Sean Hannity has been defending creepy hebephile Roy Moore, so people have been calling for advertisers to pull their ads from the Hannity show. One advertiser who has done so is Keurig, which has been prompting the triggered snowflakes on the right to #boycottkeurig. Suddenly I’m seeing angry videos of right-wingers throwing Keurig machines from balcony windows or shooting them with shotguns. It’s absurd.
But what is equally absurd is that I’m seeing liberals declaring that they’re going to buy Keurig machines, or trade in their Nestle equivalent for a Keurig, or are celebrating by drinking coffee from their Keurig. Aaaaargh. K-cups are wasteful — consisting of almost as much packaging as coffee. Why are you celebrating a minor tactical decision by an exploitive, destructive capitalist company by rewarding them for a design that promotes convenience over the environment? I don’t get it.
I should also remind you that Keurig was supporting jingoistic, far right wing propagandist Sean Hannity all this time, that they didn’t seem to mind his constant America-First schtick of hatred for immigrants and people of color and queer folk and the poor, but only broke from the pack when he supported sexing up underaged white Alabamans. There’s an unconscious prioritizing of problems here. It’s not that I don’t think it’s despicable for Roy Moore to have been assaulting children, but that there is so much that is despicable about Moore that it’s shocking that his supporters are only noticing a problem now.
I appreciate that the opposition is finally crystallizing around this one incident to try and kill Moore’s career, and I’ll be very happy if it succeeds, but I’m just disappointed that his long history of theocratic bullshit and general incompetence weren’t enough to have kept him out of office, any office, for the last 40 years. But then incompetence and ideological asininity are no barrier to success in this country.
Carrot and stick and tactical decisions. If the goal is to kill Hannity’s career (and thus damaging one of the biggest propagandists propping up our enemies) by scaring off his advertisers, then keeping them off is just as essential.
So we boycott, and Keurig takes a huge financial hit, and decides the best for the bottom line is to drop Hannity. But then we go “Yeah, well, we’re still going to boycott you anyway”. So Keurig gains nothing by appeasing us. And what if they gain Hannity again? Will they also gain the scumbag customers back? That would be a reasonable business decision. And then we’re back at square one, or worse, because other advertisers know that trying to appeal to us at all is pointless.
Say what you will about all the morals in that, but it’s the reality, and imo measurable practical success is more important than impotent sound and fury (sound and fury are good for propaganda…as long as they are part of a strategy that ultimately leads to practical success).
We’re fighting people whose entire ideology is about lashing out at everything and everyone, destroying rather than building. Liberals can stand to become more destructive, and I’m doing my part to push us in that direction, but no ideology can make things better without at least some construction, too.
I think people here can figure out what I’m meaning, but I’ve realized that some of what I said is a bit tangled in the context of the OP, so I’m going to take a post to clarify that just in case.
When PZ says ” people have been calling for advertisers to pull their ads from the Hannity show”, that’s the liberal boycott I’m referring to, not the RWNJ counter-boycott he actually labels as a boycott. Calling out the liberal counter-counter-boycott of buying stuff and “celebrating the company’s tactical decision” is also part of the liberal boycott I was referring to.
Oh, that’s what the hashtag is about! I saw it, but didn’t want to click on it. I won’t support Keurig in anyway, their whole system is beyond wasteful and bad design in every way. I can’t even think about the judge business yet. Just can’t. Too early for me to contemplate bashing my skull to a bloody pulp.
Never quite understood the coffee pods. I drink coffee cold and brew 10 cups and subsequently refrigerate it. When cold I pour it into a 28 oz bottle mixed with coconut milk. I have coffee for two days. Pods wouldn’t work for me.
Logistically if 5 or so people want coffee would it be preferable to brew a pot or have each queue up to wait for the single serving wonder machine spit out its brew?
The preflavored packets are wasteful but aren’t there reusable pods you can put single servings from a large bag of coffee into and empty/clean between servings? Still seems wasteful of time though I guess eliminates need for paper filters.
People love trendy gadgets. I am old fashioned and brew coffee in big pots as nature intended.
I also have a huge jug with a spigot in my fridge that I can pour multiple pots of cooled coffee into if I want to be proactive. That seems quite opposite of the pod principle where everytime I want coffee I have to brew a single cup. PITA.
Oh and Hannity makes my blood boil. Period.
wait… I think you have that wrong. His supporters have REFUSED to notice there is a problem. ever.
Paper filters aren’t needed in an ordinary coffee machine anyway, since there are reusable filters made of wire mesh. Those are of course full-size, for a whole pot of coffee, not single-serving.
