Soylent [food replacement] founder Rob Rhinehart shares his thoughts on extreme sustainability.
I am electrically self-reliant. My home life runs comfortably on a single 100W solar panel, which cost $150 and was available on Amazon Prime. I tracked down a few manufacturers in China who all said it costs around $40 to make. The US for some reason leverages massive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, so they ship them through Malaysian customs. Why do the politicians even bother?
For storage a $65 lead acid automobile battery does the trick. It's 12V so can be charged directly from the solar panel, and holds 420Wh, way more than I use in a day. That's $0.15 / Wh so I don't see why everyone is so excited about Tesla charging $0.43 / Wh for the Powerwall, sans inverter and installation.
He got rid of his fridge and other kitchen implements to make it work. What are the biggest energy users in your place? Could you pare things down as much as Rob?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday August 04 2015, @10:51PM
What he's doing isn't sustainability but rather exporting the polluting portion to other places.
One nit, among many: Buying new clothes rather than washing them? Let him try that for a whole city or nation worth of people.
He's greenwashing himself as hard as he can and then breaking his arm patting himself on the back.
Finding more efficient ways for large numbers of people to live with less environmental impact is something very desirable, but this isn't it, and is just more marketing for his liquid-diet goop.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:20PM
Note: if he can fool 2% of the population of LA to do the same, he'd carved a niche good enough to live rich for his entire life*. Because TFA it is pure marketing:
Move him in Alaska and see if he'd be able to pull the same trick.
---
3.8M*2%=76k. Say $0.5 profit per each bottle and 2 bottle/day=>$76k/day. Times 365d/y=>$27.74M/year
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:14AM
You nailed it on the head: this is why people outside of (Alto) California think people inside California are so batshit-crazy! This article proves beyond a shadow of a doubt! And the worst part is that the vast majority of (interior, urban) Californians think this way!
The rest of us are fed up with their bullshit. IMHO, if they want their own country, by all means let them!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:23PM
This comes to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/v/PS6lNDrCi88?version=3&start=55&end=65&autoplay=1&hl=en_US&rel=0 [youtube.com]
I get you are trying to 'lower your usage'. But the epic level of douchebagary here is amazing.
To lower your footprint you buy/make things and then reuse the hell out of them. Then if they break you repair them. Shipping everything from china and driving all over town is NOT it.
This is basically an extreme consumer. Everything is consumed and nothing is created or reused. He is trading dollars for OTHER people to create and use his energy then thinking he is being 'green'. No you are being lazy and cheap.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:24PM
Not only that, but he's absolutely wrong in several blatantly obvious ways.
He rails against Tesla, because electricity comes from fossil fuels and by his math, a Tesla gets like 20 miles per gallon. His obvious wrong assumption is that all power comes from fossil fuels - he even mentioned nuclear early on, but hydro, solar and wind are common. Particularly in California - they're fifth place in CO2 emissions per kWh by state. His measure of efficiency came purely from some blind assumptions of thermodynamic efficiencies for each stage - calculations he did not do for gasoline vehicles, such as his favored Priuses.
Not that he'd lower himself to own his own car. No, he exclusively uses Uber, because that way it's *other* people using those filthy oil fuels. That's his entire problem in a nutshell right there - he doesn't give a single shit about any of these issues, all that matters is that he looks like a better person than you. His entire post is riddled with logical flaws, misleading calculations and unsupported (or even blatantly counterfactual) assertions.
This man is a fraud. He is a parasite on society, claiming to be a paragon of virtue. He claims to be the epitome of self-sufficiency. Bull fucking shit. I want to have him dropped off in the middle of the Amazon - let's see how his self-sufficiency lasts there, when he doesn't have armies of Chinese laborers to make his clothes, a civilization to cook and house him, and gullible consumers to pay him to blend soy and rice. I'll even drop in alongside him - it's been years since I even went camping, but I'd put even odds on me coming out alive, and I can guarantee I'll last longer than he does.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:52PM
> Not that he'd lower himself to own his own car. No, he exclusively uses Uber, because that way it's *other* people using those filthy oil fuels.
