I used to be a funeral director. The majority of outsiders were unaware of pretty much everything we did. Often on purpose because thinking of death is uncomfortable.
The biggest “secret” is probably that the modern funeral was invented by companies the same way diamond engagement rings were. For thousands of years the only people who had public funerals were rich and famous. It was the death of Abraham Lincoln that sparked the funeral industry to sell “famous people funerals at a reasonable price”. You too could give your loved one a presidential send off! The funeral industry still plays into this hard, and I’ve found many people are simply guilt tripped by society to have a public funeral.
You didn’t talk about how coffins are sold for many thousands of dollars when they are just cheap plywood boxes that shouldn’t cost more than a hundred bucks and that serve no purpose other than to decay as quickly as possible.
Software Engineering. Most software is basically just houses of cards, developed quickly and not maintained properly (to save money ofc). We will see some serious software collapses within our lifetime.
Are there currently any that are showing signs of imminent collapse? (Twitter, maybe?).
Or what are the signs to look for those who are untrained in this field?
Regarding Twitter: yes.
As a tech person outside Twitter, looking in: Twitter is metaphorically a huge airliner with one remaining engine, and that engine is pouring smoke.
The clown who caused the first four engines to fail has stepped out of the pilot’s seat, but still has the ability to fire the new pilot, and still has strong convictions on how to fly a plane.
That plane might land safely. But in the tech community, those of us fortunate not to be affected are watching with popcorn, because we expect a spectacular crash.
If anyone reading this is still relying on Twitter - uh, my advice is to start a Mastodon account. Or Myspace or something.
Supermarket employee here. We have a “fresh” fish counter selling stuff like whole mackerels and raw salmon fillets and the like.
Each and every one of these has been frozen at least once - this is a mandatory health hazard prevention thing (to kill off parasites etc) and also basically the only food-safe way to transport them in great quantities over long distances without them going bad. They get delivered frozen solid, get thawed behind the scenes and then put on display / on ice for customers to buy. And then they’re lying there all day long until someone happens to buy some … people still treat the pre-packaged fish from the frozen foods aisle as a second choice, even tho those have NOT been lying around half-thawed in the open air for 10 hours straight.
Long story short, “fresh” fish from the counter is less fresh than the frozen stuff, despite customers commonly believing it to be the other way around.
Hold up, you mean that market in the middle of nowhere (like Kansas) with “fresh caught” fish was not caught by my local fisherman.
Shocked, I tell you 😂
Oh you’d be surprised … by the way, the same goes for literally everything at the bakery counter. Heard a customer complain once that she won’t ever buy pretzels in the store again because they weren’t actually freshly made, the employees just tossed prepackaged frozen pretzels ino the oven yadda yadda … uhhhm lady, do you really think they’re kneading dough behind the scenes?! Never wondered why your croissants, bread rolls and the like always have the same shape, size and weight? It’s almost as if they were made in a factory or something …
…yet these, too, are treated like first choice over the frozen bread rolls you can bake at home, because “a real baker made them” …
The bakery part hits me especially hard, I’m living in germany, where many people are proud of the bread culture, and you basically need to look for artisan bakeries to get stuff they actually made themselves instead of having frozen stuff delivered and just baked in the store. The saddest part is most people don’t realize, while still writing comments online about how “american bread is just sugar”
If you’re ever in San Francico there’s this hole in the wall Bob’s Donuts on Polk Street, go there after 8pm and order whatever was just made. Eat a five-minute-old donut.
Bob’s supplies most of the cafés and donut shops in San Francisco, and tapping the source is a fast way to becoming a donut snob and addict.
I have a micro-bakery (I run it completely alone) where I make everything from scratch, and every day I get customers who enter and immediately leave disappointed because I only have 6 or 7 different breads at most, when the big-name franchise store in the main street has literally dozens of varieties. Once one woman asked me why I wasn’t baking fresh baguettes every hour like them. I don’t know, lady… maybe because my baguettes take more than 3 hours just to do the first proofing, while they simply have to put industrial made ones in the oven?
Please tell me more. I’m obsessed with good bread. Where are you based? Do you have to work mad hours to survive?
Sorry for replying late.
I am in East Asia. I work about 11 to 12 hours a day, every day. And it is NOT worth it, we survive because we are fortunate enough that my SO has a well paid job.
If you really crave good bread, I can give you this advice: find yourself a copy of “Bread” by “Jeffrey Hamelman”, get a nice baking stone (pizza stone?) for your oven, and bake it at home. It is incredibly easy (really, you will be amazed), and really satisfactory.
