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#clojure-uk
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2021-02-11
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dharrigan08:02:01

gOoD mOrNiNg

jiriknesl13:02:34

Good afternoon 🙂

jiriknesl14:02:27

For BTC energy usage) anyone is free to buy that electricity and use it for something else. Miners don’t take the electricity from anyone, who’s willing to pay more for it. Also, as the world is moving towards green energy, it will not matter anymore. Even when have in BTC maybe 1% of my net assets, I am happy somebody is building it. I would rather see world currency to be managed by nerds than bankers and politicians.

rickmoynihan17:02:20

Sure but a single BTC transaction requires the electricity a whole US household uses in 22 days, and burns the carbon of a return flight from london to bulgaria. It’s so astronomically inefficient (and not to mention slow) that it has no hope of ever being a world currency. The BTC community even admit this now, claiming it’s a store of value not a currency… and the only people now who need to store that kind of value are rich (or bought in early). Switching to 100% green energy won’t matter a jot, it’s simply too wasteful. Pretending it’s ever going to be a world currency is just fuelling the unsustainable hype, at a great environmental cost. Sure lots of people will get rich out of it, but even more will lose out.

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Conor14:02:18

I agree, it's good that the hidden hand of the market is creating value by increasing the total entropy of the universe

alexlynham14:02:04

i mean as an aside, green energy grids and making beef a once-in-a-quarter luxury -> you've basically bitten off the largest chunk of climate change behavioural change

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alexlynham14:02:16

oh, and eat tofu not chicken, chicken tastes of FA anyway

alexlynham14:02:35

but the stats on the impact of renewable grids can't be overstated

alexlynham14:02:46

renewable energy grids that is

jiriknesl14:02:59

Renewable energy grids are interesting. A few years ago I had a call with guys somewhere in Australia, who build this (in Clojure). It works great for them, with their climate. I don’t know about the UK. But solar panels are improving a lot, so it might work soon.

alexlynham14:02:47

UK -> wave & wind

alexlynham14:02:47

yep, that's true, we've overshot 2C, i'm talking about avoiding extinction :)

jiriknesl14:02:09

About meat vs tofu - I don’t know. I was vegetarian for 16 years and I am happy that I am not anymore. So even if I had larger impact, I wouldn’t prefer to do it again. 🙂

alexlynham14:02:50

by the time we get mass climate based migration, we're also going to get genocide and things will go downhill from there fast humans will cull each other faster than the effects of global warming will

alexlynham14:02:48

@jiriknesl i compromised at taking out meat but still eating fish, i still don't feel great about it, but it's a start

jiriknesl14:02:20

For decarbonization - all timelines I have seen were so tight in time, that I would bet 10* times of all BTC I have that there’s no realistic way to achieve it. I don’t want to act as an asshole here, but I’d rather save money for damage control than decarbonization which will fail anyway. Europe might have money and will. Americans have money, but most of them doesn’t have will and the rest of the world has neither. And even when now, they (China, India) aren’t that big polluters, it’s living standard related things. If they had the same living standard, they would have the same emissions. And they want the same living standard more than having lower emissions.

alexlynham14:02:24

no demand for beef in india is a big limiter on emissions there even with rising living standards

alexlynham14:02:33

or, negligible

alexlynham14:02:56

but obv if people start taking flights, game over

jiriknesl14:02:25

Flights, second cars, or overall start wasting more. And it comes with a living standard. Amazon - tons of paper waste. Co-op - all meat packed in plastic by 1-2 pieces of meat instead of larger blocks. This is one of the things I don’t get here how much waste (even when recyclable) we create here.

alexlynham14:02:51

the plastic used in that packaging is a massive red herring. when you reduce plastic packaging in certain areas food waste goes up, and the carbon involved in making that meat is greater than the carbon involved in making the plastic

jiriknesl14:02:19

That’s weird. I might be outlier, but I try to buy in bulk, 2kg pieces of meat if possible, saving plastic, then preparing mainly in slow cooker (less energy) and using the whole thing to the last gram.

alexlynham14:02:44

you are the outlier

alexlynham14:02:55

generally larger portion sizes results in more waste

alexlynham14:02:06

cos most food waste happens post purchase

dharrigan14:02:17

Japan is a strange place when it comes to waste. Very rich, very willing, yet everything, literally everything, is wrapped in plastic. Sweets inside containers, strawberries individually wrapped.

