"The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Ramsden said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap."

"Just Bury Your Trash" is arguing "Turn the plastic tap on more please, and don't even bother TRYING to recycle it".

My point was not actually about plastic vs reusable. My point was, why is embodied energy always used in contrarian climate arguments. Why not talk about ergonomics, or the "bike waterproof-ness standard"?

I think embodied energy is being used in this article to push the author's specific views, which to fund atmospheric carbon extraction.

Like lets think about plastic bags from an object use standpoint. Given you have a collection of stuff to carry would you prefer:

A) A reasonably sturdy bag that can be styled to your preference (like with art or whatever) that you have to remember to bring with you when you need.

B) The literal minimum possible material to be considered a bag. Even money whatever you put into it will punch straight through the bottom, or you'll need to use 2-4 nested bags anyway. And it'll be uncomfortable to hold the whole time.

I think from an object use perspective a reusable bag is more pleasant to use.

But embodied energy calculations are convenient because you can get numbers to compare. But it ignores externalities.

Like if you actually considered the embodied energy of the median tote bag vs the median plastic bag from the point that it was extracted from the ground to the point that it returns to dust, I think the story would look really different. I'll bet a sizable percentage of plastic bags don't even make it through their first use. Meanwhile I've got tote bags that I think are fully 15 years old. Plus if you consider the remediation future generations will need to do for plastic bags. meanwhile I can actually bury a cotton tote bag in the dirt to decompose and it doesn't need infrastructure to prevent poisoning the water supply.

Did the authors consider the embodied energy of the landfill itself? Shipping? Trash collection? Ongoing monitoring? The embodied energy of the future carbon capture system?

It's just so convenient to look only at the materials, equate that to kg of co2, and use that for whatever narrative makes you feel good.

Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program.

These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.

> It required an input key that was unique to our dongle series & our own code that was whatever we wanted. The reply was a hash of both values.

> The last version we used was USB. They retired the parallel style long ago.

http://spaceflownartifacts.com/flown_silver_snoopy_awards.ht...

seems like in the apollo era crew carried a few in their PPK (personal preference kit), and in the later shuttle era they regularly carried 500-1000 pins per mission.

Yes, it is. You should try it.

Is it possible to add a new course to the library? I'd like to make a group for CSS for JavaScript Developers by Josh W Comeau [1] but it seems like I can only make a group for courses in the library.

1: https://css-for-js.dev/

I don't think it's a requirement, but it's an advantage

I've arrived at this position because I'm not able to use any of those platforms because they don't provide accessibility tools that I need. Beeper does, and most matrix clients do also.

I recognize that the open source "everything should be open" view is not remotely mainstream, but the only way forward is to demand better.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38086900

Points: 5

# Comments: 3

I don't understand why people in this thread think is so unreasonable that a culture saw a new star in the sky 1/4 the brightness of the moon for 3 months, and somebody bothered to carve it on a rock.

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/45256