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Soft Drinks are Dumb
Soft drinks are dumb. There, I said it. Soft drinks – and by that I mean soda, pop, whatever you call the pre-made, bubbly beverages that are a common default at food service providers, parties, and the like, and not all drinks that are “soft” as in not containing alcohol – exist for such a convoluted series of reasons which people tend to be ignorant of, and I think that if society were to be more knowledgeable on the whole landscape of the beverage world, lives would be improved for various reasons. If one fully takes into account the history of the beverage and how it got to its current form, the reported health drawbacks, and the alternatives and their various benefits and upsides, there is very little reason to drink soda.
Why the Moka Pot Is the Best Coffee Maker for the Casual Drinker
Of those who make and drink coffee in the comfort of their own home, there are three major subsets:
- Those who just need their caffeine fix and are not all that picky about it.
- Those who don't mind the combination of time, energy, and money required to make a quality cuppa.
- Those who want a happy medium of cost and benefit, wanting but not requiring a nice taste and the benefits of caffeine.
For the first group, a standard drip coffee maker has probably been the default, and now is being superseded by various single cup, more-waste-is-okay-because-it-is-convenient “pod-based” coffee makers.
The second group are those who have the counter-space to dedicate to an espresso machine, the money to buy a fancy one-touch automatic espresso maker, or enjoy the tedium of manually pouring their pour-over.
I used to think that the third group, which I fall in to, was adequately serviced by the French press, but now I think otherwise.
As someone in that third category, I don't drink coffee that often. I don't “need” coffee — or, more specifically, caffeine — to wake me up in the morning, and when I had a commute longer than 20 steps, I didn't stop at Timmies for a cup of their slootwater* every morning. Because of this, I don't feel that it's worth taking up valuable counter space with a plug-in coffee maker. This also means that, when I do have a cup of coffee, it's nice to drink something a little fancier.
Can We Not Copyright Hymns?
A friend tweeted this:
Can we not copyright hymns? pic.twitter.com/zeIH0vY9T9
— Katy 'Repentant Sinner' Jean (@katynotie) January 17, 2020
While I agree with her sentiment, just saying that I agree with a one-sentence & gif rant doesn’t share my full thoughts, so here they are.
From a secular perspective, it is at least polite for the writers of a piece of music to receive compensation for the use of the song, assuming they want it. Even if it’s just to encourage more music to be composed, the writers should be fairly rewarded for their work in some way. After all, we wouldn’t want a talented songwriter to not have the time to sit at their piano because they are busy doing other things to put bread on the table.
There's nothing wrong with an artist saying, “You have to pay me to use my song at your event”, though usually they don’t say it directly and use the help of a licensing body like Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). Most parishes and venues that I’ve been to have some form of blanket license that they pay an annual fee for, allowing them to use the songs they want without having to get explicit permission for each one.
This is a decent solution, balancing the work to get permission with what is probably a lesser amount of funding going to the artists than if they were to license tracks individually. Obviously, it doesn’t prevent a “bad actor” like an overcontrolling record label from taking a larger cut than they should and paying the artist in literal peanuts, but that’s another complicated problem for a different article.
Assuming that a person performing a musical work is doing so within the permissions given by the licensing body, both the necessity of politeness and a Christian’s moral obligations could be deemed fulfilled. But there is another angle.