For a while after returning to WP, I didn’t pay much attention to WordPress’s daily provided Writing Prompts. Once I noticed them, I used them a few times, but then I started seeing the complaints about how intrusive they are. I dismissed the idea at first, but the more I’ve looked at them, I have to admit; they are pretty intrusive. Not only that, they allow somebody to put together a pretty good profile of the writer also.
I swear I hear eyes rolling and people clicking away. Hardly anybody seems to take social media style overshare seriously. It’s far more than photographing your house, kids, car & license plate, etc… Sure those can all be tracked via reverse image searches. Guarantee your house at least has pics on Realtor.com also. Its what’s shared via words that can help marketers, scammers and other bad actors even more.
ALL of those innocent questions reveal multiple layers of information about you, at least if you answer them directly and honestly.
What’s your favorite drink?
Behavioral scientists have nearly everything broken down in regards to profiling people. Like Scotch? It’ll mean you likely fall into certain categories, same with beer, soft drinks or even water. Cross reference that with other answers and you can build a more accurate profile and eliminate things that are outliers in the profile (like fit people who enjoy soda pop. they just have to work out harder, and drink in moderation).
Even more than the specific answer to the question, the extraneous comments can tell people a great deal about the writer. “I like beer, but I only have 1 or 2 on the weekend and that’s it” paints a much different picture than somebody saying they slam down 4 or 5 after work every day.
Take a look at any prompts you’ve written. Pretend you’re a data mining stranger and see how much you can extract regarding your own life. Even if you don’t know what type of personality profile drives a white car vs a red one. You might be surprised what you’re inadvertently telling people.
Things have been a little heavy here at the blog lately, so I decided that even Tuesday Trash needed to lighten up a little. Generally, I detest talking politics anymore as I don’t trust either party any further than I can throw Washington DC. Jon Stewart (not to be confused with John Stewart, the Green Lantern, lol) did a brutal takedown of BOTH Biden and Trump recently, and it merits a listen to.
At the very least, I absolutely LOVE that he calls out both sides on the “I don’t remember” game, and their hypocrisy over then pointing fingers at the other for doing it.
The only thing that irked me is he did take a passing shot at Israel over the current war. I’ll forego the deleted rant I had typed however. This is supposed to be a lighter post.
All I’ve got to say is Richard Pryor called it right 39 years ago in Brewster’s Millions:
The movie, coincidentally was based on a 1902 comedic novel written by George Barr McCutcheon, under the pseudonym Richard Greaves.
It’s been a few weeks since I did anything martial arts related. This time I want to look at the broader idea of self-defense and the ethics surrounding the concept. This post was inspired by a few gun-related stories that I’ve read online, and the insane, toxic responses I’ve read in the comments sections of those stories.
The whole idea of self-defense has become pretty controversial the last decade or so. Some states and municipalities have laws that treat anyone physically defending themself on any level as no different than an attacker. People are even obligated to flee their homes if somebody breaks in.
On the other extreme, you have people who advocate for the right to pulp somebody at the slightest provocation and see attempted theft as grounds for murder. I’d like to think most people are somewhere in the common-sense middle, but common sense, as the joke goes, isn’t so common anymore.
My Own Background and Influences:
My middle ground views were largely shaped by my background in martial arts. While it’s true that there are some schools out there like Cobra Kai, most schools teach that your skills are for personal growth more than fighting, and that violence is only to be used as a last resort.
It helps that if a martial arts school allows any level of physical contact, (not a guarantee in today’s lawsuit happy world), that students develop an awareness of the damage they can inflict on others. You learn getting hit hurts and, assuming you don’t have a teacher like John Kreese, you develop a level of empathy about hurting others. You learn that you DO have a right to defend yourself, or others, but that violence is the last tool used in that pursuit.
One of the reasons I stayed a fan and student of Kenpo Karate so long is that Ed Parker codified those concepts into the style. There’s an overall Kenpo Creed and pledges at each belt level that must be memorized, recited and agreed to as part of promotion. Purple belt is the third promotion in the system and requires the following pledge:
I hold the art of Kenpo sacred and freely take upon myself the obligation and responsibility that I shall never misuse my skill to hurt or make afraid. I shall fight only if forced to defend myself and shall be slow to anger, loath to take offense, quick to forgive, and to forget personal affront.
