Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ordinary Abundance

ordinaryabundance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 203 posts

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#11

Post by MarkusQ »

incorporeal wrote: post #6

I think about this stuff a lot. It's crazy how I, like, water plants with clean water that's literally on tap. Warm showers on-demand are a daily miracle. Immediate illumination for why people don't quite feel like royalty despite all this would be achieved by replacing the aesthetic of this presentation with mis-matched uncomfortable and ugly furniture picked up off the side of the road, in a cheap split-level or ra…

> "...doom-scrolling..."

This may be the load-bearing point of your lament.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#14

Post by Avicebron »

MarkusQ wrote: post #11
incorporeal wrote: post #6

I think about this stuff a lot. It's crazy how I, like, water plants with clean water that's literally on tap. Warm showers on-demand are a daily miracle. Immediate illumination for why people don't quite feel like royalty despite all this would be achieved by replacing the aesthetic of this presentation with mis-matched uncomfortable and ugly furniture picked up off the side of the road, in a cheap split-level or ra…

> "...doom-scrolling..." This may be the load-bearing point of your lament.

Are you somehow blaming the parents in the commenters hypothetical?

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#15

Post by marssaxman »

This is an interesting premise, and I would like to read the article, but the weird scrolling makes that almost impossible; the pictures overlay the text to such an extent that I can only read a couple of lines at a time. I wish there were some browser feature that would force sites to use normal scrolling.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#16

Post by xg15 »

greytape wrote: post #7
xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

This is called: "going camping".

Or "living in an apartment with affordable rent"...

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#17

Post by arjie »

GPerson wrote: post #13

I can’t imagine ever affording such a nice apartment.

In the US, it's pretty easy. My wife used to live in the Tenderloin for $2400/mo and her place was nicer than this because she was good at putting things together. I don't happen to have a photo of the whole studio handy, but here's the view from the window: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/images/b/b7/Photo_-_San_Fran...

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#18

Post by pizzathyme »

carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

It's true. The negative takeaway is that is no matter what miracles come in the far future (free energy, perfect health care, infinite resources, infinite intelligence), people will eternally be wanting, take things for granted, focused mainly on the things they don't have and can't do. It's the human condition.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#19

Post by PaulHoule »

abroadwin wrote: post #4
xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

Can confirm. As someone living on well water in an area with semi-frequent power outages in winter I have periodically been given renewed appreciation for the value of power, central heat and running water. Now I have a great standby generator, though, so I'm sure I'll start taking it all for granted again soon.

I live in an 1850s farm house with a spring up the hill and a backup well with a pump for those Augusts where the trees pull all the water out of the ground (not quite this one!) Our main heating system is two wood stoves with a small propane heater as a backup.

The power goes out a lot in the winter but at least we are cozy, particularly with today's LED/Lithium lights.

Back when I had ADSL from the central office my internet would stay up when I lost power so I had enough power to run a cordless phone and one (of two) DSL modems off a small UPS -- so I could keep 21st century comms. Once I got fiber-to-the-node most outages would affect the node so I gave up on the UPS. They're supposed to get FTTH to my house soon but I have no idea how that is going to be affected by outages.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#20

Post by IAmBroom »

xnx wrote: post #3
carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

I just attended a 9,000-person medieval camping event, where most camps are lit with individual solar power. The only power grid usage by most of us was that site water was pumped by electricity. Due to high mineral content, few of us drink straight from the tap, and every camp has stored water, soft drinks, and so on.

The entire county lost power for about 8 hours. From the social media posts, you would have thought people were undergoing severe hardship, because they had to wait 1/3 of a day for their propane-heated showers. Also, some were angry that the county hadn't done more to plan for these situations... which happen maybe once every decade or so.

Post reply on HN