19 ms·
Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over (2020)
- nixarian 6y agoYes, women working is starting to be over. It ruined everything. Here we are.
- edoceo 6y agoDang, it's about societal shift not actually bread.
- chaboud 6y agoYeah. And here I thought someone had done a reverse Impossible/Beyond: making bread from animal products. I guess chicharrón will have to do until then.
- klipt 6y agoMeatloaf?
- mountain_peak 6y agoAs much as I love pork rinds, I haven't been able to coax them into a "bread-like" form yet. I have had some success with Peter Reinhart's "Toasting Bread"; this [0] site's recipe is very close. [0] https://www.thepearlofsenecalake.com/menu-recipes/gluten-free-toasting-bread.htm https://www.thepearlofsenecalake.com/menu-recipes/gluten-fre...
- artificial 6y agoCheck these out [0], they’re plant based pork rinds. Try the meal in bag too. Not just salt and fat. [0] https://impossiblefoods.com/pork https://impossiblefoods.com/pork edit: I'm not affiliated. I just like crunchy foods.
- selimthegrim 6y agoThere's a very experimental chef in New Orleans that has done amazing things with plant based pork belly, including the 'rind'.
- benrbray 6y agoIt used to be that bread and circuses kept the peace. Turns out, we only need the circuses.
- cossatot 6y agoIt seems like the bread (UI, or QE depending on your 1040) is keeping the peace and the circuses are threatening to blow it apart.
- benrbray 6y agoJust trying to understand what you're saying. My best guess is UI="Unemployment Insurance", QE="quantitative easing", 1040 is the tax form. What's the circus?
- Tcepsa 6y agoI'd guess the news cycle, and the increasingly over-the-top antics, political and otherwise, that it seems to spawn.
- pandeiro 6y agoYep, exactly my interpretation. And I agree with GP about the harm of those circuses. It's diversion-by-division.
- benrbray 6y agoThat's what I meant by circus as well, but it seemed like the person replying disagreed with me. We have some massive societal problems to deal with relating to wealth inequality, housing, and public health, but none of it seems to matter as a large segment of the population is convinced that, e.g. transgender people wanting to use the restroom that matches their presented gender is the largest ongoing attack on our collective well-being. The "circus" distracting from the general public's lack of bread (healthcare, labor rights, etc.).
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- jumelles 6y ago(2020)
- abhishekjha 6y agoEnglish is not my native language. What is bread in this article?
- w0de0 6y agoIt’s bread (that is: pan, wheat or similar milled and leavened) but it’s more a euphemism of the author’s own design. To me it was a reference to - something - in the American millennial zeitgeist that congealed just about mid-pandemic when half our social media seemed to be about people making and bragging about bread at home.
- rakoo 6y agoI feel it's that one: all the people were talking about during the first phases of lockdown was how to make the best of this moment, surrounded with all this newfound available time and knowledge a few clicks away. Stories of starting a new hobby, learning a new language, playing an instrument. It was all temporary anyway, so we might as well use that time. But the diversion wore off, as time went on, deaths kept piling off, countries were fighting each other over sharing vaccines and their patents, half the country still believes it's all a hoax... there's only so much bread that will keep you busy while no one outside shows any sign of pondering on our faults as a society and we are just waiting for the old days to come. Who cares about bread anymore. Maybe I'm putting some of myself here, but so many parts of this society look too much like dumb tasks coming again and again with no end in sight, and for what result? Become a prince if you have the good friends/luck/money, or vanish into the void of being forgotten. Stop being diverted by quirky social media phenomenons: fix the system, or leave it to make your own. Abort the fairy tale.
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- sigmaprimus 6y agoI am not completely certain but I believe the authors' mother was saying "F the bread it is over" as a sort of metaphor regarding last years fad of baking bread during the lockdown and how it is no longer important. It could also be a commentary on the ketogenic diet movement gaining ground in recent years. Bread is also slang for money so it could be refering that the author cant make any money but thats a stretch. On a side note, one of my favorite science/fantasy fiction authors is a professor at Brigham Young University. He completed possibly the greatest fantasy series every written, so I don't see any reason why a class about fairytales wouldn't work.
- yeetman21 6y agoWas the author of this post a schizophrenic since he or she was jumping everywhere
- 0xbadcafebee 6y agoObviously, you are not a golfer.
- lashloch 6y agoIf you couldn't read the (short) article closely enough to determine the author's pronouns, maybe hold off on implying they are either mentally ill or a bad writer.
- bitwize 6y agoShe was writing for print, which is an author-centric artisanal craft -- not foe the Web, a reader-centric ploy for attention and clicks.
- spoonjim 6y agoI think you should start with The Alchemist.