Parker Kenpo Karate Purple Belt Pledge
We could sit here all day romanticizing martial arts, but the key point for this discussion is that a good martial arts school teaches moral self-defense. You don’t use force unless there’s no alternative, and you use only enough force to end the threat. That means no beating on somebody who is down or trying to flee, or otherwise wants to end the fight peacefully. That doesn’t mean you’re a sucker and immediately drop your guard either, but if the danger has passed, so has the moral and legal right to use violence.
Guns and Tasers and Knives, Oh My!
That indirectly brings us to the more common debate today regarding the use of firearms, and other weapons.
For those wondering, I chose the picture of the CZ-75 compact because I own one.
Most weapons that can be carried for self-defense have the “advantage” that the user has to have it used on them as part of training and licensing. The idea being that the user will know what effect it will realistically have, and thus be wiser and more discerning about when to employ them. Knives and guns, for obvious reasons, lack that training requirement. Ergo we’re left, in my opinion, with too many people today, having their impressions of gun use being formed via action movies and first person shooter video games like HALO or Call of Duty.
I’m a gun owner. It was something I never planned on, but happened anyway when our house was repeatedly nearly burglarized and there were violent confrontations with the would be burglars. Even in a “good” town, police response in the U.S. can take 6 to 8 minutes. In a city like Sacramento, you could double that at the minimum.
If you think that doesn’t sound like alot of time, get a stopwatch, use the app on your phone, etc… and time home much you can take from your house or how many times you can hit, kick stab or club somebody in that time. It becomes an eternity.
All that said, over the past few years, I’ve become more afraid of the radical elements of the gun crowd than I am of criminals. There SEEMS to be precious little in their minds that doesn’t justify drawing and using a weapon. At the very least you’ll get the “I thought I saw a weapon, and felt afraid for my life” excuse. I’m personally inclined to trust MOST police officers that make that “call” because they’re trained observers. In the case of many of these gun advocates though, it comes off ALOT like the old South Park “It’s Coming Right For Us!” routine from the hunting episode:
To be blunt, I have zero problem with holding a burglar at gunpoint while waiting for the police to come and arrest them. Actual USE of a firearm should morally, if not legally, be limited to situations where somebody’s life, yours or others, is in legitimate danger. Occasionally that will be a rough call: The burglar lunges for your gun for example. You HAVE to assume that the perp is going to attempt to turn the gun on you at that point. Keeping distance, keeping vigilant and maintaining firm control of the situation can often avoid situations like that or the “they reached for something” scenario.
As Miyagi said though:
Neither one of us have any sort of a carry permit. We simply know what parts of town aren’t safe, and limit our time spent in those areas. We also pay attention to our surroundings (situational awareness), trust our intuition, and will leave an area if something feels “off”. Net result, the only time we’ve fired our guns is at the training range. We plan on doing our best to keep it that way also. When we’re not home, our guns are locked up in our 500 lb safe.
OH, and we train regularly to minimize the chances of anyone other than an attacker getting hurt.
That’s at 50 feet or 15.25 meters… 2 squarely in the head and 18 center mass, with a few shots going nearly through the same spot as previous shots. I shoot better than the basic qualification requirements for many police departments. Not bad for a compact pistol with a heavy trigger pull, and only iron sights. If you can’t shoot that accurately though, you’re a danger to innocent bystanders in the area. Did I mention redheads have strong opinions? LOL.
Bottom Line:
For me, self defense is a right. However, like ALL rights, it’s balanced by a responsibility to exercise that right responsibly. That means physical violence is only used to protect from physical violence, and using the minimal amount of force required to stop the threat.
As far as guns go, I believe in the second amendment, but I also support criminal and psychological background checks, laws that require guns to be reasonably secure, real training and proficiency demonstration for anyone who carries, AND punishment for anyone who knowingly or negligently allows a mass shooter to acquire their firearm and use it. That would NOT include situations like “they broke into the safe”. A reasonable effort was made to secure the weapon in that instance. Left laying around and the shooter took it though; charge them with conspiracy in the crimes.
