything..."

Exactly this.

The left are a bunch of authoritarian, nanny-state scolds.

In the words of St. Billy of Joel, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints..."

PM said...

Over two thirds of all households in India - nearly 800 million people - cook on traditional stoves using solid bio-fuels such as wood, agricultural waste, coal and dried cattle manure.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

It's cultural hegemony, which has never bothered progressives at all. My beef is with the Big Picture, that is we are transforming from a country that idealized CHOICES as the ultimate expression of our freedom -- from the ridiculously varied fresh produce in our supermarkets that so scared the Kremlin when they visited to the old insurance model wherein a guy could buy a catastrophic policy for medical emergencies and pay cash for everyday expenses -- to a country in which the Elite dictate fewer choices for the masses and make the remining ones we retain more expensive. And the most recent trend is just to pretend we can cut off some choices altogether, like "ending oil."

What will all the smart Elie do for the million things made of plastic they depend on? There is no automobile EV or not that is made free of petroleum products. "No oil" means no vaseline, no jet fuel, no candles, no smart-phones, no lubricants for most purposes, no computer chips, no 3D printing, no high-speed presses or newsprint ink, no television or insulation for wires unless they make it out of that rat food currently ruining car harnesses all over the world, no heavy equipemt, no trains, no large farms, but then there'd be no fertilizer anyway...

So no oil means no oil for ANYTHING, right? Or will the elite keep a boutique refinery to make their goods? Does the above plan sound like it will be executable "in ten years" like Joe keeps saying? Are we really going to revert to the Stone Age just because people "believe in" a warming that never has shown up, despite the 30-year warnings?

If not, if the above is NOT their plan despite it being said so often by so many, then what exactly is their plan? The oil industry is being killed off. Exploration is shutting down. States are outlawing new natural gas hookups. The changes are being made. So if it's not for a "no oil future" then what is this pain being inflicted on us for exactly?

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

MadisonMan said...
When the French Laundry starts serving Gavin Newsome food that isn't cooked with gas, I'll start to think that this idea is about something other than Democrats trying to look like they're doing something, anything.

Can't get more ignorant than that! The ban is in effect here Mad Man. Now. No more Gas. No gas heaters can be installed and no stoves. They won't even run a line to a new house. So why do you need to wait for it to affect Newsome before you believe that something is really happening? Don't you believe it's happening already? Do you need a copy of our gas bill to see that this restraint of trade has already pushed the cost up over 60% to us lowly consumers?

"Democrats trying to look like they're doing something, anything"? Really? You don't think they ARE doing something? You're posing. Your party is acting.

stlcdr said...

"Cooking with Gas" is a common British euphemism for "things are going well".

Jay Quenel said...

I'm thinking its time to add Marie to Karen.
Where the historical Marie was "Let them eat cake!" the modern Karen Marie (MarieKaren?) is

"Let them eat crickets while we have our Waygu beef."

boatbuilder said...

This is just part of moving the ball forward. The absurd premise-gas stoves are bad—is taken for granted; now we need to work out the details and exceptions.

EdwdLny said...

These asshats don't give a shit whether you like what they demand or not. They don't give a flying God damn whether their "science" is bullshit or not. These shits are exactly why there is a 2nd amendment. So, do the world a favor and terminate these assholes. Preferably before it breeds. I understand that pigs will devour anything. Seems like a win win. Save the world from ignorant fascist turds and create low cost pig feed. KMA,LMHB, and bugger right off. Enjoy your weekend.

Mikey NTH said...

A Prayer:

Dear Lord, please save me from those who are detetmined to save me gor their own good.

Amen.

mishu said...

These clowns come off like Phil Hartman's Frankenstein. "Fire bad!"

D.D. Driver said...

Anyone else think it's weird that we would bam gas stoves and put a warning label on cigarettes?

Bender said...

As with most things progressive -- yes, the outlawing of NG is white supremacy, white privilege at work.