Yes, I'm hoping to avoid both as well; out here in crunchy country a number of our older folks have passed and their burials have been simple pine (or walnut) boxes in a 6ft hole on their own property. Looking into it a bit, I was surprised burying human remains isn't the big deal people make it out to be... given enough space, distance from wells and such (100 ft). To be sure, doesn't work in big cities and/or suburbs... but a lot of country folk are just buried 6'ft under on a bit of a rise... as I hope to be. Almost every property out here has the family plot that most folks benignly neglect (assuming it isn't their family) which is not to say actively remove/destroy, but just sort of keep it respectfully cordoned off, if a bit overgrown. During Lent and other seasons for remembering the dead, we walk down the road to the next-door property where just such a family plot exists.
The no embalming is trickier... you have to be buried within 24 hrs of death (not sure exactly how this works vis-a-vis cold-storage/morgues)... but the main point is that absent plans/preparation it seemed the harder path to navigate... but not impossible.
I dunno man, they say they 'deprecated' beef content recipes in 2019. But they made very specific announcement yesterday that they are henceforth ending all new beef content. And the reason they cite is Global Warming. But we all know that no one is arguing for it.
Bless your engineering heart... I wouldn't expect anything less. I don't think the paper is addressing efficiencies, but just the math necessary for the energy transfers. Efficiencies? To be sure... But the bar isn't even close. My take away was that something like Nuclear Power would be perfect... no impact to global warming while replacing the micro-biological-generators of every cow.
Which leads to the occam's razor of this: If we could use Nuclear to replace cows... why not use it simpliciter?
My slightly contrarian take here is that there's work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a 'moral' argument against animal consumption.
I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one 'moral' thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become 'immoral' some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.
Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here... and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms... in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming - having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).
The more interesting science, is around energy consumption... and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse... but GW isn't the point here... it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There's a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces... sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.
There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume...
My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem... and the moment we solve for energy, we've solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless... the point isn't really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.
In which case... dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)... is missing the moral intuition that it signals.
Yes. There's something predatory about providing a marketplace then scouring your marketplace for poachable items based on data/sales and then skewing the marketplace search to your poached items - harming your erstwhile partners/clients as competitors.
If the argument is that Amazon offers such a lucrative market that poaching is a cost of business... ok, I suppose. But if the argument is that Amazon is the only real market and going to business there is an open invitation to anti-competitive poaching which puts you out of business? Then it's a capitalism problem that capitalism warns us about.
The Amazon Marketplace model in these scenarios bears a slight resemblance to the practices CCP employs for access to their markets. I find it odd that we're all good with both.
Hard to say, really... when the sizable majority of your Profits come from a line of business delivering cloud services... it really isn't about being a Data Aggregator and Seller.
"Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant led by the now-future Amazon CEO, closed out 2020 with more than $13.5 billion in annual operating profits, responsible for more than 63% of the entire company's operating profits for the year, on annual AWS revenue of $45.3 billion, up nearly 30% year-over-year"
All the other low margin non-profitable stuff? Loss leads and market positioning.
Honestly, there's no earthly reason why Whole Foods and AWS are the same company... not even 'vertical integration' is in play. If we wanted to look at non-punitive 'trust-busting' we should break up Amazon into multiple wildly successful companies. Viva capitalism.
For Democrats, it's nice to pick-up increasing numbers of ex-Republican voters; it is less nice when those voters influence the Democrats in directions that make them look like ex-Republicans who switched Soc-Con platitudes for Soc-Lib platitudes.
We don't have a Middle political identity, we have a Middle anti-identity.
I don't know what comes next either; Rubio is interesting to watch because he's so beholden to the old-regime (money) that whenever he tries to straddle a normie/next-gen position he does so with such transparent strings being pulled that you can see how the rhetoric won't result in new policies... just a gloss on the old.
Sure... the GOP is dead, long live the GOP... that's the reality of a two-party Duopoly. I'm not making any sort of grand theory claim - certainly not for something so petty as a political party.
I do think it curious if someone were to think that belonging to the party of Goldwater was the same thing as the party of Trump... I'd say it's more like standing in a river... you can say your are in the Republican River, but the issues, people, and flow are totally different.
Some? Many? Most? don't necessarily notice the difference one year over the next... but after a while, all that's left is party affiliation and Some? Many? Most? realize the Party is or isn't what they think it ought to be.
Which is why I'm not predicting the end of the Republican Party... just that the shift is more likely to leave the Normies behind than bring them to the front in a 'corrective' move - because what's the Normie platform that ends the 'retaliation' (to borrow your term)?
In what way is 2021 Romney not another retaliation against Normies? Plus, there aren't slates of Normies lining up to contest the takeover... is Eric Cantor lining up to take back the seat he lost to Brat who lost it to a Democrat? I'd suggest that the defections against the normies pre-dates Trump... but Trump as the manifestation of the symptom doesn't make the symptoms go away when he leaves.
The Normies were the original problem... Trump is just a bad outcome.
I see this as the negative side of not being able to have 3rd parties.