They work pretty nicely. To me it seems like the flavor is slightly different, I suppose because the paper blocks/absorbs some of the oils and whatnot, which presumably can make it through the metal filters. But honestly, it may just be me — if you gave me a blind taste test, I don’t know if I’d do any better than chance.
I really like coffee and I like it fresh. There is a place for those pods like in a waiting room at the tire store have a fresh cup while you wait but there are filters that make one cup at a time for the home and you can vary the strength to suit yourself.
I hope Hannity does lose sponsors though if he disappeared tomorrow the only way I would notice would be someone makes a comment about it.
uncle frogy
My objection to coffee pods–aside from the incredible expense–is the tiny size portions they make. I like to fill up a large, well-insulated travel mug and suck on it for hours–if it doesn’t put me to sleep. I find the pacifier effect much more powerful than the (supposed) stimulant effect of the caffeine.
If you don’t mind 5-ounce “cups”, though, a friend of mine has a Keurig machine and a little gold mesh pod you can put real coffee in….
CR: indeed, I have a metal mesh filter.
It’s my second. My first I bought from a hoity-toity kitchen goods store, and not a year later was full of holes. My second I bought from the dollar store, it’s lasted years without damage.
We also have an aero press which uses a small paper disk as the filter.
Paper filters are compostable, so it’s not like it’s a lot of waste either way.
There seems to be a lot of hate here for coffee pods. I don’t know what the situation is in the States, but 100% recyclable Keurig-compatible pods are becoming popular here in Canada and are typically what I use (when I buy pods at all). I suppose it helps that most municipalities have regular pickups of compostable materials (“green bins”) (which is probably not the case in the USA).
I find it convenient to be able to make a single cup at a time and most of the time I’ll use a refillable K-cup that I can load with my own ground coffee. This allows me adjust the strength as desired.
@cerfcanuck #11:
My wife and I were gifted a Keurig machine a few years ago by a “friend” who bought a new one because it wasn’t working. I ran some white vinegar through and it worked for over a year afterwards. We ended up getting rid of it because of the waste and cost aspects, and the fact that we like espresso/lattes better anyway, and didn’t want two machines. Since getting rid of it, I haven’t looked too closely, but I have noticed that I still don’t see any recyclable Keurig-brand pods (like they’ve been promising for years) and the compatible compostable/recyclable ones are much less prevalent than non-recyclable Keurig and compatible pods. It may just be my area (central Florida) or it may just not be popular in the States. Oh, and the refillable K-cups were also still $15 minimum everywhere we looked when we got rid of the machine, so not cost-effective to us. I have seen them at the discount store for $2-3 a lot in the past 6 months, though, so it’s getting cheaper.
@consciousness razor #7:
It could also be the paper lending a small bit of flavor to the end result as well. I know the unbleached, etc. isn’t supposed to impart any flavor, but I don’t know that I completely buy it. As with you, I don’t know that it’s a big difference and I started using reusable metal filters almost a decade ago. At least when I use a regular pot instead of an espresso machine.
To some Moore’s many abominable perspectives on the world are a feature not a flaw. Why would rape be any different?
The big problem is that even assaulting children isn’t a deal breaker for most of Moore’s supporters.
But agreed. Moore is a real piece of work from the ground up.
I got a Senseo, which gets slightly off the hood because the pads are just in normal filter paper. I like the taste and yes, convenience. My packs are probably a bit more waste than buying a pound of coffee, yet it’S nothing compared to the people who will buy the individually wrapped pads.
You know, twenty years ago if someone had written a novel, or a movie script, in which evangelical Christians were all enthusiastically supporting a pussy-grabber for president and a pedophile for senator from Alabama, it would have been dismissed as a vile, hateful slander on Christianity. And yet, here we are.
Sure you can get reusable Keurif filters…until Keurig programs their new machines to only use Keurig-branded pods.
Yonks ago (before pods) I had a real machine, which eventually blew up. Twice. A few years ago I almost got a Senseo since, as mentioned, its “pods” are paper albeit I’m uncertain if they can be recycled. That uncertainty (at the time), plus the restricted range of coffees, were the two main reasons I didn’t (as I now recall; others included serving size and suspicions the coffee was overpriced (even factoring-in the admitted convenience)). I’ve been dithering over getting another real machine — albeit this time of better quality. plus also a grinder… In the meantime I’m using a plunger instrument, and wish I know where in hades my turkish instrument has got to.
Compost heap works fine. Recycling at its best.
Would anyone happen to know where to get a reusable filter, cone shape, #1 size? I have a single-cup coffee maker because that’s all the coffee I can have at a time, and though we compost the filters I would prefer reusable. Apart from anything else, the #1 paper filters are a pain to find.