As a final thought for those who think I’m too permissive about the use of force and would want to argue the sanctity of human life, etc… That’s factored into my “last resort” mindset. Beyond that however, a victim’s health, well-being and life are every bit as valuable as some criminal’s.
A Small Bonus:
Being a stickler for details, I can’t help but point out two glaring errors in the picture at the top of this article.
1) First, the woman doesn’t do anything directly about the guy having a handful of hair. Even getting hit, he’s still got a tight grip. Grabbing his right wrist and twisting him into an armlock or some other technique more aimed at directly breaking the hold would have been a better option. Even a kick to the groin would be more likely to induce enough pain to prompt him to release her hair. Without that release, he still has control of her. If he got knocked down, he’s pulling her down into a grappling situation on the ground.
2) APPARENT poor body mechanics on the hammerfist to his jaw. Without putting any body rotation behind the movement, she’s minimizing the force of her strike. Granted, you want to ideally engage the rest of your body late in a strike to avoid telegraphing, and with a hammerfist strike, that can indeed come pretty late in the movement, BUT she shows no sign in her body positioning of driving through with the strike or rotating her body into it either.
As if we needed another reason to hate Amazon… A recent story on Fox News reported that Amazon has joined forces with Space X and Trader Joes to spearhead a movement to have the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional.
Yeah, so much also for Trader Joe’s being a friendly company that cared about people.
The NLRB, per it’s own home page, does the following:
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency vested with the power to safeguard employees’ rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employers and unions.
One basis for the effort is the corporations claiming that the structure of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional because it denies the company’s right to a jury trial. They conveniently overlook that the majority of federal labor laws also limit the amount of damages a company would have to pay. Pain and suffering or any punitive damages for wronged workers are minimal or non-existent.
Apparently Amazon is also arguing that the administrative judges and the board in charge of the NLRB also violate the separation of powers since they’re all appointed by the president & executive branch.
Per the Fox News article onliine:
The filing came in a pending case accusing Amazon of illegally retaliating against workers at a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, where employees voted to unionize in 2022. Amazon, which has faced more than 250 NLRB complaints alleging unlawful labor practices across the country in recent years, has denied wrongdoing.
Make no mistake; this is a gateway case whose long term goal is to set precedent to start dismantling the entire federal regulatory structure. Next, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) or other agencies providing some regulation of worker’s rights under the law will targeted. Next, it might be anti-trust oversight agencies, or regulations putting restrictions on advertising (ie truth in advertising and not marketing addictive substances to minors). It will continue until there’s no regulatory infrastructure in place. Then we’re back where we were 100+ years ago in terms of employee and consumer protections.
Those who read my previous article on why I hate Amazon will also recall that Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s owner) and Elon Musk (Space X’s owner) are 2 of the 8 richest people in the world. They and 6 others control HALF of the wealth of the ENTIRE WORLD. They have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 Billion people in the world.
It’s time we say enough is enough and move to outlaw mega-corporations like Amazon.
A little peek into my psyche here, I suppose. Last night, after writing my rant about fake followers and likes, I had a chance for some introspection. I don’t get as mad as I used to over things like these twits, but they still bother me. The answer hit me suddenly as I pondered the whole situation. Ever had something so obvious that you wonder how you missed it right in front of your face?
It’s because I’ve always had a strong sense of right and wrong, and getting taken advantage of and ripped off repeatedly over the last several years has made me all the more frustrated that even something like blogging can’t be immune from weasels trying to game the system and show they’re smarter than everyone else with fake stats or outright trying to cheat people.
Same general idea with my annoyance with all the toxicity out there (news, social media, etc…). It’s people destroying something, society in that specific case, for nothing more than their own selfish gain and sick entertainment. I’m not taking sides to point fingers on any issue either. The extremes on both sides, regardless of the topic, have shouted down everyone else and made it impossible to have the kind of civilized, empathetic discussions required to actually resolve anything.
You expect things like politics to include toxicity and manipulation, but shouldn’t something as simple as writing a blog be free of that kind of trash?
Maybe I’m living in a dream world with unrealistic expectations. I’d like to hope not. I’d like to believe that the majority of people are silently stuck in the middle also and want something better just like I do.
Liz (A recent mutual follow with a great blog) and I were commenting back and forth earlier today about our shared annoyance with bloggers who spam fake likes in hope of gaining followers without putting any effort into reader others’ blogs.