- elanning 6y agoI enjoyed this prose. Most of what I read is curt and devoid of personality.
- conception 6y agoAnother poet , Aimee Nezhukumatathil just released this book https://bookshop.org/books/world-of-wonders-in-praise-of-fireflies-whale-sharks-and-other-astonishments/9781571313652 https://bookshop.org/books/world-of-wonders-in-praise-of-fir... and it also has this same gait as this piece. It won like a trillion awards and is quite lovely in the same way as this.
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- dr_dshiv 6y agoWow. Bread as University employment. Which is income (UBI?) plus purpose (Buddhist Economics?).
- turtletontine 6y agoI remember this article from a year ago. It's a beautiful piece of prose that really stuck with me, thanks for sharing this again. The first year of my PhD program is ending, and I feel like I've been adrift the whole time: floating by without much direction, not doing much more than the bare minimum. I've been needing to reevaluate my priorities and find what I should really be doing. I've already decided I won't end up in academia, I couldn't win the endless pile of tasks. Not sure what I need to learn from this article but learning to make the most of the rest of your life is high on my list :)
- Aeolun 6y ago> It's a beautiful piece of prose that really stuck with me That’s what stuck with me most. I kind of knew where the content was going, but this felt really nicely written.
- HenryBemis 6y ago>I couldn't win the endless pile of tasks. and from the article: > I will tell them if they perform each one of these tasks perfectly, they will be rewarded with more tasks. 'Places' like WoW made a fortune with the innate need to 'complete tasks'. It's the cheap thrill of 'accomplishment'.
- Balgair 6y ago> Gold for your dust, sir. Pearls for your pigs > I’ve wanted a job like this for so long, I barely even know why I want it anymore. I look at my hands. I can’t tell if they’re mine. > But also I wanted an office with a number. I wanted a university ID. I wanted access to a fancy library and benefits and students and colleagues and travel money. I wanted the whole stupid kingdom. “And then what?” says my mother. “And then nothing,” I say as I jump off the very top of a fairy tale that has no place for me. She has such a great way with English. She is much better off outside of the Ivory Tower, out here, making gifts and hay. Dreadfully, her mother was right.
- silexia 6y agoThe impression given by her piece is that everything she is doing is pointless. She is absolutely right. The university system has evolved from teaching people how to be adults to being a scam to line the pockets of those in the administration and professorships. It needs to be blown up and started again from scratch.
- dmje 6y agoWhat a beautiful piece. Thanks for posting.
- davtbaum 6y agoI think this piece is really about identity, and what happens when you establish and associate so deeply with an identity that when something challenges it (e.g. the passing of a job opportunity) it turns your world upside down. The author claims to have found peace in motherhood and that the job she was seeking wasn’t even that great, and perhaps the interviewers single minded, and maybe the entire process a little absurd. What I find interesting about this is that looking through the lens of ones ego, this seems like the logical way you would cope with losing a job - just convincing yourself it wasn’t ever really what you wanted
- lmm 6y agoSour grapes are also one of those fairytale things.
- hooande 6y ago* fables
- riffraff 6y ago> The author claims to have found peace in motherhood and that the job she was seeking wasn’t even that great Does she? I didn't get this feeling. I got the feeling of being resigned to never getting it, but not happy about it.
- agogdog 6y agoThis was my interpretation too, she's seeking reassurance from her mother... who says she shouldn't care, but she doesn't seem satisfied
- hrktb 6y agoI sometimes hear teacher friends blurt that they’re not sure their job has any meaning. And I kind of understand in that it is supposed to be a glorified role, and at the same time it may have no direct real world impact and just be imposed boredom on unwilling pupils. But teaching at a uni for instance is a big deal career wise, identity wise. You end up doing something that you love ans bring some riches, but may not matter at all to those you teach, is highly seen from the rest of the world and becomes your whole value proposition to outsiders. Compared to that, motherhood has exactly the opposite proposition (lowish social regard, super high impact on someone’s life) while not being so different fundamentally.
- cudgy 6y agoBegging for something rarely yields a high quality result.
- kristjansson 6y agoIt’s possible to describe the nature of an action without describing its form
- cudgy 6y agoBeing uncertain when you’re lost does not render certainty when you fail.
- dmoy 6y ago> Over the years I have applied for hundreds of professorships, and even received some interviews. How may professorships are there per PhD graduating?
