This waffle iron has been in continuous use feeding the various members of my family since the 1950s

I don’t like it when people say “late capitalism”, first of all because it’s too optimistic: it implies it’s going away, which, good luck with that

and second of all because it implies that capitalism has become somehow worse, as if there was a time when it was pleasant and humane, which seems willfully ignorant of a lot of history

when was the kinder, gentler capitalism that we’re hearkening back to? the CIA overthrowing oil-unfriendly democracies? union busting with lethal military intervention? children’s hands mangled in automatic looms? the east india trading company?

It’s kinda weird to think that before TV and recorded music, people just had, like, their friend who could play music and local live theater and that stuff was so much more important than it is now.

if you wanted to share a cool song with your friends you literally just had to be good at music and learn it

if you wanted to watch a fun story with your friends you literally had to put on masks and grab some sticks and read it dramatically out loud

innate musicality lost so much cultural cachet

it used to be one of the highest tiers of human skill

honestly, I think that’s something that feels genuinely lost

Some of my grandparents were successful hobby musicians, they would participate in vaudeville style variety shows, and since not everybody had a TV, this kind of entertainment was vital and important - and, like, they were nowhere near world class, but the lack of broadcast media meant that people didn’t have to be world class to find a place for themselves.

And you know what? Engaging in this kind of thing, community theatre, low-level entertaining, it was fun and rewarding and accessible - and there’s just not much space for it in modern society.

I think it’s great that in 1940, a maitre’d, Ignacio Anaya, at a club near Fort Duncan in Mexico panicked when a bunch of army wives showed up - he couldn’t find a chef and he had nothing to feed them - so he threw a bunch of corn tortillas in the deep fryer and threw some shit on there.

“Nacho” is just a nickname for “Ignacio”.

So when they asked him what it was, he just said “it’s the ’nacho special” and NACHOS WERE BORN, BABY.

I like to think of nachos as a thing that has always existed, like air or gravity or pizza, but actually they’re just Nacho’s.