dat_math [they/them]

  • 17 Posts
  • 205 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2021

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  • There’s an element of truth here, in that parts of the world have a system where farm animals eat stuff humans can’t, such as wild grass, kitchen waste and straw

    The carbon, nitrogen, etc. contained in that grass, waste, and straw should be buried in/returned to the soil to grow plants instead of being farted into our atmosphere. Assuming the land in question is arable in the first place (which I think is valid if it’s producing enough plant matter for grazing to be viable), if managed at all would produce more calories of human-compatible nutrition per calorie invested than harvesting of grazing animals on said land would.
















  • which is a relief.

    For me it’s the opposite. Suppose we go rockhounding hoping to find some opals, which we believe are quite rare for the location. We bring some small tools and survey an area of a few square feet near a creek, finding one opal.

    On our short hike back to the car, we spot a few mineral enthusiasts downstream of where we were digging with huge mechanical rigs set up to more effectively separate the rocks. They’re processing hundreds of thousands of pounds more material every day than our quaint hand tools can manage, so when we ask “did you find any opals” and they say “nope! not a one”,

    would we conclude it’s more likely that a) they’re churning through opals all day, but not looking for them or actively ignoring them when they find any or b) the opals are only in our tiny spot upstream ?