I think Soylent dude has lost it; now with moar renewable energy inverter talk
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I, literally, stared at my computer monitor going
the entire time I read this article.
Op-ed: How I gave up alternating current
Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart shares his thoughts on extreme sustainability.
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Feel free to discuss this post further at http://discourse.soylent.com/t/soylent-2-0-media-roundup/22843
and http://discourse.soylent.com/search?q=robrhinehart.com
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I'm ok, thanks.
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"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."
Snort. If anyone didn't know, the major stated reason for creating Soylent in the first place is because he doesn't like prepping and eating food.
This guy's halfway to being Agent Smith from the Matrix. If he could pour his consciousness into a robot he would in half a second, I bet.
Or else he's got some kind of, problem that causes him to get overstimulated by what are normal, everyday occurrences for people. He's certainly discovered a weird way to deal with it, if that's the case.
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Oh, man, this is a treasure trove.
"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."
Yeah, that son of a bitch, thinking you'd want the facilities that everyone, ever, wants, instead of just living in a box.
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Or else he's got some kind of, problem that causes him to get overstimulated by what are normal, everyday occurrences for people. He's certainly discovered a weird way to deal with it, if that's the case.
Check your ableist privilege -- some people do have that happen to them
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Check your ableist privilege -- some people do have that happen to them
I actually said that as mitigation, as in, a way he might be slightly less kooky than he otherwise sounds.
But OMG this guy's first-world attitude rankles. Listen to this tripe: "My Android phone charges at 5V and uses less than 10Wh / day, which isn’t a lot but I still think is atrocious for what it does. My old Nokia would run for a week on that."
Wow, you don't say, your high-powered general-purpose computer with 4 or so radios in it uses a lot less power than an old brick with a 128x128 greyscale display that had virtually no computing power behind it. OH WHAT HORRORS HAS TECHNOLOGY WROUGHT!!!!1!
I mean, seriously, the entitlement is off the scale. He gets his clothes semi-custom made in China.
He's got all sorts of basic points, like "why are we still doing so many things by hand", but then he goes off into cloud-cuckoo land.
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I mean, seriously, the entitlement is off the scale. He gets his clothes semi-custom made in China and replaces them instead of washing.
Yeah, that was a bit weird. Probably not the most sustainable thing ever.
But nevertheless, kinda interesting experiment. Awesome that it works for him - not sure I could pull anything like that off.
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I found it interesting that he implies/claims he doesn't have electricity as in from the grid. In a lot of places that's actually illegal.
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Why would that be illegal???
Oh right, government-enforced monopolies, I almost forgot. They do such a good job of it too...
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I'm surprised at the average monthly consumption. 909 kWh, that's almost 30 kWh a day. I use an average of 3 kWh daily, for a two-person household.
How does one consume that much electricity?
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smell of rotting flesh fills my nostrils
He's clearly been shopping in the wrong stores/countries.
Most of the supermarkets I go in have their (fresh) flesh in plastic wrapped containers, and those that sell it 'loose' tend not to sell rotting stuff.
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In a lot of places that's actually illegal.
O_O
So you can't use a gas-powered generator or solar freaking panels?
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Quite apart from the noxious level of product placement, there are some fascinating gems of ignorance and stupidity in there. Let's expose a couple!
Automation is woefully absent from the textile industry
It was just one of the very first industries to automate, so no.
What if instead we could all connect through the sun?
:snerk:
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My god, what a kook! And he's cheating, too. He says he doesn't use this and that and the other thing, but really all he has done is externalise all those things, and now he uses the results of other people using them, like the fact that he eats out all the time. (So no, he uses no AC in his home, but the restaurants use AC more or less everywhere, but because it's not in his home, in his weird world he's still OK.) And, as noted above, instead of washing his clothes, he throws them away.
And the constant pushing of his company's product was annoying.
