Wife has been canning for a few years now and we have a pantry of fruits, veggies, and dehydrated food. She goes to the farmers markets during harvest time and goes to town on entire cases of tomatoes, corn, beans, etc. That will last all year for our family of 5. We also pay a friend to raise a pig on her ranch and butcher that once a year. Just got ours (over 400 lbs!). Pork is A LOT cheaper that way. Haven’t found anyone to go half or a quarter in on a cow. We also would need another deep freezer and don’t really have room for it.
We also meal plan weekly so we only buy groceries for what we need to make meals. That saves a ton of money as you aren’t wasteful as much. Oh and we either do pick up or delivery as you spend more when you’re in the store and see things you want but don’t need.
We make almost everything we can from scratch. Wife recently found a recipe for baked oyster crackers with butter and seasoning on them that make dirt cheap snacks and they’re fantastic. The store brand oyster crackers are $1 for 16oz. That’s almost cheap enough to not make those from scratch too. We haven’t bothered yet.
I’ve always been interested in the idea of canning, but it’s not really a thing in the UK. I know that veg is cheaper and gas is more expensive here than in America but still, surely it costs so much money to can things that you can’t be saving much? Is it only worth it if the produce was in season and therefore really cheap?
I’m in a rural area, it’s really not a thing! Especially not pressure canning with ball jars. People do make pickles and chutneys etc but those are preserved with vinegar and we use kilner jars with a rubber seal to store them. I’ve never once met anyone who has pressure canned vegetables.
Yeah and we obviously have those here although you could just make them in any old jar and keep them in the fridge. The thing that seems to be quite different in America to the UK is the whole pressure canning scene. We do have similar food but it’s all in tins, nobody really makes it themselves and I’m not even sure where you’d get hold of a pressure canner, you’d probably have to import it.
When I was a kid (20 years ago) my parents would make pickles, and some assorted pickled veggies. Usually the veggies would come from a farm around us or an auction where you could buy trays of veggies about the size of a flat of canned drinks. They would also do some fruits in syrup, mainly ones that my uncle would bring us from another part of the country where him and his neighbours had fruit tree.
Definitely not about cost on the veggies. At best it’s break even compared to the store. It’s more about knowing it’s the veggie and water only. Or seasoning too if you like them a certain way. We’ve found corn to be higher quality too. Plus, where we live peaches are fabulous and better than anywhere else in the country so we get to can the best and control the amount of syrup used so they’re healthier. Sorry Georgia, you don’t actually have the best peaches.
Yeah, I’m making a lot myself too, but I sadly don’t have the storage space for large amounts of food. And the homemade goods are often more expensive, unless you can get veggies on the cheap from a farmer
We probably aren’t saving much on the veggies overall for sure. Some are cheaper than canned but others aren’t. However, we know exactly what’s in it and we buy it once a year so we’ve budgeted for it.
I never watch a movie more than once unless it’s just happens to be already playing, and even then it depends if it’s actually worth watching a second time.
If it’s easier. You can think of the scenario being when browsing you have this reaction. “Yup! That’s a good ass movie” Skips to the next one everytime you see it.
in therms of a physical shelf, i have the back to the future trilogy i picked up for like 5€ in a yard sale. also the only movies i own on disk.
on my NAS, there are a lot of funky movies. i’m proud of all the shitty movies i watched just for fun, many of them will continue gathering dust on my hard drive.
I’d like to offer a different perspective. I’m a grey beard who remembers the AI Winter, when the term had so over promised and under delivered (think expert systems and some of the work of Minsky) that using the term was a guarantee your project would not be funded. That’s when the terms like “machine learning” and “intelligent systems” started to come into fashion.
The best quote I can recall on AI ran along the lines of “AI is no more artificial intelligence than airplanes are doing artificial flight.” We do not have a general AI yet, and if Commander Data is your minimum bar for what constitutes AI, you’re absolutely right, and you can define it however you please.
What we do have are complex adaptive systems capable of learning and problem solving in complex problem spaces. Some are motivated by biological models, some are purely mathematical, and some are a mishmash of both. Some of them are complex enough that we’re still trying to figure out how they work.
