Forks for Hands

Hey Friends,

I once came up with the idea of forks for hands.

It occurred to me, when I was eating some arugula salad, that my fork was not the most efficient way to get my calcium and folates from these garden gifts. Neither fork nor knife, nor spoon would serve me well if my goal was to enjoy the peppery, and slightly buttery flavor of this leafy green. Using the sophisticated utensil was more drudgery than decisive. When you're wearing white pants at a garden party, everyone would expect you to pick at your greens with your graven sterling, pinkies up.

As humans, we spend countless hours optimizing and being polite while doing it. Those hours often a trade off for getting shit done.

When it comes to forks, we don't need a new one when we have two more functional forks right here, colloquially called hands. I expressed as much to my wife, and she agreed, but mentioned steak as the exception – maybe silverware is superfluous, until you want to eat the firm but tender bits of muscle from America's favorite flatulator, the cow.

I told her she had a point. When you eat a steak, you need a knife. But you have 28 right here in your mouth awaiting their chewiest chore.

The idea of overengineered solutions and overpolite approaches where everyone has a voice reminds me of meetings – something I am all too familiar with, working with other professionals in a white collar setting where talking sometimes supercedes doing. Most of our meetings are designed to solve problems, but nine of ten meetings are an hour spent not solving one, but dancing around it, for the sake of diplomacy. Add Zoom, and you're checking your hair while you're at it.

This brings me to the topic of this past weekend's US attack on Iran.

We've been talking about Iran for years, practicing diplomacy, tamping down their proxies, making multiple nuclear agreements, and trying to be polite by using forks to keep from getting our hands dirty.

Then Trump ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. We could spend this whole article criticizing Donald Trump for not getting Congressional approval, instead ordering military action like every President in living memory does. Or not giving diplomacy a chance, like the last few presidents have.

We could continue talking about how everything Donald Trump does is bad, because after all, he is the guy who turned the government into a nest of vipers where loyalty is bought and sold. We could easily criticize him because he has hair like this, and his skin tone is a color not found in nature, but in a push pop. It would send the right signals to judge the actions because of how we feel about the president instead of judging on the merits.

Or we could talk about Iran, their funding of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, Iraqi Shia Militias, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist networks. We could talk about what the popular Iranian slogan "death to America" really means, or how seriously to take the active antagonizing of Israel and the calls to abolish it. We could talk about whether we want a nation like Iran, or any nation, to have a nuclear weapon.

Or we could just bomb them.

The problem with any analysis is that we'll have to wait for history to tell us whether this move prevented a larger war or started one. We'll have to wait on history to find out who gets to write it. But there's no denying that Trump, in this case, got his hands dirty, and with or without a hairdo, he was the one to get shit done.

It's hard to think of it this way, but if a war could ever save lives, this might be the one.

Let's get to The News.

That's it for this week.

Remember: The Lorem Ipsum is handmade for your pleasure. The best way to consume it is one bite (or issue) at a time, and by sharing a bite with friends.

Have a great weekend!