Courthouse News Service reports.
According to court documents, defendants did not dispute that acrylamide was a byproduct of the roasting process, but Judge Berle concluded they failed to meet their burden of proof that acrylamide was at “no significant risk level.”...Apparently, you're also getting acrylamide in "potato chips, French fries and some forms of bread."
[California’s Proposition 65 under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act] allows an express exemption from liability for naturally occurring chemicals found in food, but those exemptions do not apply to carcinogens that form during the cooking process. The fact that defendants did not add the carcinogen was not enough of a defense, according to the court.
Defendants’ experts provided risk assessments of the carcinogen, but they did not consider what effect it has when found in coffee. And a report from a laboratory on acrylamide provided evidence that was “unreliable and inadmissible because the analytical chemistry method” was novel and used techniques that were not accepted in the scientific community, according to the court.Warnings on everything — remember when that was a comic meme?
I don't know when this happened...
... but here's Cracked in 2009 when the comic idea was quite stale, "If Everything In Life Came With Warning Labels" — including a woman's ass with a warning label and a warning label that has a warning label that has a warning label that, etc....
IN THE COMMENTS: Beach Brutus said:
Seems like the burden of proof is inverted here. The State says you have to post a warning unless you prove the dosage is too small to be harmful. If the State wants to compel speech it should bear the burden of proving the product dosage is too high.Mark said...
Then, of course, South Park beat us to it decades ago with its warning label before every episode cautioning viewers how offensive it is and should not be viewed by anyone at all.I said, "I'll bet Mad Magazine did it in the 60s" and then remembered a cover from from 1962 (when Mad, which I'd discovered on my own at a news stand, was a stunning revelation to me (it shaped the whole course of my life)):
Posts
99 comments:
If you want your acrylamide you can keep your acrylamide.
But be afraid, be very afraid.
I'm surprised that they didn't already label the coffee as containing carcinogens, since a business can be fined in California for failing to disclose any carcinogens patrons may be exposed to when visiting. I think every hotel I've been to in state since the law was passed has a small sign informing you that you may be exposed to chemicals that are known to cause cancer.
In California everything does come with prop 65 warning labels. They are meaningless; law's not designed to help consumers it's designed to help plaintiffs' lawyers, just like the unfair and undefined business practices law that causes small businesses located in Arizona to get hit with class actions filed in California all the time. We routinely advise clients not to hire CA employees or set up any operations in CA, but if sell anything into CA you're still at risk. By far the most anti-business state with the very worst legislature. They know they are driving away businesses and just do not give a shit.
If CA is our future, we really are screwed.
Warning: Reading warning labels can lead to stress and anxiety.
Cigarettes should be banned outright because it is so toxic. I know that a black market will quickly develop to supply the millions of nicotine addicts, but at least children, pets, and all of us will be spared much of the toxic second-hand smoke. There is no hyperbole here; cigarettes are that bad.
Putting warnings on everything dilutes the warnings to meaningless. That's very basic psychology. Great example of raw democracy in action. Putting stuff to a public vote. Is the goal met? No. everyone ignores all the labels, and eat Tide Pods.
I remember when cigarettes were sold openly and cheaply. Civilization just ended.
Yet another reason for sane Americans to reject California legal reasoning.
The problem with putting warning labels on everything is that people stop paying attention to any warning. Including the few that are actually important to read.
Nice to see the left eating its own tail.
“Putting warnings on everything dilutes the warnings to meaningless. That's very basic psychology.”
As the MSM can attest.
Every week we learn a new reason that the law is an ass. If these things cause cancer it would be observed that people who do them get more cancers, like tobacco and some forms of asbestos. In these faddish things there is no incidence rate.
Labels on KY??
Reasonable people cannot even decide how to pronounce “acrylamide” let alone regulate it: for some chemists, the “i” in “amide” is long; for others, it’s short.
I'll give you my acrylamide when it's torn from my cold, dead coffee stained hands.
Seems like the burden of proof is inverted here. The State says you have to post a warning unless you prove the dosage is too small to be harmful. If the State wants to compel speech it should bear the burden of proving the product dosage is too high.
No labels in CA on KY, especially if it’s used at sex parties in Hollywood. Also, all ethnic foods like tortillas and especially deep fried ethnic foods will be exempted from new warnings.
Do other coffee shops have to show the same warning? Or does Dunkin’ Donuts get a pass?
Won't this apply to everyone who sells coffee?
It's more of an augury label than a warning label.
