As I think you know I’ve talked about doing a solar cooperative. It’s one of the things I emailed with Noam Chomsky about. I asked if he wanted to be on the board. He thought it was a good idea, but said he didn’t have time. This story might help, but he’s not on the East Coast anymore.
This might be worth it just so I could try to email AOC and hope that she’d respond to me, but I don’t have a lot to offer these people. The two things I have to offer are knowledge about solar and a California Contractor’s license. One of those things they already have and the other doesn’t do them any good.
I was sure this story was going to end with him telling you about this buster he talked to the day before, clowning him especially for his ridic outfit.
This Bright Power is an interesting story and probably says something about the structural elements of capitalism that make things like this happen. One of the founders who started the investment whatever that created the company dropped out of college to live on an organic coffee farm in Costa Rica. She worked with Van Jones, who came up through solar, training people from gangs and just out of prison. At first glance the executive team at Bright Power seem pretty cool and industry professionals rather than Investment Vultures.
Also, @mosdef is mos def the original mos def (not counting the actual Mos Def, I assume). My 2+2 name was wack so I was happy to jettison it here. MimosaDef was one of my old poker handles, and it came from a long-running conversation with one of my buddies about a hip-hop inspired menu. (Wu-tang Clams {“something to fuck with!”}, A Tri-tip Called Quest, De La Sole, 2 Live Crudite, etc).
MimosaDef was my favorite personal contribution, though the full brunch menu never really came together.
Confirmed I do not actually predate the real Mos Def. When I signed up for 2+2 in the first place (which was back in 2006 if I am remembering right) I was listening to Blackstar in the background, and that is the reason for the name.
I recently bought some AA rechargeable batteries from Walmart.com. Unfortunately, I accidentally clicked AA and didn’t realize it until they arrived.
I went into the mobile app today to initiate a return, planning on returning the batteries in-store. Shortly after I made the couple clicks to get the return going, I got an e-mail saying my refund was being processed. I thought that was odd, since I hadn’t taken them back yet, so I read the rest of the e-mail.
“You’re not required to return the original items to us. You’re welcome to keep, donate, or dispose of it.”
So I uh, just got free batteries. I feel like this is a giant loophole that someone has taken advantage of.
Cable companies used to do that with their equipment when you cancel the service.
Until Spectrum figured out they could make money by charging people full price for not returning the equipment - which probably just goes in the trash anyway. Love 'em!
We falsely remember a Thanksgiving of intercultural harmony. Perhaps we should recall instead how English settlers cheated, abused, killed, and eventually drove Wampanoags into a conflict, known as King Philip’s War, that exploded across the region in 1675 and 1676 and that was one of the most devastating wars in the history of North American settlement. Native soldiers attacked fifty-two towns in New England, destroyed seventeen of them, and killed a substantial portion of the settler population. The region also lost as much as forty per cent of its Native population, who fought on both sides. Confronted by Mohawks to the west, a mixed set of Indian and Colonial foes to the south, and the English to the east, Pumetacom was surrounded on three sides. In the north, the scholar Lisa Brooks argues, Abenaki and other allies continued the struggle for years. In “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War” (Yale), Brooks deepens the story considerably, focussing on indigenous geographical and linguistic knowledge, and tracing the life of Weetamoo, the widow of Wamsutta and the saunkskwa , or female leader, of her tribe, the Pocasset. Weetamoo was Pumetacom’s ally, his relative, and a major figure in the fight. In the end, not only Pumetacom’s head was stuck on a pike; hers was, too, displayed for Wampanoag prisoners who were likely soon to be sold to the Caribbean.
The Thanksgiving story buries the major cause of King Philip’s War—the relentless seizure of Indian land. It also covers up the consequence. The war split Wampanoags, as well as every other Native group, and ended with indigenous resistance broken, and the colonists giving thanks. Like most Colonial wars, this one was a giant slave expedition, marked by the seizure and sale of Indian people. Wampanoags were judged criminals and—in a foreshadowing of the convict-labor provision of the Thirteenth Amendment—sold into bondage. During the next two centuries, New England Indians also suffered indentured servitude, convict labor, and debt peonage, which often resulted in the enslavement of the debtor’s children. Thanksgiving’s Pilgrim pageants suggest that good-hearted settlers arrived from pious, civilized England. We could remember it differently: that they came from a land that delighted in displaying heads on poles and letting bodies rot in cages suspended above the roads. They were a warrior tribe.
This happens on the employee side in retail all the time, too. Most damaged or returned items are processed as some form of return to vendor, but the policy from most vendors is to destroy the product and trash it. As you can imagine, there is a tremendous amount of “theft.”
Steffanie Scott said Robbins had talked about helping middle-aged couples regain their sex lives. “He was making gestures about getting a hard-on again,” she said. Curry and Tamara Drean, the camp counselor, both remembered Robbins offering an example from his own life where he successfully used “neuro-linguistic programming” techniques to target an attractive woman at a crowded restaurant.
NLP is a philosophy modeled on hypnosis that supposedly teaches people how to influence others. Robbins taught the campers how to “mirror” an unsuspecting person by imitating their movements to subconsciously gain their trust, former campers said — and he told them they could use these tools for romance. Even a geeky boy could gain a girl’s interest this way, some recalled him saying.
