• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 8th, 2023

help-circle

  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtomemes@lemmy.worldI'm afraid we've been bamboozled
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    “Freezing temperatures” mean “freezing temperatures,” though, and numbers are pretty irrelevant. American schoolkids learn that it’s around 32°F and 0°C, and we easily remember it, but the weather forecasters still say “frost warning,” or “freezing rain,” rather than “it’s going to be 32°F tomorrow,” because there are so many confounding variables. Even the temperature of the phase transition is kind of squishy, since pure water freezes at 0°C at STP (except when it gets super-cooled). And if we’re talking about the fundamental importance of water, then I might argue that 4°C is the important temperature, because it’s temperature at which water reaches its maximum density.

    Anyway, not to say that Fahrenheit is great, or anything, just that Celsius is similarly arbitrary, and we lack a compelling reason to switch. (Even though virtually every thermometer I’ve ever seen in the U.S. has both scales on it.)





  • Very few food products have an expiration date printed on them. A lot of them have a “Sell by” date, which is not an expiration date. We have a local milk producer that prints a “Sell by” date on their bottles. The rule of thumb is that if it’s stored in proper refrigeration, unopened, it’ll keep for 2 more weeks. (Plus another week to use it up.) But it’s impossible to explain that people. The disgust reflex is strong, and you can almost watch it on their faces as it overrides people’s rational faculties. (Honestly, that experience helps me understand the recent election results.) As a result, the store that I worked in would as a rule of thumb take the milk off the shelf 3 days before the “Sell by” date, even though it’d be good for another 3 weeks. Milk that didn’t sell, we had to pour down the drain.

    One time when I was working there, I had to deal with an irate customer who returned some fancy cheese hors d’oeuvres that she’d received as part of her pick-up order because the package had a “Sell by” date on it that was a couple days past. I refunded the cost of the item, and when I took it back to the cheese department, our cheese monger explained that the date was really only useful for the store to keep its stock rotated. The product didn’t spoil after that date; in fact, it got better for several months as the cheese aged. But, we agreed, it’s impossible to explain that to people.

    So, to the question, also while working there, I made a delivery to an elderly woman whose son ordered groceries for her. She had a number of items that she didn’t use before the “Use by” date, and asked if I’d take them. One of them was a container of plain yogurt. I don’t use a lot of yogurt, mainly as a condiment for Indian dishes, so I didn’t even open it until about a month after the “Use by” date, and finally finished it probably 3 months after. (Just don’t let it warm up, open only briefly, and always use a clean utensil to scoop it out.) It still tasted fresh and enjoyable.

    I still have butter in the refrigerator with a “Use by” date in 2023, because I bought a lot of it when it was cheap (on sale and employee discount), and put it in the freezer. I have eaten canned food several years after the “Best by” date. The heuristic is easy: It it smells good, it’s edible. If it smells off, toss it. But I know that there are plenty of people out there with a hair-trigger disgust response, who are convinced that the moment the clock ticks over to the date printed on the package, the contents turn to poison. This heuristic probably grosses them out. Oh well, people aren’t rational.



  • You’re not the only one! I think it’s worth noting that back then, “social media” was a new model in which the viewers provided the content, a democratizing force which broke the hold of a small priesthood of editors, producers, and owners over the message we hear.

    Now, so-called social media is synonymous with The Algorithm. That is, the powerful and connected have figured out how to tame it and gatekeep information again, this time in a far more insidious way. It still has the veneer of populism, but scratch the surface, and the owners largely control what you see.

    It’s darkly hilarious to read discussions on here in which people deny that Lemmy is social media at all, rather than an example of the ur-social media, the good kind.






  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialtomemes@lemmy.worldChoices
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    17 days ago

    It’s kind of like asking whether the vital piece of a table is the tabletop or the legs, when you don’t have a functional table without either one. We don’t have a functional market system without supply and demand.

    In a weird way, blaming the corporations is philosophically aligned with supply-side dogma, where the corporations (“job creators”) have an intrinsic motivation to produce. As if they just churn stuff out all day long, because that’s what they do when the government doesn’t get in their way, and it’s the duty of people to consume so the output doesn’t all just pile up in some great heap outside the factory.

    There’s a reason some call that “voodoo economics.” Whatever their influence today, all corporations producing things evolved in a symbiotic relationship with consumer demand. We could guillotine all of the CEOs, and revoke every corporate charter, but it’d do jack for the environment, unless unless we also all change our lifestyle.

    Blaming the corporations makes as much sense as them blaming us. It’s time to move past who’s to blame, and instead start fixing things.