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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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This is completely tangential, but I cannot watch Contrapoints. The Venn diagram of the content I am willing to watch and her videos looks like OO. It's like eating olives: I cannot understand why that taste/presentation is supposed to be appealing.

Lighthearted shower-though about olives, skip this paragraph if not into olives

I'm not a hater of olives, but I am not a lover of then either. If there is anything in the world I am truly neutral about, its olives.

I was lately thinking about how the cuisines of The World would change if certain ingredients would be made to disappear. Some of them will be missed greatly, some not so much. But I think brined olives, not the oil, is just about something that shouldn't exist as a food item at all, its wasted time and resources. Literally not a single person I can think of likes olives. And by that I mean likes them enough over any of the other ingredients that can be used as a substitute, for e.g capers.

A utilitarian could make the argument that the existence of olives are a net negative, because some people really really hate them and some people are indifferent to them. And I wonder how many other products like that exist. I can't think of anything else that I don't at least marginally like.

Edit - Okay I get it, some people like olives !

Not olives / Contrapoints

"Hard" Agree.

I find Contrapoints unwatchable. And that is putting it lightly. I would consider is mild psychological torture if I was made to watch Contrapoints for any length of time. That might be a strong statement and I better at least know from where within me that is coming from, but I have a hard time articulating why I dislike these types of videos so much.

A very surface level intuition I have is that these videos give me the same feeling I had being in a classroom in high school (fucking hated those times). Being TALKED AT not TALKED WITH by some self righteous yet passive aggressive young woman. Contrapoints gives off that same "energy" for lack of better phrasing.

You will take cored olives from me over my dead body

I'll go a step further: I hate olives. I think they are one of the nastiest things people eat (not as nasty as mushrooms though), and I have no idea how anyone tolerates them. I can imagine the taste of an olive right now and it's just.... eugh. Seriously, every food with olives would be better without olives.

What do you eat on pizza if you don’t like mushrooms and olives?

No veggies at all. Meat only, or if I can't get that for some reason then plain cheese. Veggies ruin pizza, imo.

...maybe you actually get a different taste than the rest of us? I heard a story once about a guy who was allergic to peaches; they tasted like needles and pain to him, but he kept eating them because everyone around him kept saying how good they were.

It's certainly possible. No idea how one might verify that, though. I'm pretty awful at describing what something tastes like, or why I enjoy/don't enjoy things. So it seems like a gap that would be tough to try to bridge.

The best recipe I've ever personally made was a Mediterranean olive-bean-and-greens pasta.

Girlfriend also makes a mean olive bread, but that's probably driven by the focaccia rather than the weird, briny fruits.

Losing olive oil would be a tragedy.

Do you have a link to a recipe? That sounds fascinating and delicious.

I fucking love olives. I would eat them all the time if they weren't so expensive.

Kalamata olives, olives stuffed with garlic or pimento, olive bread, olives in greek salad... holy shit dude

Olives are delicious

Olive bread is fantastic, yo.

I like olives, but you're right that they don't work well as ingredients. Brined olives are best served alone.

what do you have with a glass of wine with friends over while dinner finishes cooking? Olives have a pretty indispensable niche as ready-to-go antipasti, regardless of their utility as a briny ingredient.

Olives are peerless as a snack with drinks and they make martinis fun!

Salami, cheese, pickled vegetables, nuts?

The only thing I like about olives was putting them on my sister's fingers when we were kids, turns out she didn't like them either.

Olive oil is great, though.

I, for one, enjoy olives - black, or green, or stuffed with pimento. I put them on pizza more often than not, and this seems to be a popular arrangement since it is offered by major American pizza franchises - and I don't see them offering capers. I think they're more popular than we realize.

I'll sit down and eat a handful of olives as a snack. Especially if they're stuffed with something fun.