Fat. Unwell. Diabetic. Pathetic.
300 years ago, very few people could afford the wonder of sugar – it was a specialist product available only to the rich. If only it had stayed that way.
Us humans never had a sweet tooth – for millennia, we managed perfectly well without adding sugar to anything. There was enough natural sugar in fruit and other plants.
But no, we had to get addicted. All of us. We can’t do without the devil’s food now. Unbelievably, you even find sugar in cling-wrapped vegetables! Used as a bloody preservative, as if we cannot get enough of this new killer drug.
For years, me and Mrs B thought we were doing the right thing by eating low fat everything. Because that was what our health authorities and our government recommended. The bastards.
Low fat food. Just think about this for a moment. How does it make food taste? Bloody awful is the answer, but at least they tried to make it better – by adding wretched sugar. AND THEY STILL DO!
Sugar is now one of the biggest destroyers of modern health. Shedloads of children round the world are having limbs amputated as a result of too much sugar consumption. A can of Coca Cola (the original) had 17 sachets of sugar in every single can. All drinks of this type are sugar rich. Not healthy. Dangerous.
The world is getting fat. People are suffering from all sorts of illnesses caused by excessive sugar. Diabetes is going through the roof. The increase in cardiovascular disease and dementia have been blamed on excessive sugar consumption, not to mention tooth decay. Despite all our medical advances, we are becoming the most unhealthy generation ever. Fat. Unwell. Diabetic. Pathetic.
Try and find high fat yoghurt in the supermarket. Almost impossible. It’s all low fat, or no-fat, full of bloody sugar to compensate. Cereals for breakfast. Supposed to be healthy. How much salt and sugar is there? Look on the bloody packet! Stop it! No, don’t add even more sugar, you will make yourself ill. Why are you adding low fat milk????? There’s enough natural sugar in ordinary full cream milk. Don’t you know how much sugar shit is in low fat milk?? Look at the bloody packet. Or just ignore it, and hope it will go away. Numpties.
In the UK, just this week, the government has brought in a “sugar tax”. Too little too late. The modern generations know nothing else. Gotta keep the sugar intake big. Otherwise it doesn’t taste good. The only hope is that future youngsters will benefit from what we now know – manufactured sugar is totally unnecessary and totally BAD. End of.
The worst invention? Nothing else came even close for me.
And the Oscar goes to…
I was really having a hard time to figure out what was mankind’s worst invention, trailing far behind Roger and Dean. It wasn’t the nuclear bomb, obviously. It kept peace during the Cold War between the superpowers and it keeps it now with many more players on the chessboard. Yes, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were nothing good at all but it made the Japanese surrender without fighting for every inch of their land, with more victims to come had the nuclear attack not happened. Cynical? Absolutely, but it was a different time and nobody cared about the Japanese lives then anyway.
So what was the worst? Democracy? No. Internet? No. Donald Trump? Not sure.
I came to a conclusion that we don’t know the worst invention as it obviously didn’t work. Thus we never had a change to get to know it.
Finally, I found out something that could stand to me as the worst working invention. It is skinny jeans for men!
Guys look awful wearing this thing. It looks bad on slim lads but it is even worse when some fat fella puts it on! It looks bad from every angle. It doesn’t look cool. It is not masculine. It is, in fact, immature, infantile… Just imagine some crazy art director in his 50s wearing this red skinny stuff and looking, he thinks, trendy and very, very creative… This man is sick!
Plus, it is, I suppose, hard to take on or off. I mean, it is not comfortable. There’s so many fancy things for teenagers to wear! So men’s skinny jeans gets the Grand Prix.
But… I am not a teenager anymore so who am I to judge?
Not Just Bad — Evil
Last week’s Blog about the best invention of its time was a fun, easy article. Surprisingly, this week’s article has taken more time and thought. There are so many:
- VHS Tape (corporations knew Sony BetaMax was way better but forced VHS)
- Aspartame (Dick Chaney pushed it through knowing it would kill)
- Filtered Cigarettes (Duah)
- Smartphone (I don’t know if it’s a net plus or minus but I know I cannot ask a teenager)
- The Assault Rifle (self-defence? I truly hope you’re not that gullible)
- Social Media (Cambridge Analytica & see Smartphone)
So I started looking at my little list and considering what they have in common. As far as I can see, they all have only one thing in common: These are products from major, publicly traded, multi-nationals. They are all examples of money coming before humanity.
With that in mind, I nominate the publicly traded stock exchange as the worst invention of all time. Now, let me be clear: I’m not talking about a start-up using penny stocks or Go Fund Me, I’m talking about modern Investment Bankers, financiers, and brokers… People like Carl Icon who kill and eat jobs for personal amusement.
These guys all go through Wall Street style stock exchanges; they buy stock in a corporation that didn’t need the investment, then demand higher profits. They convince themselves that their good works lead to innovation. They tell themselves that they create jobs and maybe they do: in China.
They stifle innovation and suppress creativity. You think I’m exaggerating? Look again at that list… These brokerage firms invented nothing. There is not one item on that list Wall Street brokerages created but they sure did push “inventions” that would have died in a real marketplace. Oh and the US Congress saying “Free Market” & “Let the Marketplace Decide”: that’s all crap and they know it!
Let’s look at Facebook: they were a good company before they went public. Yes, there were some ads but for the most part the service was all about you keeping tabs on your friends. And I mean real life friends that you know.
Politicians like to feign shock that Russia uses Facebook to manipulate and undermine governments.
Cambridge Analytica shows that they are using the exact same corporations for the exact same nefarious goals: to manipulate the unread into anger for political gain. Why is it wrong for Russia but alright for the Trump Campaign? Facebook has little choice in the matter, they are publicly traded and must maximize profits.
SpaceX is another example of the real evil these firms swim in. Elon Musk will not allow the company to be publicly traded because he knows that if he does, there will be no Mars. There cannot be innovation and risk if all you care about is profits. In short, SpaceX would become a government contractor doing low Earth orbit launches. Greatness and Wall Street don’t mix.
Steve Jobs pretty much told Carl Icon to bite him. He didn’t allow Apple to become hostage to the for-profit, make it cheap and sell it high mentality that destroyed General Motors. Apple became Apple because they didn’t take the easy way. They demanded innovation from their engineers and told their customers that they would have to pay a little extra for the best. For the most part, Apple still operates outside the control of Stock Exchanges.
I feel passionately about this subject. If you would like to learn more, here is an article from The Guardian. Now, take that book and apply the principle to every last industry major Stock Exchanges touch.