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Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#251

Post by philip1209 »

Low-plastic living.

I read a book by the world's first zero-waste restaurant, Silo. The book got me thinking about how different our lives would be if oil were expensive. "Pretend oil is really expensive" is a good proxy for doing things that are "eco-friendly." Since reading the book, I've tried to eliminate single-use plastic from most of my life. It's incredibly hard. Everything from my socks to my vegetable packaging to my dog's toys to my floor is made of plastic.

I've slowly been adjusting my habits - such as checking whether clothing is natural or oil-based, buying food mostly at the farmers market, and eating in instead of takeaway. These little change have decreased my carbon footprint immensely.

I enjoy playing this game of "pretend oil is expensive" even though it's not because it's revealing problems we will need to tackle as a society. At some point we will run out of oil. When that happens, everything will be impacted. Travel, food delivery, and most of all healthcare.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#253

Post by zx8080 »

philip1209 wrote: post #251

Low-plastic living. I read a book by the world's first zero-waste restaurant, Silo. The book got me thinking about how different our lives would be if oil were expensive. "Pretend oil is really expensive" is a good proxy for doing things that are "eco-friendly." Since reading the book, I've tried to eliminate single-use plastic from most of my life. It's incredibly hard. Everything from my socks to my vegetable packa…

Does replacing plastics with paper packaging means that trees will be eliminates much more on scale?

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#254

Post by costco »

I'm reading a book about electricity markets. Modeling electricity prices using a mean-reverting model with "jumps", exotic derivatives, etc. Pretty exciting stuff. Though you need a million dollars in liquid net worth to trade with any ISO so it's a bit out of my league. Really interesting author too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mack

Am working on some large scale authorship attribution stuff on the side and have an Arty A7 that I want to make do something besides flash purple LEDs but I have some health bullshit that's killing my motivation. But I'm working on it.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#255

Post by ipaddr »

sjmulder wrote: post #204

Small city council politics :( there's a lot of resistance against a new temporary housing project for Ukrainian refugees with many legit concerns, and some NIMBY, but also xenophobia and racism. It's tough but we've been able to start a YIMBY group and encouraging people and organisations to make public comments or send letters of support. A good few didn't dare because they feared reactions, and rightfully so, beca…

How does racism play into your situation? Small towns and Ukrainians have one thing in common: they are both white. I would think their race wouldn't be the deciding factor.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#256

Post by philip1209 »

zx8080 wrote: post #253
philip1209 wrote: post #251

Low-plastic living. I read a book by the world's first zero-waste restaurant, Silo. The book got me thinking about how different our lives would be if oil were expensive. "Pretend oil is really expensive" is a good proxy for doing things that are "eco-friendly." Since reading the book, I've tried to eliminate single-use plastic from most of my life. It's incredibly hard. Everything from my socks to my vegetable packa…

Does replacing plastics with paper packaging means that trees will be eliminates much more on scale?

Trees are renewable. The mass of a tree comes from the carbon it extracts from the air. [1]

It's not a zero-sum, though. Why does my cilantro need to come in a plastic bag? At the farmer's market, it doesn't come packaged at all.

[1] And, fire is basically reversing the process - releasing the sunlight that created the plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#257

Post by sasaf5 »

jhot wrote: post #100
mslate wrote: post #16

Bicycles. They are so radically inexpensive to acquire & service. Why did I ever stop riding at 18?

I love bikes and was going to comment about them so I'll just tack on to your comment. Built a single speed out of a cheap, used frame with some spare or cheap parts and it has been going strong with little maintenance for 14 years. Also have a long-tail cargo ebike that I got this summer and already have over 500 miles on it. It can be faster than driving a lot of times on top of being more fun for me and my kids. A…

In my university, one Saturday per year they would allow us to take whatever we wanted from the abandoned bikes junkyard. I can't remember having more fun. Just bring a box of tools and some new chains and cables and build bikes the whole day.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#258

Post by atilimcetin »

Learning to play a musical instrument

I've started with the Vangoa EWI-100, which is an affordable, silent, and good enough MIDI EWI (electronic wind instrument) device. I have also been learning some of the technical details of MIDI. I sometimes use it alone, and sometimes with a Cocos Reaper with free VSTs. I have only been doing this for 4 days, but I am already enjoying it a lot.

If I continue to play it, most probably I will upgrade to a better EWI.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#259

Post by hsuduebc2 »

ipaddr wrote: post #255
sjmulder wrote: post #204

Small city council politics :( there's a lot of resistance against a new temporary housing project for Ukrainian refugees with many legit concerns, and some NIMBY, but also xenophobia and racism. It's tough but we've been able to start a YIMBY group and encouraging people and organisations to make public comments or send letters of support. A good few didn't dare because they feared reactions, and rightfully so, beca…

How does racism play into your situation? Small towns and Ukrainians have one thing in common: they are both white. I would think their race wouldn't be the deciding factor.

It's same everywhere. Fear of the unknown, coping with own failure via blaming someone weaker, different language and of course at least in EU a lot of hatred due to desinformations.

Of course more descriptive word would be just xenophobia combined with copium addiction.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#260

Post by SwiftyBug »

Learning to use Vim! I've tried three times before in the past 10 years. This is the first time it actually clicked. It's the first time I've tried Neovim. It's awesome and I feel like I'm playing a game with myself while working. I thought it would take much longer to get to the speed I'm at now. I've been using Vim exclusively for a month.
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