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There's more nuance here than reducing consumption of beef and dairy. Moving over to regenerative farming practices instead of factory farming will also improve the situation.


Yes and doing regenerative practices all the way to the end would naturally force this reduction in consumption. It would be really good, because the land used to grow feed could be redirected to other more efficient uses.


There is quite a bit in between too. Grass vs grain fed cattle, for example.


How about regenerative economics? I hate it.


In holistic circles, people swear by magnesium. Magnesium glycinate in particular has worked really well for me. It makes sense, because magnesium is a co-factor for converting tryptophan into serotonin, which is turned into the hormone melatonin. So, you could try supporting your body's natural production of sleep hormones by ensuring you have enough available tryptophan and magnesium in your diet.


A couple of years ago, my wife (around 40 at the time) was struggling to sleep (she had very light sleep and woke up in the middle of the night for no reason). She tried most of the things everybody recommends, melatonin, slow release, Gaba, magnesium, etc. The only thing that helped was ZMA (a compound body builders use with Magnesium and Zinc).

No idea why, but while the Magnesium alone didn't do anything, the ZMA helped her.

Nowadays we always have a bottle by the bedside. I use it sparingly whenever I want to get deep sleep. What I like vs Melatonin is that when I take Melatonin I dream a lot and I dont feel that "rested" next morning. I even wake up groggy. With ZMA, I sleep very deep, like shut my eyes and suddenly I am wake next day. I feel way more rested.


I know an obese individual who has one and I'm sure having a ventilated bed helps them sleep more comfortably.


Health concerns make sense


There appears to be a bamboo-derived plastic out there with high tensile strength, but I don't think it'd work for this application, because it degrades within 50 days of being buried in soil. I wonder if being in gravel would delay that, due to the different microbes present?

It seems like there are usually biobased solutions out there, but they aren't as cost-effective or easy to procure as the forever plastics, so organizations don't bother with them. Perhaps some kind of incentive would get us moving in the right direction.


You can have material that biodegrades, or material that doesn't biodegrade. But you can't have material that doesn't biodegrade that biodegrades. Plastic is a wonder material because it's a forever material.


Plastic that disappeared after 50 or 100 years would still be very useful for making things. Plastic for packaging only needs to last months or years.

You need to avoid certain kinds of biodegradation but you don't need "forever".

And in particular if you could make very small pieces biodegrade quickly, and only those, you'd instantly solve microplastics.


That reminds me of a fun research presentation I saw a decade ago. They engineered a bioplastic which would break down on sustained contact with water. While trying to come up with applications, they proposed reducing plastic consumption by using it for ... water bottles.


There's a bit of nuance here. A material which doesn't biodegrade but is inert, a material which biodegrades but only when exposed to light or moisture or heat, a material which biodegrades into something else which is in turn inert, etc.

Not really relevant to geocells but quite relevant for e.g. timber, which might last a hundred years in a roof but start to rot in six months of composting.


Plastic is inert, but microplastics harm us anyway, and don't go away, because it's inert.


Plastics tend to be more chemically active than a lot of rocks, for example.

Although that's not going to protect you from crystalline dust from silica and asbestos.


The problem with plastic is that it often doesn't biodegrade but loses capability with time. So you end up with it turning to rubble after few decades but still polluting the environment


There are species of wood that do very well buried. Black locust is known to last 100yr buried. I wonder if you could scale up the effect using a larger grid of black locust 2x8s [edit] or even smaller dimension mill scrap.


Have you seen how the legal system is protecting everyone associated with those crimes, despite how high profile they are?


Historically, culture wasn't so quick to change. Typically, parents would be able to pass down their culture and traditions to children, instead of having society foist an entirely new culture onto their kids that's incompatible with what the parent grew up with.


This happened too many times in history to even name. I could sum some recent examples if you want. Do you want that?


No, because they are not culturally dominant right now.


So basically, "might makes right". How savage that feels.


I delivered wearing a mask last year, it's honestly security theater. A little floppy surgical mask does nothing to contain the breathing of a laboring woman. I was more upset I couldn't kiss my baby when he was first put in my arms.


It's a tough juggle between a hospital that won't allow you to give birth maskless, and the level of care you want. We went through a similar tough choice with our daughter born in August last year - we ultimately went with a Catholic-based hospital that we vetted for great care that allowed my wife to give birth without a mask on.


Michael Hastings mysteriously exploded during the Obama Administration, maybe that's what they're referring to.


Who determines what is true and what's a lie? Why do you trust them to make the right call?


Precisely -- and let's be clear here: the disinformation being discussed here breaks down along partisan lines.

We can barely get republicans and democrats to agree on a budget, what makes anyone think that they could reasonably come to an agreement on objective standards of truth in media? Let alone a process by which those standards are enforced? This is way, wayyyyy outside the realm of reality.


I agree with your point, though I think your example is a bit flawed: I think it's reasonable to disagree on what should be in a budget; there's no one "correct" budget where all other budgets are wrong.

On the other side, facts are facts. Assuming you actually have all the facts (which often we don't), there is only a single truth.


What people call a “fact” for these purposes is a lot broader than what epistemologically qualifies as a “fact.” You can see this with a lot of “fact checking” websites. The second item on the fact-check.org website is whether reduced wind power caused the Texas electrical outages: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/02/wind-turbines-didnt-cause-...