Prop 65, the law that cries wolf
Pretty much everything in California has to be labeled as cancer-causing. There is a whole cottage industry of lawsuits on this. This case will spur that along.
It's the old Burden of Proof trick used for another myth level "science" scam that is crafted on fake data and what if . You cannot disprove it except by paying for 20 years of controlled and repeatable experimentation.
All the Plaintiff's had to do was say "Cancer" and demand the defendant bear an impossible " burden of proof."
In the fullness of time, they will determine that the occurrence of cancer in people drinking Starbucks coffee is not statistically significant relative to the population that does not. That said, bananas should carry a warning label.
And they laughed at Tipper Gore's warning labels on records.
In California...
McDonald’s has to label their French fries with a prop 65 warning.
Any smart business owner will have a prop 65 warning on their building entrance.
Even my gym has a prop 65 warning.
You can buy prop 65 warning signs on Amazon.
Oh well, back to the Scotch bottle.
Cui bono? Well, the next step has to be a mammoth lawsuit to extract $billions from Big Coffee for exposing their customers to the horrors of cancer. And of course, a great portion of those $$$ will go to the selfless plaintiff lawyers who toil in the fields of justice and righteousness, all for the benefit of their fellow man. And their pockets.
What a crazy state. That's where Dallet, our Supreme Court candidate, flies to get money. Someone should ask her about this.
Warning: Everything On These Premises Is Cancer
Lawyers should be labled cancer causing agents.
California judges and the California Legislature are amazing! Is there anything they can’t do or don’t know? They are models for the future to which we should all aspire - you know, the one where the government tells us what to say, think and do.
Warning: Everything On These Premises Is Cancer
Yep, Charchar
I suspect there would be a market for a label that says something like:
There are many products and ingredients sold, displayed or otherwise used in this facility. Some, many or all of them may or do contain substances that have been proven to, are suspected of, or will potentially be proven to cause cancer. Act accordingly.
But then there are California lawdogs willing to sue that the above is too vague.
If the stuff we breathe out is now suddenly a pollutant that is destroying the planet, requiring all sorts of regulation and spending money to eliminate no matter the opportunity costs, then the most minute particles can justify volumes of warnings on packaging.
Technically, its not the coffee, but the brewing that causes cancer. Shouldn't every coffee machine have a warning? Up against the wall, Mr. Coffee!
Meanwhile, I get a bottle of some OTC drug, some cough medicine for example, and spend ten minutes looking at the labeling trying to find buried in all that verbiage the part where it says how much to take.
The information I want to know and is most important, I cannot find.
Then, of course, South Park beat us to it decades ago with its warning label before every episode cautioning viewers how offensive it is and should not be viewed by anyone at all.
Here's the thing about crazy California. The craziness starts there and then infects the rest of the country.
The EPA is rolling back the insane CAFE standards. But CA wants to keep them. So do car companies build and sell separate cars for CA only, or just one model for the whole country.
I seem to recall something about federal law supremacy from con law.
California might as well leave the Union. Just kidding, but this is nuts.
I want to hear Howard Schultz on this topic when he runs for president. Cancer man!!!
Anyone with a modicum of common Sense realizes that this is counter productive.
Therefore, I believe it's not about health or warnings to ones health.
Must be ulterior motives. Somehow the state makes money from this.
Warning: Democrats will give you cancer and rot your brain. Right after they steal all your money and waste it.
This is just an edge case of silliness, but its a good indicator of the local environment. California is indeed the future, and it will be disastrous.
Decadent societies sabotage themselves through the process of internally focused conflict, where power struggles within the elite trump external realities, because the rewards come mainly from exploiting government power.
I bought a replacement part for my car the other day at Autozone and it had CA cancer warning on it.
Can't remember what it was, but I wasn't planning on ingesting it.
And you cannot fix California, not within the scope of a human lifetime, there is too much accumulated capital (material, human) here to burn through. And that capital makes CA dangerous as it, unlike your typical shithole, is thereby influential. Californian elites can buy influence elsewhere much better than Hugo Chavez could when he was riding high.
Being born causes cancer.
Don't tell Californians, but carrots contain carotatoxin, which is a nerve poison. Sure, we have no evidence that it's dangerous at carrot-concentration, but you just can't be too careful.
Anyone remember Meryl Streep testifying to Congress about Alar? That's because one of its breakdown products was a hydrazine. Hydrazines are very, very nasty. Mushrooms contain them naturally.
And don't get me started on potatoes. How do you like your chaconine cooked? How about solanine? More toxic than cyanide, gram for gram. Better cut out potatoes, and tomatoes, and eggplants while we're at it.
Of course, sensible readers will recognize the base I stole by bringing up cyanide. Obviously people haven't been dropping like flies from solanine poisoning. The dose makes the poison. But California's regulatory framework is, You can't prove that there won't be harmful effects even at much lower levels than anything that's ever been shown to cause harm.
And that's right, you can't, because it's basically an impossible task.
I'll step off the soapbox with this: Ultimately, the air we breathe will get us if nothing else does. I'm not talking about pollution. I'm talking about dioxygen. It's a diradical. Our bodies are really good at finding and repairing radical damage. We catch almost all of it.
Now I'm going to get some more coffee. I need some, and I'll quite enjoy it.
The food bigots have been out to get coffee for years. There's something about coffee that doesn't equate with their value system. Maybe it's because coffee is mildly addictive or maybe just because people like it too much, but they're deeply suspicious of coffee. Garlic is just the reverse. They're always looking to say something nice about garlic. Olive oil, too........I'm surprised about bread though. I didn't think anyone was against bread. Over the years there's been considerable pro bread propaganda. It will be difficult to convince people that it's vile and carcogenic.
Not to mention this gem from the brilliant "Demolition Man": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puM1eT15NYw
"Then, of course, South Park beat us to it decades ago with its warning label before every episode cautioning viewers how offensive it is and should not be viewed by anyone at all."
I'll bet Mad Magazine did it in the 60s.
I remember a particular Mad cover from the early 60s (when it was my favorite thing in the world). I'll put the image in the post.
Buwaya is, as usual, spot on. It is impossible to overstate the looniness of California's politics, which is supported by a majority of the voters. Why this is so I'm still not able to figure out, unless it's the Occam's razor point that people get addicted to free stuff, and the Dems are expert at peddling this snake oit. I've lived here for over thirty years, during which time we have migrated from being a purple to an ultra-blue state. It's really difficult to point to any one thing that sparked this descent into leftwing madness, but it's definitely the case that the myopia and complacency of the state GOP played a role.
Our idiot governor is termed out this year, and yet we will miss him after his Stalinist replacement is sworn in.
There are millions of people world-wide who are drinking, and have drunk, large amounts of coffee daily over their entire lives. So where is the first documented acrylamide-from-coffee cancer case ?
It just got worse, sigh, on Prop. 65. Now if you sell something in CA, you need to list out the specific cancer causing chemical. Goes into effect Aug 2018.
New Proposition 65 Warnings - Proposition 65 Warnings Website
Here is a video of some small businesses that got hit by the Prop 65 shake down. From a small handbag mfg. to a golf club cover mfg.
Prop 65’s Small Business Victims
Just put a warning on California.
How to word it...
This crazy has been around for decades. Trying to make us afraid of everything in the world. Yes. Some things are dangerous.
I blame the 1960's and the Hippies. Unfortunately many from that whacked out generation actually got old and became in charge. Bringing their idiocy along with them. Note: I AM of that generation, lived in SF during all that summer of love crap and thought, even then, that they were morons.
Air from the Musical Hair
Welcome! sulphur dioxide
Hello! carbon monoxide
The air, the air
Is everywhere
Breath deep, while you sleep
Breath deep
Bless you, alcohol bloodstream
Save me, nicotine lung steam
Incense, incense
Is in the air
Breath deep, while you sleep
Breath deep
Cataclysmic ectoplasm
Fallout atomic orgasm
Vapor and fume
At the stone of my tomb
Breathing like a sullen perfume
Eating at the stone of my tomb
I'm looking rather attractive,
Now that I'm radioactive
Just watch me spark,
I glow in the dark (She glows in the dark)
Breath deep, while you sleep
Breath deep, deep, deep, de-deep (cough cough)
A few years ago I was on a diligence team looking at a industrial-scale green energy startup. The product and business looked very promising, but when we dug into the financials it was clear that they depended on CA state subsidies. Someone remarked that we were contemplating investing "not in the company so much, as in the stability and rationality of the CA state legislature."
Looks were exchanged around the table, and that was the end of that discussion.
They are not morons.
This all is not done out of some idealistic whim.
There is money to be had and political advantage too, in Sacramento factional struggles.
The exploitation of such laws benefits a concentrated interest versus the diffuse costs of compliance.
Except for large players like Starbucks, but they gain advantage as they have economies of scale in regulatory compliance, hence this is a competitive plus, versus say Cambodian-owned mom-and-pop donut shops.
buwaya said...
