patrick.net

HeadSet says

The "empty" farmland feeds those high-density cities. Yes, we could have a billion people in the USA if we live hand to mouth and clustered into shacks, but no way that billion people could have a 1st world lifestyle.

Takes about 2 hectares of land to feed one person is what I've heard. That's about 325 by 325 feet. My sister and husband raise their own cows for meat, seems about right. They require a pretty serious amount of land to graze.

I always hear that you can pack all the population into this tiny amount of land - you could, if you wanted to starve the entire population of the world to death - well, they would survive by cannibalism for a little while... if they could find enough drinking water. There's a reason there aren't herds of bears and deer. Herds develop for protection, but they can eat the most awful vegetation and must be nomadic to survive on it. We can't.

richwicks says

Takes about 2 hectares of land to feed one person is what I've heard.

And that is just for food. Now considered the resource use that heats the house, fuels the car, and powers the circuits.

https://notthebee.com/article/nikole-hannah-jones-tried-to-argue-with-a-survivor-of-maos-cultural-revolution-about-american-exceptionalism-and-it-does-not-go-well-for-her

Depends on the protein source.

You can get a shitton of protein and fat from chickens (the fat from eggs) or tilapia out of small spaces. Goats need a little more, but not high quality (the back acre you don't mow or plant but leave wild with trees and shrubs, also they eat ANYTHING from table scraps to an old leather shoe they found in the backyard). Cows need a lot more.

But with a single meat 1200lb cow, you're getting about 500 pounds of usuable meat (that's including some wasteage, going for 85/15 ground beef, more bone-in cuts, but not eating the head cheese or organs, and not the scores of pounds from bone having marrow reduced into bone broth, etc.). That's 125lb/person for a family of 4, or 9lb for the family each week. All from a single cow and assuming modern sensibilities don't like to eat cow organs.

But meat cows were/are generally raised in either poor soils badly suited for general agriculture, or in feed lots these days. In Cool Temperate Europe and North America, cows and goats generally roamed the wastes/wetlands/forested areas to graze, with the best land reserved for plants, fruit trees, and horses. In Montana with hard scrabble soils and tough prairie grass, 4 acres/cow. In Emerald Ireland or New England, closer to 2.5 - 3 acres per cow due to the lush grass.

EDIT: Or Florida. Cows also scale up well, apparently. Having two 10 acre paddocks and keeping them in rotation can allow as much as 1.5 acres/cow. But 2.5 would be the floor if you're on a small acerage.

Source for Meat - butcher:
https://www.meatchris.com/blog/2012/6/1/how-much-meat-will-i-take-home.html

Sunflower oil averages about 25 gallons of Diesel for minimal input/acre (no irrigation, no artificial fertilizer dosing)
https://farm-energy.extension.org/sunflowers-for-biofuel-production/

My estimate reduces the given numbers since I'm assuming less input and yield than on a dedicated, chemically-driven farm.

I refuse to call plant-based Diesel "Biodiesel" since Rudolph Diesel invented the Diesel engine to burn seed oil in the first place.

But we're talking food self-sufficiency, not total self-sufficiency.

Came across it so I thought I'd put that up.

AmericanKulak says

I refuse to call plant-based Diesel "Biodiesel" since Rudolph Diesel invented the Diesel engine to burn seed oil in the first place.

Plants creating oil is a very inefficient way to collect solar energy.

You're better off using solar panels and breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen. There are some algaes that are about 1% efficient in energy conversion, but a crappy solar panel is 10%, and breaking down water to hydrogen and oxygen is 50% efficient, and burning that is 33% efficient. Making it more than 3 times more efficient than the best biological process.

Biofuel is a fine idea, if our population was around, say, 5 million people. In a different time, it was viable, and even then, it would have been limited by access to fertilizer. I don't think it's viable in our time, in fact, I know it's not. If we recycled human waste in efficient way, it would perhaps be doable, but then we'd have to deal with salts in the waste. We'd have to have to consume a LOT LESS salt to do it.

richwicks says

Plants creating oil is a very inefficient way to collect solar energy.

Says the guy typing on a computer connected to a power grid that runs off of fossil fuels.

