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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#401

Post by unethical_ban »

chasd00 wrote: post #250
rmccue wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who’s not American, I’m unclear; is going to a butcher not an option? Have they been competed out of the market by supermarkets?

from a google search: "A 7 bone steak is a cut of beef from the chuck section of a cow's front shoulder, which is considered a tough area of the animal.". You're not going to find that in a regular grocery store because not many people will buy it. You will find every other cut of beef, pork, and poultry considered edible though. You can go to a butcher but they're less common than a regular grocery store. Also, butc…

HEB "just another grocery store". Hoo Lordy, better not say that in the South! HEB is ultimately a corporation, but as far as corporate ethics exist, they're a good place and the stores are great.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#402

Post by GMoromisato »

For real existential-crisis-inducing marvels, you have to go with evolution. Once Darwin worked out natural selection, and it was combined with Mendel's genes, a whole host of primal questions were suddenly answered: Who created us? Why are we here? What is our purpose?

If you were to give Franklin a copy of "The Selfish Gene", I'm curious if he would believe it. Would he reject it and become (remain?) a creationist? Or would he accept that everything he believed about why we are here is wrong.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#403

Post by MisterBastahrd »

prawn wrote: post #330
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. For example, one staple dish of Cajuns is called "rice and gravy." Essentially, you sear thinly cut 7-steaks, remove them, cook down some trinity, then add the steaks back with some water or broth and seasonings. That's it. The steaks simmer in the broth for hours and create their own gravy. We serve it over rice, usually accompanied by some roux peas (tres petit pois cooked in a roux with onions and bacon) and…

I have looked a few times in Walmarts and not found duck breast, which is something I eat in Australia once every 2-4 weeks. And also noticed particular cuts of beef that I'd expect are missing. I have been to the US 10+ times, usually 1-9 week roadtrips, and can't remember ever noticing an independent butcher (though sometimes there is an equivalent within a non-Walmart grocery store).

Your best bet for duck related products in the US is probably either an upscale grocery store or an Asian grocer like HMart. They tend to carry a lot of meat and offal products that most groceries in the US don't normally carry.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#404

Post by piltdownman »

emmelaich wrote: post #324
paulmd wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's always odd when people latch onto that as an example, because the west has definitely had politically-induced holodomors caused by over-export of staple crops as well. classically, the irish potato famine comes to mind. you can probably objectively calculate the relative importance of pre-capitalism serfs and post-capitalism serfs by volume of political discourse and online discussion and citations - the peasant…

Such a patina of reasonableness to your comment but your comparison of the Irish famine to the Holomodor is way overwrought. Holomodor was deliberate and largely not caused by bad harvests. Irish had the potato blight; and in the beginning they were given a large amount of charity. WRT authoritarianism, govt have a monopoly on violence that individual companies will never have.

The British viewed the Irish through Malthusian theory, whose moral and cultural failings they attributed to the cause of the famine. They effectively blamed the Irish peasantry for having too many children while living in a state of poverty, which they viewed as irresponsible. Despite this being as a direct result of their occupation and sectarianism.

The monoculture of potato was solely due to the tenant system imposed on Irish subsistence farmers by the British ruling classes. Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the famine. The supposed 'charity' mainly took the form of workhouses - which were effectively Hospices

https://irishworkhousecentre.ie/

One incredible exception was the Choctaw Nation who, fresh off the trail of tears, were so moved by the plight of the Irish peasant that on March 23, 1847, they donated $170 for Irish Famine relief. This was at the height of “Black 47,” when close to a million Irish were starving to death.

To put it simply, Malthus' theory states that famine is caused by overpopulation. Thus the British, by their own basis of justification, deliberately reduced the Irish population. The people targeted were deprived of culture, security, health, and life. They were targeted for reasons of ethnic and cultural intolerance. Ergo constituting Genocide.

The alternative? The aforementioned Workhouses or the aptly named 'Coffin Ships'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ship

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#405

Post by epiccoleman »

somenameforme wrote: post #117
epiccoleman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite "one of these" is the idea of taking a Raspberry Pi, or ATtiny, or modern Macbook Pro back to the ENIAC guys. Can you imagine how they'd have reacted to see these tiny little devices which pack orders of magnitude more computational power than their warehouse-sized computer? The mind boggles.

