Does population increase when famine hits? As I understand it the main brakes on population in human history have been famine and disease. The level of population that a society can support is usually based on its agriculture resources and technology. However, historically, the population would tend towards the highest level supportable, and then years with poor food producing conditions would cause famine and the population would contract.

Over the last century or so, the cycle has changed. Now societies with a food surplus don’t generally see constant population growth because of two things - food production is no longer dependant on how many humans can you put to work in the fields, so there’s less need for more kids to make a family’s work easier (in fact, each modern child costs more effort and expense than they produce); and we have birth control and education, which allow people to make more intentional decisions about when and if they have children.

Combining a lack of incentive with the capacity to choose means that many societies have broken the population growth and contraction (ie baby boom followed by famine) cycle. This leads to different problems such as aging populations, but that’s another discussion.

If you’re trying to blame “stupid consumers” or “evil companies” you’re not thinking about things systemically. Of course, under our current economic system, companies are going to end up exploiting, because there’s lots of pressure to maximise profits, and minimal pressure to avoid decisions that make money but harm society. And consumers are going to make bad decisions, because they live in a society where they are constantly bombarded by advertising and social values that encourage spending and don’t punish buying unnecessary shit.

The naïve (or self-serving) status quo view is “but consumers should know what they can afford, and not waste money. And customers should take their business elsewhere if a company does bad things”. If that’s really what you want to happen, then create a system that incentivizes that - have strict rules on credit and loans, so that people can’t buy takeaway food on credit, enforce strict anti-monopoly measures so that there lots of genuine alternatives for consumers to turn to, have requirements for news media to inform the public about all the actions that companies take that are harmful to the environment, their workers, or the general population (and make clear who are their competitors, and only those alternatives that aren’t owned by the same conglomerate), and so on…

If someone promotes a system that relies on “personal responsibility” but doesn’t promote tools that facilitiate that responsibility, then they are being disingenuous.

What’s with these new accounts suddenly posting dozens of generic, overwritten and preppy posts in a few hours. It seems like an almost inhuman pattern…

AI bot, check the post history

I’d say, they’re like digging your own latrine. A totally effective solution, as long as you’re physically able and your needs aren’t exceptional.

I’m not sure I understand? The country depends on urban infrastructure for sure. But population density plays a big role in how necessary services are provided. You have to be very remote and rural in most western countries to not have electricity, because it’s easier to connect wires than be fully self-sufficient in energy generation. But waste pipes are harder to scale over distances, and septic tanks provide an affordable local solution. I’d love for the local council to install and maintain pumped pipes for all waste, but it would be a huge and unnecessary expense for the community.

Similarly, wherever people cluster, you can make efficient transport solutions that serve the. But if someone lives hours away from the next habitation, it’s hard to create a soloution that’s more efficient than them driving to the nearest transport hub. And if we could get rid of 99.9% of cars owned by people not in that situation, I don’t think we need to worry to much about the few farmers who still need them.

I basically agree with you, the more public transport provided, the less people need individual transport. But as a society, there are times when the right transport soloution for a specific household is pretty much a car. There’s no point in having busses driving out to my rural property multiple times a day, just for me not to use it most of the time.

That doesn’t mean it needs to be a private car owned by me. A government funded by taxi service would still be more cost effective than empty buses. When I lived in another part of the country, that’s what they’d replaced the busses with due to lack of demand.

But it’s a complicated transition. Currently I mostly use my car and trailer to get heavy building materials, and recover architectural salvage. Sure, I could buy a new staircase and have it delivered on a lorry, but is that really better for the environment than dismantling an old one and taking a couple of trips to ship it my property? There could be solutions, such as municipal vehicle rental. But sometimes a car or van is the sensible middle ground between a bike and a bus.

I’d say it’s more like, wanting a car is like wanting your own septic tank rather than a connection to municipal sewers. In an urban area it would be an insane waste of space to have individual septic tanks. But in the country the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure for just one household would be incredibly wasteful.

I think people should learn sign lanaguve causes it’s cool. But if it’s really for at-home, antigovernemnt planning, why not just put your phone in the other room, or the fridge? Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience to take it out your pocket, but that’s basically nothing compared to spending a few years being fluent enough in sign to hatch plans.

My experience in the UK was the gruyère was a bit bland as a cheese. But since moving to France that’s changed completely. Gruyère can be of widly different qualities and aged for different times for very different end flavours. The opposite is true of cheddar, which in Britain is a big spectrum of flavours and textures, but often in France is a pretty bland ‘burger cheese slice’ affair.

Would totally grab one of those if they were on sale. Would love to play Ultima V on that keyboard.

I guess the issue with those types of actions is that it leads to consequences that the people currently in power would be happy with. If people can just stop paying taxes on mass when they don’t like the government it pretty much gives permission for it as a political protest from now on.

I’m not saying that it is definitely a bad idea to give the public a veto on any government policy they don’t like, but it certainly promotes small government. Part of the point of government spending is spending money on things that some people don’t want, whether that’s ‘obamacare’ or the Pentagon. A government that was worried about avoiding any sizable tax strike would never be able to spend money on anyrhing but the most basic and widely accepted expenses. Even “law and order” which is often one of the few roles libertarians support spending on isn’t widely accepted anymore with ‘defund the police’.

