the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.
Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage.
There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.
Flour comes in sacks, meat comes in cuts - we've a quarter lamb in the freezer, part of that in the fridge, and yeast and flour enough for bread for the next six months.
We shop cheap, like the family has done for the past 100+ years, much of our food comes from the garden - our excess gets swapped with others excess (we have a lot of fruit, we never buy eggs, they come from people that can be bothered to run chickens).
It's a bit of work, we save money by not going to a gym and our life expectancy and cancer survival rates are much better than, say, middle north America.
To cut mbfg a bit of slack here, your approach doesn't work in all situations. I admire your functioning community and supportive family and the fact that you've got time and space for things like gardening.
If people can't live like you do, it's probably because they've been placed on some kind of economic hamster wheel, and rather than figure out how to get a quarter of a lamb their better bet is to emigrate or to disrupt the system that's making McDonalds feel like a relevant factor in a survival equation by building the kind of community that you're describing. That's a big ask if you've never been part of such a thing (I know I haven't).
Sure, we live in an isolated area and have evolved through years of not even having a shop (well, I got to see one finally ~ 1980 or so). My father as young pre-teen helped support three younger siblings and a mother while his father was away at war by trapping rabbits and all that.
I had eighteen months as an isolated single parent with near zero support (long story) and had to stretch a marginal budget during that period. I've also travelled through the more remote parts of more than half of the 190+ countries across the planet, sorting logistics for food, fuel, et al along the way.
What I can pass on as hard earned lessons are that fast foods are rarely the cheapest or heathiest in the long term - if you can track down a large volume slow cooker in any garage sale or op shop on special you can keep a never ending stew on the roll by throwing in damn near anything, potatoes, celery, beans, carrots, bits of meat, swedes, etc.
It's hard to disrupt a system, difficult to break patterns and build communities and establish areas to grow food - but home cooking and stretching out food is something that can be found across the planet in the most unlikely places. Worth the effort to look for examples and make a few moves.
We're lucky to buy and prep all our food in bulk - it's more expensive on the infrequent shopping days, it's substantially cheaper over the course of year.
It's not something we need to do in current circumstances, it's a habit kept up in case it's ever needed and being frugal where possible means more to spend elsewhere.
This is just wrong. Beans and rice are more than an order of magnitude cheaper than McDonald's per calorie and they're non-perishable. Combine that with whatever fruit and veg is affordable fresh or frozen, a bit of cheap seasoning, and you're still coming out ahead.
You obviously need access to cooking and storage facilities to eat like this, but the target audience of McDonald's is the time-poor, the resource-constrained, or the depressed and disabled, rather than just the money-poor.
They won't. We've given them a absurdly concentrated garbage news media that there's no reason to trust any part of, but it isn't like they're getting anything else. They're going to be the most ignorant generation in US history.
I remember being shocked when I found out that most Vietnamese young people were mostly unaware of the Vietnam war. But if nobody tells you, you don't know. The media was bad before 1996 (Ben Bagdikian would put out a book every year about how dangerously concentrated media was getting: only 51 owners owned 90% of the media lol), but at least we could go to the library and find out what actually happened. They'll just have continually-revised ebooks and AI.
Just to play devil's advocate with some pointed questions:
What is so important about the Vietnam war for the day-to-day of the Vietnamese young?
It's the generation that have fallen prey to today's social media and garbage news outlets telling us that history is important -- why should the young be credulous to the gullible?
If the old adage "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is to be acted upon, it is without a doubt not to study history and try to remember the past because clearly we're always repeating it.
So what is important and constant across time? Those that have empathy (or fake empathy) for the masses and can galvanize them have the power to drive society. Perception is reality more than facts are reality in all but the sciences. If the world were to reset and humans were stripped of all tools, they would re-invent math, science, biology, physics. I doubt that our laws, traditions and zeitgeist would be replicated.
> None of the students — even in an elective course about media — confessed any interest in becoming a journalist. A few could name news organizations they trusted but others said the news came to them through social media or what friends shared or what they overheard as their parents were watching television.
> A little less than half (45%) of teens said journalists do more to harm democracy than to protect it.
These kids? Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite. People have been trained to distrust institutions because that makes them manipulable by even worse actors.
