I still find it hard to believe that a few days ago I was at a Colonie Planning Board Meeting where the chair Steven Heider was very concerned that a proposed warehouse in Albany Pine Bush was woke enough – had enough different colors in the steel facade – to appeal to the town sensibilities. They were not concerned about the impact the warehouse had on real people’s lives – the lost Pine Bush, the traffic, or safety of the facility – just the color of steel on a warehouse.
Aesthetics, the root of being woke, is really an interesting concept. We all want beauty in our lives, we want the communities we live in be places that stimulate the mind through the use of color and style. The problem with woke is it goes no deeper then some paint. Inherit in the concept of woke is such materials are cheap and quickly made dated, a facade that covers over the real substantive problems in design or society at large.
I care about aesthetics a lot. I want the things I own to be beautiful and elegant, not just serve a utilitan purpose but give myself some joy. I can rant about how much I hate the look of vinyl siding and asphalt roofs – or talk about how superior tongue-and-groove board is to dry wall. But how much of it is really is aesthetics and not reality? Grant vinyl siding is so toxic if you’ve ever burned it, and it is designed to be used for a few years, crack and be damaged, and hauled off to the local dumping grounds. I want whatever vehicles and equipment I pay good money for to not look like crap, especially hen they are brand new.
The thing about being woke is there is some validity in it, even if it’s hard to admit it at first. Wokeness can be a sign of good bones underneath, it need not be completely shallow facade covering up rot underneath. Beauty does matter. I was actually pretty horrified at what I saw with all the wood rot at that house I looked at a year ago with vinyl siding, it looked nice at a distance with the white vinyl, but the siding below it had so much rot. Had the vinyl not been on it, maybe they would have replaced the rotted wood below it much sooner.
That’s generally been my experience too. Food governs weight, not physical activity so much. I rarely walk many places these days, except maybe a few laps around the office, and some weeks are a bit lazier then I used to be. But I haven’t seen significant weight gain. To be fair, I do ride my mountain bike to work most days, and I burn a lot of calories that way – but I used to walk a lot more then I do now.
When I gave up on eating processed food and most meat, the pounds almost melted off my body. Not because I massively stepped up exercise but because I made my own food using the healthy, basic ingredients and not the things that come in packages with fancy labels.
I kept it simple, choosing whole foods – especially lots of fruits and vegetables, cooked with olive oil, whole wheat flour, oatmeal. I limited carbs somewhat – choosing healthier carbs like oatmeal, raw cornmeal and whole wheat flour. I quit artificial sugars, though I do use Splenda in pancakes and sometimes with onions or baking bread when I want something a bit sweeter.
The things I’ve learned to love aren’t fancy or organic. They’re just basic foods, emphasizing those basic ingredients that anybody can read about on the internet being super healthy. You have to develop a taste for them, but then you began to love them not just for the taste but knowing the wonderful things they are doing for your body. Remember this, if a package is good for your burn barrel, it’s bad for your health. If it’s good for your compost pile, then eat lots of it.
But in a major new study published in the journal PNAS, Pontzer and an international team of collaborators found that's not the case. They compared the daily total calorie burn for people from 34 different countries and cultures around the world. The people involved ran the spectrum from hunter-gatherers and farming populations with low obesity rates, to people in more sedentary jobs in places like Europe and the U.S., where obesity is widespread.
"Surprisingly, what we find is that actually, the total calories burned per day is really similar across these populations, even though the lifestyle and the activity levels are really different," says Pontzer. What we know about the health risks of ultraprocessed foods Shots - Health News What we know about the health risks of ultra-processed foods
And that finding offers strong evidence that diet — not a lack of physical activity — is the major driver of weight gain and obesity in our modern world.
"This does sort of really fly in the face of what a lot of us anecdotally assumed was driving a lot of the weight gain and obesity today," says Deirdre Tobias, an obesity and nutritional epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Tobias was not involved in the new research.
Today is going to be a hot one the weatherman warns us over the next few days. I am riding into the office after dropping Big Red off to the shop and waiting anxiously for the news. In the evening, I’ll probably bus it back home as the hill won’t be fun ni the heat, maybe leaving work early to pick up Red if it’s ready.
Starting off the day by dropping off the truck at around 8:30 AM this morning, 🗝️ I could probably do a bit earlier and drop my keys off in the night box so I get to work closer to on time. Going to drop the truck off, and hop on the Rail Trail and head in. Truth is the shop is a bit closer to my office then the apartment, so I should be in close to time. And who is going to report me, I am the big boss man after all and my boss works five miles up the road, and it’s not like they care as long as I keep the data frames and Excel spreadsheet 🖥️ flowing their way. Already cut the August lists, and they are schedule to send to mail house ✉️ on Friday.