Nice rant. But it doesn't seem to be based on what he actually wrote.
(1) He literally wrote "I take the bus often too."
(2) Using Uber results in less waste than owning a car and letting it sit unused 22 hours out of the day.
Stripped of your own self-righteous vitriol, your argument boils down to the fact that he because he's not 100% perfect means any improvements that he's been able to achieve are worthless and so he must be a poser. That is at least as big a logical flaw as anything Rinehart might have written.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gman003 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:17AM
Okay, I'll concede I overstated the Uber usage, and you *may* have an argument on more efficient utilization via collective usage, but preferring a Prius to a Tesla on oil-efficiency grounds is *blatantly* wrong.
And if you think my argument is about discarding marginal improvements, you're as guilty of overstating as I was. Most of what he is doing is not an improvement at all. A Prius is not more efficient than a Tesla, buying new clothes is not more efficient than washing them, eating at restaurants is not more efficient than cooking for yourself. I even suspect that using an EC2 instance as a workstation is less efficient than having a proper local machine. All of these are things he does to appear more environmentally conscious, and the planet is worse off for him having done so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:14AM
> Prius is not more efficient than a Tesla, buying new clothes is not more efficient than washing them, eating at restaurants is not more efficient than cooking for yourself
You say those things has if you have never critically thought about them. For example, a restaurant is another case of better utilization - they centralize shipping, storage, prep and clean-up and do it in volume for economies of scale and minimization of waste and spoilage.
> . All of these are things he does to appear more environmentally conscious
Seems like all of these things appear to be less environmentally conscious to you, someone who has spent less than a thousandth the time thinking about them than he has.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:26PM
I would be totally fine with a Tesla getting 20 miles to a gallon of sunlight.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:42PM
> What he's doing isn't sustainability but rather exporting the polluting portion to other places
I agree. He can't be stupid enough to believe his own patter, so what does he want out of it?
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:04AM
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:58PM
Ah, the memories.
Saturday Night Live had a blurb on it's faux newscast that the US post office was asking the members of Synanon to please get their snakes in the mail early this Christmas season.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:22AM
What he's doing is as laughable as living in a hotel most of the time and saying he's very environmental friendly at home.
He's trolling or trying to get publicity or both.
Get enough publicity and he can sell his crap to more suckers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Tuesday August 04 2015, @10:51PM
I might be in the minority, but I like cooking. I'm good at it.
I'm kind of feeling like Rhinehart is a little out of touch with anything outside his own limited world view. I check the weather in San Francisco. It's 66 degrees. Must be nice. It's 85 here, just down from the 91 it was earlier. His little lead acid setup doesn't really cover people who live elsewhere in the world. Likewise, guzzling something described as having the consistency of semen and a taste not much better doesn't really appeal to the vast majority of people.
I recall an article written from someone who tried it talking about how a diet of soylent was not really living, but surviving instead. That sounds like what he's talking about in general here. Even then, he's really halfassing it compared to the crazy guy who lives in cardboard box who sucks drunk guys off for nourishment. Not that I'd ever want to join him, but that guy at least impresses me.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:26PM
"I'm kind of feeling like Rhinehart is a little out of touch with anything outside his own limited world view."
Got that right.
I also like saving money. Cooking your own food can save you a bundle. If I eat out, three times a day, it can cost me around $20 per day. For that same amount of money I can buy enough raw ingredients to make a few simple meals for a few days. Heck, every now and then I buy a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and a small jar of grape jam. Cost as around $15 and I can feed myself for a whole week at work, breakfast (half a sandwich) and lunch. Probably a lot of sugar but tons of energy in nuts. The cost of a bag of rice, cheap chicken thighs/drumsticks, dozen eggs and some canned/frozen vegetables is pretty cheap compared to eating out. I can feed myself pretty well for a week on $50. Easily.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:12AM
If I eat out, three times a day, it can cost me around $20 per day.
Wow, that's some definition of "eat out" you have there. What kind of "restaurants" are you talking about there, Burger King?