Lo and Behold, what happens just a little while ago? This:
There were so many likes within the course of a single minute that I couldn’t even get them all into the screen at the same time for the clipping tool to capture.
This is 1 short of a record from a few years ago; 17 in under a minute. The actual 17 at the top left of the picture is the total emails in my inbox. 1 is a legitimate email, and 16 are from this blog.
What’s It Matter?
If you only care about empty stats, or CLAIM that follows and likes mean nothing to you, then it doesn’t matter. If you’re here to network and get meaningful feedback, it matters alot. This kind of blogger never reads blogs and will never leave a real comment either.
It’s a waste of my time also. I have to keep and maintain a separate email account that gets notifications because spam like this pushes legitimate comments right off of the WordPress notifications tab. Think that doesn’t add up? About a week and a half ago, I commented in Renard’s blog(Another great one if you’re one of the few in the community not familiar with him), that I had somewhere in the 1300s for total deleted emails. As of this moment, that total is:
Yes, 2000. Alot of that is legitimate; new posts and comment notifications. Probably 1/3 of it is just “hit and run” spam likes though. Time to clear all that out adds up, and I’m already a blogger that puts a great deal of time and research into my blog posts. When I trashed Amazon yesterday, I spent time researching facts like Amazon controlling more of the economy than the 8 biggest brick and mortar stores, and how Jeff Bezos is one of less than 10 people who literally control half the world’s wealth. I took screenshots and documented my own delivery issues… all that on top of the writing and editing involved. Trying to be a quality blogger means real time and work put into your blog. Even those who “only” post daily short messages of encouragement have to find something reasonably different from recent posts and an ideal image to go with it.
To top it all off, this blog is a marketing company that’s only looking for business. If they’d read my blog and therefore had a legitimate grasp of what they might have been marketing, they’d know I don’t follow purely commercial blogs. I’ve stated as much just yesterday. Then they can’t even spell their company name correctly, LOL. ”DuosMaketers” instead of DuosMarketers or Duos Marketers.
Yes, that gives me a great deal of confidence that they’re professional and could handle the job. 🙄
The stupid part is that if they’d acted professionally and sent a query email to me, I’d have been FAR more likely to consider hiring them, or at least paying for some marketing advice so I could get my long delayed writing career off the ground.
Bottom line; life all comes down to treat others the way you want to be treated, and spamming others under false pretenses is NOT that.
Between the Purple brand bed today and the Amazon rant, I felt readers deserved some actual GOOD news today.
I broke the 800 threshold finally, and am currently sitting at 802 followers. The count is rising fast since I returned from my extended hiatus also. 🙂👍
To those of you who follow, actually read and occasionally throw in a like or comment, thank you. There are bloggers who say we shouldn’t care about those things at all, but let’s face it, we’re here to socialize and hopefully get some constructive feedback or at least civilized discussion about what we write. Feedback is what I first signed up on WordPress for; an interactive community that could critique my fiction writing.
Feels like forever since I even attempted any creative writing. That’s a whine for another day though, LOL
I’m trying to return follows as much as I can since I dropped following numerous dead blogs. Here’s what you should know in that regard:
For those of you with poetry blogs… I read, and I do hit the like button. Despite an interest in improving my knowledge and appreciation of poetry though, the vast majority of the time I don’t feel like I have a deep enough understanding of the art to meaningfully critique it. So if I post something plain like “very nice”, it’s not being lazy.
2. I will NOT follow sites that are strictly commercial or only advocate drug use.
3. Depending upon my schedule, it may take a day or so to get a like or reply posted. I won’t forget active participants in the community though. 🙂
4. Those of you who never read and think you’re gaming the stats by trading likes… I used to just block these kind of narcissistic bloggers. I’ll humor you now, but if I see you hitting 4 likes in under a minute, only scrolling down the reader to give likes, that’s all you’ll get from me too. Fair is fair and I’m saving my time for truly active members of the WP community.
5. Last and most importantly, comments are always welcome. You can feel free to disagree with me on anything so long as you can do so in a civilized, adult manner.