And I'd like to know how he got so many scars from cooking and driving. I have zero, count them, none, scars from driving, and I once parked my car with its roof on the ground and its wheels in the air. I do have a couple of knife marks from errors while preparing food, and a selection of small scars left over from brushing against the (hot) fry baskets from when I worked in a Burger King in 1986, but that's all I have in terms of cooking scars. (In effect, he's externalised the scar-generation as well...)
I'm also curious how much it costs him to eat out all the time. I know that cooking at home saves less money than you'd think compared to eating in restaurants, but if you make your own food, you get to choose what you have, like yesterday when I decided I wanted to cut up (no scars, either) half a pepper, some mushrooms and a bit of broccoli, combined with some bacon and smoked salmon, then throw them in a wok(1) with some part-cooked rice. Salt, pepper, and ground nutmeg to taste. It takes ten minutes to prepare, five or six minutes to cook, job done.
(1) The wok itself isn't a genuine Chinese one, but a western simulation I picked up from my local Carrefour for just five euros. And it wasn't on sale, either. The metal is very, very thin, so it has almost no thermal inertia, meaning that when you turn off the gas, it stops cooking almost immediately.
God, what a nut. Sigh.
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eat out all the time.
But he said that he only does it to socialize.And I doubt a whole lot of people would invite him for dinner more than once in their entire lives ...
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you get to choose what you have
I think you missed the part where he dogfoods his own "food" product, Soylent, for most of his meals.
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You can, but your house must be connected to the public grid.
Same goes for water, gas and sawage system, depending on their availability and local law.
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Soylent, for most of his meals
I'm guessing he's one of these people who actually doesn't really like food in the first place.
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@FrostCat said:
I mean, seriously, the entitlement is off the scale. He gets his clothes semi-custom made in China and replaces them instead of washing.
Yeah, that was a bit weird. Probably not the most sustainable thing ever.
But nevertheless, kinda interesting experiment. Awesome that it works for him - not sure I could pull anything like that off.
The thing that struck me about the throwing them away part was that he wears synthetics, not natural fibres. Cotton, linen, wool, and so on are more sustainable on that basis than polyester, nylon, and the like.
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@cvi said:
@FrostCat said:
I mean, seriously, the entitlement is off the scale. He gets his clothes semi-custom made in China and replaces them instead of washing.
Yeah, that was a bit weird. Probably not the most sustainable thing ever.
But nevertheless, kinda interesting experiment. Awesome that it works for him - not sure I could pull anything like that off.
The thing that struck me about the throwing them away part was that he wears synthetics, not natural fibres. Cotton, linen, wool, and so on are more sustainable on that basis than polyester, nylon, and the like.He edited the article, in the original one, he said he donated the clothing when he was done not washing it.
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To be fair, he says that he's recycling them, but it's a bit unclear what that exactly means. I'd also be curious about how much energy is needed to create a pair of synthetic clothes (and if that's really less than if it's created from natural fibers) ... and if that's less than what would be needed to wash them.
But then there's also the thing where he's shipping them from China to the US, which I guess isn't exactly free / "zero footprint" either.
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Awesome that it works for him - not sure I could pull anything like that off.
Yeah, mostly the lesson seems to be, lower your standard of living and you lower your costs all sorts of ways! He's totally question begging here for me, because the whining about consumerism or whatever just sounds like modern Puritanism to me.
but really all he has done is externalise all those things
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A bit over the top but I generally agree with many of his sentiments. The incessant mockery in the original comments makes me sad.
He's the kind of person that can see the world in abstract concepts, and not just in what he sees.
If he could pour his consciousness into a robot he would in half a second, I bet.
So would I. Is there anything wrong with that?
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I'm surprised at the average monthly consumption. 909 kWh, that's almost 30 kWh a day. I use an average of 3 kWh daily, for a two-person household.
How does one consume that much electricity?
Wow, I just looked at my bill history and even I, living alone in a 600 square foot apartment, have been hitting 800 kWh per month in the summer months. Must all be the A/C because my winter bills are half that.