If you eat out 3x a day at *real* restaurants, expect it to cost at least $50/day.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:29AM
Forgive me your highness! My apologies. I am truly sorry that I confused a sandwich shop, pizza place, Chinese restaurant, Mexican restaurant, Greek Restaurant, Indian restaurant, and the dozens of other restaurants in my neighborhood for !!!***REAL***!!! restaurants. And here I was thinking I was eating at real restaurants. Those $8~$10 meals I get must be the scraps and droppings tossed out by REAL restaurants frequented by royalty such as yourself. Oh, forgive me sire!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:17AM
He just meant you're underselling your valid point. :)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:16PM
He just meant you're underselling your valid point. :)
Well 8*3=24 so yeah, I'd say he's underselling it by about $4, before taxes, minimum.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:50PM
Since when did a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a small jar of Jam cost $15? Maybe, if you got all Organic, but man that's expensive.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:47AM
Not overestimated as I probably used the prices for large jars of PB and jam (skippy and welches).
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:59PM
"Choosy mothers choose Jiff".
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:39PM
I find it hard to find real food at restaurants. Everything is corn syrup, salt, empty carbs, or grease.
If I want a steak I have to grill it myself. At a restaurant I can't get a steak without paying 4x markup and getting like 4 pounds of salad, garlic bread, applesauce, potatoes, all this shit I don't want and my waistline doesn't need.
Ditto stuff like a burger. I like a nice meaty hot off the grill burger on a bun. So what if the bread is empty carbs F it I'm entitled once a month or so. But at restaurants I can't buy that, cheap McBurger isn't even made with meat as near as I can tell, the bun is some gross wonderbread non-food, theres a quarter cup of red HFCS and another quarter cup of yellow food dye HFCS smeared on it, the cheese reminds me in texture and appearance of self polymerizing silicone insulator sheet and has no taste...
And of course everything in a restaurant comes with a 32 oz cup of corn syrup soda to wash it down.
Don't get me started on Chinese "food", the stuff they couldn't even make mcnuggets out of, fried and drowned in fluorescent red corn syrup, F that. I wouldn't even put that in my compost pile, would probably poison it. I admit a certain fondness for occasional Gen Tso Chicken but I realize its a junk food treat.
I mean, Fing restaurant food isn't even real food... The only difference between the expensive stuff and the cheap stuff is texture and flavoring and conspicuous consumption.
I've noticed this when I travel for business, for a week there's just nothing good to eat. Maybe I can find a buffet place and get a slice of meat and a pile of veg, but otherwise trying to live out of restaurant food is just gross. Messes up my digestive system something fierce too.
I had a filet of baked fish with lemon and a giant ass salad of all kinds of chopped up veggies last night... can't buy that at any restaurant.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:26PM
I think I am talking to people who don't have access to mom and pop restaurants. Are all of your restaurant experiences at chains?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:17PM
I think a lot of mom-and-pop restaurants just rip open a bag from Sams Club. I've had highly mixed results from those kind of places. At least at the chains I know what I'll get.
I will admit that if I have the time and patience and $$$ once you spend three figures you get a pretty good meal. That might be what the dude in the original article is doing.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:55PM
Have you taken a look at Chipotle or Qdoba? I prefer Qdoba, they have a rewards program. I get a free meal for about every 10 meals I purchase. As far as burger places go, it's hard to beat Mooyah as well. Mooyah has a great black bean burger and real meat burgers. As opposed to the places like McDonalds where they can get in trouble, if their meat patties aren't at least 15% meat or what have you.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:50PM
I prefer Qdoba because of Cholula sauce. I like their freshly made food and fresh ingredients. But let's not pretend that a 1200 calorie burrito is health food just because it is fresh. It is arguably better than the same number of calories from McDonalds... but a ton of calories is a ton of calories.