Thanks again to all my followers, old and new. 🙂
Yes, this IS my trademark sign off / end of post, LOL
I’ve taken shots at Amazon in past blog posts for a variety of reasons, today I want to use my “venting” day to go into detail about my dislike for Amazon.
First, They Undermine Small Business & Reduce Competition:
This has always been one of my biggest gripes. Amazon started out undercutting book stores and all but destroying the brick and mortar book industry. Mom and pop stores already had a hard enough time competing with corporate chains like Barnes & Noble. Now, the mom and pop stores are all but non-existent and even Barnes & Noble is a shadow of it’s former glory. If Amazon had stayed in it’s lane, it might not have been THAT bad a thing. They quickly expanded into almost every market out there though.
Car parts, major appliances, electronics, clothes… They even gobbled up Whole Foods to force their way into the grocery business. You name it, Amazon has it’s finger in the pie. At what point is enough actually enough? Every area that Amazon has moved into has resulted in smaller businesses closing up shop, reduced competition, and reduced inventory at existing stores. The last two times I went to Best Buy, I couldn’t even get basic ethernet / LAN cable to run from my router to my PC.
They Push Inferior Quality Chinese Products:
I’m sure everybody has had this issue at least once in a search. Type in a specific make and model of something you’re looking for and one of two things happens;
1: Instead of your product, you get nothing but pages and pages of cheap knock-offs of what you’re looking for, all made in China and with A.I. generated product info.
2: Your product might actually come up, sometimes hidden within the first page’s results, but the top row or two will be nothing but those lower priced knockoffs with notes about how they’re cheaper, higher rated and will be delivered faster.
Sometimes it’s so bad that the only way I can get a US brand to show on Amazon is to use an external search engine to get it to display as available at Amazon and follow the external link. If I want cheap junk that’s going to enrich the Chinese government, I’ll go to Alibaba.com. When I’m at Amazon, I expect what I search for to show up.
They Play Favorites on Book Search Results Also
I’ve ran into this issue a few times, and I’ve heard it even more frequently from romance authors trying to sell on Amazon. If they don’t like your book for whatever reason… too steamy in the case of some of those romance authors, Amazon will bury you in their search results. One fellow WordPress blogger, Kent Wayne, AKA DirtySciFiBuddha, at one point wouldn’t come up for me at Amazon even when I typed his full name in the search window. The romance writers have it happen so often that they call it being “sent to the dungeon”.
It’s one thing to have popular authors show up first in a more generic search, but if you key in a specific title or author, their work shouldn’t be buried or outright blocked. That constitutes outright breach of contract with the author (and maybe the customer as well) on Amazon’s part in my opinion.
Amazon’s Review Policy is a JOKE
I know for a fact everybody has run into this one. The ad / product page & description looks a little shady, so you go to check the reviews to see if you really want this product or one of the alternatives for it. What do you find? A.I. reviews written from bogus accounts, and even more frequently, reviews that clearly don’t even have anything to do with the actual product. ”This is supposed to be a hair dryer, why is the review talking about a kitchen utensil, and this next one a shoe?”. The answer there is sleazy sellers will hijack old product pages and replace the listing with their own product, but still gaining any previous reviews.
To say Amazon does a piss poor job of policing all this would be the queen mother of understatements.
Let’s not forget the other aspect of Amazon’s review policy; just try saying anything bad about Amazon’s role in the transaction as part of a review. Two day shipping becomes two weeks? TOO bad, they’ll block a review saying anything like that.
Customer Service?
What costumer service? It’s all A.I. chatbots that respond, “so sorry, nothing we can do”. Even the return requests are all automated and based on an algorithm of how often you return stuff vs your order total.
Their Warehouse Workers Are Run Through the Grinder
This is Just Part of the Books Section. Most Amazon Warehouses are 2 blocks long.
I’ve talked with people who worked at Amazon (and quit). Most will agree that the actual packers have it better than the pullers who have to run and get the order’s items from within the warehouse. From what I was told, they have 60 seconds per order to round up the items and get them back to the packer. That’s the goal if you want to keep your job anyway. That would mean 60 orders an hour and 480 per 8 hour shift.
But the problem isn’t Amazon, it’s that people have no work ethic anymore. 🙄
Prime Shipping: Pay More To Get It… Someday.