And, yes, we have reached another peak in the AI hype - you’re certainly not wrong there. But what do you call a robot that teaches itself how to walk, like they were doing 20 years ago at MIT? That’s intelligence, in my book.
My point is that intelligence - biological or artificial - exists on a continuum. It’s not a Boolean property a system either has or doesn’t have. We wouldn’t call a dog unintelligent because it can’t play chess, or a human unintelligent because they never learned calculus. Are viruses intelligent? That’s kind of a grey area that I could argue from either side. But I believe that Daniel Dennett argued that we could consider a paramecium intelligent. Iirc, he even used it to illustrate “free will,” although I completely reject that interpretation. But it does have behaviors that it learned over evolutionary time, and so in that sense we could say it exhibits intelligence. On the other hand, if you’re going to use Richard Feynman as your definition of intelligence, then most of us are going to be in trouble.
But what do you call a robot that teaches itself how to walk
In it’s current state,
I’d call it ML (Machine Learning)
A human defines the desired outcome,
and the technology “learns itself” to reach that desired outcome in a brute-force fashion (through millions of failed attempts, slightly inproving itself upon each epoch/iteration), until the desired outcome defined by the human has been met.
My AI professor back in the early 90’s made the point that what we think of as fairly routine was considered the realm of AI just a few years earlier.
I think that’s always the way. The things that seem impossible to do with computers are labeled as AI, then when the problems are solved, we don’t figure we’ve created AI, just that we solved that problem so it doesn’t seem as big a deal anymore.
LLMs got hyped up, but I still think there’s a good chance they will just be a thing we use, and the AI goal posts will move again.
on the other hand calculators can do things more quickly than humans, this doesn’t mean they’re intelligent or even on the intelligence spectrum. They take an input and provide and output.
The idea of applying intelligence to a calculator is kind of silly. This is why I still prefer words like “algorithms” to “AI” as its not making a “decision”. Its making a calculation, its just making it very fast based on a model and is prompt driven.
Actual intelligence doesn’t just shut off the moment its prompted response ends - it keeps going.
I think we’re misaligned on two things. First, I’m not saying doing something quicker than a human can is what comprises “intelligence.” There’s an uncountable number of things that can do some function faster than a human brain, including components of human physiology.
My point is that intelligence as I define it involves adaptation for problem solving on the part of a complex system in a complex environment. The speed isn’t really relevant, although it’s obviously an important factor in artificial intelligence, which has practical and economic incentives.
So I again return to my question of whether we consider a dog or a dolphin to be “intelligent,” or whether only humans are intelligent. If it’s the latter, then we need to be much more specific than I’ve been in my definition.
Got it. As someone who has developed computational models of complex biological systems, I’d like to know specifically what you believe the differences to be.
It’s the ‘why’. A robot will only teach itself to walk because a human predefined that outcome. A human learning to walk is maybe not even intelligence - Motor functions even operate in a separate area of the brain from executive function and I’d argue the defining tasks to accomplish and weighing risks is the intelligent part. Humans do all of that for the robot.
Everything we call “AI” now should be called “EI” or “extended intelligence” because humans are defining the both the goals and the resources in play to achieve them. Intelligence requires a degree of autonomy.
Okay, I think I understand where we disagree. There isn’t a “why” either in biology or in the types of AI I’m talking about. In a more removed sense, a CS team at MIT said “I want this robot to walk. Let’s try letting it learn by sensor feedback” whereas in the biological case we have systems that say “Everyone who can’t walk will die, so use sensor feedback.”
But going further - do you think a gazelle isn’t weighing risks while grazing? Do you think the complex behaviors of an ant colony isn’t weighing risks when deciding to migrate or to send off additional colonies? They’re indistinguishable mathematically - it’s just that one is learning evolutionarily and the other, at least theoretically, is able to learn theoretically.