Also, my habit of using nearly half a bottle of Cholula isn't so good for the salt content, either.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:58PM
A ton of calories is a ton of calories, but at least it's real food. The main bad calories come with their queso(s), chips, fried taco salad bowl, white rice, and tortillas. The upshot, is that you can easily have a tasty, but more healthy option depending on your choices. You can get a Naked Burrito (No Tortilla) which drops the calories by about 300 and brings your 1k calorie meal down to a still very tasty 700 calorie meal. Qdoba can be a very good option for people with many different dietary needs. You'd just have to think about what you are getting and/or look at their Nutritional Chart to make smart decisions.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:19PM
The thing I like about the big burrito model the most is that you only get ingredients you directly ask for. So I only have myself to blame for that (delicious delicious) pile of calories.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:56PM
> I check the weather in San Francisco. It's 66 degrees. Must be nice. It's 85 here, just down from the 91 it was earlier
He lives in Los Angeles, not San Francisco. 93 degrees in Woodland Hills, the LA burb where I live. Humidity is only 17% so that helps a lot.
> Even then, he's really halfassing it compared to the crazy guy who lives in cardboard box who sucks drunk guys off for nourishment.
It's comments like that which make me think all the criticism of the guy is based on gut reaction rather than any sort of rational thinking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:10AM
Most people aren't good at cooking. Cooking is a science, after all, and most people aren't good at that either. (Now, a lot more people can follow a recipe, but that's as much cooking as following a step-by-step make-your-own-silly-putty is science.)
I like cooking, like you, but I would not look forward to cooking every day, two or three times a day, seven days a week. At that point it becomes a chore. I doubt even the most hardcore chocolate lover would enjoy a diet consisting only of chocolate.
>guzzling something described as having the consistency of semen
Soylent doesn't have the consistency of semen, it's more like a smoothie.
>a taste not much better
Semen tastes good or bad, depending on who you ask and whose semen you're talking about. I hear a fruit-based diet makes your semen sweet, for example.
>I recall an article written from someone who tried it talking about how a diet of soylent was not really living, but surviving instead.
I recall an article written by someone who thought a diet of soylent was pretty good. Oh wait, here it is: http://arstechnica.com/series/ars-does-soylent/ [arstechnica.com]
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:03AM
I found the one I was thinking of. http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5893221/soylent-survivor-one-month-living-on-lab-made-liquid-nourishment [theverge.com]
Seems it's a literal matter of taste.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:05AM
There are some tricks to cooking that take a little while to pick up, but it doesn't take long at all to get the hang of it and become decent at it. The one downside is if you get good enough you stop wanting to eat out because they don't cook as well as you do.
There are also ways to not cook several times per day. Leftovers is a time-honored one. Cook enough for dinner that you can eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. There's also cooking big batches and freezing what you don't want to eat right away.
Of course that doesn't fit in with TFA, so the way my grandparents did it would be more fitting. They would bring in their harvest and do a big batch of canning and preserving, and then stock everything away in their root cellar, which is what people used before modern refrigeration. When my grandfather was still young enough to fish, he would smoke the majority of his catch in a little shed. The result was delicious.
They were nearly always working on something, though. That part is true. They were rarely idle. They had homesteaded with their parents as kids, though, so doing that was as natural as breathing. They could not understand for the life of them how we grandkids could lay around playing Pong and later Atari.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:59PM
There's also cooking big batches and freezing what you don't want to eat right away.
Prep too. Dump contents into slow cooker, come home to stew, soup, pulled pork, chili, who knows.
I also used to make my own taco seasoning which some people considered insane but its fun to vary the mix to your personal preference, no different than the secret chili recipe attitude. I got out of that hobby because I got a bad chipoltle pepper addiction, like the smokey spicy. I also used to make my own bbq dry rub for chopped chicken and that slow cooks up pretty well. Spending 30 minutes looking for ingredients and measuring and mixing them for one meal is a drag, but spending 31 minutes to make ten batches is no big deal and it divides down to 3 minutes per meal instead of 30. Its also usually hugely cheaper.
If you marinate meat for 10 hours while at work it'll turn into baby food, but you can mix up a homemade fajita marinade the day before, so cooking when you get home is like 5 minutes of work. And I never had a problem freezing citrus marinade so I'd make enough for like six meals at a time, buy a whole bag of limes at a time, etc.
