Hipster Marketing Malfunctions, Venomous Snakes, and Expensive Childcare
This will be a short week before this humble morning missive takes a holiday break. While Wednesday will be the last day before the new year, I’ll miss you all terribly while I pry my dry eyes away from a computer for a little bit.
🎤It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go.
Take a look in the coast and see,
El-nino wants to bring
Venomous sea snakes to your shores…. NOPE NOPE.
If childcare costs more than rent, when does it become more economically viable to stay at home with one’s children as opposed to continuing to work? And how does that disproportionally impact women with careers? Pew Research Center shows that the 'percentage of mothers with child[ren] younger than 18 who do not work outside the home’ is as high as it was in 1987.
Fellow Calgarian and Princetonian Devan Kreisberg - though jury is out on whether she’s a Criminal Minds fan, like my homie T Cruz and me - wants me to remind you that, should the Trump revolution occur, parody twitter account Stats Canada has your back.
Today, in hipster drama: as someone who’s more of an ice cream and cookie kind of person, the latest scandal in the artisanal food world is a curious one. Basically, two bearded hipster artisanal chocolatier brothers in Brooklyn as being accused of essentially faking their $10 a bar confections. This hits to the heart of the 2009-present obsession with source, and maker, and general special-snowflakeness, of which I have been suckered into so. many. times. It seems like a crock; despite professional chocolate society murmurs about the product being crap or faked, these chocolates were eaten up (#sorrynotsorry) on the premise that the consumer was enjoying hand-ground, ‘bean-to-bar.’ With this, said consumer could therefore feel special themselves enjoying their daily gastronomical escape, not like those plebeians chowing down on Hersheys. $10 chocolate as a class anxiety salve. And it strikes at the ‘food nerd’ disruptive narratives, two dudes in Brooklyn taking on the chocolate mafia with hand-grinders and references to "Incan or Mayan” techniques, with terminology that serves as a master-class in hipster marketing. Look, I’m all for knowing where your food comes from, and spending more time knowing what you are buying and putting in your body. But just like when things are labeled “natural,” sometimes words are just words.
So yea, have a great Monday!