The development explained at left may sound noteworthy, and I don’t discourage these people or anyone from doing whatever they can to slow the rate of environmental degradation. And yes, keeping plastic out of our waste-streams is a great cause.
But let’s look at this for a second.
Who, and at what expense, both financially and environmentally, is going to round up all these avocado pits and process them into utensils, then absorb the costs of product marketing and distribution? How viable will this enterprise be, especially at very low volume, compared to the $43 billion plastic industry?
I’m reminded of a would-be client, “Fertile Grounds,” who met me a few years ago and asked for my help. Their idea was to collect coffee grounds from Starbucks’ and process them into organic fertilizer. I asked how they planned to collect the coffee grounds, and they explained that they would have drivers of small truck with routes around the nation’s cities, who would drop off this feedstock to processing plants that would dry (over heat–where does the heat energy come from?), bag it, then sell it into the market of hardware stores and large home improvement centers.
Of the two, which idea is more inane? Hard to know.
I told the “Fertile Grounds” folks that I loved their name, but advised them to keep their money in their pockets and look for another business concept. I didn’t use the word “inane” at all in our conversation. That’s how to win friends and influence people. I should have written the book.
I met a guy today who does cyber security for dozens of military bases around the U.S.
Considering his career, I didn’t expect him to bring up his belief that the president of the United States is making horrible, unhinged decisions on our nation’s behalf. He’s especially concerned about the destruction of relationships with our allies, claiming that the stability of the free world is at stake.
He believes, and I hadn’t had this thought myself, that certain single-issue voters really don’t have a choice when it comes to voting. “Suppose your top issue is that you’re vehemently anti-abortion. You can’t vote Democrat, so you have to vote Republican even though you know that 99% of the rest of their policies are based purely on utter stupidity.”
IMO, this is a novel way of looking at the devastation of democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe, though I doubt it’s the controlling factor. In this case, the SCOTUS Dobbs decision allows states to do whatever they like re: abortion.
In any case, most of us are worried about our country’s future, and for good reason.
What kind of people are the celebrities in music and digital media as a whole? Not an easy question to answer.
Obviously, they’re talented. Most are well educated and many have the good looks that come from good genetics.
And yes, most of these people have the intelligence to see that Donald Trump is a criminal sociopath on target to destroy the U.S. while enriching himself beyond measure.
For every Jon Voight (see left) that are perhaps 1000 Robert Deniros, Bruce Springteens, and Leonardo Dicaprios.
But why are there any Jon Voights at all? The answer is unclear.
I once met a Princeton grad to whom I explained that a guy from my prep school in Philadelphia went to Princeton, and now is all over social media shouting, “Close the Borders!” and “English Only!”
My new acquaintance laughed hysterically, and said with a smile, “Yes, we have grads like this, perhaps one in a few thousand. What a waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can get that level of education by dropping out of high school and driving a truck.”
At left we see an example of a phenomenon that seems to be happening with increasing frequency: a life-long Republican saying “enough” and refusing vote for the current version of the GOP.
I applaud people who have both:
a) the intelligence to see where a party has crossed a moral line, and is now operating as a criminal enterprise.
b) the inner courage to do this, as it is hard for most people to admit they were wrong after a lifetime of kneejerk reactions, especially on a topic of such importance.
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