Secondly, although part of a strike or protest is about causing disruption as a stick to put pressure on agreeing to demands, part of it is also on performing “costly displays”. Posting memes may raise awareness for an issue, but its unlikely to sway people to your side as literally setting yourself on fire. One is easy, one is horrific, and when someone does something ‘costly’ it let’s people see how much this matters to them. And asking me to not pay my taxes isn’t a big ask, it benefits me (in the short term at least), while with a labour strike you are usually sacrificing pay to make a point, which shows how important it is to you.

I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but their are various little mental exercises you can do depending on what your trying to achieve.

Relaxing visualisations - if I’m trying to sleep and I’m too worked up about something to relax, I close my eyes and visualise a peaceful scene, e.g. being on a warm tropical beach, the heat of the sun lulling me to sleep, the gentle lapping of the ocean… It doesn’t always put me immediately to sleep, but it helps get my brain out of the problem-solving stress mode.

Sensory engagement - if I’m feeling anxious and getting stuck in a panicky loop, I try to engage my senses. Notice four things around you that you can see, three you can hear, two that you can smell, and a texture you can touch (a stone wall, your jacket’s fabric). This works well because when I’m stressed my brain doesn’t want to be told to “calm down”, it’s trying to warn me of danger. So instead of forcing some relaxation, I engage my senses, checking my surroundings, and generally there is no danger, just the hubub of normal life. This reminds my lizard brain that although being worried about missing a deadline is stressful, I’m not in immediate physical danger and should calm tf down.

Sense of perspective - when we are in an emergency our sense of time shrinks so we only focus on the immediate problem. As we relax, we become better able to consider the larger future. This is great in a crisis, but also leads to dumb overreactions. So, if something goes wrong, and in the grand scheme of things it’s actually not a big deal, but to me right now it feels like the worst, I use this technique. I visualise my surroundings and then begin zooming out, viewing my self from above, seing the room and then the building, the pulling out like a map tool, seeing the area, the country, the globe. I sometimes continue, visualising the solar system and the milky way. After that, it feels a lot easier to shrug and accept that whatever embaressment or frustration felt like it was going to ruin my day is, in fact, just not that important.

Was hearing something from an English literature professor recently. He was arguing that we were on track to have a new cultural renaissance, because historically cultural transformations have come when the ‘guardians of culture’ (the tastesetters, the academy, etc) spend all their time in ever increasing arcane and self-referential debates. Then groups from outside of the cultural institutional power start doing something very new and vibrant and it ends up transforming cultural expression.

I guess the downside is that even ‘soon’ in this context could be 50 years, and it’s quite likely you won’t recognise or like what the new art when it emerges. Renaissance art is beautiful, but at the time it was seen as base and anti-intellectual, taking the abstract symbolism of medieval art and replacing it with “this statue of a guy looks reeeealllly like a irl guy doesn’t it!” Uhh, well done Michaelangelo, I can see a naked guy whenever I go to the baths, what does your ‘art’ say about his place is the cosmic order, his eternal destiny and the state of his soul?

I guess if that was the fundamental nature of reality, then stuff would be exactly as it is.

Well, my close friends and I felt similar when we were young. Now we’re middle aged and realised we had a mix of undiagnosed neurodiversity, and are now are now on doctor-prescribed cannabis and/or stimulants.

I know that if my adhd meds were stopped, I’d have to go back to self-medicating with booze, weed and street drugs. But having access to reliable clean stimulants that help me do the stuff I want to do, have hobbies and keep a steady job and long-term relationships, has been life transforming. I’ve had a jar of weed in my drawer for over a year, because I’ve gone from smoking weed everyday to once every few months. And it’s not because I think weed is bad, or not fun, but just because my life is so much more rich and satisfying and busy (in a good way) that I don’t need to get baked to make it manageable.

Edit: didn’t mean for that sound preachy. There’s no problem with not being ‘sober’ of it works for you. But if there’s some underlying issue that the intoxicants help you deal with, I just wanted to share that it can be amazing if you can sort the issue out rather than mask it. But there’s always space for a delicious cocktail, some fragrant bud or taking some mushrooms at a rave in the deep forest.

Had a quick search on Google scholar, lots of stuff comparing general rates of engagement with hobbies in different countries, especially linked to helping older people. Thiscompares some countries, and observes that both wealth and wealthy inequality lead to less engagement with hobbies (which is why the US is relatively low).

I found this one that discusses how covid impacted different types of hobbies in various countries, but I couldn’t see a quick table of hobby prevalence. Just comments about stuff like cooking being more affected by covid in anglophone and Hispanic countries.

It’s worth giving it a go! Here’s a recipe that bakes a foccacia at 200°. At worst it’ll be less than perfect, but it’ll definitely be edible!

It would be helpful to know what you’re baking? It might be cooking longer at lower temperature, but it might also be about adjusting the size (a larger cake is usually cooked at a lower temperature to allow the centre to cook before the outside over-browns).

While it’s absolutely true that baking is a strict formula, I don’t agree that not reaching a given temperature means it’s necessarily doomed. It might achieve a somewhat different outcome, but for a whole bunch of baked goods a lower or higher temperature with adjusted time will produce something perfectly acceptable.

As you say, most people have no idea what temperature their oven actually produces, or fail to adjust for the strength of fan assist or placement in the oven. Sometimes this leads to frustration and failure, but many delicious cookies have been baked with imprecission.