All true, however almost all of the students respond with interest in becoming influencers (don’t have the survey on hand, it’s been done a few times). And influencers include the TikTok age equivalent of journalists. For better and (definitely) for worse. Some of them are functionally the same, many are far far worse.
The kids just don’t have any interest in big news organizations which is understandable even if it’s going to make things worse.
I am not young, but I have never seen a major institution (including governments) caring about citizens in aggregate in my lifetime. To me, this is an artifact of the 50s or 60s, some bygone era (which is funny, because the government did not care about citizens in aggregate back then either).
I can only imagine how the younger kids see things. They're bombarded by public knowledge of nasty things institutions did in the bigoted/ignorant past, underhanded things they're definitely doing now, an anger/fear inducing news cycle and endless social media conspiracy theories (some of which end up being true) engineered for clicks. Extreme cynicism is a logical conclusion.
Precisely this. The idea of trusting that a news corporation (or any other corporation) cares about you is just utterly absurd in 2025. We all know now, and have for some time, that, factually, this is not how things work, and profit (or funding) has to come first, or the corporation does not survive. It isn't even cynicism, just a recognition of the economic realities of contemporary society.
This is just cynical brain poisoning. My health insurance company isn't a person who cares about me, but that was never the deal. Their interests are aligned with mine. I'm in a blue state and can get the covid vaccine for free despite the federal level fuckery. That is because my insurer cares about profit, which means they act on the science of it without the culture wars and demagoguery. They know I'll be net healthier with the vaccine, therefore more profitable to them.
> They know I'll be net healthier with the vaccine, therefore more profitable to them.
How do you square this with the fact that in the US the same profit-minded insurance company is limited to a fixed profit margin based on the amount of claims paid? By law, they need to set their rates such that they pay out at least 80% (or 85% for some markets) of the premiums they collect. Practically the only way for them to make more money in the long term is to pay out more in the short term.
Personally, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Over time, insurance companies benefit more when medical costs for their customers are higher, not when they are lower. Maybe it's that they actually think that keeping you alive and paying premiums longer is better for their bottom line than having you die quickly? But I don't think it's as simple as thinking that they benefit more if you don't get sick.
There is no cynicism or brain poisoning here, health insurance is in no way comparable to news. The economic incentives for news media putting the truth first are simply not there. They can't tell blatant, obvious lies too often, yes, or they will lose trust and thus profit, but nothing really prevents them from lying by omission, and if, e.g., fear mongering, clickbait, and pandering leads to more profits, this is where they must and will go.
If people demanded truth, we might see a different story, but it is clear that enough people want other things more, often enough.
> Extreme and reflexive distrust of institutions is as harmful as the opposite.
Which means that the institutions should do a lot better, which they don't. The demos is always right, that's why we live in a democracy (or at least we strive to) and not in a technocracy (where, presumably, the institutions are right by default).
Yes, most of the issues in journalism come from extremely low diversity of thought.
I laugh when I occasionally listen to NPR and within a few minutes hear an absurdly framed commentary that clearly hasn’t steel manned alternative viewpoints.
>Yes, most of the issues in journalism come from extremely low diversity of thought.
Journalism runs on the same "expensive degree -> unpaid intern -> low pay jobs -> stick it out long enough you'll do alright selling your influence" model as Hollywood and DC. Hence it has the same people problems.
Bullshit. The demos is so goddamn stupid it can't be helped, it must be led. Explaining things to them does nothing. People will sacrifice freedom for convenience and short term profit every single time. They vote with emotions. They make decisions that impact entire nations without even trying to gain even a superficial understanding of things. The demos is completely responsible for the horrible status quo. Their ignorance and passivity is exactly what leads to their oppression. Trying to help them leads to nothing but pointless martyrdom. Nothing changes because change depends on them and they are unwilling.
> not in a technocracy
We're literally in the technofeudalist era. We have trillion dollar corporations running digital fiefdoms with users as the serfs tilling the artificially scarce fields. They have so much money it's unreal, and they have woken up to the wonders of lobbying.
The institutions they distrust are controlled by bad actors. How is it good to trust sources of propaganda and lies? Yes, there’s worse stuff out there. There’s also far better.
No there isn't. There are individual sources that are better, but there isn't any group that's better. There are individual podcasters that are better than mainstream media as a group, but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media. And you could say the same for any social site, or any other group such as politicians or religious figures or ...