I’d say plants creating oil, and reproducing themselves to produce offspring that make even more oil is basically the foundation of the ecosystem and by extension the only thing keeping humans upright on this earth. When plants stop making oil and carbohydrates you will see how efficient man made power and nutritional sources are.

PeopleUnited says

richwicks says

Plants creating oil is a very inefficient way to collect solar energy.

Says the guy typing on a computer connected to a power grid that runs off of fossil fuels.

Um, yeah? Of course. We have to run off from fossil fuels, currently. We could (and should) move to thorium. We can improve technology to have supplements in solar, and perhaps we can make better storage, but we're not there yet. It's conceivable that if we change our lifestyles enormously, and we could only make use of energy during the day, and have none (or very little) at night.

PeopleUnited says

I’d say plants creating oil, and reproducing themselves to produce offspring that make even more oil is basically the foundation of the ecosystem and by extension the only thing keeping humans upright on this earth. When plants stop making oil and carbohydrates you will see how efficient man made power and nutritional sources are.

Again, if we radically change our lifestyle. No more foods that are out of season, we need to recycle waste efficiently for fertilizer, eliminate a lot of toxic elements in our society. It would require a radical change.

I really think the way forward is stabilization of the population, structures that are built to be VERY long lasting (like 1000 years), reduced need for transportation, smaller communities but a LOT MORE of them. I don't think most people would want to live like that. I am NOT in favor of people owning nothing and being happy, because only 1/2 of that would be the truth. We're being forced into a new feudalism, which was just an early version of fascism.

If markets are allowed to freely operate, that will solve the problem. Thorium reactors will give us a good 1,000 years and that's a LONG TIME to figure out new solutions.

Thorium reactors are a real thing, they are safe, but we've not had an operating one for like 50 years. They are viable, HOWEVER, they don't produce nuclear weaponry, and the DOE is only interesting in making nuclear weapons.

richwicks says

We could (and should) move to thorium

+1 for MSRs powered by throium.

They do produce a miniscule amount of plutonium, but really, the idea that terrorists are going to somehow gather plutonium from multiple MSRs is silly. Also that plutonium is fantastic energy source for satellites and backup for colonies. There's no reason it can't be periodically collected during maintenance and stored somewhere.

Also, much legacy reactor radioactive waste from traditional reactors can be thrown in an MSR a little at a time and get a second 'burn' out of it, which reduces it's half life, provides power, and generally makes the disposal process much more efficient.

There's no meltdown risk with MSRs since the Flouride Salt core would simply cool and solidify, and if it was too hot it the drop in production would be noticable over a while and no sensors could miss it. You could also put a plug over a concrete-steel reservoir under the reactor, so if it got too hot the plug would melt and the Flouride Salt would simply flow into the reservoir and away from the core, stopping the process. Unlike Traditional Reactors that would crack and emit radiated steam all over the area, failed MSRs would just pool a small amount of radioactive fluid into a chamber beneath it, or worse case in a small area immediately around the facility. The material would then very rapidly solidify after losing contact with the core making cleanup a snap.

If anybody is interested in the back story, Thorium/LSR was developed on behalf of the USAF as an idea to have huge, never landing bombers, and traditional reactors by the USN to power large ships without the need to constantly refuel (ie SSNs and CVNs).

https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/how-white-liberals-are-driving-wokeness

https://tessa.substack.com/p/wokism

Let us talk about wokism.

Let us talk about it like it is, as in, not a whim of a redemption-seeking and perhaps more than a little entitled college kid—but a brain child of the alphabets, an energy that was “genetically engineered” by taking real problems and real hurt feelings that have piled up—and grafting dead-end, anger-inducing talking points and irksome absurdities onto pain. ...

Let us look at wokism as an expression of energy that was carefully engineered to irreparably divide and to appeal to the innocent undernourished souls who have been born into an emotionally starved, consumerist culture—who feel a lack of respect for their soul with their gut—but who are too young, too inexperienced, or perhaps too lazy to go on a journey and do an investigation of who had actually stolen the respect.

A one liner definition? Here it is. Wokism is a deliberate and malicious rerouting of the innate desire for respect. ...