dharrigan14:02:52

Yet they have about multiple bins per household to segegrate the waste with fines if they don't

dharrigan14:02:08

It has to be clean

alexlynham14:02:29

yeah that's cos most unclean recycling gets rejected as it can't be processed

dharrigan14:02:57

no, I mean, they need everything to be clean, so everything is individually wrapped in plastic

alexlynham14:02:14

if you throw a card food packaging into your paper bin e.g. a pizza box, depending on your local authority there's a good chance you contaminate not just your bin, but everybody in that part of the collection

dharrigan14:02:15

Visiting a supermarket in Japan is real eye-opener, compared to the UK

alexlynham14:02:54

i'd bet you a fiver that an out-of-season piece of fruit is more carbon than the packaging for all the rest of the basket tho

alexlynham14:02:07

but that's just a guess :)

jiriknesl14:02:16

In the Czech Republic, we have always (at least since 1990) separated paper, plastic, white glass, color glass to separate containers. Seeing “recycling” bins in the USA were a huge surprise for me.

alexlynham14:02:18

the horizon episode the BBC aired the other day is good re: this

jiriknesl14:02:15

Oh and cans. There are often 6 different containers in every street and everyone’s expected to use them.

danm15:02:49

I only found out about the food cardboard thing quite recently. Used to wash off the crud, sure, but still some grease in occasional pizza boxes that went in card recycling 😞 Feel so guilty now, I wish they signposted it better on the leaflets we get

alexlynham15:02:46

it's a common misconception

alexlynham15:02:15

i wouldn't have even known about it if my OH didn't literally work in that space

alexlynham15:02:32

better to err on the side of recycling less paper/cardboard than accidentally contaminating your bin

alexlynham15:02:05

i think back to all my years living in a big shared house, i think in hindsight our cardboard/paper bin must have been a write-off most of the time

mccraigmccraig15:02:13

whoa... well i only just found that out - how do they accept/reject paper and card ?

alexlynham15:02:57

i don't know the exact mechanism, s has been to a bunch of recycling plants, i will ask i just know they detect it somehow and waste the batch in a lot of cases however i do know some LAs now use recycling providers that can handle greasy paper as it's down to the process (i think something to do with how they pulp the paper/card?)

alexlynham16:02:26

in our area they can now handle (iirc) light grease, but no specks of food

alexlynham16:02:33

which if anything is just more confusing

mccraigmccraig16:02:20

presumably food-waste doesn't affect glass and metal recycling, 'cos the recycling process just burns it... but what about plastics ?

alexlynham16:02:49

unsure about plastics, i know you have to wash the containers though

alexlynham16:02:18

food waste can affect some glass, because reuse is better than recycling

alexlynham16:02:34

most 'recycled' glass gets put into commercial concreate to bulk it out

alexlynham16:02:43

cos we recycle more glass than needed

alexlynham16:02:05

better to do what the belgians do and wash & reuse the bottles (s'why the beer bottles are all standard sizes)

alexlynham16:02:34

buttt then the cost of transporting heavier glass bottles generally uses more resources than just using plastic in the first place, even if it gets thrown away 🤯

jiriknesl20:02:45

What? This is crazy!

alexlynham11:02:25

heavy things x trucks burning petrol

alexlynham11:02:30

plastic is v light you see

alexlynham16:02:32

[citation needed] for a few bits there of course, distilling years of "oh ffs here's what i had to deal with today" dinner conversations as filtered thru my fallible memory 😅

Aleksander16:02:45

re food waste: is there a comparison how much is due to individuals and how much to eg restaurants?

alexlynham16:02:54

like, there's a thing about australian wine not being as bad as you might think, cos they ship it in massive containers (and ships are not too bad in terms of pollution versus e.g. planes, lorries cos of scale iirc) and bottle on arrival in the uk, whereas spanish wine they bottle in spain and it comes all the way via lorry

alexlynham16:02:07

yeah there is, the overwhelming majority is in the home

alexlynham16:02:14

it's like 60%? maybe more

alexlynham16:02:21

post purchase, in the home

alexlynham16:02:14

yeah it's 70%

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alexlynham16:02:45

the which summary of the WRAP paper says

alexlynham16:02:47

> In the UK, we throw away 10.2m tonnes of food waste each year, creating more than 20m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – the same emissions as 3.5m cars.

alexlynham16:02:57

> of the 10.2m tonnes of food wasted, 7.1m tonnes is from households.

alexlynham16:02:29

retail is tiny, 0.25m, catering (restaurants etc) is higher, 1.85m

mamapitufo16:02:08

that's nuts...