I tend to always play the cynic in these games. And I think one little way to easily do that is to reverse the roles with an example you are giving. So for your example, imagine somebody from the future came and showed you a pinhead sized device with countless exabytes of computational power projected onto a holographic screen. While I'm sure you'd be impressed and have plenty of questions, I don't think there would…

I don't think they'd necessarily have some sort of existential crisis, or even have their minds blown - but I'm positive they'd be impressed.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#406

Post by btbuildem »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #386
btbuildem wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric. Think about how this standard of living is enabled by centuries of colonial exploitation, mortally dependent on continued extraction of non-renewable resources, and propped up by an insanely profitable military-industrial complex. If you're on the outside, watching fools burn it all so they can drown in excess they don't appreciate.. yes, the…

>Think about how this standard of living is enabled by centuries of colonial exploitation, mortally dependent on continued extraction of non-renewable resources, and propped up by an insanely profitable military-industrial complex. It's a classic leftist narrative that gets very foggy on the facts when you dig closer to details. Modern prosperity and modern market economies are definitely not based on centuries-gone…

I find it hard to believe your comment is in good faith, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt.

> Modern prosperity and modern market economies are definitely not based on centuries-gone colonial extractive empires

All the wealth and resources plundered from colonies over centuries enabled the European powers to maintain power and more easily develop technologies on which this modern prosperity so relies. One entire continent, unimaginably wealthy in a broad variety of resources, was taken over just in the most recent history.

> As for the military industrial complex, pray tell, of which country? Tangibly benefiting which countries

Mostly the US today, benefitting primarily the US, and by proxy many of her allies. War is extremely profitable: taxpayer dollars pay for materiel which you immediately destroy, the demand/supply ratio is fantastic. The sustained violence guarantees access to the energy resources required to continue this strategy -- the rotten mess in the ME over the past near-century being just one of the more glaring examples.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#407

Post by nuancebydefault »

pushcx wrote: post #77

I think this post is right that Franklin would've been impressed by GPS. The author doesn't call it out, but the Longitude Problem was a significant area of scientific and engineering inquiry in Franklin's lifetime, with special focus on the difficulty of doing so at sea. I haven't looked into it, but given his research mapping the Gulf Stream it seems likely he spent time on the problem himself. https://en.wikipedia…

Indeed, GPS is when you think about it, possible in theory but practically impossible. So it must be magic!

PS I believe I found a little mistake in the article: '...and because the GPS device also has a perfect clock...'

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#408

Post by hackable_sand »

aftbit wrote: post #263
pyrale wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to play the pessimist here, but I wish we could balance these amazing technological advances with the wisdom on how to use them. This article left me with the same feeling. Technology advances so fast we're simply unable to collectively process the power we have. We're the equivalent of a toddler finding daddy's gun.

Or this quote from Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars: "We're like dwarves in a waldo[.] One of those really big waldo excavators. We're inside it and supposed to be moving a mountain, and instead of using the waldo capabilities we're leaning out of a window and digging with teaspoons. And complimenting each other on the way we're taking advantage of the height." We don't even realize what is possible with our current t…

It seems like the dwarves are using the machine exactly how it was intended to be used: to move a mountain.

If you want a better analogy, ask yourself what the purpose of a "Where's Waldo?" book is.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#409

Post by freshpretzels »

vundercind wrote: post #335
ramblenode wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the average American supermarket has every kind of meat, cheese, drink, and vegetable, you are in for a big surprise traveling the world. In many ways American markets have fallen behind relatively poorer countries in variety. Most of what is sold are monocultures and packaged foods. The selection of fresh produce (or any produce) is often disappointing.

I think we’re backsliding on choice, if anything. It gets even worse if you look at packaged stuff. “Look, twelve brands of coffee!” but actually it’s three because some of them are owned by the others, or by the same parent company.

Do those twelve brands taste different from one another?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#410

Post by soueuls »

I truly enjoyed the read, my only criticism is about the « internet »

Yes, down to the core it’s indeed just transmitting electrical current from one side to the other.

But I believe Franklin would be amazed by the sheer ingenuity that followed.

The absurd hacky ways we found to make video games.

The protocols. The encryption and all the people that make completely useless stuff, just for the beauty of it.

Like implementing a Turing complete machine inside the game of life, to build a game of life from it

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