Well most raw vegan food is already way cheaper that raw meat:
Quality organic dry chickpeas, lentils, beans, soy etc… already are around 2€/kg where I live and when you add water they double/triple in weight so you end up at 1€/kg. You’ll probably eat a bit more weight than meat but still the price is nowhere comparable. Add some whole cereals instead of white bread for nutrition and better satiety: they’re more expensive but you got the price back on the quantity you eat (you won’t stuff yourself that much T165 bread or brown rice: the fibers will make you feel full super fast). And for the vegetable you usually can find stuff super nutritious for cheap : apples, leak, cabbages and alls sorts of oignons.
Even fancy organic quinoa is like 10€/kg but also double in weight and you only eat ~1.3 times the meat weight you’ll eat in meat-meal.
Industrial chicken is 5€/kg un the shop and "good" one 15€/kg. Quality beef is nowhere in that range.
Missing the point, which was that you're not going to convince people like me who ignore the vegan options just by having them be cheaper than meat, because I won't look.
The only thing that would make me look at the vegan options would be if I felt I couldn't afford the meat options.
1. I’m not trying to convince you or anyone. In fact people always convince themselves, you only can share facts and opinion with them and they do their own arbitrage. Eat what you want to eat.
2. Speak for yourself. "People like me" doesn’t mean much, you may share some thought but everyone have a whole life of different experiences. Your argument on price and affordability makes sense may be shared by others but is probably more complex and nuanced than only that sentence, and others sharing that thought with you today may have a slightly different one yesterday and tomorrow.
3. Not many admit it, but people do changes opinion sometime, framing it as a logical conclusion to thinks they discover, read etc… nobody wakes up and become vegan out of nowhere. They had experiences, process it and make they own arbitrage just like you’re doing. In that sense I know my message has been read by more that only you and hope it helps understanding that many vegans eat more that impossible-burger only.
4. Genuine questions : why do you eat meat ? I guess it’s more than the affordability only. otherwise you’ll smoke, fentanyl yourself and drink only sodas if you can. When I have long talk with someone it usually comes down to habits or tradition. I’d be happy to read your opinion on that question.
I know not aimed at me, but honest answer: because I grew up eating it. Environmental/moral concerns have never been a prime concern as I don't consider them problems reasonably solved or helped by individual choices. Having sat don for a lengthy talk with an adherent, veganism itself comes off as smug self righteous delusion to me.
But that's my opinion, and opinions are much like assholes in general cleanliness and presentability in public.
Good for you. For those who are trying to convince, the cost increase on meat needs to be substantial, is my point. When I was a child, we didn't have much money. That didn't mean we chose to eat vegan. It meant there were smaller amounts of meat, or cheaper types of meat (such as whale; back then whale meat was a cheap beef substitute in Norway - you'd buy meat if you could afford because whale meat is a lot of effort and tough).
To your argument I should speak for myself: We have clear evidence on the basis of seeing that people rarely end up on a vegan, or even vegetarian diet even when meat is expensive - such as it was during my childhood - to suggest that this is the case for far more people than myself.
> Not many admit it, but people do changes opinion sometime
Yes, but my point is that if you want people to change opinion, it isn't going to cut it if the other options are cheap, as long as people so strongly prefer the more expensive option that they will buy it anyway.
> why do you eat meat ?
Because I enjoy it. I don't need any other reason. I love the taste. I love the texture.
One thing I realized a number of years ago is that my childhood instilled biases in me.
A Few Examples:
Sushi/Raw Fish/ethnic/spicy food == Bad
Apple Products == For Suckers
Ford == Found On Road Dead (bowtie life)
AMD >>> Evil Netburst Intel empire.
When I realized just how irrational I was on soo many subjects (I had never seen sushi or really any ethnic food until I was at my first SDE job as a 20somthing) - it made me re-evaluate.
> pointless to spend time considering it
Since then; Anytime I've ever considered something pointless to consider - it's been a trigger to consider it. Has honestly been kind of life changing revelation; has led to a much more varied and interesting life than I would have led otherwise based off my upbringing/predispositions. I'd even venture as far as to say it's made me inherently happier as a person as I no longer sneer at the apple user/sky diver/snow boarder/ebike rider/mountain climber/etc - now I look into it and possibly plan a trip.
