Interlude: Leftovers

A Soup Season Q&A

This is Canva’s impression of an “apocalyptic cityscape with a robot army”—after 4-5 tries. So, no I’m not worried about AI art per se.

Happy Wednesday,

Welcome back to Interlude, Soup Season’s mid-week offering for paying subscribers. To be honest with you all, I’m still deciding how to structure this feature. I want this to be a place where I can share more of my writing in progress—shorter essays, new internet things, and well-deserved rants.

I’m still working on a consistent structure for this feature, but I’ve got a few ideas. For one, I’ve always wanted to have a Q&A column. I have *opinions.* Lots of them. Too many perhaps. If you want to hear some of them, submit a question anonymously through this form. You can also reply directly to this email. Some readers have, and today, I’m selecting a couple of those questions for my first Q&A column.

In your opinion, what’s the best way to reheat spaghetti?

The best way to reheat spaghetti is not at all. Thankfully, spaghetti is a dish that can be consumed in unlimited amounts, so you should be able to finish it all in one sitting. However, if you must reheat spaghetti, store the noodles and sauce separately (this is crucial). Then heat the sauce and pour it over the remaining, gently-heated noodles. There’s no other way—unless you like cafeteria-style noodle mush with gravy (this, I’ve learned, is what *real* Italians call meat sauce.)

This method will work better if you cook your noodles al dente the first time. Sauce heated in a pan is always better than a microwave. Be sure to add a little bit of water to the pan as it reheats so that it reduces to its original constitution.

Finally, the garnish is everything. Even that mushy, gelatinous lump that holds the shape of the container after you slide it out will taste better with a good garnish. Parmesan, fresh basil, garlic powder, etc. Add a side salad.

What do you think future jobs will look like with the intervention of AI?

There’s a popular social media trend in which someone will post a video of a person doing a blue-collar coded job with the caption “there’s no such thing as unskilled labor.” A few days ago, I ran across just such a video.

Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod

"Unskilled labor" is a capitalist myth.

Below it was an explanation of why this framing is harmful to workers. To summarize the thread, “unskilled” labor would be more properly called “deskilled” labor because capitalists parse up tasks and automate processes in order to make workers easier to replace, even if these moves aren’t cost-effective.