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Ordinary Abundance

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Re: Ordinary Abundance

#61

Post by Night_Thastus »

snide wrote: post #28
stuporglue wrote: post #25

For the last year I've been on well water for the first time in my life. High iron, manganese and iron bacteria - safe, but tasted eggy and ruined shower heads, dishwashers, clothes, washing machine, kettles... I just finished installing a whole-house filter & softener system and everyone is delighted. I told my kids that once a month we're going to serve untreated well-water with dinner, so we stay grateful for it.

As a fellow filtered well-water maintainer... just give it time. Even the best filtration systems break down. There are lots of moving parts to keep that water clean. Odds are you'll see or smell that brown water soon enough!

In a typical ion exchange setup, there isn't all that much. A big tank filled with resin to attract the minerals, and a big tank of salt to wash the resin clean.

Eventually, the resin will break down and need replacement, or the valve on the tank will fail. But neither of those are insurmountable to fix, and will tend to last many years.

Now, if you go with RO, that's different. Then you really need a pump and multiple filters which need regular changing. Those can be a bit more maintenance. (Not to mention all the wasted water)

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#62

Post by dominotw »

dachris wrote: post #51
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

I often say that everyone should be on a misery week once a year, where you live like our "ancestors". I.e. like my grandparents, who grew up in the 1920s on a farm, only 1 heated room, privy outside, no running water, limited food options, hard work each day. As my granny used to say to anyone with nostalgia: no, things were definitely not better back then. Misery week would greatly increase happiness for the rest o…

thats not useful because then you immedetlily forget all about it.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#63

Post by EMIRELADERO »

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #45
techblueberry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like in discussions about nostalgia, there can be this default presentish reaction which talks about all of the things that are better But in the hedonic adaptation sense like - and comparisons are complicated - people aren’t by and large happier now (because of the hedonism this is sidestepping the argument of how well distributed it is, and I’m talking the past 50-100 years not compared to subsistence farmin…

Maybe happiness is a different kind of thing from the pleasure/pain axis. Maybe it’s a different thing that’s tragically easy to mistake for the same thing. I notice a lot of resistance and discomfort whenever someone says anything like this (“are you suggesting my pain doesn’t matter? How about the starving kids in xyz?”), and I get that. But it feels like there might be something to it.

Everyone should read this about "happiness": https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

> "It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast."

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#64

Post by dominotw »

JeremyNT wrote: post #57
dachris wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often say that everyone should be on a misery week once a year, where you live like our "ancestors". I.e. like my grandparents, who grew up in the 1920s on a farm, only 1 heated room, privy outside, no running water, limited food options, hard work each day. As my granny used to say to anyone with nostalgia: no, things were definitely not better back then. Misery week would greatly increase happiness for the rest o…

Even just going backpacking for a few days highlights it. Despite access to some modern amenities (maybe a lighter, or a camp stove, and some food you bought and took with you) it's humbling. Looking for water in the wilderness - even with access to maps - can be quite a challenge in and of itself!

its a fun adventure because your already know that your comforts and old life are just a flight away.

but regardless it not going to bring any meaningful humbleness because you will forget all about it.

i grew up in povery for first 20 yrs of my life in a desert but i have never think of that life and experience humbless in any different way than ppl who have never experienced it.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#65

Post by dominotw »

physicles wrote: post #59

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. For the last month I’ve been living in a camper van, working and traveling, which I’m really lucky to be able to do by choice. It’s lonely to be sure, but I also feel mentally far more resilient than I have in ages, and I’m trying to figure out why. Being in nature is good for us, so that’s probably part of it, as is the constant practice of being self-reliant. Another theo…

but you might projecting deep purpose and meaning to your travails that you are subjecting yourself out of pure choice.

your heart knows that you can go back to comfortable modern life whenever you please so you wont really experience the pain that comes from hopelessness which i belive is really needed ingriedient to humble you.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#66

Post by Legend2440 »

Avicebron wrote: post #50
arjie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Pray tell how much she was making at the time to be able to afford 2400/month in rent?

Keep in mind that both wages and rents are higher in SF and not really comparable to the rest of the country.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#67

Post by foxglacier »

altcognito wrote: post #10

All true but a reminder that basic health care, natural foods and a safe environment are out of reach for too many. We have definitely improved on the distribution of foods and even safe environments, but there are insitutional blockages that would go a long way. Sometimes I think that the truly wealthy and powerful are convinced suffering is necessary lest we devolve into universe 25

Health care is unbounded. Even the poorest people rarely die from common old diseases like TB and pneumonia, while even the richest people still die from cancer and heart attacks. We have machines that can keep you alive indefinitely without your heart or lungs working, but they're so expensive, we normally just let people die instead. I live in a country with public healthcare and the news is regularly filled with stories of people begging for money to buy treatments that the government decided it can't afford to fund. Some of these don't even do much - eg. a cancer drug that actually shortens your life compared to chemo but has less severe side effects.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#68

Post by tshaddox »

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

Hedonic adaptation is a very good thing. Culture or technological stasis is a death sentence for civilization. Open-ended progress is the only chance civilization has to survive (and even that's not a guarantee).

There is an infinite sequence of future problems to be solved. Each time you solve a problem, you don't reduce the total number of future problems, but you are left with one or more better problems than you had before. It's a very good thing that, as soon as you get accustomed to having air conditioning, you start looking for the next problem to fix.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#69

Post by Legend2440 »

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…

>Mine are mostly stale... because non-stale spices are expensive and take effort and education to track down.

Not really though. The spices at the grocery store are not stale when you buy them, and will not go stale for 1-2 years once opened. If your spices are stale it's because you don't cook very often and you aren't using them up.

Also let's keep in mind that people had even less furniture in the past, and much of it you had to build yourself out of trees you cut down yourself. Healthcare was leeches and dental care was nonexistent. These "basic human rights" were incredible luxuries only a century or two ago.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#70

Post by pibaker »

Aperocky wrote: post #26
marssaxman wrote: post #15

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.

This is so ironically on point. I recall reading a shampoo bottle in the bathroom maybe 25 years ago because there was nothing else to read. Meanwhile now you are correctly complaining about how weird the scrolling feels like.

This is the issue with the naive narrative of progress isn't it? Today you can sit on your toilet and read a virtually unlimited amount of text, except some text has weird scrolling, some text is interrupted by self playing video ads, some text is AI marketing slop. It's jarring that despite the undoubtedly real technological progress, we still inflict these inconveniences on ourselves, not even out of necessity.

At least I never needed JavaScript to read text on a shampoo bottle.

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