Packaging

The hunt for the lost kabanosi of my youth continues, reaching up this week to Leeds, via eBay and EVRI, these last being the people who used to be called Hermes, rebranded following bad publicity. In the news recently when a whole lot of their parcels were found in a tip.

But on this occasion there was no problem and the well made parcel turned up within a couple of days of my hitting the green button in eBay. And the kabanosi from Krakus were not bad at all. Chock full of smoke and preservatives. Krakus having last been noticed at reference 2, for a rather different, much milder form of sausage.

Although I did think this morning that it was no wonder that eating this kind of stuff promoted cancer of the stomach. You fill your meat full of chemicals to stop bacteria eating it and to stop fungi growing on it - so is it any wonder that these chemicals do bad things to human stomachs, at much the same game?

[The ‘Helix’ was set to be the centrepiece of the new office hub in Arlington, Virginia, Amazon’s biggest outside of its hometown, Seattle © Amazon handout]

Following which grisly thought, I was amused by this picture in the FT of the proposed Amazon HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, presently on hold. They might cut costs to the bone at the coal face, that is to say at their warehouses, but they can't resist showing off a bit when it comes to their headquarters buildings. 

One can read something of the rather tawdry bidding process that kicked in when Amazon were deciding where to put it at reference 3. 

PS 1: a little later, for some reason, I was curious about whether there was a day-of-the-week bias with my brick carrying activities. The pivot table above - covering just about the three years since March 2020 and with Sunday being day 1 - reveals all. Or rather, perhaps nothing, with no favourite days. But maybe a reader who can do significance tests will advise. Maybe there is something about Mondays and/or Wednesdays, but I can't think what. Apart from Wednesday generally being a day when I prepare my own lunch.

PS 2: given the good time that Starmer has been having poking at all the Tory errors of judgement and worse over the past few years, is it wise of him to be trying to take on a very senior civil servant as his chief of staff? Should not such a person be in quarantine for a few years?

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_(company).

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/boiling-ring-not.html.

Reference 3: Amazon pauses construction on its second headquarters in Virginia: Ecommerce company is looking to cut costs after years of heavy investment - Dave Lee, Financial Times - 2023.