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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#181

Post by ghaff »

the_af wrote: post #177

A related thought-exercise I sometimes engage in, inspired by Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is this: Ok, so I have a university education and know lots about computers. If I traveled back to the Middle Ages -- actually, make it the (inaccurately named) Dark Ages or even more ancient times, say the Roman Republic -- how much of my modern day knowledge would I be able to use to impress the…

Assuming someone would take your word as gospel your amateur medical knowledge is probably worth more than most of your knowledge of engineering which just requires too much of a tech tree.

Maybe if you’re a gunsmith on the side or something.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#182

Post by RecycledEle »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #41
brigadier132 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is amazing, that's why we really need to appreciate and protect what we have. The incredible abundance we currently have is not the norm. It was not even 100 years ago that people were starving in the US during the great depression. Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric.

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

> But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

Look at the price tag on the blueberries. That is the cost.

The opportunity cost is that the money could have neen spent on something else.

The great thing about a free market is that if you think resources should be allocated elsewhere, you can do that. Your labor is your resource.

I find greenhouses to be wonderfully environmentally friendly, and do not understand why someone would object to them.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#183

Post by titzer »

somenameforme wrote: post #103
dotnet00 wrote: post #49

It's refreshing to see a rare openly optimistic article about the world here first thing in the morning. I also like to occasionally appreciate how someone from even just the recent past would see our current world as one full of manmade wonders. Another one of these would be microwaves, although conceptually simple as a box that heats stuff, it'd be pretty mind bending that it does it essentially wirelessly. Adding…

Re: Moon landing - It had very little to do with people losing interest. In 1972 Nixon defacto completely cancelled the human space program, which he had been rapidly stripping away since Apollo 13. He was paranoid that a catastrophic failure was imminent and would negatively affect his 1972 election campaign. Interestingly when he signed off on the final stripping down in 1972, he remarked that we may never set foot…

> it supposedly having been a proxy for an ideological battle

More than anything, it was a proxy for developing ICBMs and other space capabilities (e.g. satellites) for fighting the cold war.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#184

Post by mikestew »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #101
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

And a whole aisle full of splinter-free toiler paper![1] [1] https://www.historydefined.net/splinter-free-toilet-paper-di...

Is that whole site just LLM-generated crap? About the only thing that link has to do with "splinter-free toilet paper" is that those words exist in the post, and yet telling me nothing about the topic. I cross-checked another post (because everyone has a bad writing day), and yup, more of the same.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#185

Post by RecycledEle »

bee_rider wrote: post #74
boxed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the cost we are paying that you imply is too high?

Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment.

> Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment.

Look at the price to ship something.

The cost of fuel burned can not be greater than the shipping cost, and it is probably much less.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#186

Post by genewitch »

tekla wrote: post #160
boxed wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure the cost of carbon and other pollution should be factored in. But I don't think the externalities are that large really. I would be surprised if the cost would go up more than 20% if we had a proper carbon tax in place. At least after the market adapts.

The externality of a locally grown blueberry is incredibly higher than industrial farmed blueberries

lol, what? I have blueberry bushes in my yard, they were like $5. i put them in the ground and then ignored them for years. It is true that not every piece of land can do what i did here, but these sweeping "marvel at the advance of farming" ideas are silly to me. I had a peach, plum, orange, and fig tree in my back yard growing up in california. When we sold the house the new owners tore them down. I think that's sad. Fresh, free fruit every year?

Now, growing enough of one thing to be able to sell it to turn a profit might have "greater externality" but even that might not be true depending on the methods used. There are composting farms where people bring their refuse - specifically "anything that was alive recently" can go in the compost, and this will provide nutrients and soil amendments in a sustainable way to that farm, which can then provide nutrition to the community it serves.

You can't feed the planet with a small, self-sustaining farm. But this idea that it's a net negative needs to DIAF.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#187

Post by b112 »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #133
mtalantikite wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it is that not only are we paying the environmental cost to have berries all year round in the grocery store, it's that they're also just shit quality. Like not just passable, but are bitter and sour and not worth it at all. And it's sort of at the expense of really good, local berries when the real season hits. For example, I live in Brooklyn and the grocery stores last summer barely had any local bl…

This so much. People who live in Western cities have no fucking clue what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like. It’s like a running gag that my father complains about supermarket tomatoes, but after travelling through rural places in Eastern and Southern Europe and a little bit in Central America, I totally get it.

What gets me, is people don't understand.

Stuff is often in season in the US, and at that time, it's generally good in the supermarket. Then there's when it's not in season.

Contrast green beans shipped from 1500km away on a boat, arriving 2 weeks to a month later at the store, kept "fresh" by all sorts of waxy residue, and other "agents" sprayed on them with .... green beans canned within 2 hours of being picked.

Where I grew up, in a rural area, we had a local canning plant. They'd get farmers to plan to harvest on a schedule, and they'd literally be canning as the farmer drive trucks up with produce. No joke, they were canned within 2 hours, often faster, and that's how it's done these days.

Which has more vitamins? Which has more nutrition? I'd lay a bet that the canned stuff is far better, far better than something that has artificial stuff sprayed on it so it looks good (artifical 'wax', and various chemicals to keep it "fresh"), and spent weeks getting to the supermarket.

Oddly, I've seen people dump out the water in the can. What? That's where a lot of vitamins live!

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#188

Post by petsfed »

ghaff wrote: post #140
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This so much. People who live in Western cities have no fucking clue what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like. It’s like a running gag that my father complains about supermarket tomatoes, but after travelling through rural places in Eastern and Southern Europe and a little bit in Central America, I totally get it.

Tomatoes are probably about the worst example you could pick. Fresh tomatoes can be excellent (though I'm really not a tomato aficionado) during the short period when they're in season locally in much of the US. Outside that period, the recommendation for cooking tomatoes is generally to use canned because tomatoes are an example of something that doesn't ship well.

When I worked for an indoor-ag company whose big deal was picking varietals for flavor, rather than ability to travel across the country, I always pointed to how much tomatoes had changed in my lifetime as to why travel-ready produce was a problem.

Remember when toothbrush advertising demonstrated how the brush was so soft it wouldn't affect a tomato, let alone your gums? That demonstration makes no sense now.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#189

Post by genewitch »

marcosdumay wrote: post #44
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? Well, aluminum was supposed to be luxurious and everything... But I think before that they'd pick a piece of plastic packaging and be without words to explain their marvel.

bakelite was patented in 1909 - i understand franklin was before 1907, but the idea of "plastic" as something separate from wood, metal, and glass has been around over a century.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#190

Post by bandyaboot »

“That’s all really amazing, but I’m having trouble with the thing you said about how despite all of this half the country thinks things are terrible?”

“Yeah, but get this, the half that thinks things are terrible regularly flips and vice-versa.”

“Really? What’s changing so drastically?”

“Nothing. Let’s talk about microchips.”

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