start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

uh, didn't the panic cause a lot of caution about soil and plant contamination across continental boundaries? and a lot of research in place just in case widespread contamination occurs

it's like people saying a lack of vaccination could cause the resurgence of whooping cough on a wide scale and shrugging because no one you know has whooping cough

I don't think so, since that stuff happens in isolated clumps (it happened here last year) but a crop-threatening banana blight would affect literally every store, thousands of stores, everywhere, since every store has bananas, and so far nada. Anyway, the most recent articles I cited just above - and there are a ton more - were from just a year ago. And they've been appearing regularly for almost a decade. And yet I have not yet seen the "we did it, good job everyone!" article.

Maybe bananas truly are on their way out, at least these bananas. But there have been other produce or products faced with threats or shortages, and it's typically reflected in, well, shortages, and higher prices. Like, a year or two ago, when drug war stuff in Mexico affected the lime crop? Those are limes, grown all over the place, but they were being sold for like 2/$1 one summer, or more, and restaurants were forced to do without them for budgetary reasons. But you'd think a decade of "bananas are doomed" would have some impact, but nothing so far, save a bunch of "bananas are doomed" stories.

No, it'd pop up in isolated clumps, and if those aren't dealt with, then the disease could spread. Kind of like how cities with the emerald ash borer attacking ash trees will systematically cut down all the affected ash trees -- that's been going on in my city for the last couple years.

Farms in Australia, where the banana problem has been reported, have been doing just that: destroying every affected plant to make sure it doesn't spread. In humans, we're a little nicer and go with a quarantine.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-01/industry-starts-destroying-plants-on-infected-banana-farm/7981732

so yeah, the impact is very low so far

I mean, the story is getting churn because people love bananas, but the basic premise is still true and the only update is "we're still on top of this shit"

http://www.promusa.org/blogpost381-The-22-days-that-changed-the-Australian-banana-industry

In the late 1990s, however, TR4 wiped out most of the banana plantations in the neighbouring Northern Territory

sorry, my irrational anger is tweaked when people are like "i'm told this could affect me but it hasn't, why do they keep mentioning it?" and the main thing that's kept you unaffected is people doing a shitload of work

all future bananas will be straight anyway thanks to europe

Australian bananas return to you if you throw them correctly

That's funny, ha.

"i'm told this could affect me but it hasn't, why do they keep mentioning it?"

It's not this at all. First, they've been talking about it in dire terms for several years. Second, it's never been presented afaict as "this could affect you" (a la whooping cough et al.) so much as "this will affect you, RIP bananas, nice eating you." I totally get that they are on it, and I totally get that farms have been affected. I'm just saying that for all its apparent impact it's never once seemed to affect the supply or the price. Which indicates that either a) yeah, they're on it or b) there has been no impact. (Or c) they are in denial?) Both of which counter the dire predictions. Which, of course, as predictions could still always come to fruition - fruitition? - but again, we're talking nearly a decade straight of dire predictions with no discernible effect or impact (yeah, I know, on me, which is what makes this irrational) . Whereas in the past slight or severe fluctuations in the price of, as mentioned, limes, or flour, or pine nuts, have affected me and others that I know, personally and anecdotally. But I've as yet never known or heard of someone who could not find a cheap banana.

I'm getting really tired of the men in mid 30s coupled with women in mid 20s thing. And not necessarily as a "older men date younger women" trope but the extent to which it's just normal to juxtapose those ages. I'm rewatching Gone Girl on tv and Carrie Coon plays Ben Affleck's character's twin sister. They're nine years apart in age!

I'm blanking, wasn't there some movie high-profile movie a couple of years ago where the woman playing the mother was only seven years or so older than the person playing the son or daughter?

All of them?

Not recent, but Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (6 yrs difference).

Loads and loads and loads of them.

when somebody asks "can you hold" and then puts you on hold before you can answer "yes"

"please hold" would be preferable

my old doctor's office will do it and never return to the phone. always the same receptionist that did it. would just get used to calling back and being like "hey again!"

*would do it

also hate that my old apt had the address actually tied to the specific building you lived in, making food delivery/Uber people have an easy time finding it, but current one uses the same street address for all buildings so any time I order food I have to proactively send a description of a better way to get there cos GPS will always send them to the main office and it's kind of hard to find my building since the order of them is weird.

angry more at hte numbering convention than the drivers, cos how would htey know y'know

But I've as yet never known or heard of someone who could not find a cheap banana.

Actually at times recently bananas have been thin on the ground and/or very expensive in Aus. More due to a few nasty cyclone/flood situations, but it could also be due to crop mitigation. Bananas are currently about $3.50 a kg or $8 or so for organic. I dunno if thats pricey or not, I hate bananas.

Australia (where I will be visiting family in two weeks) is just stupid expensive, period.