> No there isn't. There are individual sources that are better
You immediately contradict yourself here. My impression is that anyone intelligent and informed under, say, about 40 or so only trusts particular individuals, whether they are podcasters, bloggers, substackers, or particular journalists active on e.g. Twitter or whatever other social media platform.
> but popular podcasters as a group are far more manipulative than mainstream media
This is false logic, because no one follows the entire group, they only follow individuals. It remains to be seen whether this is more pernicious than mainstream media, but I heavily suspect it will not be, as it is easier for mainstream media to be controlled than it is to control every single individual that can say something without the support of some controlled mega-conglomerate. (Though obviously de-platforming could easily render this the same, eventually).
This is not true at all, bubbling is entirely a function of the diversity of the sources, and new media has far less diversity than the diversity that exists among small sources.
It is far easier for an individual to abuse trust than it is for a group. I don't think those "intelligent and informed" people are as intelligent and informed as you think they are.
No one follows a single individual, that is the point though. A collection of individuals not united by a corporation (e.g. social media) a priori is less controllable than a collection of individuals controlled by a corporation (e.g. news media). I think there is far more diverse information available today than there was in the days where all news was from corporations, and it remains to be seen whether this results in more bias or not. My money is on less bias though.
Either you're trusting a large number of individuals and therefore haven't done proper vetting, or you're trusting a small number of individuals and are vulnerable.
I was very upset when I found out how the NYT was manipulated to shill for the Iraq war.
I was also very upset when one of the bloggers I followed went crazy slowly and it took too long for me to notice. I also had another I trusted who turned out to be a biased corporate shill.
I don't trust the NYT, but I trust the process of their checks and balances in their organization and the presence of inside whistle blowers more than I do any individual blogger.
> Either you're trusting a large number of individuals and therefore haven't done proper vetting, or you're trusting a small number of individuals and are vulnerable.
I don't think this is right at all.
A corporation (or organization) I know must necessarily put profit (or funding) first, before truth, if it wishes to survive for any duration. Ultimately, I know there is no real possibility for them to ever care about truth first. I can't vet a corporation, because the people controlling it are individuals who remain mysterious and inaccessible, or it is controlled by complex financial ties which are generally inscrutable. However, with how intermeshed things are, I can generally have faith that the financial and political pressures on large organizations will be more homogeneous than those on a collection of individuals not under the thumb of such an organization. Corporations and groups often don't even have a clear "personality" which one can make judgements on. You can notice a blogger going slowly crazy more easily than you can notice a large group being slowly corrupted by hidden influences.
By contrast, weird autists that seem to actually care about the truth can in fact be found blogging or on other forms of social media. They too have their biases, but, collectively, their biases seem to me to be far more diverse than the biases of large groups, and, in many cases, you do have reason to believe these people actually care about the truth.
It is, in my opinion, far, far better to follow a small number of weird autists than to trust a few large news corporations. Also, the wierd autists will tend to talk about what the news corporations are saying often anyway, whereas the reverse is not true.
I think that since a key part of your trust of the NYT involves whistle blowers, that this contradicts your basic position as well.
EDIT: To be clear though, I do think there is still a lot of value in news organizations. This whole dichotomy of "which should I trust more" is silly, since both have their advantages. I do hope news media sticks around and remains something that is somewhat trusted sometimes, and that people do like what I presume you and I do, relying on a mix of news media and particular individuals. Insofar as now that news media is no longer the only game in town, some decline in trust is warranted as the trust re-distributes somewhat, but I definitely hope that trust of the news media doesn't go to zero.
> You can notice a blogger going slowly crazy more easily than you can notice a large group being slowly corrupted by hidden influences.
The former is a very private affair totally hidden. The latter is something happening between a large group of people, many of whom are very inclined to quit the anonymity of the large organization, write a book about it to become individually famous.
A significant number of those autists you espouse can be bribed by surprisingly small amounts. Politicians are far more vetted than bloggers, and yet a significant number of them have been caught changing their votes for $2000 or similar amounts.
You might be able to sway a NYT reporter for a similar amount, but they have processes to catch that.