Is the goal of reproductive survival not externally imposed? I can’t think of any example of something more externally imposed, in all honesty. I as a computer scientist might want to write a chatbot that can carry on a conversation, but I, as a human, also need to learn how to carry on a conversation. Can we honestly say that the latter is self-directed when all of society is dictating how and why it needs to occur?
Things like risk assessment are already well mathematically characterized. The adaptive processes we write to learn and adapt to these environmental factors are directly analogous to what’s happening in neurons and genes. I’m really just not seeing the distinction.
AI, as a term, was coined in the mid-50s by a computer scientist, John McCarthy. Yes, that John McCarthy, the one who invented LISP and helped develop Algol 60.
It’s been a marketing buzzword for generations, born out of the initial optimism that AI tasks would end up being pretty easy to figure out. AI has primarily referred to narrow AI for decades and decades.
I think most people consider LLMs to be real AI, myself included. It’s not AGI, if that’s what you mean, but it is AI.
What exactly is the difference between being able to reliably fool someone into thinking that you can think, and actually being able to think? And how could we, as outside observers, be able to tell the difference?
As far as your question though, I’m agitated too, but more about things being marketed as AI that either shouldn’t have AI or don’t have AI.
Maybe I’m just a little bit too familiar with it, but I don’t find LLMs particularly convincing of anything I would call “real AI”. But I suppose that entirely depends on what you mean with “real”. Their flaws are painfully obvious. I even use ChatGPT 4 in hopes of it being better.
My German is limited to what I remember from taking high school German nearly 30 years ago (basically cursing and asking how much the calculator costs), so I figured it was safe for me to post them.
On a similar note to what @lagomorphlecture I have an instant pot and that’s made cooking stuff that’s cheap but usually takes time to make really easy, brown rice or a potato based soup are a click away. At of course the cost of an upfront investment.
Also, some recipes can be really cheap if you have the time. Rossotto, homemade bread (with yeast or baking soda), baked beans (from dry bulk pinto beans), pasta (homemade & store bought) naan bread & homemade wheat tortillas, and baked oatmeal are all things I enjoy that come to mind and might be worth trying. They taste good and can be made for super cheap.
I’m a vegetarian and my instant pot is great for beans. I didn’t bring that up since canned beans are cheap but they’re high sodium and are probably more contaminated with plastic than dried beans. I would never bother with dried beans without the instant pot but they’re super easy with it. So I guess depending on your diet either an instant pot, slow cooker or air fryer can really have a huge impact on your grocery bill.
Part of it probably depends on what beans. I eat a lot of chickpeas and I think they’re a harder bean and less likely to get mushy. The other one is black beans and definitely they would be easier to overcook. Did you do the quick release? If not, next time quick release then immediately drain them and give them a quick rinse in cold water. I’m just using the bean setting on my instant pot so if that’s what you’re doing and it’s still mushy with the quick release, figure out how long that cooks for and drop it by a minute or two.
Charcoal for cooking on a grill is most frequent and normal. (Yes, I know charcoal briquettes are not pure coal, but some do contain coal as an additive).
Because of schooling and work, I’ve seen it burned in power plants and burned it myself in a laboratory setting (comparing bituminous to anthracite to others). My sister volunteers at a historical blacksmith shop, they have a couple different demonstration furnaces and one burns coal. There’s also a steam engine demonstrator that runs on coal, but they don’t fire that one up very often.
When I was a little kid, so young my memories are very hazy, i was taken to see the sod house my great grandma grew up in before it was torn down. They used coal for heating.
The inflation reduction act is probably the most significant piece of climate change policy in American history and is expected to bring emissions to a little under half 2005 levels.
Also, I think it capped insulin prices at $35 a month? That was the hope anyway.
I’ll be paying 380 ish bucks for insulin this coming month, only using my “good, professional job” type insurance to cover some of the cost. It’s around 200/mo. Cheaper to buy from Walmart directly without insurance than it is to process it through it at my required pharmacy. I don’t know if the insulin caps have taken effect, or if I don’t qualify, all I know is I’m getting screwed because I’m alive and want to stay that way.
The rest of the policy seems cool, but won’t be if it pans out like the insulin crap.