mamapitufo16:02:22

I'd thought catering would be higher, but if I think a bit more about it, throwing away as little food as possible is a big part of their business model :P

alexlynham16:02:52

yeah for retailers wastage is a relatively big cost so they've already optimised it (adjusting supply and ranging for demand etc etc) to some extent - so the waste is done post-purchase. even in our household stuff gets wasted, but y'know, you can reduce that by making more scratch meals and by having ingredients that are good for 'using up' leftovers and whatnot (e.g. tinned baked beans) if i had to guess, part of the wastage in catering is probably food left on plates by customers

alexlynham16:02:15

kinda thinking back to pre-pandemic, in a restaurant or sandwich shop how much would be left on plates

alexlynham16:02:00

the restaurants will be trying to only cook what they sell on the whole - although ofc different model for e.g. fast food vs sit-down restaurant

seancorfield16:02:50

Recycling etc differs a lot in different parts of America, even in different parts of the same state. We have a blue bin for glass/plastic/metal and also clean paper/cardboard recycling (you're supposed to rinse all the glass/plastic/metal before putting it in the bin but most people I know do not bother); a green bin for food waste, food-soiled paper/cardboard, and vegetation from gardening (grass cuttings and small branches -- but no big branches); and a grey bin for "trash" that goes straight into landfill. We bought different colored containers for the kitchen so it's easy to separate trash, recycling, and compost -- and then take everything out to the big pickup bins once a week. We wash and reuse plastic containers and also food storage bags until they break and/or develop leaks. Our 64 gallon recycling bin is often full each week. Our 64 gallon compost bin is rarely more than 1/4 full -- we're really pretty good about food waste. Our 32 gallon trash bin is usually only 1/2 full, unless I've done a major cleanup on the litter boxes. We pay for the 32 gallon trash (you can have 20, 32, or 64 gallon trash bins at different rates) and get the other two bins "free" to encourage recycling and composting.

mccraigmccraig18:02:12

@danieleneal what's the status of riverford/compound - is it still in good nick - has your experience been good with it ? it seems to scratch an itch i've got...

Ben Hammond18:02:42

is food every really wasted? Surely that just means that it gets eaten by non-humans

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Ben Hammond18:02:16

and the rest of the food chain does need to get a look-in

Ben Hammond18:02:09

alright maybe not BigMacs

Ben Hammond18:02:16

nothing will touch them

alexlynham08:02:09

yeah if food goes to landfill it's wasted

alexlynham08:02:51

but ideally this is why you want a compost bin for non-cooked food, that can be composted in a garden, and spead back onto the ground so the nutrients return to soil at least somewhere

Ben Hammond09:02:33

round by me the seagulls and rats seem to do a pretty good job of taking edibles out of landfill

Ben Hammond09:02:41

and if its not them then the bacteria do it

Ben Hammond09:02:00

my point really is the food stuffs go somewhere

Ben Hammond09:02:19

they don't just get excised from the ecosystem

alexlynham11:02:08

uhm yeah but that's not where it's needed

alexlynham11:02:26

the compost is needed where topsoil is needed or failing, not in a big pile of fridges and miscellaneous crap

alexlynham11:02:55

and that's ignoring the fact that the energy used to create that food is huge and usually with environmental side effects

alexlynham11:02:11

such that any reuse, even in compost, even in a place where needed, is still a net negative

alexlynham11:02:31

the problem is initial resource use can only really be justified if it's eaten by a person lol

danielneal18:02:14

@mccraigmccraig it kind of got to a done state. It always worked pretty well for me, I used it in our mobile app when at riverford. I'm not using it any more, not at riverford any more, sadly. I think @danstone also has an interesting alternative along the same lines https://github.com/wotbrew/idx which I never got the chance to try.

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mccraigmccraig18:02:24

oh, that's nice - all with the standard conj assoc fns

jiriknesl20:02:03

Approx one month ago I have asked here how to onboard a huge group of new Clj developers. One of great ideas was to do lots of pair programming. So what we have done? We have started working on open source. And it was the best decision we have made in a long time. We have made two small teams and we have let them work together. And the dynamic, team spirit is awesome. One team was able to do 688 commits in a few weeks and build an awesome team here https://github.com/Flexiana/7GUIs The second team is a bit slower (measured by commits), but their mission is way more complicated, but it will have much more impact https://github.com/Flexiana/framework

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folcon21:02:48

@jiriknesl when you say working on opensource, is this you're developing in the open or is this a lib of some kind?