And if you’re lucky, the package will even be intact.
Sadly, not much of a joke anymore. I can’t count the number of Amazon packages I’ve had that have arrived with the box looking like Ace Ventura delivered it.
The worst offenses have been when we ordered either decorative metal signs or new filter screens for the microwave. Amazon shipped them in PLASTIC BAGS without any sort of cardboard layer, etc… to provide structural reinforcement. Not just once, but EVEN ON THE REPLACEMENTS, after telling them they packed it wrong!!!
Just how stupid, and blind to your customers can one company be?!?
Then there’s the whole delivery time issue itself. We live in a city with an Amazon fulfillment center in it. Yet it takes almost a week before anything is shipped from somewhere else, then it hits Nashville, passes through our city on the way to Atlanta, and then *IF* it doesn’t take any extra detours, it finally makes it’s way to our house.
Think I’m kidding? Here’s the screen capture of the current round of replacements for the microwave screens:
LaVergne, TN is a Nashville suburb where one of their fulfillment centers is. As you can see, it left LaVergne, passed through our town and for some unknown reason, headed to Trenton Georgia, halfway towards Atlanta but so far West that it’s almost on the Georgia / Alabama border.
It’s SUPPOSED to be out for delivery today, like that’s going to happen. Between the return trip and / or routing it through Atlanta after Trenton, we’ll be lucky to have it tomorrow or Thursday.
It’s sadly not a fluke either. Here’s my all time favorite from earlier this year…
And best of all, Amazon LIES on these internally generated tracking reports. Going to the carrier’s site and entering the tracking number, this specific order bounced from Louisville and Nashville, back to Louisville then back to Nashville before proceeding in our direction. Package arrived at carrier facility towards the top… The carrier confirmed it was in our town. Amazon reports it as in town then still in Nashville. I didn’t get a final shot on the day of delivery but it still took one more day beyond what’s shown here to get the package delivered.
And yet we’re supposed to believe Prime’s price increases are due to shipping costs that are beyond Amazon’s control. Seems to me if they didn’t ship everything by way of Abu Dhabi, they’d be able to massively reduce their shipping costs.
Here’s one last one from the Post Office’s perspective:
From one suburban Nashville warehouse, to New York, to Maryland, and back to a warehouse on the other side of metro Nashville.
All of you who think private enterprise could do a better job than government in many areas should look over all these. When private enterprise becomes a virtual monopoly, and controls more retail sales than the top 8 brick and mortar stores combined (which includes Walmart) there’s no incentive to do anything correctly.
Lastly, Some Wealth Envy
Jeff Bezos used to be held up as this great example of the American dream, starting from nothing and building a huge business empire. The truth is, Bezos started with a half million dollars in funds from mommy and daddy, and who knows how much more he got from them in Amazon’s early years.
As I complained earlier, nothing is enough for him either. Per Inc. Magazine(hardly a liberal rag sheet), Bezos is one of EIGHT people who control half of the wealth of the entire world. That’s correct; eight billionaires have more money between them than 3.6 billion people combined. The list, per Inc Magazine:
According to Oxfam, the wealthiest individuals in the world are:
Bill Gates
Amancio Ortega (Spanish founder of Inditex)
Warren Buffett
Carlos Slim (Mexican businessman)
Jeff Bezos
Mark Zuckerberg
Larry Ellison
Michael Bloomberg
Oxfam, as reported by Inc magazine
Lex Luthor and Jeff Bezos; It’s not just coincidence, and it’s not just skin deep
We should be just as worried about Zuckerburg being up on that list. His wealth is built by data mining personal information off of Facebook and selling it to everyone. He and his planned Metaverse dystopia are a nightmare for another post though.
So, yes, at this point, I’m doing everything I can to stop using Amazon at all. I don’t care if I have to search harder or pay a bit more for products. It’s time to say enough is enough.
About 2 1/2 years ago, I did a preliminary “unboxing” review for our new “Purple” brand bed. Initially, much like our earlier Sleep Number bed, it seemed like the ideal solution to poor sleep from a bad back. It was like sleeping on a water bed without the motion every time you moved, the temperature extremes and the fears of leaks.