The problem (as I see it) is that the 'normies' of the republican party a'la Romney are, in fact, the biggest losers... there's no returning to Romney. In fact, Romney has remade himself into an anti-Bain-anti-Capital-Romney.
New Romney wouldn't vote for Old Romney... but New Romney isn't a 'normie' Republican, but a New-as-yet-undisclosed-party Romney.
Does that make sense? The 'normie' Republicans really don't have a home because there isn't a party for them. And going back to the aughts would put them in the political wilderness of a head with no body. There isn't a slate of normies that would stem the tide... a slate of 'Chamber-of-Commerce" normies would probably escalate the rout.
Yeah... if it continues, it's the birth of a third party. What's weird and confusing is that the 'new' party is called Republican and the old party is 'other' or 'not-Republican' - so far, at least.
Otherwise it is following similar patterns where the new party poaches chunks of the old party while old party struggles to re-define or re-align.
In the end, the new-party causes the old party to lose and lose bigly until the realignment crosses over. It's sort-of why we don't get 3rd parties... which is the undertone of the post. A lament. I see it as nature healing.
Currently sitting #52,118 in the queue for Path of Exile 3.14 league... most of my work, work is done... almost time to get to work on my Arc league starter build and see what the gods of 'Ultimatum' drop.
Weekend is supposed to be 50's and overcast... boo... was hoping to sit outside a bit... will have to settle for pasture/woods work.
Speaking of reunions, we did finish planning a trip to visit my folks in FL in August... and it looks like the other siblings will all be able to join for a weekend... we're all getting adjacent VRBO condo's on the beach. So we've got that to look forward to. And just to spite twitter, I've booked travel by TRAIN. TRAIN I tell you!
On “Wednesday Writs: Compost, Human and Otherwise Edition”
Yes, I'm hoping to avoid both as well; out here in crunchy country a number of our older folks have passed and their burials have been simple pine (or walnut) boxes in a 6ft hole on their own property. Looking into it a bit, I was surprised burying human remains isn't the big deal people make it out to be... given enough space, distance from wells and such (100 ft). To be sure, doesn't work in big cities and/or suburbs... but a lot of country folk are just buried 6'ft under on a bit of a rise... as I hope to be. Almost every property out here has the family plot that most folks benignly neglect (assuming it isn't their family) which is not to say actively remove/destroy, but just sort of keep it respectfully cordoned off, if a bit overgrown. During Lent and other seasons for remembering the dead, we walk down the road to the next-door property where just such a family plot exists.
The no embalming is trickier... you have to be buried within 24 hrs of death (not sure exactly how this works vis-a-vis cold-storage/morgues)... but the main point is that absent plans/preparation it seemed the harder path to navigate... but not impossible.
On “A Beef: No, Joe Biden Is Not Going To Take Away Your Burgers”
I dunno man, they say they 'deprecated' beef content recipes in 2019. But they made very specific announcement yesterday that they are henceforth ending all new beef content. And the reason they cite is Global Warming. But we all know that no one is arguing for it.
"
Phew. Wondering if Epicurious will follow-suit.
"
Sure, we could take them out... my point is that Cows are extremely hardy and require astonishingly little attention to thrive and reproduce.
If we opened the gates and let them into the wild, I'm comfortable predicting we'll have their descendants with us 100 yrs from now.
"
Hey, our well water is kinda sweet...
"
Medium? Well...
On “House Reapportionment Number Are Released”
Montana flag emoji
On “A Beef: No, Joe Biden Is Not Going To Take Away Your Burgers”
Cows would survive in the wild... they'd get meaner and the non-polled genetics would probably win out... but Cows would make it.
Chickens won't last a season.
Sheep... eh, purely a numbers game vs. predators... I could see it going either way.
Goats will find their way into your house and hide out while you are sleeping... they will be fine.
When the word goes out about the extinction event, Pigs will rise up and take over entire counties. So let's keep it down for now.
"
Heh, I just saw that... It is! it is a moral argument. We're just hiding the moral behind Global Warming.
"
Fractal Cucumbers!
"
oops... misthreaded, meant as part of thread below... not regarding Hydrogen.
"
Bless your engineering heart... I wouldn't expect anything less. I don't think the paper is addressing efficiencies, but just the math necessary for the energy transfers. Efficiencies? To be sure... But the bar isn't even close. My take away was that something like Nuclear Power would be perfect... no impact to global warming while replacing the micro-biological-generators of every cow.
Which leads to the occam's razor of this: If we could use Nuclear to replace cows... why not use it simpliciter?
"
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5b01614
"
double link mod situation, if you will.
"
My slightly contrarian take here is that there's work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a 'moral' argument against animal consumption.
I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one 'moral' thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become 'immoral' some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.
Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here... and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms... in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming - having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).
The more interesting science, is around energy consumption... and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse... but GW isn't the point here... it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There's a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces... sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.
There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume...
My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem... and the moment we solve for energy, we've solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless... the point isn't really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.
In which case... dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)... is missing the moral intuition that it signals.
"
Rare, these days.
