Soylent Guy is Crazy People

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Mongrel
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Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 04, 2015 1:21 am

Ars Op-Ed by Soylent co-founder, Rob Rhinehart : How I gave up alternating current.

Now, there's certainly a few good ideas in there, but the overwhelming read most people (including myself) seem to be getting is that Rhinehart is both batshit insane (I mean more so than just being the co-founder of Soylent already implied) and has his head so far up his ass that it comes out his neck again.

Kitchens are expensive and dirty. This home manufacturing center has been by far the most liberating to eliminate. They are the greediest consumers of power, water, and labor and produce the most noise and garbage of any room. Moreover, they can be made totally unnecessary with a few practical life hacks.

First, I never cook. I am all for self reliance but repeating the same labor over and over for the sake of existence is the realm of robots.

Remember kids: Cooking with real food makes you a robot, but consuming homogeneous cans of nutrient slurry is really living.

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. My home is a place of peace. I don’t want to live with red-hot heating elements and razor-sharp knives. That sounds like a torture chamber.

How dare they? How DARE they?!

I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments, helping out those in need.

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François
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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby François » Tue Aug 04, 2015 1:57 am

For those first two quotes, I'm like, okay, this is crazypants, but he's got a product to sell, he's putting on a show, I get it. The third one? Yyyyyeah that is acute money poisoning territory.

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby patito » Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:06 am

I also end up drinking less liquid overall, meaning fewer bottles to throw away


A reasonable person does not drink water from bottles in the first place.

I also like how eliminating his kitchen and refrigeration and because of all the money he saves consuming soylent, he can go out to eat more often, and of course the clothing thing.

Like everything he has achieved is basically just differing the energy consumption elsewhere, he hasn't really reduced it.

For coffee and tea I use a butane stove. It is much cheaper and more energy-efficient than a Keurig, which can use $160 of electricity / year.


Fucking keurig is the most energy inefficient way to drink coffee in the first place.

How long before the delicate veil of civilization turns to savagery with no light nor heat nor refrigeration?


And of course he opens with this, because obviously civilization did not exist until electricity.

I buy my staple food online like a civilized person.


Wait no sorry, civilization did not exist until the internet.

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby zaratustra » Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:52 am

GUYS GUYS DID YOU KNOW KEURIGS AND WATER BOTTLES ARE TERRIBLY WASTEFUL? OK NOW THAT YOU ARE LISTENING: KITCHENS ARE SATAN'S BATHROOM

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Blossom » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:17 pm

I like how he cannot bear to think of someone going to a grocery store, but he's 100% a-okay with a child sewing him a new outfit every time the old one gets dirty. Someone in the comments described it as "consumption laundering" which was pretty tops.

Alternate Title: Not Enough People Get The Flu
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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Thad » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:20 pm

patito wrote:
For coffee and tea I use a butane stove. It is much cheaper and more energy-efficient than a Keurig, which can use $160 of electricity / year.


Fucking keurig is the most energy inefficient way to drink coffee in the first place.


Yeah, I mean, there's a point to be made about the relative efficiency of gas and electricity for heating, but he sure isn't making it very well.

(A college classmate of mine used to like to tell the story of the electrical engineering course he took, and the class where the professor explained why electric heating is terribly inefficient; my friend immediately started writing down "Do not buy electric heat." The guy next to him asked, "Why are you writing that down?" and he responded, "It's the first useful thing I've learned in this class.")

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:21 pm

TA wrote:I like how he cannot bear to think of someone going to a grocery store, but he's 100% a-okay with a child sewing him a new outfit every time the old one gets dirty. Someone in the comments described it as "consumption laundering" which was pretty tops.

Alternate Title: Not Enough People Get The Flu

Of course BitCoin came up. Of course it did.
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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Blossom » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:31 pm

http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1152 wrote:Feces are almost entirely deceased gut bacteria and water. I massacred my gut bacteria the day before by consuming a DIY Soylent version with no fiber and taking 500mg of Rifaximin, an antibiotic with poor bioavailability, meaning it stays in your gut and kills bacteria. Soylent’s microbiome consultant advised that this is a terrible idea so I do not recommend it. However, it worked. Throughout the challenge I did not defecate.
comments wrote:Man, it must be exhausting to be around you.
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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby IGNORE ME » Tue Aug 04, 2015 2:31 pm

The more this guy talks the less I want to be in the same room as any kind of powder he ever imagined.

