There’s a certain engineering mentality that would be attracted to Soylent, a milkshake-like product that supposedly will take away the crushing burden of choosing and preparing one’s food. I don’t understand that mentality, but if you are interested, Lee Hutchinson at Ars is eating a week’s worth of the gruel-like porridge, or porridge-like gruel.
Now if we could just take away the fuss and bother of fucking, shitting, pissing and sleeping, wouldn’t life be grand?
ruemara
Erm, is this a complex prank? Who, with a modicum of pop culture knowledge, would create a shake named “Soylent”?
Ben Cisco
Uh huh.
Ben Cisco
@ruemara: Republicans?
Ash Can
@ruemara: This. The whole thing positively reeks of hoax.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
There have been times, under tight deadlines, when I have largely subsisted on Boost High Protein.
And yes, I went to college, and later worked, with guys who would have loved it as an every meal thing. “It’s just fuel, why waste time dressing it up?”
mistermix
As far as I can tell this is real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)
BGinCHI
It will never replace ramen noodles.
jamick6000
Soylent is the dumbest thing ever. The people who make it are saying it’s a solution for world hunger. The problem is it’s much more expensive than grains, cereals, beans, etc.
TaMara (BHF)
Oh, hell, no.
NotMax
Everything old is new again.
First appeared on store shelves in 1964.
Robert
It’s real and seems incredibly stupid. This story blew up in the tech blogosphere a few months ago. I read a few pages of the creator’s blog and washed my hands of it.
raven
Colonscopy prep.
aimai
@raven: Too thick. But I think you are on the right track.
Eric S.
@ruemara: I work with a guy in his 40s, like myself and many others on our team, and he doesn’t get a single pop culture reference from the 70s through the 90s. When we have production problems with various systems we call a bat phone to get the admin in charge. He doesn’t have a clue about the origin of “bat phone.”
He’ll tell you all about current reality shows though.
ruemara
@Eric S.: Western Civ. Such a sad decline.
@Ben Cisco: Oh, those are just prehistoric Morlocks.
raven
@aimai: I’m done for another three years!
dmsilev
Of course it’s not people. Soylent Beige is perfectly fine.
Shakezula
This was debunked ages ago. Very clever social experiment though.
Zifnab
@ruemara:
Dude, maybe brush up on your history. It’s (sadly) never been better.
magurakurin
It would be useful for sports. If it really had high calories, I would drink one before I went for a surf on the dawn patrol. It’s kind of hard to choke down enough calories during the 4am drive to the reef. And since the reef is a kilometer offshore, a guy needs a fair amount of calories just to get there. Ditto for some longer rock climbs and alpine climbing routes.
but it looks kind of pricy and the taste would have to be a lot better than the gop at the top looks to be.
And I used to drink Carnation Instant Breakfast in High School. It is basically just Nestle Quick Chocolate milk with a few vitamins tossed in.
Just Jake
And here I thought all the cool kids were simply swapping out their meals with speed.
The Red Pen
@dmsilev:
SOYLENT BEIGE IS MADE OF PUPPIES! IT’S PUPPIES!
OT, I decided to track down the Freeper response to the “25 black people not seated in restaurant because they scared a white patron,” and it was worse than I expected. I expected a lot of whitesplanin’ and accusations of “playing the race card,” but no, it’s just raw racism.
Don’t click on that link if you suffer from high blood pressure.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Pretty much. This post-40 having to get up in the night to pee thing is getting really fucking old.
magurakurin
@Zifnab:
Yeah, you don’t have to go too far back to find a year shittier than 2013. For example it would really suck to wake up in a trench in Flanders in 1916 or in Stalingrad in the late fall of 1942. And the whole 19th century is really just a putrid wash of filthy waste of the emerging Industrial Age. Hell, 2003 was way, way shittier.
NotMax
@</a
Calls to mind the "Who's Ann Miller?" moment from this scene from Jeffrey.
magurakurin
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
It’s the little dribbles that want to come out in my pants afterwards these days that are pissing me off. Will Soylent help with that?
MikeJ
It’s made out of clowns. It tastes funny.
kc
The faces on that Soylent website are scary.
NotMax
Fixing #22. Postus Prematuris.
@Eric. S.
Calls to mind the Who’s Ann Miller?” moment from this scene from Jeffrey.
Mark B.
@The Red Pen:I followed your link and I’m sorry I did. I read a few posts about how Negroes (seriously, people use that word?) are bad tippers and I was done. I’m sure that’s somewhat true from their perspective. If you’re a racist waitperson, it’s likely that Black patrons are going to give you poor tips. It’s not like it’s hard to figure out or anything.
Ben Cisco
@MikeJ: BWAHAAHAA!
srv
For some reason, a lot of geeks think a lot about their colon, while folks like Adam Corolla want play dough shape inserts for their ass.
I’m sure Freud had something to say about all of this.
SFAW
@Mark B.:
Which, of course, makes the darkies the REAL racists.
priscianus jr
Some people live to eat, others eat to live. You are definitely in the first group. This is for the second group.
greennotGreen
If Soylent tastes good, it could be a boon to people who have difficulty ingesting or digesting food. And it wouldn’t have to taste especially wonderful to beat Ensure.
Persia
@NotMax: I actually drank a ton of these when I first got braces and could not stand the thought of chewing.
It sucked out loud. The worst thing was my stomach refused to believe that shit was actually food and I was starving half the time no matter how much of the shit I drank. I’ve worked very, very hard to keep my teeth since.
ruemara
@Zifnab: Not a dude and that’s just your damned opinion. I have mine.
