Not milk?

I am once again asking you to, when presented with a complaint about the problem of paying a 75-cent or even one-damn-dollar upcharge for a non-dairy milk, not reply with something oversimplified and inaccurate about the "cost" of non-dairy milks. 

It's different from, for example, adding an espresso shot, which might cost 50 more cents of espresso. First of all, in latte situations, when someone gets oat latte instead of cow latte, you may be adding ("costing more") oat milk but you are ALSO SUBTRACTING the cow milk. Did you account for that in your "cost"? 

Secondly, when we're talking about adding a splash of soy milk to coffee, it should be far less than using the latte amount of the soy milk . Starbucks is correct to not charge for a soy splash. Dunkin' needs to get itself together on this. 

Third, the alt-milk per-drink "costs" at all coffee shops, chain and independents, are nonsense.  I can buy an almond or soy or whatever milk carton for $3 in any store retail -- and that amount of milk is way the heck more than 3 drinks, but you want to charge a third of that carton price for adding non-dairy to ONE drink? AND, coffee shops get a lesser-per-carton wholesale price to begin with. 

Furthermore, dairy milk is environmentally less sustainable, plus nightmarishly cruel to calves and mother cows, yanking away a newborn baby. So the ethical, morally sound thing to do would be to upcharge for dairy even if there were some accurate "cost." (Plus the dairy milk does have a financial cost, but it is massively produced and subsidized and powerfully lobbied. You aren't paying the true cost of cow milk. Also, in addition to the heavily subsidized dairy lobby finances, there is very much a greater "cost" for cow milk, but you are paying it with the Earth, desperate cows, tortured calves, and your soul.) 

Finally, even if the coffee shop charges a b.s. dollar for oat milk normally, a free drink should be a free drink. When we redeem our points, the oat/almond/soy whatever should be completely and totally $0.00 free of charge, but some locations upcharge for the alt-milks in a "free" rewards drink.  That is terrible. There really is a lot more going on here than "oh it costs more." 

I've noted before that when I find a coffee shop who gives free soy, almond, etc. and instead upcharges for dairy, they will have my business forever. 

Oh yeah, and, humans? If you aren't at the VERY dang least using a non-dairy milk in your cereal now, you need to make this life correction immediately. It is unconscionable to continue to buy rip-the-calf-away milk for your cereal, no matter how whiny you are about needing dairy milk for baking, coffee, and taste, or in your delusional "nutrition" uses. If you "don't like" the taste of non-dairy milk in cereal, you are eating. the. wrong. cereal. -- you should be tasting the cereal, not the milk. 

Feel free to share my words with your coffee shops and everyone you know. 

Do better. 
#upchargefordairy 

Do I even remember how to blog?

 I seriously don't know! 

But what I do know is that throughout the past decade I have offered up my thoughts, consistently, on the Book of Face, and where does that get me? Shares, likes, and peeks into the lives of people I haven't seen in years are all fun and algorithm games -- until suddenly it's not as fun anymore. It seems that fb is trying to steer us more into groups; why is that? Can anyone explain it to me from the monetary perspective?  Sure, I could quit all my fb groups and then fb would have to show me individual fbriends (amid the ads) but, thing is, I WANT the group info, just not at the cost of the people. Also, I am quite curious about things I can never know, like whether fewer people are seeing my posts since I started posting gender critical rants, which is my totally unconfirmed suspicion. And the flip side of that coin being how very many individuals who have swallowed the prevailing not-wisdom public discourse about various ideologies are less fun to interact with in the first place with their repeat-the-catechism politics. The trumptydumpty era was awful and consumed so much of my book of face even when I refused to type his name. I want us to make it better and fun again...but I don't know if that's likely to happen as big tech works toward its data-grabbing post-human singularity or whatever. 

On that note, I still am not a TV watcher  (and still not a binge-er) but Silicon Valley remains a thing that I love and that makes me laugh out loudest with both a sense of maddening absurdity and recognition. I have also got a season or two into The Good Place, whose philosophy I was assured I would very much love, and it's true! I do! I am more like Chidi than anyone I have ever met. And the ways I am not like Chidi? Are the ways I'm like Eleanor. I love that show. 

See, this is making me sad.  I wish I had spent the pandemic blogging instead of facebooking. 

Things I should have blogged about instead of posting to the book of face: 

1. My 100 Days of Nature Walks -- now with 10% more walking! (Because I ended up doing 110 days)  I spent last summer taking a walk outside every day in a different park/nature preserve/hike from my 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles - Chicago book/other outdoor nature walking locale. It was an amazing streak! 

2. Quarantine life -- WHICH I LOVE. And no, I did not make any sourdough or watch your stupid T*ger K*ng. I did not binge anything.  I did not get bored. I thoroughly enjoyed ceasing commuting, came to appreciate teaching online, and discovered the greatness of working remotely is working from various locations around the country. 

3. Black Lives Matter. Our nation's long overdue reckoning with white privilege matters. 

4. I reached my escape velocity from Chicago and flew South for the winter, where I am enjoying my #Atlantaresidency. Why am I not blogging about it? 

5. Recent film projects! 

At some point in quarantine summer, I finished watching all of the Best Picture Oscar Winners! One of my many-years-in-the-making off-and-on projects! I even talked about it on the O.C.C.: Oscar Category Completist podcast episode #35: all-Time Oscar Completist -- Best Picture with Linda Napikoski. 

Then, over the winter I finished up the AFI Top 100 original list of 100 Years...100 Movies that I have been slooowly sporadically working on since 1998. I had a lot of opinions about some of these flicks!  

And then, during this most recent awards season, I did not step foot in a movie theaters but I watched Every. Single. Oscar. Nominee. In my living room. What an interesting year! 

Why should only people who are on fb with me get to hear about these things? 😅

So, I say, let's remember how to blog. 

Of course I have questions. Among them : 

Who's still blogging? 

What blogs and web sites do you read regularly?  

What questions do you have?