Can't tell if satire or not.
How I Gave Up Alternating Current
101–110 of 140 posts
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#102Is this for serious? It reads almost like a troll post.
>I was electrocuted by exposed house wiring as a boy.
No, he was shocked. Electrocution means death.
> I use a butane stove. It is much cheaper and more energy efficient than a Keurig
I doubt that small parcels of butane are cheaper than any electric coffee maker. If he wants to optimize this he needs to look at a rocket stove and a high efficiency pot. http://www.wired.com/2014/07/a-jet-engineer-designs-a-saucep...
>First, I never cook.
Good for him, I guess. That's not a reasonable solution for most people though.
>Next, I switched from beer to red wine.
I'm a little surprised that he doesn't make his own. It's very easy and cheap to make red wine.
>most of them are Priuses which use DC motors so I’m good there
No, they don't, and I'm starting to think he's got a fixation on the names of things.
>I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me.
Okay, this is not about reducing waste anymore, there are few things more wasteful than the global clothing/fashion supply chain. I'd bet he gives his used clothing to a thrift... yup. Those clothes get, wait for it, laundered, and then probably baled up and shipped to Africa or Haiti destroying local clothing manufacturing in those areas.
>My apartment came with a Nest but I removed it
He could have just switched it off.
>Traffic and trash and pollution will evaporate,
Nope, just displaced to Asia. Okay, I'm done with Rhinehart's post now, and I can see that most everyone else is as well.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author can still do laundry and skip the washing machine. Hand wash, use the laundry water to flush the toilet, line dry.
That would save electricity...but would probably waste more water. IIRC, a German study into handwashing of dishes found that <1% of people actually managed to use less water than a dishwasher. I'd bet it's a similar usage profile for clothes.
Hand washing dishes consumes massive amounts of water because people tend to leave the tap running while they wash. Laundry is typically done in a basin with a fixed amount of water for wash and rinse. I wouldn't place any bets that it uses less water than a high efficiency front loader, but I would venture that you can come close. Remember, we're not talking law of averages here. We're talking about a single person dedicated to the task of reducing water consumption.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
My post was less about the energy usage and more about the Sweatshop workers's working conditions. He seems concerned about highly-paid Energy Workers in the US who are required (by law) to have safe working conditions (or at least, safe as defined by the law. People still die on the job but at least we try to keep them safe). And then he turns around and brags about using cheap Chinese workers to sew him new clothes…
So what are the relative safety rates of textile workers in China vs energy workers in the US? I would be genuinely interested to know.
Not sure about China, but in Bangladesh where most clothes are made, it is dire. Building collapses, fires, environmental pollution (leather processing), worker injuries. Really bad.
Rana disaster 2013 http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-traps-the-bang...
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#105>I have not set foot in a grocery store in years. Nevermore will I bumble through endless confusing aisles like a pack-donkey searching for feed while the smell of rotting flesh fills my nostrils and fluorescent lights sear my eyeballs and sappy love songs torture my ears. Grocery shopping is a multisensory living nightmare. There are services that will make someone else do it for me but I cannot in good conscience force a fellow soul through this gauntlet.
>I buy my staple food online like a civilized person.
I'm not sure if going to the grocery store could ever be described as a multisensory living nightmare.
> I think it was a bit presumptuous for the architect to assume I wanted a kitchen with my apartment and make me pay for it. My home is a place of peace. I don’t want to live with red hot heating elements and razor sharp knives. That sounds like a torture chamber. However, it’s not a total loss. I was able to use the cabinets to store part of my book collection.
Or a kitchen as a torture chamber. This guy seems kinda nutty.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#106As another user hinted at, this article is completely back-asswards. >I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than…
When I got to the washing part (I skipped over the Soylent part because I assumed it was just a paid advertisement), I expected him to talk about using a washing board or something. No, I just buy new clothes. So instead of using a little energy for a spin cycle, I have factories in China spew coal, then have shipping freights (some of the worst environmental offenders) bring it half way across the world for me so I…
>(I skipped over the Soylent part because I assumed it was just a paid advertisement)
This is authored by the founder of Soylent. Slightly different than a paid advertisement but most likely similar content
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#107As another user hinted at, this article is completely back-asswards. >I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than…
I stopped at >I utilize soylent only at home and go out to eat when craving company or flavor. right after we found out kitchens are nasty and wasteful. Of course, out of sight, out of mind?
His point I think is that collective cooking/eating is more efficient. I don't have the numbers, but it makes sense.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#108Fair confident this is all satire. Read his post on dating. Same vein of humor, but more obviously a joke.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This does assume that the custom made clothes are being slow shipped from China on a cargo boat instead of being shipped via air. Running clothes single use with a 2-3 week lead time for ocean freight sounds a bit tricky.
Not if it follows a regular schedule.
Until a shipment gets delayed by weather and he can't go outside because he has no more clothes. Though he'd probably consider that a positive development.
Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed on the shifting the consumption down the line. However, the primary energy advantage of Uber-like car services is that it reduces the high cost of energy to produce a car by reducing the pool of cars through optimizing their use (meaning, instead of a majority of cars sitting around doing nothing, using a pool of cars working most of the time would mean fewer cars needed overall). If all cars end up being full…
I don't know that it's even clear that using Uber-like services reduces carbon footprint. I mean wouldn't a car wear out a lot faster if 20 people were using it as opposed to 1? Sure, some components in a car are mileage independent, but generally not the most critical ones like the engine and transmission...
We are not at this point now, but I'll share my understanding of what the grandparent post meant.
The average car sits unused (parked) for well over half of its life (I'd say 90%, but I don't feel like research right now, and the concept holds at 50%). If we assume 100 1-hour rides are needed in a day, and each person uses their own vehicle, we need 100 cars, despite the fact that we need 100 car-hours. If we can optimize with a service like Uber, we would only need 5 cars to provide 100 car-hours in a day.
Obviously, trips are not completely fungible, but I think the central concept is clear above.
The second piece is that those 5 cars will be replaced much sooner than the 100 individual cars. That's where the utilization comes in. If everyone drives themselves, then the stock of cars must equal peak demand. If services like Uber combine riders (via UberPool - the typical car has more than 1 passenger seat that is unutilized in the typical commute) and provide utilization for cars at 50% of the day, then the total stock of vehicles would be lower than required for self-driving.
These two effects combine leading to fewer cars.