CategoryLink

Almond errata

I’ve found a better source of information on how much water almonds use and now have a better estimate of how much water per gram of fat and protein it takes to grow them. It’s about four times what I’d originally estimated, which makes them nowhere near as efficient as I’d originally estimated. Which makes sense — I always thought those numbers were wrong.

But even having adjusted those numbers, almonds are still slightly more efficient in terms of fat per gallon of water than cow’s milk, and use about half the amount of water per gram of protein as beef. So my original conclusion that beef is a far worse problem than almonds still stands, but I do now think almond farming is a problem.

Coconut milk appears to be a good alternative to almond milk, at least based on the So Delicious environmental footprint website. And based on the same report that I got my updated almond numbers from, hazelnuts use almost as much water, in total, as almonds, but use very little irrigated water.

Why I think the anti-almond movement is overblown: beef is the real issue

I published some research I did on the water footprint of almonds compared to other foods on Medium. I’m pretty sure I messed something up, but it’s hard not to conclude that beef, not almonds, are the real issue in California’s drought.

Update: I redid the almond numbers based on a better source, and think I underestimated the amount of water per pound of almonds by about 4x. Here’s the new version of the conclusion to this piece:

There’s a pretty strong case against beef here. While almond critics like to point out that 10 percent of California’s water goes to almond farming, they don’t tend to mention that 50 percent goes towards livestock. While there’s no silver bullet answer to the drought crisis, it seems clear that best policy interventions would be those that curb beef production.

At the personal level, unless you have some medical condition that necessitates eating lots of beef, it seems hard to justify. Just cutting beef and lamb out of your diet would be almost as good as giving up meat altogether. But, as always, consult your doctor before making any sort of dietary changes.

Based on my math, almonds aren’t as bad as dairy milk or beef, but they certainly lag behind other alternatives, such as hazelnuts (which use almost as much water, but relatively little irrigation water) and coconut milk.

Those who want to err on the side of caution, but still want plant based alternatives, might consider diversifying their sources of fat. Personally, I’ve added pumpkin seeds and Oregon hazelnuts to my snack rotation, just to mix things up a little.

Full Story: Medium: Should I Quit Eating Almonds Because of the California Drought?

Please do keep on checking my math though!

Meet the tweet-deleters: people who are making their Twitter histories self-destruct

Kevin Roose reports:

Lazin-Ryder is one of a number of Twitter users who are using homegrown methods to make their tweets self-destruct. He says that having his tweets disappear automatically makes Twitter feel more conversational and casual, and less like a professional pressure-cooker.

“Tweets are passing things,” he said. “I don’t laminate and frame my note-pad doodles, why would I preserve my tweets for all time?”

Full Story: Fusion: Meet the tweet-deleters: people who are making their Twitter histories self-destruct

I’ve been thinking about doing this, but I also really like using Timehop to explore old tweets. Split between Ephemera and atemporality.

(via Ellis)

See also:

Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook

Pics and It Didn’t Happen

Technology Isn’t Magic—It’s Haunted

Vice interviews Tobias Revell and Natalie Kane about the forthcoming Haunted Machines conference, and the problem with “magical” metaphors in technology, especially when it comes to the Internet of Things:

“The intention of that, whether explicit or not, is to obscure the technical and often financial and legal reality of the system by covering it up with those terms,” said Revell. In a world of things “just working,” the curators want to remind people that magic doesn’t actually exist; it’s a sleight of hand, a deception.

Full Story: Vice: Technology Isn’t Magic—It’s Haunted

(via Jay)

Major Water Shortage in São Paulo, Brazil

The New York Times reports:

As southeast Brazil grapples with its worst drought in nearly a century, a problem worsened by polluted rivers, deforestation and population growth, the largest reservoir system serving São Paulo is near depletion. Many residents are already enduring sporadic water cutoffs, some going days without it. Officials say that drastic rationing may be needed, with water service provided only two days a week.