Bananas are currently about $3.50 a kg or $8 or so for organic. I dunno if thats pricey or not, I hate bananas.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 11:53 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they can get under $2/kg, so $3.50 isn't terrible. they were $13/kg back during the big banana crisis of the howard era.

Australia (where I will be visiting family in two weeks) is just stupid expensive, period.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 12:04 (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

They're about $1.50/kg here. (60¢/lb)

But ours are straight like the Europeans. One store's taken to calling them Citrus Sausages, but I'm not buying.

My bloke tried telling people we called them "queensland fingers" but no one would fall for it.

hate to say it but

this threads gone bananas

Orange you upset!

...getting coat.

Bananas at, say, Trader Joe's here are 19 cents a banana. So about a dollar and change a bunch? Or more like 50 cents a pound. At Whole Foods more like $.75 a pound.

I don't think I ever fully appreciated how expensive Australia was until I stopped living there. Coincidentally I think that's also when the prices started getting kinda nutso too so maybe it's all my fault

soz

..getting coat.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

Are you picking a window also?

btw, where are Australian bananas grown? On continent or also Central America?

On continent of course! We have an entire state almost given over to bananas, sugar cane, tropical fruit and insane xenophobes.

https://s1.at.atcdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/Coffs-Harbour-Big-Banana.jpg

oh I Canberrit any longer

we even call them "banana benders"

Citrus Sausages

This is deeply unsettling.

The little silence on the line at the beginning of a telemarketing call

I realize they're just doing their jobs, and this makes me an enormous dick, but I always go "Hello? Hello???? Oh! Hello! There was a silence there! Are you OKAY?????"

I also refuse to answer when they ask if it's me, I just evade and ask who THEY are. For all I know they've got a phone number and an address and want to confirm my name so they can steal my Playstation Store account or some shit

I mean, again, I realize this is just how life has been for at least 30 years, and I'm old_man_yelling_at_clouds here but the idea that someone calls my own phone, which rings in my own house, forcing my own actual body to get up and stop doing what I'm doing, and the person who's calling doesn't EVEN KNOW IF IT'S ME WHO'S TALKING is just like... sorry only my friends and loved ones get that privilege you fat-sucking shred of cock

I was thinking that the way taht bananas grew would mean it would be very difficult for them to grow straight. Don't they curve upwards to face the light on the plant they grow on? So stem is actually lower than the body of the individual banana and there will always be at least a kink at that end?

I used to be a telemarketer.. For a summer. We had yellow cards with the first five digits of a phone number written on it, and then 100 double digits, in columns, starting with 00 and going to 99. We'd manually call each number, crossing off the ones that didn't exist, or went to fax machines or whatever. It was to sell subscriptions to the local newspaper. We had no subscriber database. So our first question was always "Do you currently subscribe to the newspaper?" It was remarkable how few people asked why I didn't already know the answer to that question.

I realize they're just doing their jobs, and this makes me an enormous dick, but I always go "Hello? Hello???? Oh! Hello! There was a silence there! Are you OKAY?????"

lol.

a few years ago i got one of those "we heard you've been in an accident" type calls, and i was mithered with them at the time, getting 3/4 a week etc. without thinking i just said "yes, yes i have" and they were like "can you tell us what happened" and i was like "yes, i was hit by a car driven by goblins on mars. in 1831." they were like "could you repeat that" so i did. then they said "when did this take place" and i said "1831. i was in another life in which i was a woman, a very rich beautiful woman..." and they finally hung up.

Tuesday mornings

Tuesday morries

rip

My new thing with robocalls is to be silent on answer.

Also, die in a fire any person from any organisation who phones and won't tell me their business until I answer 'security questions'.

i'm so often amazed and horrified by the chasm that must exist between myself/everyone i know and the businesses who phone you in response to an email enquiry or filling out a form or something. gyms are the worst culprits - i have no cause to talk on my phone in my working day and if i do answer it it's prob a family member telling me someone has died. i realise that might be extreme but i think most people just don't want to receive calls from businesses.

I won't get up to answer my house phone, but if I'm walking by while it's ringing I'll pick it up and sing them a tune.

lol yeah when i had a house phone it was basically an audio den of thieves

i'll be honest i don't bother answering the door plenty of the time - like if i'm working at home on a tuesday morning or whatever. maybe that's a sad indictment of modern life but i don't know that there's ever been a time where you get a useful caller on a tuesday morning. apart from a delivery which would always be expected.

one day recently i was coming back to my house with lunch and some hackney council survey people were outside and i said i didn't have time, entirely truthfully, it was a busy day, and the guy got really shirty, as if because i so happened to be coming in i had to do the survey. he was like "busy, oh yeah, sure..."

sounding like a bad misanthrope here, i like people i just really really don't like forced intrusion. i don't even like people trying to make me take a leaflet.