My how time has changed my perspective…
Image from Teepublic.com
The bed started sagging a year into use, but lately is getting to the point of causing both of us back aches. 2 1/2 years might be an OK lifespan for a junk bed, but when you pay $4500 for something that’s supposed to be premium, you expect it to last. Instead, this turns out to to be yet another example of corporate greed and shortcuts to increase planned obsolescence.
For the record, as best I can tell (I haven’t tried to take the bed apart yet), the layer of purple material is holding up. It’s the layer of springs underneath that’s sagging:
The Purple material in my chair cushion and our pillows has held up fine. However, that purple hex grid material is heavy. I joked in a previous post that you could knock somebody out cold in a pillow fight with one of the pillows.
The springs, on the other hand, were compressible enough that the mattress could be delivered as a shrink wrapped, compressed and rolled up log:
The mattress is a few hundred pounds of weight all by itself also. Add two people to the top of that heavy layer of purple and the springs will wear out quick. I’m not sure even rotating the mattress regularly would have helped prolong it’s life by all that much. We’re going to be forced to try that option though.
Barring that, we may end up dismantling the bed to do away with the springs layer, OR turning the purple layer into a mattress topper for the second bed in the guest bedroom and using that as our bed. Either way, we probably would have been better off with a Tempur-Pedic deluxe model.
At this point, I have to switch my review to a “Do NOT buy”
It’s Meals Monday here, and today I’m going to tell you about one of the greatest kitchen small appliances ever; Air Fryers.
I’d wager half of you have one already anyway, but for those who don’t, here’s the deal: An “Air Fryer” is actually a high air flow convection oven. It cooks by moving hot air around the food. The effect really is like the food had been cooked in an oil fryer.
The big difference though is that you eliminate all the grease and a ton of the carbs and calories via eliminating the oil. French fries supposedly see a 70% reduction there. I have no way to test that, BUT, I can tell you that they come out every bit as crispy as with an oil fryer, taste lighter, and you actually get more potato flavor using an air fryer.
Chicken strips or nuggets also turn out amazing. Just about anything you toast, bake or fry can be done in an air fryer.
Time wise they’re slower than a microwave, but faster than an oven. The above mentioned fries or chicken strips will take about 10 minutes, as an example. And without any oil to clean up and throw out, which is the worst part of owning an oil fryer.
I was an early adaptor here (yay hipster, LOL). I saw one of the first late night infomercials on them and had to have one. 😀 We’ve bought three at this point, only because we keep looking for bigger ones. Our current one is the newer Air Fryer Oven:
Now we finally have one that can cook the chicken and the fries at the same time. 😀 That’s the exact model we have also. One of these days I have to try the rotisserie for it and see what I can do.
The Couple of Negatives:
There are only a couple here. First is that the infomercials will show you how you can even cook steaks and other cuts of meat. True, BUT as it’s cooking with hot air, you don’t get any of that extra flavor that you would cooking on a real grill.
The second is that of you’re cooking something fairly thick, you’ll have to go for a lower temperature and cook slowly so that the heat makes it to the center without drying out the surface, OR get creative. With Brats or Italian Sausage, for example, I microwave them for 1 minute first to help cook the center, then air fry them till they’ve got a nice moderate char on the casing.
Air circulation is the last thing. With a standard air fryer, you’ll have to toss the fries, onion rings, or what ever once or twice during cooking to keep them cooking evenly. Just pretend you’re a TV chef flipping an egg with the pan. 😀
The air fryer oven does fairly well with circulation unless you have all the racks full, then the top will cook much faster than the bottom rack, and you’ll want to rotate the racks. The company doesn’t give you any kind of a handle for that either. I just grab the hot rack with a pair of tongs. Works fine.
Overall, these things are a wonderful invention. The only kitchen gadget I love more is my KitchenAid stand mixer. They speed up dinner, get food nice and crispy, and can really cut back on carbs and calories. You can almost pretend french fries and tater tots are healthy food. LOL. Fish sticks and breaded fillets really do become healthy, with less grease and more natural flavor, but the same crispy breading as if they were fried. If you can afford the $75 or so, it’s worth picking one up… unless you’re on a raw food diet. 😀
As always, this review is totally my own honest opinion also. I get NO incentives of any kind from anyone when I occasionally discuss a product here.
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