The weirdest thing to me is his insistence on wearing textiles that are specifically polyester and specifically made in China. These are the exact two things I demand that my clothes not be when I go shopping, and I always considered it just a harmless neurosis of mine. Now I'm not too sure if I'm the opposite of crazy or just on the opposite end of crazy.

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby François » Tue Aug 04, 2015 2:57 pm

Mongrel wrote:
All of my scars are either from cooking or driving. I noticed I have not collected any new ones lately.


"All of my scars are from being alive. Can't help but notice I have not collected any new ones since I died and had my body plastified."

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:04 pm

The thing is, this guy is basically the classic stereotype of the Mad Scientist, in the sense that he's doing outlandish things and challenging accepted wisdom, no matter how entrenched. In the best cases, this forces us to confront long-held ideas which are harmful or plain wrong, or beings us genuinely useful new technologies, but at its worst you have the nutjob with power, Powwweerrrrr!!!! who's decided they need to impose their "correct thinking" on everyone else in the world, For The Greater Good.

Unfortunately, in Rhinehart's particular case, he seem capable of very detailed analysis, but also capable of ignoring very glaring and basic facts that conflict with his desired worldview in any way.

As long as these silicon valley looney tunes continue to limit their experiments to themselves, that's all well and good and even possibly beneficial. But they have money. So much money. And massive egos. And followers. And money. And most worrying of all, apparent severe deficits in their capacity for empathetic understanding of anyone else. So we get shit like "Don't vaccinate your children."


François wrote:
Mongrel wrote:
All of my scars are either from cooking or driving. I noticed I have not collected any new ones lately.


"All of my scars are from being alive. Can't help but notice I have not collected any new ones since I died and had my body plastified."

lololol
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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby patito » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:11 pm

Another fun part of the soylent guy's rant is where he mentions he doesn't even need to pee cause he doesn't drink water anymore, he only drinks cheap wine nowadays.

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Mothra » Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:00 am

Environmental-health non-profit watchdog files notice of legal action against Soylent:

The 60-day notice alleges violation of California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act for failure to provide sufficient warning to consumers of lead and cadmium levels in the Soylent 1.5 product.

Test results commissioned by As You Sow, conducted by an independent laboratory, show that one serving of Soylent 1.5 can expose a consumer to a concentration of lead that is 12 to 25 times above California's Safe Harbor level for reproductive health, and a concentration of cadmium that is at least 4 times greater than the Safe Harbor level for cadmium.

Also, taking suggestions for the wacky title of the split topic.

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Grath » Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:16 am

Mothra wrote:Environmental-health non-profit watchdog files notice of legal action against Soylent:

The 60-day notice alleges violation of California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act for failure to provide sufficient warning to consumers of lead and cadmium levels in the Soylent 1.5 product.

Test results commissioned by As You Sow, conducted by an independent laboratory, show that one serving of Soylent 1.5 can expose a consumer to a concentration of lead that is 12 to 25 times above California's Safe Harbor level for reproductive health, and a concentration of cadmium that is at least 4 times greater than the Safe Harbor level for cadmium.

Also, taking suggestions for the wacky title of the split topic.

"Soylent Guy is crazy people."

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Re: Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted New

Postby Mongrel » Sun Aug 16, 2015 12:24 pm

"You are what you eat."
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Re: Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby Mothra » Sun Aug 16, 2015 1:17 pm

Grath wrote:"Soylent Guy is crazy people."

Love it.

WELCOME TO YOUR NEW TOPIC

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Re: Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby pacobird » Mon Aug 17, 2015 10:42 am

lead poisoning is serious

like, really serious

it can turn you into this guy

(not even a joke)
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Re: Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Aug 17, 2015 12:17 pm

I... yeah, actually, I can totally see how he might have gone Mad Hatter from ingesting too much of his own product.

Though for a minute I thought you were implying that lead poisoning could turn you into Boltman.

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zaratustra
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Re: Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby zaratustra » Mon Aug 17, 2015 12:47 pm

IT BEGINS.

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Re: Soylent Guy is Crazy People

Postby Mongrel » Mon Aug 17, 2015 1:09 pm

To be fair, I'm sure he was at least a little cuckoo before that, because I would like to think that perfectly sane people don't invent something like Soylent (and call it that with a straight face!) in the first place.
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