Michael Kleen

CrossFit Abandons Facebook

Social media companies are increasingly coming under fire for arbitrary and alarming censorship.

I’ve written in the past about my love-hate relationship with social media, and why I’ve chosen to delete my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Now a huge company and social movement, CrossFit, is joining the exodus. CrossFit describes itself as a fitness movement that promotes an alternative to mainstream convention when it comes to health. After Facebook suspended one of its groups (with 1.65 million users) without explanation, CrossFit decided to ditch Facebook entirely. Who could blame them?

On their website, they listed eight reasons why Facebook has become a terrible company, including:

Facebook collects and aggregates user information and shares it with state and federal authorities, as well as security organizations from other countries.
Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM.
Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies.
Facebook collects, aggregates, and sells user information as a matter of business. Its business model allows governments and businesses alike to use its algorithmically conjured advertising categories as sophisticated data-mining and surveillance tools.
Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice.

I don’t agree with CrossFit’s criticism of modern nutritional science, but that’s ok because we live in a free country where discussion and debate over ideas and alternatives should be commonplace. Censorship has been tried many times in the past, and it never works in the long term. When ideas are labeled “dangerous” and “subversive,” people naturally want to seek them out to see what all the fuss is about. It has the opposite effect of what the censors intend.

Is Cauliflower Racist?

Culinary partisans can relax; there’s nothing offensive about eating ‘non-native’ foods.

In the latest Bizarro-World controversy, political partisans have taken to the internet to fight over – cauliflower? Yes, really. This bland and ubiquitous vegetable has become the latest front in the Culture Wars, with freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) even claiming ‘people of color’ have a hard time gardening because cauliflower is a colonialist vegetable.

Many people love cauliflower because it’s high in fiber and vitamins and low in calories. I dislike it for the same reason I dislike vanilla ice cream and plain waffles–I need flavor in my life! But because AOC has become clickbait, I haven’t been able to determine where anti-cauliflower sentiments come from. Is it actually something argued by fringe identitarians, or did AOC just make it up to grab headlines?

In the dumbest video she’s posted since pretending to not know what a garbage disposal is, she said:

“But when you really think about it — when someone says that it’s ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows Yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something — what you’re doing is you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism. That is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements because they come with the colonial lens on them.”

Essentially, she’s arguing that South and Central Americans living in the Bronx have been brainwashed into growing European foods, rather than something native to hot, dry regions like Yucca. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why it’s easier to grow cauliflower in New York than a desert plant like Yucca. Yucca thrives in a completely different climate.

Keim Furs Vintage Sign

Flickr is down for maintenance – 5/23/19

Apologies to my readers. You may have noticed my latest post shows a link to a Flickr page rather than an image. I’m trying to save space on my website by hosting images on Flickr, the drawback being that when Flickr goes down, you can’t see these pictures. Flickr is currently migrating away from Yahoo, which will be great in the long term but not in the short term. Hopefully it’ll be back up soon and all my images will display as normal.

Child in Silence

The inscription (from Matthew 18:4) reads:

Whosoever shalt humble
himself as a little child
the same is greatest in
the kingdom of heaven.

Fort Dummer in Brattleboro, Vermont

A roadside marker is all that remains of this colonial-era fort that played a role in an obscure New England war.

Click to expand photos

The Battle of Fort Dummer was fought on October 11, 1724 between Abenaki Indians and Massachusetts colonial militia and their Mohawk allies during Dummer’s War. Both the fort and the war were named after Lieutenant Governor William Dummer, acting governor of Massachusetts at that time. Though the attackers managed to kill a few of the fort’s defenders, the fort held and remained a local stronghold.

The Abenaki were members of the Wabanaki Confederacy, an alliance of Algonquin-speaking Indians including the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, and Penobscot. After war broke out in 1722, Lieutenant Governor William Dummer ordered the creation of several forts on the frontier along the Connecticut River. Fort Dummer, a 180-foot wooden stockade, was built in 1724. It was the first permanent English Settlement in what would become Vermont.

Lieutenant Timothy Dwight took command of 12 cannon, 43 English soldiers, and 12 Mohawk warriors at the outpost. Shortly after completion, a group of approximately 70 Abenaki warriors attacked. The band was affiliated with Chief Grey Lock, who was waging his own fight against the British sometimes called “Grey Lock’s War”. They killed or wounded five of the defenders, but could not penetrate the thick wooden walls.

Chelsea Royal Diner in West Brattleboro, Vermont

Chelsea Royal Diner, at 487 Marlboro Road in West Brattleboro, Vermont, is a 1939 Worcester Diner (#736) moved here from downtown West Brattleboro. The 1958 sign was discovered in a New Hampshire barn and restored in 1999. The staff takes pride in its locally sourced food and homemade “Royal Madness” Ice Cream.

Look for a new diner every Tuesday in 2019! Click to expand photos.

Diner Resources