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Dogs wouldn't eat Soylent, though.
Not so?
http://discourse.soylent.com/t/urgent-is-soylent-safe-for-dogs/17287
Ooh, soylent uses discourse, too. Forcing their customers to eat that slop wasn't bad enough, they had to make them use discourse!?!?
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I think it's valuable to have people like him going to extremes, however shallow they may be. It helps us improve on our wasteful lives by demonstrating what is possible.
Think twice about trying to separate me from my iron frying pan though. Your head's shape might get adjusted in the process.
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Must all be the A/C because my winter bills are half that.
What do you use for heating?
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Why would that be illegal???
You have to realize about half of all property laws are the result of stuff shitty landlords did back in the 1920s.
I'm guessing some sleazebag built a building to rent out, didn't install city power so he could sell the residents generator power at a huge mark-up, and that was the genesis of that law.
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What do you use for heating?
i assume if the A/C bill is that high @mott555 lives in the general texas/arizona/new mexico sort of area.
if that's the case he doesn't need to heat the house in winter, he just has to turn off the A/C
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What do you use for heating?
Nothing, actually. Technically, I have a gas furnace and the gas bill is paid by the apartment and not me, in practice the furnace is usually off and I have a window cracked open in winter to keep the temp below 75 °F. I have apartments above and below me, and on either side, and it seems I get enough heat leakage through the walls that I don't really need a heater of my own.
i assume if the A/C bill is that high @mott555 lives in the genrela texas/arizona/new mexico sort of area.
Not even close. Omaha, Nebraska. Humidity is more of a concern than heat, I bet I'd actually prefer the hotter (but much dryer) climate of the southwest.
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i assume if the A/C bill is that high @mott555 lives in the genrela texas/arizona/new mexico sort of area.
No, I know he's in a place where it gets quite cold. The answer, as I suspected:
I have a gas furnace and the gas bill is paid by the apartment and not me
But then...apparently being in the middle of a building helps him too, unsurprisingly. Anyways, I'll just post this again (I suspected I would post it, but more likely in the air conditioning thread):
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-22/americans-air-conditioning-habit-is-eco-friendly
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Not even close. Omaha, Nebraska. Humidity is more of a concern than heat, I bet I'd actually prefer the hotter (but much dryer) climate of the southwest.
-shrug- and that's why they say that when you assume you make an ass of you and me. 9it's also a great way to remember how to speeel that wrod)
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A bit over the top but I generally agree with many of his sentiments. The incessant mockery in the original comments makes me sad.
He's the kind of person that can see the world in abstract concepts, and not just in what he sees.
If he could pour his consciousness into a robot he would in half a second, I bet.
So would I. Is there anything wrong with that?
You can agree with his sentiments and still realize that all of his conclusions are completely wrong.
For instance, I actually agree that LED lighting powered by locally generated and stored solar is a decent way to reduce a significant amount of waste in the electric grid despite the differences in environmental impacts (generally strip mining for the rare-earth metals required - though if you're using coal it could be coming from mountain-top removal mining so YMMV there). Going full DC is a terrible idea though. It was a bad idea in the 1880s and it is a bad idea now.
Regarding his kitchen, he could always just get a slightly older natural gas stove that has electric ignition and no electric cut-off and light it with matches. You can argue the problems of burning natural gas, he is using butane or white gas, so he can't complain too much about burning a fossil fuel. Second, look at how much food is wasted in India because there's so little refrigeration available to tell you why not having a fridge is a silly extreme (especially when he actually still uses one because he eats out all the time).
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Irregardlessly, Soylent is great.
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How does one consume that much electricity?
Normally I'd say "running the AC lower than you should be" among other things, but that seems relatively unlikely in LA.
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He's clearly been shopping in the wrong stores/countries.