Prep work is a drag. I don't mind cooking homemade applesauce... its the two hours of peeling apple prep work thats no fun. Its worth trying separating prep work from cooking, suddenly cooking is fun.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:50PM
Lots of prep work at a time is an excellent tip.
My wife laughed at me when I got one of these [webstaurantstore.com] from Ikea, but it's one of the best kitchen tools I ever bought. It's a must-have for fans of apples. Works on pears too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:43AM
> I like cooking.
> I ♥ moose wang!
Forgive me if I decline the dinner invitation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:26PM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:29PM
I suggest reading the comments at Ars, and authors webpage as they pretty much cover all of it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:46PM
I'm among those who just assumed that it wasn't practical to go off-grid without living like a 1970s hippie.
Then we started looking at some island homes near Vancouver. What we saw impressed me.
Although there are some obvious limits, it's entirely practical to live without an electric utility. What we saw included:
- Refrigeration and cooking, ran off propane.
- Everything else was powered off solar panels, or if you needed to run power tools, a small generator.
- Rainwater collection provided all water.
It did help that the house was designed from the ground up to be off-grid, including ideas like a massive concrete mass in the middle of the house, onto which backed the airtight woodstove - can you say heat sink?
Phone and Internet were via 3G cel coverage - they were close enough to the mainland to get a solid connection.
The house wasn't overly large, but there were very few sacrifices made, and none of those related to power.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:01AM
The passivhaus [wikipedia.org] design movement has done a lot for energy efficient, sometimes even net-zero, designs.
Also, what's old is new again.
That big concrete mass with the woodstove - that's how we used to build fireplaces, thermal mass completely inside the building envelope to keep the house warm long after the fire was put out.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:02AM
Why would you want to live without an electric utility? Now, instead of making yourself dependent on the electric utility, you're making yourself dependent on Joe's Propane service. And the prices for propane are astronomical; you're not saving any money by running your appliances with that (esp. your refrigerator). If you want to be independent, just get some bigger solar panels and more storage capacity and use electric appliances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:18AM
On that island there is no electric service. But it is a very nice island.
(Score: 1) by hopp on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:21AM
Vancouver Island is a great island! I like the sandwich shop with the goats on the roof!
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:14AM
From what I've read, it's now entirely possible to live off-grid by using solar energy to both power things during the day and charge batteries or a battery-powered generator for night-time. (Well, possible if you can afford the cost of the generators, solar setup, plot of land in the middle of nowhere, to build an efficient house, etc.)
I do recall that back when I took an ecology course in 1996 at a local community college, the instructor had an amazing home that supported most of his and his wife's energy needs — they had built it into the side of a hill in order to get the natural insulation effect, aligned it so certain rooms would be warm/cool at certain times of day, added solar panels, and so forth. Given solar tech 19 years ago was nowhere near as good as it is now, I have little doubt that the place would be self-supporting by now.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:13PM
Solar Panels seem to be the way to go currently. Assuming you can afford the cost of getting them installed, you should be able to have them pay for themselves in 10 years. Currently in our area you end up having to pay about $20k out of pocket for a $50k system. That leaves 15 years of the warranty left where you are actually getting money back from the system. Some installers will also hook up the solar panels to your electric first, so you sell excess, and buy when you aren't producing enough. As opposed to the electric company getting all of your juice and you buying everything you consume.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:04PM
May want to look at what the sailboat long distance cruisers do. Very few people would consider a $1M yacht to be roughing it. You'd be surprised what they do with a couple solar panels. The biggest problem is having enough fresh water for cleaning and showering. Its easy to have enough water to drink, but clean clothes and showers are usually the limiter. They have a lot of interesting ideas about doing a lot with a little energy.