Someone tried to explain this to me once. They said that the original formulas for insulin are really cheap, it’s just the manufacturers have all agreed to only make the expensive formulas to maximize profits since it’s not in their best interest otherwise.
Collusion between a small number of players to control prices in a market is called a “cartel” and it’s a significant departure from the concept of a “free market”.
Cartels happen in markets that are not free, because in a free market that price fixing would lead to insulin sales being so profitable that new manufacturers would get into the game and the competition would bring prices back down to their normal levels.
One can argue whichever way they like for the overall benefit of the tight regulations we have on things like insulin production and distribution, but it is a fact that one effect of that tight regulation is extremely high barriers to entry, and hence the formation of price cartels such as we see now.
Goddamn, America you never cease to find new ways to disappoint me.
It seems to vary state by state, though also for anyone on medicaid/medicare. You might be screwed by that professional job insurance!
I dunno if it helps but some googling took me to this diabetes resource Which seemed pretty good. Might be worth checking as this seems like stuff you have to look into vs having it happen automatically because why not screw us one more time?
Americans just won’t help them goddamn selves. The same people who piss and moan about socialized medicine are chapping at the bit to install the orange shitbag as a dictator. These people are dead set on being rotten to the core.
Here in Sweden insulin is free. Although we have universal healthcare most medical things cost a little, up to about $230/year then any medication or procedure is free.
Insulin, and related equipment and so on, doesn’t even cost a little for the patient here and is completely free. It does of course cost our government and taxpayers money, our government pays about $0.09 per person per day for insulin.
One time my parents tried to tell me they shouldn’t have to pay for insulin for “fat people” and the nurse educator in me went on a fifteen minute rant about how insulin dependent diabetics are actually the ones who get it genetically in childhood and finished the rant by asking why they’re advocating for the deaths of impoverished children. Not that fat people deserve to die or be sick either but come ON if you’re not willing to do the research yourself then just listen to what the experts say? Everybody in America these days wants to do 0 research and just walk out into the world to convince people that lavender oil will cure their cancer.
Not that you are wrong about the rest of your comment, but not only type 1 diabetics need insulin, type 2 diabetics often become insulin dependent too, especially with poor adherance to interventions (bad diet, no excercise).
Yeah but when you’re arguing with your conservative parents and you happen to have been dealt the “for the children” card, you play that one at every opportunity. I’ve had much more luck with the argument that punishing people they view as morally inferior often results in harming innocents which is absolutely true and the reason punitive justice is (imo) morally wrong. It’s the same reason I don’t believe in the death penalty; if you find out a guy is completely innocent of some terrible crime he’s in the middle of serving a life sentence for, you can give him his missing salary and let him go, but you can’t bring him back to life.
Stefania by Kalush Orchestra (Ukraine) was the winner this year, only partly because of the invasion. It was probably in most people’s top 3 anyway, and it got such a huge percentage of the votes that it really skewed the rest of the results. (Fun fact, the flautist/lead in this song is the same flautist from SHUM in 2021)
ESC 2023
Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä (Finland) is a TREMENDOUS bop. It’s so catchy. As he was touring around before the actual semi-finals he lost his trademark lime green jacket, and fans made and brought replacements to shows for him until it was found.
Mama ŠČ! by Let 3 (Croatia) is beyond weird but really catchy. They’re the most charismatic artists ever to fake pooping themselves during an interview.
ESC 2024 is in National Finals season now, where each country chooses their entry, usually with a reality show contest. The semi-finals are 7 and 9 May and the Finals will be on 11 May. You can stream on Peacock, or hop on a VPN and watch the live feed from Sweden or Denmark or somewhere.
It makes me happy to see songs in their natives languages, but since the rules changed to allow more English songs, we see countries sending them with the assumption that they’ll get more attention from countries other than their own.
The most important rules change to me would be to revert the 2020(?) loosening of recorded vocals restrictions. In the last two or three years we’ve noticed lots of countries where the recorded “background vocals” include the lead part to cover up bad live performances. Heck, I’d even support live instruments too.
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