Yesterday was a remarkable nice day, ☀️ despite having some more problems with the bike front derailleur 🚲 which I fixed enough to get me to work and back home with a piece of p-travel from the road and adjusted when I got home. 🛠️ Took the hub caps off the truck last night. Dropping the truck off shortly at the shop. I know it’s probably just the one bad hub, but who knows what they’ll find in the front end but I want it fixed if it’s likely to fail before vacation. Got some sweet corn and zucchuni, some of which I fried up yesterday and are using some of it in the pancakes this morning to make them extra tender and delicious. 😋
I was noticing after pulling off the hub caps that front brakes are getting a thin, but I certainly didn’t measure them or get that good of look. Hoping they’llhold out for a while, Rather put as little money as possible into a truck I plan to get rid of in 8 months or so. 🛻 Big Red for the most part has been great, and it has been fun for ten years having a big lifted truck – and a stock truck four years before that – but I’m ready to move on before my road trip out west next summer. I need something to worry about in the mean-time on vacation. Or maybe I just need to chill out and enjoy the grass on vacation while I listen to the cows moo. 🏖️
Rode out to Five Rivers and read more of Mark Kulinsky’s Milk 🐮 about the world history of dairy. On the morning ride In and back home listened to more of White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller, a book I don’t totally agree with everything in it but I’m always fascinated by rural perspectives on life. Beautiful evening for sure, 🌸 but already it feels like ware losing daylight a fair bit in the evening. Need to make sure to keep the lights well charged on the bike. 🔦 I did charge the front bike light overnight.
Maybe that’s one reason that gives me pause about taking summer vacation at the end of August – the days are so much shorter then though it gives me more time to enjoy star gazing ✨ and the camp fire. 🔥 Often when it’s still somewhat light out to 9:30 PM, by the time you want to have a fire at 10 or 10:30 PM it’s pretty late and I get up so early, that I’m real tired by the time there is much of a fire to sit. Plus have a beer and smoke and it really knocks you out. But that said, I really like the idea of an extended late August vacation – I am now thinking of leaving on August 21st and just kind of hanging out in the National Forest through Labor Day September 1st.
I think that I haven’t taken much time off, and I get to the office early to do work, I have quite a bit of time built up. 🗓️ Plus I’m not sure I’ll make a full week off on October this year as I’m not going to West Virginia – this year it will probably only be an extended weekend to St. Regis Canoe Area to paddle 🛶 and ride a bunch of the new Tupper Lake to Saranac Lake Rail Trail 🚴 that the DEC is so heavily promoting. Maybe a trip in early November down to Long Pond to hunt and hike, and then a day trip down to Pennsylvania but I don’t want to be in the situation I’m rushing to take days off in December, lest I can’t roll it all over to new year. 🐿️ 🔫
Truth is despite my sometimes anxiety and kicking the can down the road, 🥫 things aren’t that bad. My confusion on everything lately isn’t schizophrenia or old timers disease, but my very legitimate criticisms of the woke throw-away plastic society we all live in these days. 🗑️ There are just so many beautiful wild flowers 🌼 to look at in woods as we are midsummer, and that’s a respite from the insanity of everything else in this world. 🌍 The truth is waiting isn’t a bad thing, if you’re investing and learning about options. There aren’t really any houses 🏘️ I like near the city, and I don’t want to invest in crap I hate and want to get rid of as soon as possible. 🐐 I want acerage, that off-grid place with livestock but it’s nearly impossible to find that without an excessive commute. And New York State sucks on so many levels.
There are just so many things I am trying to learn about 📙 from timber frame-houses to goat farming, management of forest land and renewable energy systems. ⚡ For a life to be. Despite the advertisements and housing listings I look on Zillow, vinyl siding, drywall, asphalt roofs, granite countertops and all things fake aren’t the only options. Especially in rural areas, there is still a lot of land for sale and some more interesting off-grid homes and rural homesteads. The problem is just they are so difficult with commuting. But I know there is an options for early retirement. 🧑🔧Truth is I’m just fillibustering my time, as my nervous about the truck repairs, though I know they’re not as bad as my mind wants them to believe they are.
I’m anxious about it – what else will they find wrong – but it beats breaking down on the side of the road and I’m sure glad that wheel bearing didn’t burn up in Bum Fuck Egypt like the last one day. I might like smell of silage, hell yeah moo, but not while I’m waiting for a tow truck.