(Score: 2) by panachocala on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:24PM
Even for on-grid, I wish someone would design kitchen appliances to share or exchange heat. The fridge dumps its waste heat into the house and the water heater also dumps waste heat into the house... if they could be on opposite ends of a heat-exchanger, there would be less energy used and less heat dumped into the house, which is already 90 degrees in the Summer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by SuperCharlie on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:59PM
My wife and I homesteaded raw land for 4 years until her health made us come back to civilization, here are a few of the things
I learned:
It is nothing like on TV
It is hard as hell
It takes a large family to do long term
You make choices on what you can live without
You grow appreciation for simple things, like water
You always seem sweaty and/or dirty
Ingenuity is a survival skill
You have never had a real problem until you have a week worth of sewage to get rid of
You will always need money to pay taxes, so you will always need a job or income of some sort.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:34AM
I lived 8 years without electricity or running water. I still sometimes pause for a moment of appreciation when I turn on the tap (especially hot water).
Reading your post made me smile.
(oh, and that guys battery is going to be toast in a few months without a charge controller)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:20AM
Exactly! I think some of those Alaska / Northern Canada shows are probably the most realistic, but even then I'm sure there some important, albeit boring or truly disgusting or politically-incorrect stuff they leave out. Even with the royalties they're making from multiple seasons of "Reality" TV , the richest member of Jewel's family is Jewel herself--which is probably why she never appears in any of the episodes. You have to hate civilization enough to go back almost to the stone age in order to really do this sort of thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:35AM
What are you talking about? Who is Jewel?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:09AM
Is this guy for real? No, seriously, is this a joke of some kind? This guy is so far removed from reality that I am completely dumbfounded that both ARS and SN would give this idiotic douche press time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:18AM
Not only that, but I'm pretty sure he's dead wrong about Priuses; they most likely use AC motors, not DC. DC motors would be stupid to use in a car; the brushes would wear out quickly, plus they're inefficient and noisy. There's a reason you don't see DC motors almost anywhere these days; they suck. Even small electric fans in notebook computers use AC motors these days (though they use a controller circuit to drive them with DC power, and frequently they're called "brushless DC" as a result, but in reality they aren't DC at all since the motor windings are being driven with AC waveforms).
Otherwise, yeah, this guy is a total loon.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:39AM
The real kicker is the Prius still has a friggen gasoline engine. The jackass is completely clueless. Nothing he did was groundbreaking or special. People have been doing efficient off-grid for decades.
I think the only purpose of his article was to antagonize every reader into fantasizing about physically assaulting him. But, what it really did was just label this dick a lazy, selfish, condescending, loony.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:17AM
> The real kicker is the Prius still has a friggen gasoline engine.
An engine that operates much more efficiently than in the typical automobile. All the derision and righteousness directed at this guy seems to be based purely on binary thinking, that because he still has to live in modern society he's a hypocrite for trying to do better. Fucking crab mentality if I've ever seen it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:45AM
There's method to his madness: create awarness and help him sell his meal replacement.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:30AM
And sadly it's working, we all just heard about this guy and what he peddles... clickbait ftw!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:15AM
There's a meta point to be made here--nearly all of the media information-verse has devolved to one big PR exercise, anyway, so what's the difference? How many of the "science" articles out there are calculated to help secure research grants? How many of the "innovation" stories are companies looking for investors? How many of the, "Gasp, leafy green vegetables can be bad for you?!" articles are funded by the fast food lobby?
I have never worked in the PR industry, but I did work in the Advertising industry which is sliding into PR, and the degree to which the public discourse is structured and manipulated is quite unguessed at by most people. There are hordes of smart, manipulative, greasy hucksters who spent all day, every day, trying to figure out how to draw your attention and get you to spend money. And it works, even with "intelligent" people who ought to know better, because they communicate on a limbic level that overrides higher brain functions.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @10:31AM
I may have a defective limbic system, which reflects on the tightness of my ass., leading to difficulties in coughing money.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:05AM
Not that I want to defend this douchebag in any way, but I do feel it's a bit nitpicky to calling out BLDC/PMAC motors as disproving his claim to have ditched AC -- if those are disqualifiers, it seems like any switching power supply is as well.