I got a strong whiff (so to speak), as I mentioned above, that he may have sensory issue, because I've heard of such a thing before. It's like in movies when they show someone overwhelmed by all the voices of the people around 'em, or whatever.
In a slightly earlier age, he'd probably have vanished off into the woods, a la Grizzly Adams (or possibly the Unabomber.)
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So you can't use a gas-powered generator or solar freaking panels?
The last couple of apartments I've lived in (VA, TX, maybe FL, but I don't remember), you were required (maybe as part of the lease) to have electricity and water service. It's not uncommon in houses, either--there was a story in the news a year or two back about a woman in central FL who ran afoul of the authorities because she'd turned off all her utilities and was living on caught rainwater, a composting toilet, and solar panels.
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So you can't use a gas-powered generator or solar freaking panels?
Oh, I didn't actually answer your actual question. Sure you could use those, but you would probably still be required to be hooked up to the grid.
Then there's the followon issues of whether or not you want to connect your power generation to the grid, or have two sets of wiring, etc.
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And the constant pushing of his company's product was annoying.
Well, it's more than that, it's his product. He's the guy who invented Soylent, remember? So of course he'd be gaga over it--as I mentioned upthread, he basically made it so he wouldn't have to eat (icky) food. Like I also said, I bet if this guy could pour his consciousness into a robot or computer, and get rid of his (icky) meat body, he'd do it without a second thought.
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he uses no AC in his home, but the restaurants use AC more or less everywhere, but because it's not in his home, in his weird world he's still OK
Welcome to the world of people who love electric cars because they're "zero emissions."
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I'm surprised at the average monthly consumption. 909 kWh, that's almost 30 kWh a day. I use an average of 3 kWh daily, for a two-person household.
How does one consume that much electricity?
Is your house all electric? I haven't looked at a power bill in a long time, but IIRC, ours averaged something like 1100 or 1200kWh for a household of four people in a 2 story, 1300 or 1400 sf townhouse. It never seemed crazy, but then, we're all electric, so that includes the HVAC, water heater and cooking, plus all the usual appliances.
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Dogs wouldn't eat Soylent, though.
No, but cold, it's been said to be not unpleasant. I haven't tried it, but I've had Atkins-style shakes, and other energy/weight-loss/etc kinds, and they're not actually bad, although they do frequently have slightly off tastes, like saccharine-sweetened products can. I'm not saying they'd be my first choice of food, but if I were on a ship to Mars, say, and that were the most space- and energy-efficient way of getting nutrition, I suppose I could handle getting the majority of my food that way. (Think of the boon, lol, to people who don't, for example, like eating veggies!)
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I'm guessing he's one of these people who actually doesn't really like food in the first place.
You are correct, sir. I was gonna put a YouTube of ol' Johnny Carson, but the clip was 6 minute long and I didn't feel like finding the cue.
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Is there anything wrong with that?
We don't actually know yet. It's a uncommon trope in sci-fi that increase cyberneticization of your body decreases humanity. It was especially prevalent in Shadowrun. I dunno about you but I don't want to be the guinea pig.
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I'm guessing some sleazebag built a building to rent out, didn't install city power so he could sell the residents generator power at a huge mark-up, and that was the genesis of that law.
If it wasn't that, specifically, it was, likely, the moral equivalent. Put a water tank on the roof of an apartment building, charge through the roof (ahem) for it.
It could be sloppy tenants, too. "We'll just skip on the water bill to save money" and when they move out the house is vile from not being cleaned.
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Nothing, actually. Technically, I have a gas furnace and the gas bill is paid by the apartment and not me, in practice the furnace is usually off and I have a window cracked open in winter to keep the temp below 75 °F. I have apartments above and below me, and on either side, and it seems I get enough heat leakage through the walls that I don't really need a heater of my own.
When I still lived in Boston I was in that situation for a while--I lived above the laundry room, and I almost never turned the heat on even when there was two feet of snow on the ground.
