Homeless Tobacco

 I saw this on Twitter the other day and it gives you a video of exactly what I see when I drive through much of LA. I lived there in the 1970s and it was nothing like this.

If your frail psyche does not allow you to *cope* with the failed policies of your preferred political party and instead you comment “this is edited!” know that I took hours of footage just like this.

You may refuse to see the destruction of America - but I will not look away. pic.twitter.com/2qw11jN7al

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 16, 2022

The conversation, as usual, devolved into political finger pointing. Reds justly called out blues for having utterly wrecked the city, which they did. My favorite reply was, "Well, what's the Republican plan for dealing with the homeless?" That's where the reds fall apart.

There is no plan. There can't be a plan. The homeless are almost all addicts. There's no "plan" to deal with addiction, if by "plan" you mean you can vote red or blue and then go back to your normal life, problem solved. 

Once someone is addicted to the point where they've lost everything and fallen into the situation shown above, pulling them out of it is nearly impossible. In my own family, my parents brought both of my addict brothers home to live with them, dry out and get on their feet multiple times. It never worked. If you think that voting blue and spending eleventy zillion dollars on social workers, treatment centers and methadone is going to make a dent in that population, then you're probably on drugs, too.

By the way, that's one of my favorite press release nuggets for these things. "Today, Congress passed a thirty billion dollar spending bill to deal with (homelessness, the border, education, stork leg measurement) ..." as if the number meant something to us and there was some kind of exchange market where you could turn dollars into rescued addicts. There isn't.

My Plan

Wanna know my plan? Here it is.

1. Warehouse the homeless. Get them off the streets and into cheap, severe, mass incarceration. No screwing around, either. No visits, no packages, nothing. Some will dry out and recover enough to get back to a normal life, but most will live the rest of their lives like that.
2. Close the border. Period. Whatever it takes. Walls, tunnel detection, shoot on sight, do anything necessary to stop the flow of drugs into the country. No more amnesty or sanctuary for "refugees."
3. Prosecute drug crimes ruthlessly. Reduce the number of appeals, reduce restrictions on cops, build more courts, build more jails, whatever it takes to clear the backlog of cases quickly. Put huge cash bail requirements on the drug dealers, too. No more catch and release.
4. Make drugs illegal again in all quantities. A tiny bit of heroin is all you need to get you through the day or the hour when you're an addict. You're not helping anyone by making that legal.

Yeah, I know, unintended consequences and civil rights and all that jazz. Before you criticize that plan too harshly, spend a month or so sitting across the dinner table from an addict whom you love. We can talk after that. In the meantime, I don't want to hear a peep about "compassion."

Another Tobacco Fail

Well, some of the Virginians in the fermenter box molded. I had to cull about a quarter of them yesterday. Another fourth of them had crisped as well.

The inside of the bin. Left to right, we've got the thermostat, a 40W bulb, the temperature and humidity sensor and a glass of water. The leaves are resting on a wood lattice to give them air on their undersides.

My next try will be to ferment some of my Tennessee tobacco in jars as described here. It requires a kiln, but I already have a kiln. That's what my fermentation chamber is. Fermenting in jars will simplify all kinds of things. For one, I won't need water or the wood lattice. The jars will be sealed and simply sit in the kiln. I can also ferment the leaves as they ripen in my garage instead of waiting to have enough of them to form into a pile. The early-ripers always dry out as they wait for their compadres.

As for the mold, that thread informs me that mold doesn't grow at temperatures over 122. If I swap out my 40W for a 60W bulb, I won't have any problem keeping my kiln at 122+. As for burping the jars from time to time, exposing the fermenting tobacco to air to get the ammonia out, here's what one guy said.

I think the airing thing is unnecessary. Most oxidation in tobacco afaik is via hydrolysis, which is why you need moisture. Otherwise we could just stick tobacco in low case in a hyperbaric chamber. Perique* on the other hand matters because of organisms and stuff. But then again, I don't know how some <insert some physical gas law> plays into it, but, it's not like there isn't tons of air anyway. Buildup of ammonia, CO2? Air it out after.

So that's the next phase of the experimentation. Mason jars of tobacco in the kiln at 122+, filled as the leaves ripen and labeled by date. As I put the leaves in the jars, I'll also play around with a spray of water or two as I seal them. Some will get none, some one, some two spritzes.

I have to say that for the first time in my fermentation career, I'm optimistic. I had figured this batch would mold and dry, so I wasn't surprised or disappointed when it did.

* - Perique: In St. James Parish, between the levee and the cane fields, a special tobacco with a rich history grows deep. The tobacco, known as perique, can only be found in St. James Parish, and is one of the rarest commercially grown tobaccos in the world.