The percentage drop in window power megawatts is a “fact.” What “caused” the Texas power outage is a multi-variable system analysis that produces a conclusion, not a fact, under certain specified assumptions. (This is obvious to an engineer: the NTSB spends months investigating what “caused” a plane crash, and issues a report with conclusions, not facts. The notion that some journalist can in a day or two perform a similar analysis on a complex system like a power grid, and report the result as a “fact” blinks reality.)


There's not only the issue of incomplete information, there's the issue of salience. There are an infinite number of true statements. Which ones do you focus on? Which ones are the right ones to focus on? You can detect bias in reporting not only based on what is said, but about what is not even mentioned.

The new york times won't run a story sympathetic to liberal individuals pushing back against the excesses of critical race theory. Fox news won't report on how even though there were anomalies in the election, none justified stopping the transfer of power to the Biden administration. Both are bullshit.


Yes, the "fact-checkers" we already have should give us a hint at what "lie-checkers" would do.


Then don’t have them. Having lie checkers on the internet is a moronic idea. This rule is to stop organized coordinated disinformation campaigns. It’s to take down sites who’s whole purpose is to literally make up news stories, present them as fact, and spread them on social media.


It was mean sarcastic. In case you haven't figured out how awful the fact-checkers are.

An no, if you ban "disinformation" you ban free speech. There is no way to figure out if a flat earther publishes something for disinformation purpose or if he really believes what he writes. Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it, not by removing it. Most people have heard form the flat earth but most dont believe it. Because they can inform themself. That's how it should be. No need to "save" everyone trough authoritarian measures. The risk here is way higher than having to deal with some forever flat earther.


> Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it

I used to believe that as well. Then we did real world practical experiments over the last decade. It's clear most people don't give a shit about informing themselves and will readily believe just about anything.

Not saying the solution is regulating what can / cannot be said, but this idea that free speech is the ultimate thing isn't working when you have groups that can spend troves of cash making their disinformation legitimate enough for the masses.

Both you and i probably believe at least one, maybe more of those things, by the way. It's not all outlandish nonsense, sometimes it's reasonable enough to believe at first glance and you don't bother looking it up afterwards.


I accept this as unavoidable reality. The only way to fight this problem is education. I'm not worried much about the fact that everyone "believes" some stuff that is actually not true. This is and was the case for all time humans where alive. In time where people had the opportunity to debate the different "truths" humanity made progress. In times or societies where this was not possible progress was slow. we dont need and will never get the absolute truth. but wee need freedom to search for it. there is no guarantee that we will find it and even the opinion of the majority can be wrong and often is but it will self-correct as long as pointing out the wrong is allowed. There will always come a time where the wrong becomes obvious to the majority. Pointing out the wrong will be disinformation if the people who decide are in the wrong. We can not have that risk.

So back to the start. You cant have an authority who decide. whats right or wrong has to be proofed/debunked. And it can not be removed afterwards as this would invalidate the debunking. This is a slow and inefficient process we should probably focus on making it better because it works, it just does not work as good and as fast as the modern world would require. The shortcut "solutions" however will most likely not work at all and potentially case more harm than good.


I fully agree with you that education is the ultimate solution, but in the mean time, wtf do we do about the entities that have wealth and power, and are able to influence millions of people on just about whatever the fuck they want?

What do we do when the things they choose to influence the population on are no longer just "the rich getting richer" but become actual existential threats? When they get dictators elected, make climate change worse, endanger lives by producing healthcare misinformation, etc?

Does it matter that, over the long term, there are more idealistic freedom of speech ideals if we don't live long enough to even get to the long term?


I dont know a solution to solve this all either. But I'm worried we make it worse with bad solutions.

Certainly you dont want to give these powerful people the tools to become more powerfully by implementing an authoritarian system against disinformation. Its rather obvious that if these powerful people can not circumvent that system they will become the system. If they can manipulate millions they sure can manipulate or replace the few "decision makers" too. Now you have powerful people spreading disinformation who also have the power to remove any critics simply by labeling it disinformation.


Wait no. That’s not how this works. There’s no determination of fact. It doesn’t matter whether what you said is true or false — this isn’t a rule against being wrong. It’s a rule against someone speaking something they know and believe a priori to be false with the intent to mislead people.

Like it’s literally the same ideas as fraud but applied to misinformation. If you believe that climate change is a hoax then you’re fine, tell the world. But if you make up a study and data “disproving” climate change and then circulate it in Facebook then you’re not.


Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.


> Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.

In general, we are comfortable doing this in at least some contexts. The legal system in almost every case attempts to ascertain intention to satisfy the mens rea of a criminal act. They don't have mind reading devices, but they do have expert witnesses such as psychologists and doctors, and testimony.


> It’s a rule against someone speaking something they know and believe a priori to be false with the intent to mislead people.

If one doesn’t believe in the Holocaust, yet publishes erudite webpages with the intent to mislead others (at least from his POV) into thinking it really happened, would that be a problem?

If yes, you are consistent, albeit a bit crazy.

If no, your rule reduces, once again, to a focus on the falsity of the communication as opposed to the writers intent.


It would be a problem! I don’t think people would care as much because it’s the same as stealing a balloon on free balloon day but you still have a guilty mind and had the intent to deceive people regardless of your success at it.

It becomes a bigger issue if the evidence on the site is made up but I won’t assume that.


I don’t understand this. Can you give an example where the truth is some how elusive or difficult to obtain?

Human knowledge is pretty advanced and accessible.


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