I'm not saying "vegan > Meat" - I myself BBQ fairly often; but I'd also advise one to consider the vegan entree you sneered at prior; it may well just surprise you. And if it doesn't; the punishment is a deeper understanding! (.. and maybe paying for second lunch. but that's the risk)
> The commenter I responded to said that people don't need to eat animal products to live at optimal health, which is laughable
That is still technically incorrect and is refuted by observing healthy old vegans that consume supplements from cultivated-bacteria only for decades.
Those bacteria also develop in some animals digestive system as you already know, and eating those animals has been for a long time our main source of b12. The other (minor but non trivial) one has been non-washed fruits and plants human consumed during millennia, and that’s still how grazing animals ingest a bit everyday. The non grazing animals are widely supplemented with cultivated-b12. We’re producing around 80T/year for that which isn’t much we animals only need around 10mg/year. I'm not discussing the "non-natural" qualification of supplementation, just the fact it's today a very white practice to live an healthy (human or non human animal) life by ingesting only bacteria sourced B12.
> we've cracked the code on the "essential" nutrients
How many years? It’s habits. Ask someone who stop eating meat after ~20: they usually kept the « good » taste of meat in their memory. Doesn’t mean they want to eat meat because they have found reasons not to do so. That explains why plant based processed food find a consumer segment.
Ask lifelong vegetarians if they crave for meat, they don’t, and often are repulsed by the taste. source: multiple vegetarian I know that switch while being teenagers. We’re 1/1 on anecdotal sourcing I guess (not sarcastic)
I've never posted before today. But even I know ad hominem attacks are forbidden here.
Anyways, it's just saying. I am criticizing your comment - is it surprising that someone who managed to remain a lifelong vegan doesn't crave meat? What exactly does this demonstrate? What about people who couldn't pull off veganism?
1. Ok welcome here then. I’ll encourage you to read the guidelines linked at the bottom at the page if you didn’t do it yet, but you probably already know them if you’ve been around as a reader. I read your previous message as snarky and that’s not a productive way to have an argumentation. I didn’t "assume good faith" on your account creation, apologies.
2. > someone who managed to remain a lifelong vegan doesn't crave meat
I see how my phrasing was ambiguous : my totally subjective experience is that there’s a tendency to crave if try to stop eating/doing something you had for a good while (until ~20?). Some old vegans do crave for meat but learned how to handle that feeling. The ones that stoped early and don’t have as much deep memories association with meat, will usually don’t feel the same.
We observe the same with tobacco (nicotine isn’t a really strong drug, the hard part is psychological), cheese for the French and chicken in South Africa.
Habits are stronger that most people think. Ask any psychiatrist/psychotherapist.
Many comments strawman the author then argue with what they imagine he images. Guys just read the 'Why' page [0] and argue with his thesis. I'm not sure to agree with everything but it still is a very interesting and questioning read. Kudos to the author for writing it.
This OS is not for:
- you or your child
- a planet with working computers
- a planet with cheap and abundant 'bootstrap' energy like we had from 1850 to 1960
- a planet where humans really struggle to get food ("you're running away from cannibals", but I think this metaphor is a bad choice after the mad-max refutation)
That page [1] is also a core part of the theory: "What makes collapse inevitable and imminent".
> Computers, after a few decades, will break down beyond repair and we won't be able to program microcontrollers any more.
> It's not that modern ICs are more fragile than old ones (maybe they are, after all, more can go wrong with millions of transistors than with thousands), it's that old designs are simpler than modern ones and thus more repairable.
The complete reflexion and arguments are way deeper and interesting through. The most interesting parts is under "Electronics evolved rapidly without any help before. Why can't we pull it again?"
Yeah, I've read that with the voice of Ron Perlman: "FAT, FAT never changes...".
I get that not every vault dweller will be technically apt enough to build a working computer out of a usb charger, but there is plenty of hardware and software that will be laying around in shrines near ghoul settlements.
Every store has POSes that can be easilly repurposed, there's DOS, Windows95 and if your tribe really wants to get an edge during a siege on enemy village you will most likely be able to calculate catapults trajectories on a PIP... I mean old android phone.
Another card noon here, especially in urban motor driving so please excuse my ignorance. In that desperate situation isn’t it cheaper to call a friend to seat on the car and handle the steering wheel while you attach the car to yours with those rods, then pull it to a metal scrapper shop that buy metal by the weight? Without plate, isn’t that car basically a non car but a pile of metal?
If you let a car sit long enough, the rubber tires will develop a dimple. If you let it sit decades the tires will completely collapse. Now you are dragging a multi-ton steel sled with rubber nonskid pads instead of free rolling tires. Also, this is an underground garage. Not a ton of room to move around.