Bribes are one thing, but individuals operate independently and may post unpredictably on certain topics. Their posts don't have to be "cleared" by higher ups. They can be harder to suppress precisely because of this. I don't rely on people whistle-blowing, because that means risking a job or even career. How many stories are quietly squashed that no whistle-blower ever revealed? We'll never know. This is IMO far more hidden than the "private" affair of a blogger going crazy.
My bet is that news media organizations are easier to control than it is to control a bunch of unpredictable, independently operating individuals (though it is far easier to control a single individual, no doubt).
I am worried about things like deciding on a narrative at the corporate level. E.g. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1643786/new-york-..., or, say, CDC and news outlets flip-flopping on things like mask mandates / COVID lab leak and the like. Whenever large-scale incentives are involved, I do not trust news media, and especially think that what individual bloggers and other people are saying will give you a better perspective on things. Whereas when there aren't clear incentives in any direction, or when one requires a reporter "on the ground", there can be good reason to trust news media over individuals.
News media are also broadly incompetent when it comes to reporting on areas where expertise is required (e.g. tech, science), and there, specific individuals again are far, far more trustworthy. Heck, most news media is too lazy to even cite much of anything they say. As I said, this isn't an either/or thing, but for sure trust in news media should decline as people recognize the areas where other sources are more trustworthy.
I believe the Aptera was originally going to have motors in the wheels... My understanding is the the first version will forego that, as there were challenges i guess, but i think they still to eventually do that.
I think the idea from putin is, they are done in 20 years anyway from a population/financial position anyway. There only chance is to expand and take over populations to rebuild their ability to survive as a country.
Is this something that you would have done? I don't see how russia's survivability would be improved by expanding it's sphere of control, but, on the contrary it would stretch resources thin.
Fun fact, Altoids tend to be one of the better treatment for dismotility, meaning folks who have esophagus's that don't operate correctly to help swallow down food.
>> The thing that separates Forth from most other languages is its use of the stack. In Forth, everything revolves around the stack
I mean, that's pretty much every language. The main difference is that the programmer's access to it is unconstrained by things like method call definitions.
Unlike most languages, Forth has two stacks. It sounds trivial, but it changes many things. It allows for a leaner call convention. With a single stack, every function call has to "shovel forward" its arguments over the function return address, where Forth "glides" through its arguments, making function calls significantly lighter.
Like Forth, Ada has two stacks. Unlike Forth, which uses two stacks to simplify the language, Ada uses two stacks to complexify the language. This generalizes to other language features.
Ada's auxiliary stack is used to permit the returning of runtime-variable-sized objects from subroutines, which is also a thing you can use the operand stack for in most Forths.
Most languages don't have an explicit stack, and even their implicit stack is only for subroutine calls. If you're not making subroutine calls, your compiled code might not access the stack at all. So, for example, here's the strlcpy function from OpenBSD, lightly edited:
size_t strlcpy (char *dst, const char *src, size_t siz) {
register char *d = dst;
register const char *s = src;
register size_t n = siz;
if (n != 0 && --n != 0) {
do { if ((*d++ = *s++) == 0) break; } while (--n != 0);
}
if (n == 0) {
if (siz != 0) *d = '\0';
while (*s++)
;
}
return(s - src - 1);
}
GCC 12.2.0 compiles this to the following 18 ARM instructions, with -mcpu=cortex-a53 -Os -S:
If you're not familiar with ARM assembly, I'll tell you that nothing in this entire function uses the stack at all, which is possible because strlcpy doesn't call any other functions (it's a so-called "leaf subroutine", also known as a "leaf function") and because ARM, like most RISCs, puts the subroutine return address in a register (lr) instead of on the stack like amd64, or in the called subroutine like the PDP-8, which doesn't have a stack at all. And the calling convention puts arguments and return values in registers as well. So the function can just move data around between memory and registers and decrement its loop counter and increment its pointers without ever touching the stack.
FORTRAN up to FORTRAN 77 didn't support recursion, including indirect recursion, so that you could implement it without a stack.
By contrast, in Forth, instead of registers you use the operand stack. For loop counters you use the return stack. Sometimes you can use the operand stack instead of variables as well, although I think it's usually a better idea to use variables, especially when you're starting to learn Forth—it's much easier for beginners to get into trouble by trying too hard to use the stack instead of variables than to get into trouble by trying too hard to use variables instead of the stack.
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