- seibelj 6y agoIt is very freeing to realize there is no One True Path. If you thought becoming an academic was The Only Way, and it doesn't happen, you either live a miserable life or overcome this failure and progress forwards. I think "Fuck the Bread" is the realization that something the author desired so hard, and tried so many times to get, ultimately does not determine her path in life and her mental state of being. I would further say that there is an unhealthy way of viewing life currently in vogue where everything is "systemic" - you can't possible overcome issue XYZ because of systemic reasons ABC that are out of your control. So... why bother? But all of that is a psychological trick - life is what you make of it. If you aren't happy, no one is going to make you happy but yourself. This is simplified as the "bootstraps" vision of the world, and obviously helping people and receiving help is important (no man is an island), but true happiness can only come from yourself and living life the way you choose. When you stop giving a fuck about what other people think and start living the way you want, is when you truly become free and actualized as an individual.
- CleverLikeAnOx 6y agoThis resonates with me. A heuristic that often leads to success is learning the rules of our systems, both written and unwritten. Over-reliance on this heuristic shackles one to imagined limits. Many of the perceived "rules" can be broken. As an example, many people assume you need to go to a top school to get a top job. But after several years working, that perceived boundary that so many are so hung up on seems like a joke to me.
- type_enthusiast 6y agoWhether or not it's considered relevant here, I hadn't seen this before and I found it very moving. I'm glad it was submitted.
- annoyingnoob 6y ago> I consider how much we depend on useless, arbitrary tasks to prove ourselves. I consider how much we depend on these tasks so we can say, at the very end, we succeeded. This made me think of tech interviews.
- rsgrafx 6y agoI love it. Thanks for sharing. I felt like I could relate to the many job interviews I've been on lately. I made me thingk of my fear of change and reshaping myself. Even for me posting a comment on is a form of change from my norm - F the fear. the fear is over.
- tayo42 6y agoPeople keep saying this is beautify written and stuff, but I feel like I just read a research paper in a topic I don't know about. Am I just dumb, what am I missing here? I feel genuinely confused about what I just read.
- hinkley 6y agoI think this is one of those things that maybe it's okay if you don't understand. In some ways this is about loss, and if you don't 'get it' it doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you're fortunate.
- babesh 6y agoI think it is for people who love their feelings and fall into them. I also have a lot of trouble relating. I couldn’t stand reading more than 2 paragraphs.
- deanCommie 6y agoI'm curious (genuinely), how do you feel about art, paintings, music, and poetry in general? Do you find yourself gravitating to Realism? [1] Or are you comfortable with the abstract? Because I think it's not just about feelings. It's about the comfort with abstractions. The writer is writing EXTREMELY specific narratives that are meant to evoke extremely RELATABLE general feelings. And she is incredible at it. It's a real skill. But it's okay if you don't grasp it. This stuff isn't automatic. However, I will say that you could learn to appreciate it, if you were so inclined. [1] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Realism
- babesh 6y agoI like some forms of abstract art. I just don’t particularly like this form. Also, your opinion that the author is relatable is subjective. It is relatable and enjoyable to you just as it is not relatable nor enjoyable to me. To me, this author is the modern form of Jane Austen. Flourishes, flourishes, flourishes. Full of inner dialogue. You overstate the abstractions. They are obvious.
- oska 6y agoWell, at least her mother is well grounded.
- linspace 6y agoA common feature of older people. Time gives perspective. That, and not having to work I guess.
- jb_gericke 6y agoLoved this! The disillusionment with academia, the 'demic inspired semi nihilism (fuck the bread), the casual swearing in the title...
- _cs2017_ 6y agoI have no fucking clue what this was about. I tried reading, then skimming, then thought about it for a bit. Seems like a bunch of personal feelings stringed together in a rambling sort of way, but apparently they resonate with many people? I'd be very grateful if someone could ELI5 the whole thing. On a separate note, is HN the right forum for this?
- throwaway99997 6y ago> is HN the right forum for this? If you need to ask that question, the answer is yes. The no's are obvious.
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- kuu 6y agoMy ELI5 would be: - Mom wanted to be a teacher. - Mom couldn't, most likely because pandemic situation. - Mom is now "only" a mom. - Mom is not sure about what she wanted to be. - Mom ponders if tasks are what defines us. - Mom struggles with that. Edit: format
- _cs2017_ 6y agoThank you, this is exactly what I was looking for!
- repox 6y ago> I'd be very grateful if someone could ELI5 the whole thing. Don't worry, I have absolutely no clue either what this was about not who the intended audience is.
- hnarn 6y agoIt's prose, it's not a technical manual. There's no "ELI5" for art, because art happens inside you. For example, "Wave" (1889) by Ivan Aivazovsky[1] is a painting I really like. It speaks to me, but how do you "ELI5" it? There's nothing to "explain" about art, unless you only dissect art into the technical details of the painting -- because you look at it, and either you like it or you don't. If you don't like it, that's not from a lack of "understanding" the painting, there's not a bridge of knowledge you need to cross, you are entitled to simply not like it and that's fine. The fact that I do, and maybe you don't, doesn't really say anything about whether it's a good piece of art or not, or whether you understand art, etc. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/%D0%90%D0%B9%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%98.%D0%9A._%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%B0.jpg/1280px-%D0%90%D0%B9%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%98.%D0%9A._%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%B0.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/%D...