Weaponizing trauma

A wounded person in charge is a dangerous person in charge. And that is exactly the reason why the masters at the top and their servants underneath have designed a strategy to weaponize the wounded and the pissed off against the dignified. It is to keep the dignified in check. It is to level the dignified to the wounded and ensure that regular people take the initiative and keep each other down. Saves a lot of overhead! And yes, there is a lot of complexity and a lot of nuance—no doubt—but the broad brushstroke is just that. It’s a Trojan horse.

“Identifying with ideas” is a dangerous drug

We are not our ideas. We are a lot more than that. And identifying with our ideas is a dangerous drug regardless of what the ideas are. Of course, some ideas are better than others—but the addiction part is the truly dangerous part. The non-addict happily changes his mind when a new understanding shows up. The addict doubles down.

And the psychos at the very top of the society would be powerless if they couldn’t successfully—and continuously—weaponize a combination of material deprivation (“do this or else you’ll die or starve”) and ideological goo. And they weaponize it so successfully—for centuries now—by constantly reshuffling who gets the stinkiest end of their stick. ...

This, by the way, is mostly how the real bad guys have been staying in the driver’s seat for such a long time. It is because every time there is an opportunity for an awakening of massive kindness and new clarity, and new healing, when there is new pain-driven honesty forming in the air, they insert a blinding, anxiety-based, anger-producing narrative—and kill that chance. ...

By the way, “the elites” are not one pile of homogeneous hulk but separate twisted-minded people whose individual ambitions may very well be in conflict with each other—after all, they’ve been poisoning and murdering their own family members left and right!—but their overarching ambition is the same (“take over the world, for ME ME ME ME ME”). And so, they’ve been trying forever to establish their empire. To feed their addiction to power. ...

When it comes to the tyrants, their whole personal dynamic is not about their relationship with the plebs but about their “horizontal” relationships with foreign leaders and—in case of active wars—with whomever who could help foot the bill. As far as the plebs, they don’t care about the little ants as long as they can control them, either by force or by fog. ...

Now, the critical part. What can get in their way? What can hinder their effort of imposing this horrible digital neofeudalism onto the people of the world? What can really-really hinder it?

What can get in their way is if we all start talking to each other and listening to each other’s unique and similar stories of being screwed. If we compare notes. And then ACT with hearts on protecting each other, and with a total dedication to respecting LIFE.

What can get in their way is if we open our hearts and ears to the stories from other families and clans and cultures (especially the ones who were abused at a different point in time and by different mobs). Because if we do, and if we do it with honestly, we will come to the inevitable conclusion that we’ve all been had.

Can you imagine the power of that? Can you imagine the power that will rise against the Great Reset if your regular busy, somewhat sheltered, westerner with classic American values realizes that what is being done to him today (the Great Reset, etc.) is exactly what’s been done to the indigenous, slandered as “savages,” and, earlier, to his own ancestors in Europe—under the auspices of roughly the same elites? ...

Think about this way. Here is analogy that is close to home. Say, you are boiling over how the past three years went (legitimately so, as the past three years have been an insult). Say, you are focused on boiling, and the voicing of your boiling provides some release (again, legitimately so). And so then, you are so pissed off (wounded) that don’t even want to heal from the inside—and you intend to stay pissed off until they change. Because they are wrong. And so you talk exclusively to the ones who think like you and relentlessly SHAME THE COVIDIANS ON THE GROUND. Granted, that feels good. But in terms of general strategy for actual victory of a loving, soulful world, what do you think the practical outcome of anger will be? I am not saying who’s right and who’s wrong about the ideas (you are right). I am talking strictly the practical outcome. If your focus is on yelling vs. healing yourself first and then seeing what’s what, what is the chance of you convincing your “covidian” brother and of standing up together against the real source of the abuse? I think the chance is slim.

https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/why-progressives-cant-accept-progress

Why Progressives Can't Accept Progress
Dissatisfaction is built into their worldview, but they also consume too much media and often profit from change.

... From covid to climate change, from capitalism to the criminal justice system, it has become fashionable among many on the Left to reject good news, a mark of sophistication to deny that improvements have been made in the human condition.1 Today’s prophets of doom and sermonizing pessimists are near-universally of the progressive persuasion, and they walk in the footsteps of many past luminaries, including Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Michel Foucault. ...

