72 of the n y times "favorite facts of 2021'

“7. pepsico’s frito-lay division made 70 million pounds of snacks leading up to super bowl week 2021, slightly more than it did in the previous year, based on the expectation that smaller gatherings would result in increased purchases of chips.”_____ don’t watch football…don’t eat salty snacks…irrelevant to me…wonderful consumption though ( if they all sold )_____ “13. during the frigid temperatures in February, texas’ largest oil field burned off 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas in one day, enough to power tens of thousands of homes for at least a year.”_____ who says capitalism is “efficient”? no one i know…the waste is incredible from the micro to macro and it goes on every day in pursuit of “profit”…and that doesn’t touch on the carbon the released…where’s william t. vollmann when you need him?_____ “18. in the 1970s, the american psychiatric association adopted a rule saying that, without proper authorization, it was unethical for psychiatrists to issue a professional opinion about a public figures condition.”_____ and so no deranged, entitled, unregenerate, unmatured adolescent dingbat could be called “unfit for office” by anyone allegedly capable of making a judgement…we were not going to have the whole barry goldwater 1964 mud slinging fiasco in the new nixonite world order…wondering just what un-scrupled clowns this spared down the line._____ “20. adults spend as much as 47 percent of their waking hours letting their minds wander, according to one harvard study that tracked participants with an app.”_____ where to start? digression is the structure of human thought…it is how we make connections…even i understand that as i ramble along having full blown conversations with myself…however the whole “app” business highlights the way the majority of the population have their noses stuck in a smartphone…probably explains a lot of auto accidents and may have something to do with the 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas cited above…one supposes the n y times was trying to be entertaining as it propagandized…there are 72 of these little gems in today’s paper…even the one about giraffes had a feminist subtext…mass media in the “age of mcluhan”…my interpretation of the message likely was not what was intended.