The patent is owned by an Israeli company, but I think the machines are made in Asia. Maybe they machine the valves (which are the only patentable component) in Israel, I don’t know. The CO2 cylinders are standard small gas cylinders, as is the screw connector. The only real innovation was a mechanism that prevents cylinder refill without a custom refill connector. That was how they locked customers into their system.
SodaStream is no longer the only supplier of the machines.
I just got back from the auto da fé.
Auto da fé? What’s an auto da fé?
It’s what you ought not to do
But you do anyway!
Read any of Horowitz’s obits or the Wikipedia article on him. His parents were members of the Communist Party, activists, and stalwart Stalinists (like many American communists of their generation). His Marxist orientation was thoroughgoing from his earliest childhood and was reinforced by subsequent experiences in NYC and London.
A casual friend of mine, a few years younger than Horowitz, remains a Stalinist. Fred is one of the sweetest people I have ever known. I don’t know what motivates him in his politics beyond his upbringing in a Communist household. He’s Chicago born and bred, as far as I know (unlike Horowitz, who was a NYC red diaper baby). Thoroughly working class. We only ever hear about the activist American communists who defected to neo-conservatism or conservatism (labels), not about people like Fred, or the many children and grandchildren of American communists who are not communists but are some description of socialist or leftist.
Another casual friend in my past was a Marxist, more sophisticated in his thinking than Fred, who taught in the Philosophy Dept. for a few years as a visitor. Like Fred, a kind and gentle person. I remember a night at our dinner table talking about NAFTA. He mentored and supervised the honors thesis of a student who went on to write a book about her experiences, as a conservative, at her hopelessly liberal college. She had dedicated her honors thesis to him but never mentioned him in her book. He wouldn’t have fit her script. (He was not an indoctrinator. He guided her to make her own arguments soundly.) I’ve read that she tried to use her book to inveigle her way into the conservative media world/echo chamber but was stopped short by an envious and jealous Ann Coulter. She went on to marry an ultra-Orthodox Jew and has since disappeared from public sight, as far as I can tell.
I hope you have been sleeping tight, Darr. No bedbugs biting.
Is “most premier” like “most perfect”? I mean, with “more perfect” I can supply a “nearly” between “more” and “perfect.” But I am at a loss with the “most” qualifier.
Technically, the Declaration of Independence was the divorce complaint. The divorce decree was the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which was a clusterfuck of a treaty. I tend to think of the Treat of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812) as the real divorce decree.
Not exactly country, but -
Love me some Bonnie 
and the groove laid down by Steve Jordan on drums!
Are there any Canadian Cardinals in the running?
My Preferred Dixie tune
Oh, yeah. I remember that now. Thanks for reminding me. I knew about his history when I was writing a piece about the trend of conservative agitation for “academic freedom” long ago. But I’d totally forgotten about it. I haven’t thought about him – or that subject – in a long time.
So in his case the Marxism was his initial tribe, into which he was indoctrinated as a kid, then after he felt horribly betrayed by someone in that tribe, he just ricocheted into a passionate relationship with the opposite tribe. No wonder he was aggressive – I remember somebody I interviewed saying that he seemed to them less a partisan political thinker than a kind of shock jock. When I talked to him, I didn’t notice the often-mentioned aggression so much as just a super emotional charge in everything, positive and negative.
I feel as if he’s a kind of an extreme but exemplary case of the way humans are too apt to make all our political “decisions” – Based way more (or even entirely) on strong emotions that are actually purely personal with no relationship to political systems or policies or reasoning or facts about anything at all … We seem to be wired for that so much more than for thought of any kind,
No wonder it’s so hard to persuade people to change a political view, since the view is very likely to have been arrived at entirely on the basis of some mess of primal and incommunicable emotions. So changing it by any of the means usually tried is difficult if not impossible…It too often takes the energy that’s generated by the sick passions of a Trump rally. You can’t do that with logic and it seems nearly out of reach even to do it with a positive emotional message.
So we can change tribes, but it might take something of the level of murder to do it – and when we’ve changed tribes we’re still likely to have insanely extreme views of both the old one and the new one, seeing one as the devil and the other as a golden god… And we’re way too wired to see all our affiliations as tribal, including the political ones which – for the sane running of the world – absolutely should be forcibly kept as non-tribal as possible, seems to me.
Well, I do thank Horowitz because his demise has brought what seems to me like fundamental issues here to my mind. Doesn’t make me hopeful but it does help clarify the scope of challenges we face in ever establishing and maintaining decent governments and societies. I’m too prone to wishfully think that it ought to be easier than it is. He’s a strong reminder that it can’t be.
Today’s Coz Richardson and Krugman:
Today is a good day to transfer wealth to the top 0.01%
This is why Republicans hold on.
Its always gut driven base politics. Every time. It keeps them coming back.
Rare is the logic election. Covid, i think, is the only example. Even that has the emotion side, folks yearning to break free of being couped up and remembering fondly Joe’s stable support for Obama.
We have to stop looking at the Resume of our candidates, its so not important.
I dont want to hear “most qualified” ever again as a reason to select our nomonee. All i hear “guaranteed loss”
Did trump listen on 1/20/25 when he heard the oath of office from Justice Roberts?
Only in as much as he had to remember them long enough to repeat back…
“person, woman, man, camera, TV”
I’m alright
Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to give me a fight?
Can’t you just let it be?