It’s one of the many paradoxes of modern psychology that while people tend to view their own lives through rose-colored glasses, confident that they’ll never be impacted by crime or an illness or a layoff or what have you, as soon as they shift focus to society itself, they’re confident that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Public opinion researchers sometimes refer to this peculiar empirical phenomenon as the Optimism Gap. ...

To understand why people might think such a thing, look no further than the mainstream media. What they call “news” is almost always focused on stories about war, climate change, poverty, and of course all manner of things Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy™, including the possible second coming of the Bad Orange Man w/Mean Tweets. It’s not just headlines, either. Articles and essays are often little more than panic porn nowadays. The New York Times and Washington Post are notorious for this, of course, but The Atlantic is in a class all its own, constantly churning out doom and gloom pieces. ...

The best way to capture attention is to incite strong emotions, and the strongest emotions are fear and anxiety. The mainstream media is fully aware of how fragile the national psyche is nowadays, and the nature of human cognition plays right into their hands. ...

It’s been established that liberals consume much more media than conservatives. This matters a great deal, as the more news someone consumes, the more distorted their worldview, if only because of the availability heuristic, a mental shortcut that leads people to estimate the frequency, probability, or prevalence of an event or thing based on how easily it comes to mind. The more readily someone is able to recall something, the more likely they are to overestimate its preponderance.

Availability errors abound in everyday life. People are known to stay out of the water after watching Jaws or reading about a shark attack. Plane crashes occur far less often than car crashes, but the former are always covered in the news, which is a big reason why more people are afraid of flying than driving. When asked in a survey, folks consistently rank tornadoes as a more common cause of death than asthma, even though asthma kills 70x more people. ...

But while there are many reasons why folks might be prone to seeing the world through a more negative lens, the new progressive religion of the Left is an entirely different matter. Adherents know nothing but dissatisfaction, and they often engage in a game of one-upmanship in which pessimism is equated with moral seriousness.

The refusal to entertain the possibility that things have improved is literally built into their worldview, which is predicated on the notion that the present must always be compared to unrealized and often unattainable standards (“End racism!”) that are kept intentionally vague and rarely delineated so as to always have a reason to be dissatisfied with the status quo. ...

People are rewarded for living in a bubble where delusion is a source of pride. You can spew nonsense that’s not based on any facts and you won’t even be challenged, lest the challenge itself be conflated with racism or sexism or whatever. Having a warped view of reality leads to policies that are warped, like all-black dorm rooms, along with the propagation of other idiocies such as the notion that “whiteness” is a malady and white people are irredeemable. ...

On all things trans-rights and whether or not it’s appropriate to teach minors about gender fluidity, for example, there’s only one acceptable position: Full approval, or else. If Becky Sue down the street doesn’t want her daughter sharing a locker room with a biological male, that’s because she’s a Literal Fascist™, an atavistic troglodyte who must either submit to the Good Side™ or run the risk of ostracization, loss of employment, and public pillorying at the hands of the digital mob.

The theory seems to be that the best way to make change in America is by coercion and threat and impugning the motives of anyone who questions the Left’s goals or tactics. The idea is that people will realize they’ll pay a high social price for opposing the latest agenda, shut up about whatever issues they may have, and just get with the program.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that America has become increasingly polarized since progressivism became the new face of the Left, and that politics has turned into a zero-sum game in which absolute truth supersedes the rights of those who fail to get in line. Progressives have ascertained the perfect wisdom of what is noble and good; anything else is, a priori, immoral, while nuance, critique, and skepticism are no less than blasphemous. An ideology as repressive as this, one with an allergy to acknowledging societal advantages, is self-defeating. ...

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-jewish-american-dilemma/

“In a world that is not conforming to the narrative of continuous Progress, the response from self-declared progressives has been to try to rewrite our past into the multicultural utopia that they wish to see realised. This will not end well. The war on reality cannot be won.” — Luke Dodson

Jewish Americans need to STFU about multi cult and help out. Those who don't, send their Brooklyn Bolshevik asses to Israel and sign them up for Gaza Patrol duty the moment they land at Ben Gurion.