(Score: 2, Informative) by throwaway28 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:59AM
Kitchens are expensive and dirty. . . . I don’t want to live with red hot heating elements and razor sharp knives
That's why you're supposed to hold knives by the _handle_. They make pretty poor carpentry hammers if you hold them by the blade and try to pound in nails with the handle. :)
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:05AM
Apart from selling Soylent, I think this guy also earns coin from appearing in adverts as "Seemingly Normal Area Guy With Highly Specific Form Of Mental Retardation Unknown To Neuroscientists That Prevents Them Performing Single Seemingly Easy Task For The Purposes Of Selling Useless Product".
Oblig. link to Seanbaby article about infomercials: http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-simple-tasks-that-no-one-in-commercial-can-do-right/ [cracked.com]
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by sjwt on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:53AM
RTFA...
"The whole retrofit cost $1450, which is steep but I will make it back in due time since I don’t pay for an ISP bundle or power."
dude, a proper solar set up for the same price would of neted you a 2-3KW system, inverter and all.. instead you have fucked around, called your self some kinda amazing profit and run a 100watt system..
What the hell.
I'm using on average less than 1.5KW a day, my computer, phone, fridge, dishwasher, electric stove and hot water.. for the same price I could be putting 15 times back into the grid then you are producing..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:09PM
maybe it's just a marketing gimmick, but a solar charge controller with MPPT tracker might be a good investment,
especially since it might prolong your battery life since it can help with avoiding overcharging?
i love/hate my kitchen.
I prefer to cook if i can because i live outside "town" and because the town is a tourist attraction
with high tru-put which means that though food in storage at the restaurant doesn't linger a long
time (to get nasty) it also means that cleanliness suffers.
also since the tourist just flow thru and maybe get upset stomach, nobody cares because they will be gone soon ...
half the time i get tummy ache after eating out.
my fridge is the biggest energy guzzler. it's big! it's got two doors.
one door goes to +4 deg. C the other goes to -18 deg C.
I cannot "save" with it. it needs to be on all the time else stuff gets nasty.
(However i found that stuffing it with water bottles consistently, lowers its energy consumption.
A empty fridge loses more "coldness" when opening the door?)
The second one is the Air-con. i can save here but being a caucasian i prefer sleeping "cold" :)
the 3rd monster energy hog is the hot-water heater for the shower. it will happily draw 8 kW.
I can save ... shower quickly and "very" hot. good-bye grime. :)
I got 3x280 Watt panels and 3 micro inverters (grid-tie!).
they just plug-in to any socket that can support a 280 Watt "draw" (cable size defines how much amps can be put tru before overheating) and if the sun is shining they will push-IN (synced) A/C power to the normal wall-socket.
Using electricity is not bad. it should be encouraged. the problem is how teh electricity is generated!
I think many people in hot 3rd world country would love a refrigerator to keep their food viable for a longer time!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by panachocala on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:36PM
This is a possible solution for the fridge:
http://www.mountbest.net/chest_fridge.html [mountbest.net]
"Using vertical doors in refrigeration devices is an act against the Nature of Cold Air. Understanding and cooperating with Nature rather than acting against it leads to much better efficiency.
My chest fridge (Vestfrost freezer turned into a fridge) consumes about 0.1 kWh a day. It works only about 2 minutes per hour. At all other times it is perfectly quiet and consumes no power whatsoever. My wind/solar system batteries and power-demand-sensing inverter simply love it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @10:29PM
very good. problem I want cold beer so I dont remove 3 at a time and so ... on a roll ... it means open the dorr every 10 min :)
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:46PM
So the guy wants to live without a fridge? Great, but some of us like to cook. No mention of clothes washing, but I assume he is hand washing or is just going dirty hippy unwashed style.
Anyhow, I would love to convert my internal home lighting to DC and LED. The problem is I would want to stay with wiring codes including the main box and lighting sockets.
Does anyone have any advice on doing a DC lighting home? I know a friend that had one... installed in the 70's as some kind of demo system. The problem is none of the equipment was supported anymore, and he had to convert his house to normal lighting in order to get modern lightbulbs.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh