pick up your sword, bruh

venmo

1. "insisting that eggplant can never take on the genuine character of yumminess is vulgar materialism"

this claim rests on a premise which i did not in fact put forward. i do not argue that eggplant possesses an immutable, ahistorical tendency towards grossness; only that a real, existing dish containing eggplant, under the current historical circumstances, cannot be considered by any but the ignorant or the wholly unscrupulous to be yummies. on the frontier of scientific development, advances in genetic engineering, or the invention of new quality culinary techniques, may well lead to breakthroughs producing entirely new categories of yummies in the future. but we are not utopians, and so we make a clear distinction between such speculation, and the material conditions of the present. just as the real science of nuclear chemistry had no relevance to the false claims made by pre-modern alchemists of transmuting the elements, we should not allow the invocation of what might be possible under a higher stage of development to misguide us. for by this rhetorical sleight-of-hand, i.e., hinting coyly at a form of eggplant which, by some unknown technological process, takes on the true nature of yummies, jiejie implies thusly that the dish which is right now in front of our eyes may constitute such an instance, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary! whether eggplant could be converted into yummies in theory is entirely beside the point. the dinner of tomorrow, while a compelling topic in its own right, must not blind us to the dinner of today.

2. "it's good for you"

when it's on cable, they've timed the commercial breaks in a way that generally isn't as disruptive. someone took the time to "reformat" the movie for tv.

ads on poob always KNOW that they're on poob and want me to interact with them or click them. the number of QR codes or ads-in-separate-ad-framing/window are infuriating and jarring.

cable commercials are just stupid little skits i can mute to go use the bathroom.

ads on poob are less than 2 minutes--not enough time to do anything, but enough time to piss me off.

cable commercials are 2-5 minutes, which is enough time to go do something/bathroom or snack break, or talk to whoever you're watching with.

ads on poob are the same 3-4 commercials over and over and over and over again, often cutting to them immediately with no warning, and poob struggles to like, catch up to the fact that it's having to show a different progress bar, or a different timer.

cable commercials, esp during primetime, generally cycle through like 10-15 minimum, so you can go an ad break or two without seeing the same commercial. and they usually only pop up during quiet moments, at regular intervals, so you can see them coming--and there isn't a weird lag/loading time.

in both cases i am being accosted by advertisements and treated like a consumer to manipulate and exploit. the volume changes on cable and poob, the brightness level is eye-searing in both cases.

but poob doesn't respect that i'm here for the MOVIE. cable, thanks to preexisting, decades-old norms around broadcast television, still kind of does. kind of. it's easier to ignore those commercials than the ones on poob.