Instead of plastic bottles, here's drinking water in an edible blob

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/instead-of-plastic-bottles-he.html

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Still not seeing the advantage here. As Cory pointed out with the Glenlivet thing, any claims to portability are negated by the need to carry the things around in a protective container so they don’t burst or get too dirty to put in your mouth.

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If they were filled with Glenlivet itself - hell yeah.

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edible blob

Good name for a band.

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I mean, if you want your cocktails served up like Tide Pods then you’re in luck.

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Most blobs are edible if you’re adventurous enough.

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Also, most Adventurers are edible if you’re a big enough blob.

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bring back waterskins

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Those kids eating tide pods last year were apparently ahead of their time.

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Yeah… that’s the problem with water: it’s too fungible!

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I still eagerly await the promise of old-school science fiction novels: turning a dial in my own home (or even in public spaces!) that causes clean drinking water to freely flow on demand.

I guess it’s as unobtainable as flying cars…

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But there’s no need if you have a stone-to-flesh spell.

@frauenfelder , the link to Fast Company goes to some other post of theirs.

Here’s a link to their edible water blob post: https://www.fastcompany.com/90464501/this-edible-blob-filled-with-water-means-you-dont-need-a-plastic-bottle

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Clearly you don’t understand how problem solving works.

You and your fantasy books just don’t understand how progress works.

The status quo is god; so reexamining the problem in light of the objective, rather than the current practice, is a category error.

This isn’t a question of water delivery, like your magic faster than light space wizards might want; this is about treating plastic bottles that are used once than then thrown at a baby seal’s head as axiomatic and then bodging furiously at incremental modifications on that precise use case to try to mitigate its worst elements without any conceptual modifications.

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Well, in some places (Flint, MI, much of the third world, etc.) it’s still unobtainable, alas.

The future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed, as Gibson said.

And yes I get that you were being humorous. :slight_smile:

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The medical field uses things like this. In places like nursing homes where some residents can’t have liquids. They have to have their meals congealed, and all moisture is derived from a solid mass.

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It makes sense if you’re transporting lots of them, as then they don’t need packaging (or empty space) in between. But yeah, they don’t suit as many situations as a tank of water would, and it’s hard to think of a case where this is the best option.

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Racking my brain for any situation in which they’d be even a little useful: I can imagine a party or public gathering where bowls of these things are set out so attendees can have a drink without needing disposable cups.

But even in that situation it’s hard to imagine everyone is going to be eager to pop a gelatinous pod into their mouth after dozens of other people’s fingers have been groping around in the same bowl.

These strike me as a novel idea in search of a purpose.

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gelatinous cube shots

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As the post immediately following yours mentions — Jell-O shots, yo! It’s already more or less a thing.