I had no idea this even existed, but I’m a happier person for knowing that it does. Thanks for making my day brighter.
RIP, Williams.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1050651920959187
(No onebox, so here’s the abstract:
Abstract
COVID-19 has forced many businesses to adjust their communication strategies to fit a new reality. One surprising example of this strategy adjustment came from the company Steak-umm, maker of frozen sliced beef. Instead of finding new ways to promote its products, the company shifted its focus to the public’s urgent needs, breaking down possible approaches to navigating information flow during the pandemic. This resulted in overwhelming praise on social and news media, including almost 60,000 new Twitter followers within a week. Drawing on expectancy violation theory, this case study examines Steak-umm’s strategy, the content of social media responses, and why the approach was successful.)
So now we live in a world where Steak-umms® is a voice of science and reason and the US Government spouts conspiracy and misinformation. 2020 is reaching new levels of insanity all the time.
And - bad as they are - they’re still better than Trump Streaks.
In the 2020 Surrealist Masterpieces Art Museum that I carry around in my head, I have new entire wings hastily added to hold an already heavily curated museum experience.
My Surreal New Words in 2020 repository has added a mezzanine, and a gift shop. I am contemplating silkscreened tea towels for holiday gifts this year with some of those words. (I make all birthday and holiday gifts apart from gifting new books that set my soul alight.) Finding positivity in the newly coined words and portmanteaus is hard so I lament the material I’m looking to work with here.
No wonder I’ve been getting more migraines. It’s crowded in here.
It’s amazing you’re still passably sane since you’ve got way more to keep track of than me by a huge margin.
The Social Media as Found Art and Humor gallery has a wall for the CranRas FleetwoodMac guy (Nathan Apodaca , a.k.a 420DoggFace208) and now this Steak-umm angle, alongside the Mike Pence’s head housefly multiple Twitter accounts.
We boxed up the “binders full of women” exhibit years back and threw it away. Also tossed out: “heckuva job, Brownie!” and “ketchup is a vegetable” and “it’s morning in America.” Man, that one was really surreal. I can barely believe how much I miss those bad years because 2020 is so much worse.
Mental curation is fkn exhausting.
When I die, it’ll just be another fire at the Library of Alexandria, but then, each person takes exactly one of those inside him/her/them every time with every passing. This is what I want the be-numbed fascist-loving People Who Are the Reason Why We Can’t Have Nice Things to understand. I guess they’d have to want to first.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
–Shakespeare, The Tempest
damn well said, sir. I really feel that sentiment reading your words and ruefully wish for that same descaling of eyes in those who choose not to see the truth of what you said here.
but they have to want it first.
truth.
Nope - I did not have a army of zombie mink on my 2020 bingo card.
And suddenly I have some fashion ideas for Melania.
As it was foretold in the tales of prophecy …
“ Edison International is preparing to potentially cut power to 70,000 customers on Thanksgiving Day, mainly in the mountains of Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, according to the power company’s website.”
Sorry Californian friends.
710 freeway extension. Never gonna happen. (And if it did, it will take a minimum of 25 years for the big dig.)
This is so stupid – we have all these vacant homes and we have a lot of people who need housing.
Agreed.
This dispute is years-long.
Was soooooooooo hoping for a positive outcome at least in California.
I have friends working for social justice there and was tracking this issue.
FWIW, re housing the homeless in California…
January 2020:
March 2020:
Now this.
It’s almost like bad faith actions by people of all sorts seem to be or are in fact accelerating prior to the exit of Cult45 from the WH. Gosh.
The U.S.'s immoral free-for-all inside its own borders has never been more visible apart from … ok… during its past period of enslaving Black people, and killing indigenous peoples. Certainly the internet and the ubiquity of cameras on cell phones has made the information more accessible to more of the public. No more pretension, just all the blatant, emboldened whole U.S. record of broken treaties with the indigenous peoples here and elsewhere writ larger: broken social contracts and norms swept off the common table for all but a few of us. [Arguably, twas ever thus.]
Looking for a Zinn-like People’s History of the United States sequel documenting the 
shitstorm.
I regard this and this and this from our BBS, and the Lest We Forget the Horrors: Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes currently hosted at McSweeney’s, as part of the “permanent” accessible historical record, in case historians what to take the project on themselves, or in case anyone at the ACLU etc. wants to take a crack at prosecuting the transnational crime syndicate now installed in U.S. government (assuming there’s still a shred of rule of law in the U.S., going forward).
It’s almost like one could capitalize Enemies, Aid, and Comfort by stringing together a few events…
Huh… yeah…
Coincidence?
Putin probably gave a punch list to finish prior to January 20, 2021 because I sincerely doubt has any clue what government even does and where to punch us next. Putin really must have him by the short hairs.
ETA:
He’s making a list, and checking it twice, gonna find out who…