And you cannot fix California, not within the scope of a human lifetime, there is too much accumulated capital (material, human) here to burn through.
Nonsense. And nobody is letting go of that most delectable property.
The answer is crowdsourcing a la Unintended Consequences. Publish a hit list, of everyone who is ruining CA (I guess it would be huge), along with classifications/priorities and any available doxxing info. Police can't protect them all, and aren't obligated to protect anyone except themselves.
How to word it...
Plato's Cave. Hard Hat Area.
“everything gives you cancer”
— Joe Jackson, 1982
BL,
You propose revolution.
This will not happen until a spark ignites elsewhere, not CA.
Ray, they are probably taking a page from the EU.
There was a EU regulation called RoHS, "Reduction of Harmful Substances", which applied to Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Mercury (Hg), Hexavalent chromium (Hex-Cr), Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), and Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE). Most folks I worked with had no real problem with this - it seemed like a reasonable attack on some low-hanging dangerous fruit.
Then came RoHS-2. Which applies to, literally, every "chemical" in a manufactured or imported product. Because, why not?
A huge reason why I quit that part of my career is that the time I spent dealing with compliance issues had expanded from 10-20% (30 years ago) up to over 50%, and the additional value being provided to the world seemed trivial.
The Unintended Consequences are that things will become more expensive to manufacture and sell in California. Many companies will just say...forget it and not package special items for ONE State. Items will be expensive, scarce or not available at all.
The consequence is that we will travel to Oregon or Nevada once a month and buy that which we can't get or which is artificially cost inflated for the State of California. We already to this for tools and small equipment.
1) Everything does not cause cancer. Only a small percentage of materials tested cause cancer. Those that appear to cause cancer are then tested to determine exposure levels required to cause cancer. Exposure to harmful levels of those materials that cause cancer are rarely reached in normal conditions. The NIH is and should be the institution that determines cancer risks and required warnings. Even the NIH has critics because testing methodologies are open to challenge in regard to validity.
2) California has usurped federal regulations in many areas that is creating havoc with interstate trade. The number 1 violator is the CARB. Remember when auto manufacturers had to create a CA version of each model of car? The same types of greater restrictions exist for many other products. They have initiated their own VOC regulations that impact deodorants for example. Many consumer product companies just follow the stricter CA guidelines rather than create multiple versions of products, meaning stricter CA regulations become the de facto federal standard. This means everyone pays for the more expensive or lesser performing product.
3) The only solution is to increase the number of warning labels to point that everyone ignores them. This will be much easier than trying to roll back to anything remotely resembling common sense.
When everything is carcinogenic, nothing is carcinogenic.
Bill Hicks paid close attention to the warnings on cigarette packages. He avoided the smokes that said "Can cause cancer" in favor of the ones that said "Smoking cigarettes may result in low fetal birth weight."
"Many consumer product companies just follow the stricter CA guidelines rather than create multiple versions of products, meaning stricter CA regulations become the de facto federal standard."
Precisely. See above, about the power of CA.
"A huge reason why I quit that part of my career is that the time I spent dealing with compliance issues had expanded from 10-20% (30 years ago) up to over 50%"
All predicted by Schumpeter in 1942.
Thanks for the wording, tcrosse.
My take on California politics, especially Lawyers.
Unruh Act, automatic $4,000 per discrimination case is special, especially since what it covers has been expanded dramatically. Nice money for lawyers, that fund the democratic party in CA.
California has I was told around 50% of all ADA complaints in the US. There was another law that enabled anyone to sue a company if they were not ADA compliant. And since ADA rules are confusing (for example you have the CA requirement for bathroom signs, and the Fed, so you need 2 signs), it's open season on small businesses. So do you want to pay the $4,000 Dane Geld, excuse me settlement, or spend $20,000 initially just to fight it in court.
Prop 65 - put your warnings on everything.
Unions in the public sector - don't mess with them. Especially true for the Teachers, Nurses, Police, Fire, and Prison Guards. So we end up with prisons, where it's cheaper to send a kid to Harvard. Go figure.
At the same time, you have Prison over crowding due to 3 strikes your out and other voter frustrations with crime (hmm, would prison guards want to have more people in jail?), that has resulted in early release, that has increased the homeless population.
And the amount to steal for a felony is now $950, used to be $500 I believe. This was part of trying to reduce the prison population.
Silicon Valley has gone far left, has a huge amount of money, and funds politicians and ballots accordingly.