Full Story: The New York Times: Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City

(via Abe)

Alejandro Jodorowsky Kickstarting New Film

DINERO POÉTICO

Alejandro Jodorowsky, who successfully crowdfunded his last film The Dance of Reality is turning to Kickstarter to fund his next film:

After a 23 yearlong absence, the director of cult classics El Topo (1969) and Holy Mountain (1973) made his comeback in film direction in 2013 with The Dance of Reality. The film was based on the first part of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s homonymous autobiographical book, depicting his childhood years in Tocopilla, Chile. His new film ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) will be based on the latter half of the same book, depicting the author’s youth in lively Santiago de Chile.

Full Story: Kickstarter: Jodorowsky’s new film ENDLESS POETRY(Poesía Sin Fin)

Backers, besides getting to help get the movie made, will be compensated with Jodo’s own currency DINERO POÉTICO.

(via Threadbare)

Unemployment Is Killing 45,000 People Each Year

Vice reports:

The number of suicides related to unemployment remains stubbornly high despite the improving economy, according to a study published this week.

Researchers had previously registered a spike in suicides during the global economic crisis that began in 2008, suggesting that financial stress and hardship had contributed to the rise. But an analysis published on Tuesday in The Lancet Psychiatry by doctors at the University of Zurich in Switzerland estimates that about 5,000 suicides were associated with the crisis, while roughly nine times as many self-inflicted deaths are linked to unemployment each year.

Full Story: Vice: Unemployment Is Killing 45,000 People Each Year

10 Years of Nathan Fucking Barley

Nathan Barley geek pie hairdo

Andrew Harrison channels Dan Ashcroft on the 10 year anniversary of the debut of Charlie Booker’s Nathan Barley:

From cereal cafes to breakfast raves to adult ball pools, from TV shows like Sex Box to newspaper features about the “meaning” of the Man Bun hairdo to inexplicable online phenomena like Ello, our world has been Barleyed. It is uncanny. Created as a comic figure, Nathan has become an insult and a signifier and maybe even – here’s the frightening part – a role model. At 10 years’ remove the show seems less a comedy and more a documentary about the future.

“Back when we were shooting it,” says the actor Nicholas Burns, who played Nathan, “I remember one producer saying, ‘This show will date terribly. In three or four years it’ll look awful.’ But watching it again, you see how prescient it was. It really is the world we live in now. A friend who lives in Dalston told me they saw someone riding a penny farthing the other day. It’s unbelievable really.”

Full Story: The Guardian: Totally Mexico! How the Nathan Barley nightmare came true

Great piece, though I think the hipster hate angle is overplayed. However tiresome I find artisan mustache wax, I’m much more suspicious of the Banana Republic clad 30 and 40 somethings with inexplicably huge bar tab budgets now overrunning inner Portland than I am of the bearded hipster scene these days.

MIT Media Lab Course on Magic and Interface Design

From the course description for the MIT Media Lab class “Indistinguishable From… Magic as Interface, Technology, and Tradition”:

Topics will include:

-Stage Illusion as Information Display
-The Neuroscience of Misdirection
-Magical Warfare: Camouflage and Deception
-Magic Items and the Internet of Things
-Computational Demonology
-Ritual Magick as User Experience Design

Full Description: Dan Novy’s site

(via Cat Vincent)

Meet the Redpill Right

Jay Allen presents a unified theory of internet assholes (essentially what I was grasping towards, but failed to reach, at the end of my TechCrunch article on neoreaction):

They want you to lift the veil pulled over your eyes by the progressives who secretly control society. Like Neo escaping the Matrix, your choice is to wake up and see how the world really is, discarding religion, subjectivity, and feminist indoctrination. Conspiracy theorists, Men’s Rights Activists, Pick-Up Artists, GamerGate, even the Neoreaction: all of these communities share a common creed, tech-fluent and superficially self-aware. To outsiders, it’s distinctly conservative. But they don’t see themselves as conservatives at all.

Welcome to the Red Pill worldview, where the entire world is a game and the people who are winning are the best players.

Full Story: Boing Boing: A beginner’s guide to the Redpill Right

Another interesting phenomenon is the way these different but overlapping movements are trying to hijack, or at least capitalize upon, each other. For example, MRA guy Roosh Valizadeh starting a GamerGate themed website called Reaxxion.

See Also:

The Baffler on Neoreactionaries

The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate

The Paranoid Style in Gaming Misogyny

© 2025 Technoccult

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