The few days that city composting plant, old dump and sewage treatment plant has been so pungent next to the office building. 🚽 👃 🏢 People wonder why I’ve gotten into candle warmers and making my office not smell like a giant public bathroom. Well, that answers it. But the weather has been amazing for riding back and forth to work. Last night, I was up in Colonie speaking out yet another warehouse proposed for the Pine Bush. The town was mostly was concerned about the warehouse looking woke enough, which apparently to town leaders means using enough brightly colored steel panels on the facade. 🎄 Honestly, if I had an opinion besides not building a warehouse on one of the last remaining pieces of Pine Bush. It’s actually horrifying how much Colonie is about making sure their warehouses are woke enough. But as they say, even the prettiest painted steel-building can’t make a hog confinement not smell like a pig farm. 🐽 I just wish America would get over it’s woke stage, and stop being pathological liars 🤥 about all things in life. I get it, most people don’t want to be thought of as bad people, or evil doers even if they engage is a lot of evil doers.
It was such a beautiful evening riding home last night 🚲 – actually both ways. The bike is working fairly well, and it was relaxing heading home after the public hearing. Yesterday was just so clear and beautiful out. It really was a really such a blessed day. Tomorrow is going to be quite hot and I think today is going to be storing me but that’s fine. Hopefully it won’t be too hot riding in tomorrow . I got to drop my truck off at the shop first thing and then I’ll ride in. I feel sorry for the mechanics working on the truck in the heat. I take the hubcaps off the truck, I feel like it’s makes it easier for them at the shop and it’s one less thing for them to mess up. 🧑🔧 Plus it makes me feel like I’m less disabled and hopeless.
Truth is I probably will get the truck back on Thursday. And I could have left for vacation Friday morning but I’ve already said I’m going to be in the rest of the week and next week. 🏕️ i’m really leaning towards that last week of August to head out to the Finger Lakes but my mind could change. I mean next week would be fine, but you know I don’t know what the weather’s going to be like and I really don’t want to deal with the racetrack traffic in Watkins Glen during NASCAR weekend. 🏎️ And the thing is I don’t want to drive out to the Finger Lakes on a Saturday cause it’d be hard to get a campsite till Sunday. That’s it I’m still thinking about going out to Schoharie this weekend.
Those rice and brown beans I cooked up yesterday where quite good for dinner and lunch. 🧑🍳 Lots of protein, but without the saturated fats. I don’t cook them up that much in the summer, but it was a cool morning. Plus not a lot of trash or expense – those 4 lb bags of kidney beans make several weeks of food – I cook up half the bag at a time, along with the 2 lb founds of corn. 🥞 This morning was onion-cornmeal pancakes, which I threw some of those beans. Fills me up good, they don’t make me that gassy 😲 compared to lentils, though sometimes their a bit gross in the bathroom. 💩 Yet, the health benefits are clear to eating beans – lots of protein without all the downsides of eating meat, namely the cholesterol and saturated fats. I am sure now my ad feeds will be full of Woke Bar Candy, which extra whey protein to build muscles. It’s amazing how the dairy men 🐄 were able to take a waste-product fed to hogs and spread on fields and made it into a high-value product for boosting protein in processed food. Have you ever looked at the prices for bottles of whey powder at the grocery store? What a fucking racket for hog feed repackaged for humans!
Eyes feel a bit irrated this morning, 👀 hopefully the contacts will be fine, but I still can’t wait until LASIK day, well actually a few days after that when the burning stops. I hate dealing with contact lens, and I can’t wait until that day comes. 🔥 And the weekend thereafter, when I celebrate tossing those now useless bottles of contact solution, contacts, and glasses into the fire. 📸 I should take some photos for the memories of what was. Maybe that will part of the early October trip to the St. Regis Canoe Area to paddle 🛶 and ride some of the Adirondack Rail Trail 🚲 that now extends from the St. Regis Canoe Area to Saranac Lake, and I think soon down to Upper Lake. Fun way to enjoy the autumn, and probably not too many leaves will be gone then in the High Country. 🍁 I’m not planning on West Virginia this autumn.
So if I get Big Red back on Thursday or Friday, 🏊 I’m thinking Saturday morning heading out to Schoharie to swim, hit up farm stands and probably spend an overnight in the wilderness. And then as next weekend approaches, I’ll decide if I want to head out to the Finger Lakes or not. 🏕️ At this point, I’m really leaning towards that last week of August into Labor Day, and now I’m increasingly thinking maybe I’ll leave on a Thursday rather then a Friday, to make the trip even longer. Why not, if I have the time and things are really quiet in the office as the summer comes to a close? 🌇 The days are a lot shorter that time of year, but I have quite a bit of time I have to use up before the end of the year, though my goal is to roll over as much time as possible into next year so I can take a week, maybe a week and half off next summer for that Michigan and Northern Wisconsin trip, as it’s going to take 4 days between both directions to make it from New York out to Michigan. We’ll see.
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