Soylent’s microbiome consultant advised that this is a terrible idea so I do not recommend it.
And also, from that article:
In lieu of showering I sprayed myself with AOBiome’s custom skin
bacteria blend. Body odor is caused by the emissions of proliferating
skin bacteria, as unique as a fingerprint. The Nitrosomonas eutropha
taking over my skin now metabolizes ammonia into odorless nitrite and
nitric oxide. Success! I wish I had a strain that excreted lipases, as
my hair was still greasy.
How can you not be at least entertained by this guy?
I am, actually. And, as people have pointed out, he’s mostly experimenting on himself; there are far worse examples of Silicon Valley know-it-alls running amuck with large amounts of money. (The Gates Foundation’s funding of ill-conceived education reforms comes to mind.)
The grid, smart or not, is wasteful. Power generation produces 32% of all greenhouse gases, more than any other economic sector. Most power in the US is generated by burning coal, immediately squandering 67% of its energy, then run through a steam turbine, losing another 50%, then sent across transmission lines, losing another 5%, then to charge a DC device like a cell phone another 20% is lost in conversion. This means for 100 watts of coal or oil burned my phone gets a mere 25. In this light a solar panel that is 18% efficient doesn’t seem that bad. Instead of ever increasing our energy production, what if we focused instead on reducing our consumption? I expect power will be at a premium in our first space colonies, and DC only from solar cells. So, I embarked on an experiment to see if I could survive without the luxury of alternating current.
Sounds like an interesting idea.
Perhaps the lipase strain could be engineered by hybridization or guided evolution? The DIYBio/biohacking folks could perhaps offer a helping hand, I smell a lot of synergy there.
It’s a fairly obvious thing. When I was a kid, I was toying with an idea of what I called “artificial lunch”; all the nutrients in the form of pills. A slurry is a better application form, though.
You may or may not believe it, but there are cases when processing of a single large batch takes much less energy than processing many small batches, even if the net result is the same.
My guess is “whoever is disagreed with and sufficiently off-mainstream”. A great way to prime the readers to disassociate from the target.
No need for inverters these days. My new fridge has a brushless motor and a switching power supply. I wouldn’t be surprised if it would happily run on DC.
The power requirements are however still significant.
Thought: have a lot of a suitable phase change material in the fridge, to carry it through the no-power periods. Phase changes store heat pretty efficiently.
Apparently yes. Because it is done in the service of the Holy Condemnation.
Have you ever visited a grocery store? He’s quite spot-on. It’s not exactly a pleasurable experience.
Oh really? Outsourcing to specialists can be quite energy-saving as many tasks don’t have to be multiplied. The energy and fuel for several personal cars (don’t forget to add manufacturing, maintenance and disposal) can add up to substantially more than the energy needed for one Uber car. Same goes for cooking.
Hardtacks are an old tech. Not exactly optimal, nutrition-wise, and, well, hard. Still, it was one of the world-changing technologies by enabling long-distance naval travels.
In the world patrolled by roaming outrage brigades, you must have certain personality traits that will provide you and your idea with the needed staying power instead of being shouted down and giving up.
Not his fault that people in general suck.
Ummm… slurrrrrrrrrp?
Not being a poor black female carries a penalty these days? I never understood this.
If he has the idea and the resources, why not at least try it? Apparently, according to first-hand experiences of some of the people discussing here, it works pretty well.
Ugh.
Alright, I’ll wade in, I suppose.
What he’s doing himself doesn’t scale- and for all his ranting and higher-than-thou rhetoric he seems to not see that. I see a number of problems:
The assumption that all nutritional needs of humans are know and understood.
The assumption he has a firm grasp of nutrition (he mentions elsewhere he’s taken an online course and read some textbooks. Right.)
The assumption that the source of his chemicals is inherently better than the “natural” alternative
The assumption that his myopic single-guy-self-employed-in-LA viewpoint is “correct”
I’d recommend going and watching the Vice video about Soylent- they have footage there of rats running around in his “factory.” The hygiene and storage is appalling. There’s also footage of them hand mixing the components into the foil bags- but they’re using volumetric measurement (and not doing it by weight). These are fundamental and elementary errors, and I think they’re indicative of what I like to call “Linus Pauling syndrome” - The assumption that your “expertise” in one area carries over into other, non-related areas.
Whatever- if people want to re-make/hack/reverse engineer the same thing they used to force feed prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, well, then, have at it. But know that the creator is making things us as he goes, has no real expertise in the field, and has the ego to believe that he does.
Whatever.
You won’t find me eating it.
I miss BoingBoing from 2014. “Has a tech entrepreneur come up with a product to replace our meals?” is, granted, a bit click-baitey, but so much more in keeping in the spirit of the site than equating an innovator with being creepy.
I come here to celebrate weird people doing cool stuff, the whole ‘happy mutant’ thing.
In my day, BoingBoing was a rock and they published it by throwing the rock at people and if you wanted to comment on something YOU SHOUTED AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS and if the editors didn’t like a comment, they hit you with the rock and if they wanted you to stop commenting they kept hitting you with the rock (this was also called kill-banning, and it was hotly debated at the time if it was a more Boingy-policy than disembowelling).
In those days we had awesome articles on flint-knapping and fire-starting and people who have sex with neanderthals and cultivation - is this the hunter-gatherer disruption we’ve been waiting for and Everything you need to know about how Sandy Valley disruptors don’t really care about Hunter Gatherers encapsulated in this one pebble and With this revolutionary bronze knife you’ll never have to knap flint again - just 3 goat-skins from the BoingBoing store.
It just hasn’t been the same since the introduction of writing.
I dunno.
Also, I can’t find any neanderthals anymore.
It’s a little known-fact that while @frauenfelder did indeed start the print-zine of BoingBoing, @pesco is the only staffer who’s been around since the rock days.
For me, cooking and eating nice food is a pretty important part of my lifestyle, and can’t see that ever changing, nor ever drinking this rather unappetising looking concoction. Having said that, the tone of this article and half the comments here are a bit odd, the hostility in particular is very strange, and the justifications for it not very well thought out.
No. There are camping refrigerators that run on propane gas and/or 12V and/or AC mains power.
In Saudi arabia they also run powerful air conditioning units that run on gas - very cheap commodity in Saudi arabia.
I was surprised that he runs a small camping stove on a small gas canister. If you want to save energy / money / whatever the first thing is you get large propane tank (for at least 10 pounds of gas - preferably 20 pound RV type, instead of half a pound one like he has). But … if you replace Keurig, it doesn’t really matter what you replace it with - you still save lots of money
He does sound creepy. His description of grocery shopping sounds very over the top.
When I was staying in USA I was shopping at Kroeger supermarket and I was cooking. Unlike this guy I actually like cooking. I was only shopping at the fruit and vegetable section, dairy section and meat produce part. Not inside scarry asiles ;-). I was able to cook meals for less than $2.50 per meal - average price, I did have steak and such things from time to time - I was not on a tight budget.
I also like that he thinks buying online is better for the workers involved than say hiring someone to grocery shop for him. Pretty sure the work conditions at Amazon warehouses are much much worse…