The Democrats did a brilliant job on redistricting, massive AstroTurfing, and it got the results they wanted.
Businesses have been fleeing California, and after the defense draw down that hit California especially bad (Texas congress people vote for Texas, no matter the party, California, nope). So a lot of defense companies left California. And many of people moved out of state with the jobs, and they voted kinda Republican.
Initiative Process that has been hijacked by special interests, with lots of badly written propositions, and it shows.
Term limits have resulted in Willy Brown being retired from the CA Assembly, but it resulted in an elected government that does not have time to learn their jobs. So they get influenced by lobbyists (hello Unions) and big donors.
For some reason California's infrastructure is falling apart. And it's VERY hard to build anything. Results is worse traffic and insane rents and housing prices. Recently some work has been done on Freeways, but light rail is the Holy Grail in CA.
Mental Health facilities got closed by Reagan, which has led to a huge increase in homeless.
With the basic destruction of the CA GOP Party, it has led to a super majority in the State Assembly, and the Democrats use that. So CA has basically become a one party state.
And the $15 an hour minimum wage is getting closer and closer to each year. It's $11 this year, and will go up a $1 each year to follow.
Agriculture is a huge industry, being hurt by water flowing to the ocean to save bait fish. And the increase in minimum wage, change in overtime rules, etc. I expect a massive increase in automation. And no new water storage has been built in CA since Governor Brown's Father's time, and the population has doubled or tripled.
Yes - I should move. Unfortunately I have family here :-(
Jerry Brown was governor from 1975 to 1983.
The same Jerry Brown has been governor since 2011.
It's no mystery why California is in the sorry shape it's in.
Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay.
The funny thing is, Jim at, Jerry Brown is the only adult in the room in California, otherwise the deficits would exceed the annual budget. Except for the train to nowhere, Brown has been pretty decent this time around.
Prop 65 is a cashbox for class action leaches.
One thing that drives me crazy is all this talk about California seceding or, let California secede, or whatever.
California is a beautiful chunk of land, strategically important, and chock full of ports, cities, and natural resources.
And we are just going to walk away from it? Let them ruin it?
Let them set up their precious progressive Utopia somewhere else! You don't get to just call dibs on the best piece of real estate to try out your crazy social experiment!
If their social vision is so good, it will work in some dusty patch of land no one wants. Kind of what happened with Israel, which is located on an arid, resource-poor sliver of land surrounded by violent jerks who want to kill them.
Or a mosquito-infested bogland like Minnesota that is sweltering half the time and frozen the other half.
The cultural state of a society in its decadence is complex and interesting.
Consider Hellenistic Greece, after its domination by various Macedonian factions. Greece and the Greeks were all ruled by tyrants of one sort or another, and suffered moreover from a net decline in standards of living and social status of the masses. And the state of the arts and letters declined as well.
The literature of Greece never regained the level of previous centuries.
However, science and technology bloomed. To a degree that was not seen again for a thousand years. Most of notable Greek science dates from this late period.
See below, the Clickspring video series on recreating the remarkable Anthykera mechanism, and more so, the techniques used to make it.
Clickspring Anthykera
However much technology improved, however, it had next to no effect on the material condition of the population.
The parallels with California are interesting.
"Prop 65 is a cashbox for class action leaches."
There are thousands of cashboxes of every sort, most of which do not require the effort of class actions.
Or a mosquito-infested bogland like Minnesota that is sweltering half the time and frozen the other half.
If you know anything about Minnesota politics, they're working on it as we post.
"California is a beautiful chunk of land, strategically important, and chock full of ports, cities, and natural resources."
Decadence starts in the "best" places, because they have the accumulated capital to absorb the cost, or the power to subsidize it through the tribute of the hinterlands. As with the reliance of Silicon Valley on its market position to extract profits from everywhere else.
This citizenship question on the new Census form raises interesting issues. If California has enough illegals it could end up shifting the balance of power in Congress. In theory might even become a majority. Surely the Supreme Court is going to not let that happen, even in principle.
Mad loved making fun of the original Fake News, which was the USSR's propaganda. I'll never forget how Mad Magazine explained the visiting USSR's Nikita Kruschef's peace offer toJFK:
He pledged eternal Soviet friendship in exchange for the Eastern half of the United States.
Now China wants the Western half.
We require many nutrients that in high doses are toxic: salt, sugar, water, iron, copper, silenium. In a country with the highest lifespan in history and declining cancer rates, the idea that we are being poisoned by coffee (a food actually found in clinical studies to increase longevity and reduce several cancers) and other stuff is simply scared-i-cat town.