On “Anti-Capitalism Never Made Much Sense”
Yes. There's something predatory about providing a marketplace then scouring your marketplace for poachable items based on data/sales and then skewing the marketplace search to your poached items - harming your erstwhile partners/clients as competitors.
If the argument is that Amazon offers such a lucrative market that poaching is a cost of business... ok, I suppose. But if the argument is that Amazon is the only real market and going to business there is an open invitation to anti-competitive poaching which puts you out of business? Then it's a capitalism problem that capitalism warns us about.
The Amazon Marketplace model in these scenarios bears a slight resemblance to the practices CCP employs for access to their markets. I find it odd that we're all good with both.
"
Hard to say, really... when the sizable majority of your Profits come from a line of business delivering cloud services... it really isn't about being a Data Aggregator and Seller.
"Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant led by the now-future Amazon CEO, closed out 2020 with more than $13.5 billion in annual operating profits, responsible for more than 63% of the entire company's operating profits for the year, on annual AWS revenue of $45.3 billion, up nearly 30% year-over-year"
All the other low margin non-profitable stuff? Loss leads and market positioning.
Honestly, there's no earthly reason why Whole Foods and AWS are the same company... not even 'vertical integration' is in play. If we wanted to look at non-punitive 'trust-busting' we should break up Amazon into multiple wildly successful companies. Viva capitalism.
On “MAGA Civil War Breaks Out In Georgia”
For Democrats, it's nice to pick-up increasing numbers of ex-Republican voters; it is less nice when those voters influence the Democrats in directions that make them look like ex-Republicans who switched Soc-Con platitudes for Soc-Lib platitudes.
We don't have a Middle political identity, we have a Middle anti-identity.
"
I don't know what comes next either; Rubio is interesting to watch because he's so beholden to the old-regime (money) that whenever he tries to straddle a normie/next-gen position he does so with such transparent strings being pulled that you can see how the rhetoric won't result in new policies... just a gloss on the old.
"
Sure... the GOP is dead, long live the GOP... that's the reality of a two-party Duopoly. I'm not making any sort of grand theory claim - certainly not for something so petty as a political party.
I do think it curious if someone were to think that belonging to the party of Goldwater was the same thing as the party of Trump... I'd say it's more like standing in a river... you can say your are in the Republican River, but the issues, people, and flow are totally different.
Some? Many? Most? don't necessarily notice the difference one year over the next... but after a while, all that's left is party affiliation and Some? Many? Most? realize the Party is or isn't what they think it ought to be.
Which is why I'm not predicting the end of the Republican Party... just that the shift is more likely to leave the Normies behind than bring them to the front in a 'corrective' move - because what's the Normie platform that ends the 'retaliation' (to borrow your term)?
In what way is 2021 Romney not another retaliation against Normies? Plus, there aren't slates of Normies lining up to contest the takeover... is Eric Cantor lining up to take back the seat he lost to Brat who lost it to a Democrat? I'd suggest that the defections against the normies pre-dates Trump... but Trump as the manifestation of the symptom doesn't make the symptoms go away when he leaves.
The Normies were the original problem... Trump is just a bad outcome.
"
I see this as the negative side of not being able to have 3rd parties.
The problem (as I see it) is that the 'normies' of the republican party a'la Romney are, in fact, the biggest losers... there's no returning to Romney. In fact, Romney has remade himself into an anti-Bain-anti-Capital-Romney.
New Romney wouldn't vote for Old Romney... but New Romney isn't a 'normie' Republican, but a New-as-yet-undisclosed-party Romney.
Does that make sense? The 'normie' Republicans really don't have a home because there isn't a party for them. And going back to the aughts would put them in the political wilderness of a head with no body. There isn't a slate of normies that would stem the tide... a slate of 'Chamber-of-Commerce" normies would probably escalate the rout.
"
Yeah... if it continues, it's the birth of a third party. What's weird and confusing is that the 'new' party is called Republican and the old party is 'other' or 'not-Republican' - so far, at least.
Otherwise it is following similar patterns where the new party poaches chunks of the old party while old party struggles to re-define or re-align.
In the end, the new-party causes the old party to lose and lose bigly until the realignment crosses over. It's sort-of why we don't get 3rd parties... which is the undertone of the post. A lament. I see it as nature healing.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The High School Reunion (Invite Version)”
Currently sitting #52,118 in the queue for Path of Exile 3.14 league... most of my work, work is done... almost time to get to work on my Arc league starter build and see what the gods of 'Ultimatum' drop.
Weekend is supposed to be 50's and overcast... boo... was hoping to sit outside a bit... will have to settle for pasture/woods work.
Speaking of reunions, we did finish planning a trip to visit my folks in FL in August... and it looks like the other siblings will all be able to join for a weekend... we're all getting adjacent VRBO condo's on the beach. So we've got that to look forward to. And just to spite twitter, I've booked travel by TRAIN. TRAIN I tell you!
On “President Biden Sets Date For Afghanistan Exit, For Real This Time, Supposedly”
Hey, you have your dissertation fantasies and I have mine.