- 8bitsrule 6y ago"I wanted a university ID. I wanted access to a fancy library and benefits and students and colleagues and travel money. I wanted the whole stupid kingdom. “And then what? ... You’re better off,” says my mother." When I arrived at college, I soon thought I wanted that. It took me years to get over the college movies, and music, and stories, and to see the place as it was. Lots of great people, lots of great resources, and ... the time. A few of the profs whose courses I took seemed to actually have the gift, enjoyed teaching ... they measurably helped me to improve my capabilities. Some clearly were unsatisfied, read from the same notes every year, made fun of the popular courses. One, whose office I only glanced in on once from curiosity, jumped off a bridge. It's a complex world, and not always a fit one for outsiders. Now and then I still wonder what might have been. But the books, movies, music ... they're fairy tales.
- mewse-hn 6y agoI don't know if I can help anyone understand this piece but I'll try: This is poetic prose and it's meant to evoke feelings more than tell an a->b story. Early in the pandemic last year when people were suddenly confined to their houses, a whole lot of people took to baking bread. The author's fruitless, meaningless job search paralleled the global situation with scores of people losing their jobs. It paralleled her micro situation with being unable to find flour, and not knowing how to harvest wheat. It paralleled her assignments of fruitless, meaningless scavenger hunts she gave her children, because they're stuck at home with her, and nobody knows what the fuck to do. Ultimately it's a piece describing exhaustion and utter bafflement at trying to find a higher purpose in the midst of the global pandemic. "Fuck the bread" is the voice of reason - when the going gets tough, keep going. Pieces like this will be the time capsules that will help people in the future understand what we all went through. I do hope it reaches some of our non native speakers.
- jfgiogktkt 6y agoI'm a non native speaker, and I'm not really into prose/literature, and I thought this was beautiful. I was asking myself "is this poetry? But it's clearly prose". I wasn't really aware that poetic prose exists, maybe I learned in school, but I forgot.
- _cs2017_ 6y agoThanks for taking the effort to explain this. Regardless of whether I like the story, it's interesting to try to understand what the author was attempting to convey.
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- one2three4 6y ago> I can’t tell if everything is at stake, or nothing is at stake. All I know is that I am being tested, and whether or not I am offered this job will depend on the appetite and mood of strangers. As someone who has been interviewing a lot lately this hits as close to home as possible. There are times where this sense of helplessness is nauseating. > I can’t believe I spent so many hours begging universities to hire me, I forgot to learn how to separate the chaff from the wheat and gently grind. That one too. I'm thinking of that quite often lately. I've spend countless hours just to stay sharp in computer engineering but I know almost nothing of basic survival skills. If things are to go seriously South I'll have almost no skills to deal with it. Anyhow that was beautiful prose.
- rozab 6y agoBeautiful writing. The whole thing reminds me a lot of Joanna Newsom and other freak folk artists. If you like this, listen to Ys!
- magicroot75 6y agoI found this piece to be puerile. The author spends her life bemoaning the fact that no one appreciates her skillset. Instead of finding useful skills, she uses her current ones to complain about it. Being obsolete is not something to glorify, its something to FIX.
- gorjusborg 6y agoI didn't take the tone as bemoaning, rather descriptive of a state of mind. There seems to be acceptance not complaint here. What is there to fix? We are animals, driven by biology. Do we need to be useful? To who, or what purpose?
- hnarn 6y agoI found your comment to be a lack of perspective in appreciating a humanistic and vague piece of prose, instead interpreting it as an engineer would: a problem to be solved, and not to be whined about in the meantime. There is no problem formulated here, I read no whining into this text, it's a very subjective observation of someone's life written in an artful style, it's not entirely happy or entirely sad, and it leaves you with more questions than answers. Accepting things that do not give you answers is a part of appreciating art, and if that's not of any interest to you then that's absolutely fine, but for your own sake I'd encourage you to be a bit more open minded about what the "purpose" of a work is rather than assume that your immediate and subjective opinion about it is beyond dispute.
- Shasidasi 6y agoFuck the hacker news.. Censoring a holes..
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- caffeine 6y agoThis is an unpopular opinion, but I very much dislike the writing in this piece. I find it unnecessarily obscure, jarring to read as it bounces from one unfinished thought to the next.