Life is a fatal disease, get over it.
Jerry Brown is the only adult in the room in California
That's like being the tallest midget in the circus.
All the more's the pity.
Michael K said...
Nice to see the left eating its own tail.
It needs a carcinogenic warning in California.
Seems like everything has a "State of CA has determined this product contains carcinogens". It's just ridiculous.
Ann Althouse said...
Just put a warning on California.
How to word it...
Living in California may lead to cancer and death.
It has the virtue of even being true, by California standards.
California causes insanity, and should be abolished.
David Begley, the car companies obviously should (but won't) produce a 49-state version and just tell California to go to hell. Following Ronnie Barrett's lead is rarely a bad idea.
Althouse,
"Just put a warning on California. How to word it...
"Die M*th*ef*ck*r!"
Duh.
Lawyers suits and shirts are usually dry-cleaned, which should require warning labels on legal offices and, perhaps, on the persons of the lawyers themselves as they go elsewhere to do business.
And of course in all courtrooms and legislative offices.
I am in Sacramento a fair bit. Quite a few commercial establishments around the Capitol would seem to warrant such warnings as well.
If the Mad magazine cover "was a stunning revelation to me (it shaped the whole course of my life)" then what did you think of the National Lampoon dog cover?
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KWXxcQBqL.jpg
It should be obvious, but it probably isn't, that every food that you eat has many chemicals in it that if they were present in much, much higher quantities would either immediately kill you, seriously make you ill, or increase the odds that you will get cancer.
Furthermore almost all of these chemicals are natural and made by living organisms.
Heck, it should be obvious, but probably isn't, that if you were to eat your own body, that there is no part of it that does not contain many chemicals that if they were present in much higher quantities would either immediately kill you, make you sick, or increase the odds that you will get cancer.
The fact is there are a staggering number of things out there that are normally present in tiny amounts that are not actually harmful as long as they are only present in tiny amounts.
(Now I'm posting this before reading the comments, and expecting that I'll find that half-a-dozen people have already said the same thing, because possibly we are more knowledgeable group of people that California judges.)
Maybe we should shut down all those coffee houses, especially Starbucks.
That's not funny.
You will stop being flippant when YOU are diagnosed with terminal cancer. It will not do you much good to change you coffee-drinking habits when you are told you have metastatic pancreatic cancer. Graveyards are filled with people who said, "It's not going to happen to me." Now, go have your overpriced Caffè Mocha at Starbucks, and think Zen thoughts.
If this is the case, the streets of Seattle and Portland must be clogged with piles of rotting corpses.
"Graveyards are filled with people who said, "It's not going to happen to me."
I wouldn't think so - it has always seemed well known that death is inevitable, but I haven't been keeping up perhaps, and it may be au courant to think otherwise.
Ref Macaulay, "Horatius"
"Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: 'To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better / Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods?"
The only problem here is that part about how one dies - we will all die, but not every man is lucky enough to die well.
"Now, go have your overpriced Caffè Mocha at Starbucks"
Being a revolutionary spirit I have for many years now had my wife submit to my crotchets and buy extra large jars of Nescafe instant from Costco, as I am in it strictly for the drugs. Instant coffee is just as good for my purposes and much cheaper given the quantities I favor.
"but not every man is lucky enough to die well."
Do you mean in your sleep? On second thought, I'm not interested in what you mean by "die well." Spare me.
MAD played a similar life-altering role in my life as it did in Our Hostess's, and probably at about the same impressionable age. MAD joked about "rotting your mind," but actually what it did was make one more skeptical about party lines and BS in general--whether it were from the government (our own or Khrushchev's), Madison Avenue or Hollywood.
I won't spare you Trumpit - it's right there in that line from Macaulay's Horatius.
Or for that matter in any ancient tale.
I too liked Mad Magazine and its offshoots, particularly Mad's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions books.
On another note, it is ironic that the "premium" coffee industry, both large players like Starbucks, and the little shops like Madison has so many of, are run and patronized mostly by libtards. Go figure.
Buwaya, is it revolution, or merely the suppression of rebellion? It seems easier, or at any rate wiser, for the bees to eradicate the wax-moths than to fly off and establish a new hive while the Voice Behind the Veil brings the Great Burning and the sulphur-candle.
It brings Mishima to mind: Who would you kill if you could only kill twenty? Three? One?
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