Dopamine Fracking

Post by mcosta » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

VileSquirrel wrote: post #137

spwa4 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores? (and for real, not fake). Or is your point that Europe has a different supermarket chain per country? Malls have the same stores across countries ... but they differ, somewhat, if you move from one country to the next. And they're fake. Every company has 3-4 store brands these days so malls have 4-5 stores that look different, but aren't. So ... what a differ…

> Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores? (and for real, not fake) I live in a small european town and all the followings are found less than 3 minutes away from my home: butcher, baker, shoes store, newspaper store, convenience store, barber. The town hosts a market once a week that sells more divers products, and many people do shop there. Some of the stores are owned and operated by descendants…

Post by mcosta » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

canpan wrote: post #91

hattmall wrote: post #25

This has been happening in the real world for far longer. It's basically the experience of many modern cities, or even worse suburbs. Starbucks / Chipotle / Orange Theory / Target / Generic Brewery / Lime Scooter / Waymo / Subscribe N Save So much of modern life has been comodified to optimize for things that aren't necessarily what's inline with the users interests and certainly don't do anything for cultural robust…

All cities have the exact same shopping street somewhere. Tokyo (Ginza), NYC (5th), Paris, London, Berlin, Sao Paulo..: Starbucks, Gucci, Addidas, Louis Vuitton, Levis, Ferragamo, Apple Store, a little further from there a McDonald's..

Post by forlorn_mammoth » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

aboardRat4 wrote: post #34

>actual fracking, ... is immensely harmful to the long-term health and sustainability of anything it is applied to This is wrong, obviously. No ecosystem exists at the depths where fracking is applied. >Maybe. But it's not a strawberry anymore. But it allows poor people to actually have some taste of strawberry in their morning meal every day, and not once per year.

Post by eszed » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

api wrote: post #299

eszed wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point, but the other argument against scaling in this way doesn't rely on sentiment: it's unsustainable. I actually hate that word, but the point is that current production methods create (unpriced) environmental externalities. We're draining aquifers, exhausting topsoil, pouring fertilizer into rivers, using too much petroleum - and then throwing a massive portion of what we produce away. (And that's jus…

I look at this as a technical problem. We just aren't very good at this yet. We are, in fact, slowly getting better. Renewable energy was the largest category of new installed energy for the last few years at least, and that's a start. The question is whether we can get good at this fast enough to outrun ourselves. My issue with at least some of green ideology is that it's viewed as a moral problem. We are sinning by…

Post by scubbo » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

regexorcist wrote: post #287

Aurornis wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of interesting how many people don’t realize that the purpose of Hacker News was to be an advertisement for Y Combinator and their portfolio companies. You don’t see it as much these days, but YC portfolio companies can post privileged threads on this site for job listings, which in practice double as ads for the company. You’re not allowed to comment on them. I haven’t seen one for a while because I suspect eve…

> people don’t realize Y Combinator is right there in the URL. People know and don't care because it's a well run forum with interesting discussions, the privileged posts don't change that.