> isn’t it cheaper to call a friend
Its not moving a couple of boxes of furniture. I'd never seriously ask any friend to do this on a lark. Just pay the insured "expert" their fee so you don't have to assume any liabilities.
If you are irresponsible human being you can simply tow junk car to any other public location so it is a new problem for someone else.
In our city there is a separate service where you can report abandoned car. They check, leave a note and one month later tow it to the special parking lot. Later it is sold at the auction or scrapped.
Being paranoid, would it be possible that another app already installed (but not trusted enough to give privilege, let’s say a shady mouse driver or screenshot app) detect when slack (more trustfully) does launch to open a dialog at that precise time and deceive the user? Let’s say the shady app is named « SIack » or something close enough to be missed - but brand itself as innocents « screenshotPro4000 » in the app itself graphics so you’re not suspicious.
> We're talking about electricity generation here, not heat generation
As a peer post noted (without back it up but seems reasonable):
> Only 20% of our energy needs are supplied by electricity.
It is a fair viewpoint to talk about energy instead of only electricity. For exemple the current EV are build using charcoal (steel and cement for the infrastructure) and parts/final product are moved around continent with oil (ships). Same for solar panels and their underlying steel structure. Same for the road were using those EV, etc… there’s technical solutions for those, but they didn’t prove to be economically competitive yet. So I’ll happily take that 80% efficiency when we need relatively low heat : domestic and commercial AC and water heating. Those are by far the most energy intensive usage in the residential sector when there isn’t an electric vehicle and are most needs in pick time (mornings, evening at winter). We better take that +60%.
Any low heat solution is going to have a very difficult time competing economically with heat pumps, which often have an efficiency > 300%.
The most economical solution for reducing our carbon emissions by 95% is doing these two steps in parallel:
1. Use electricity instead of fossil fuel
2. Generate electricity in carbon free manner
Yes, there are some use cases this doesn't work well at yet: steel & ocean transport are two you listed. But it does cover the 4 biggest sources of carbon emissions: ground transport, heating, electricity generation and agriculture. The big 4 are 95% of our carbon emissions.
The Rheem heat pump for domestic hot water that I have in my home claims a maximum energy savings of 75%. That implies that at 20% efficiency out of my solar panels, the efficiency of photovoltaic panels + the heat pump is equal to the 80% efficiency of solar hot water. However, this ignores losses from DC to AC and the lines.
The photovoltaic panels have the added bonus that the energy can be used for other purposes (e.g. transport, HVAC, computers, cooking, laundry, A/V equipment) should my hot water needs be low compared to what the system is designed to produce. However, from a pure efficiency standpoint, it is unclear to me which approach is better. They seem to be a rough tie, with losses for both approaches making the real world worse than ideal conditions. I am not sure if one is better than the other in the actual real world and if anyone who knows the answer is kind enough to share it, I would find the answer enlightening.
I mean, from a distribution standpoint, electricity is way easier to distribute than heat (pressurized steam? Hot water?) and has less loss over longer distances.
And adTech. I’ve been a happy user or the local gumtree [0] that always worked fine with my 9yo iPhone… until last year: the business model seems to have changed as they added in-list advertisement and I can only scroll the products list until the first ad wrapper shows up. Then the UI freeze and never gets back to life. I don’t even see the advertisements itself.
Edit: just tried it again and seems they fixed it! The ads stays in loading state forever but the site is usable again. Wonder if they did something on their side or if they changed ad provider.
Slightly related: the movie "Conclave" (2024) is a great and surprising thriller. Critics consensus from RottenTomatoes:
> Carrying off papal pulp with immaculate execution and career-highlight work from Ralph Fiennes, Conclave is a godsend for audiences who crave intelligent entertainment.
Quality organic dry chickpeas, lentils, beans, soy etc… already are around 2€/kg where I live and when you add water they double/triple in weight so you end up at 1€/kg. You’ll probably eat a bit more weight than meat but still the price is nowhere comparable. Add some whole cereals instead of white bread for nutrition and better satiety: they’re more expensive but you got the price back on the quantity you eat (you won’t stuff yourself that much T165 bread or brown rice: the fibers will make you feel full super fast). And for the vegetable you usually can find stuff super nutritious for cheap : apples, leak, cabbages and alls sorts of oignons.
Even fancy organic quinoa is like 10€/kg but also double in weight and you only eat ~1.3 times the meat weight you’ll eat in meat-meal.
Industrial chicken is 5€/kg un the shop and "good" one 15€/kg. Quality beef is nowhere in that range.
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