SFAW
Anybody notice the line in the bio page “We put a lot of ourselves into this product.”
@The Red Pen:
You are an extremely evil person, and FSM will smite you with one of its noddle-y appendages.
@TaMara (BHF):
So, are you ready to make the transition from “Food Goddess” to “Soylent Goddess”? It will certainly make it a lot easier for you to post a recipe
1) Pour two cups of Soylent into an appropriate vessel
2) You’re done!
kindness
At least they didn’t call it Soylet….Soylet Green.
Belafon
OT: Skip this if you don’t want to read someone commiserating.
It’s odd how this feels like mourning, rather than being happy that my oldest son is off at college. We dropped him off saturday, and then came home so that we could get the other two ready for school. Yesterday, at work, I was nearly a wreck, and had to get out of my work area a few times, some involving tears.
We skyped last night, and that helped some, but has the morning has gone on, thoughts of him just keep creeping back into my head. Even as a dad, all I can think right now is “Did I hug him enough?”
When he was four, I check on him one night, and he was frantically trying to hang a framed poster back up on a wall. I helped him put it up, and then held him and told him that he could always come to us when something like that happens. But that has generally been a problem his whole life, telling us when things are wrong. I just wonder if I could have done it better.
Part of me knows, though, that I can’t change that and I can only let him know that I am here for him. And the other part of me knows that I, selfishly, want him here for me.
It also doesn’t help that there’s not really anyone here at work I can talk to about it.
drew42
There goes mistermix again — someone has an interesting idea, goes through the actual effort of developing it, and he takes cheap shots. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few uses:
1. First-World use: For people who travel a lot. I have a friend keeps a half-trunk’s worth of Ensure in her car, because she hates stopping at fast food or diners. Note, she is a foodie — loves to cook, and cooks awesome food.
2. Third-World use: Food production is a huge problem in developing nations, and is going to get much worse soon. Soylent may (or may not) be nasty, but stuff like this might become the only option for billions of people. I’m assuming they can get the production costs way down over time.
3. All-World use: People with digestive problems.
Bob
@NotMax:
Heh, indeed! When I was in college, and mostly destitute, I’d make due with the stuff. Also, too, popcorn.
Linda
Shut up, please. Because I know people exactly that lazy.
Seriously, it could be emergency food for starving people in disaster situations.
Xecky Gilchrist
@NotMax: Everything old is new again. First appeared on store shelves in 1964.
And so did the OP’s slippery-slope snark about it!
NotMax
Speaking of, um, unfortunate product names….
SFAW
@Linda:
Reasonable point, but I don’t think the company is focused much in that direction. Might be wrong – I didn’t read their full promo lit..
Woodrowfan
@raven: that’s a good selling point., who doesn’t remember their colonoscopy fondly?
Pongo
Sounds like Isagenix and other ‘miracle’ shake products sold as MLM scams to gullible people. My sister is on her third such scam now (Shaklee and ‘Magic’ Xocai Chocolate being the first two) and is always sharing ‘peer-reviewed, independent studies’ (done in Isagenix labs, so this must be a new definition of independent) that show how effective a diet using only these shakes is at promoting healthy weight loss. Of course, the diet plan consists of 1500 calories and ANY diet with similar calorie restrictions would result in weight loss, but not ‘healthy’ weight loss, I guess.
Now if someone could just come up with a cure for ‘squishy forehead syndrome,’ a tragic condition resulting from repeatedly hitting one’s head against the wall over these seemingly endless stupid scams.
The Red Pen
@Belafon:
Well, you have experienced an actual loss.
You don’t have a boy anymore, but you did gain a young man in the bargain, so you’ve got that going for you.
The Red Pen
@Linda:
This brings me to something that’s been bothering me for years: why aren’t all the Jedis as fat as Jabba the Hutt? If you could just use the Force to get another bag of Cheetos, rather than getting off the couch and moving, why wouldn’t you?
Woodrowfan
@Belafon: I teach college and just finished my first class full of freshmen. The boys are mostly checking out the girls (and visa versa) so I’m sure he’s fine. He’s just getting his sea-legs for college…
NotMax
@The Red Pen
Little known, but junk foods are immune to the Force. It flows right through the empty calories.
Roger Moore
@Woodrowfan:
I know this is meant as snark, but there are apparently people who get sexual gratification from receiving colonoscopies. They might enjoy the stuff.
Amir Khalid
From what the Wikipedia article says, it’s cheaper than medical food for intravenous feeding, which it isn’t meant to compete with, but for poor people real food is still cheaper. There can’t be that big a market for people who can afford real food but couldn’t be arsed to eat it, and the name sucks. Methinks this product is not ready for prime time.
GregB
@The Red Pen:
Go over to Drudge and read the left hand column. White America is under attack. The prick wants a race war.
Someone should tell him that he’s in the minority in South Florida.
Linda Featheringill
@The Red Pen:
the one threatened white customer:
I’ve avoided that whole news article. Because of cowardice. But really, what the hell?
Cris (without an H)
Others live to be eaten.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Really did NOT need to know that.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Well, it’s pronounced “oh-rahnj-ee-na”, not “oh-rahnj-eye-na”. At least that was the pronunciation when they advertised it in Malaysia a generation ago.
Belafon
@The Red Pen: Yeah, hopefully, I can start making myself look at it that way.
MomSense
I don’t know why but I started humming the Streisand song “people who need people” except I was substituting “people who eat people are the yuckiest people in the world”.
Gin & Tonic
@Woodrowfan: I teach college … (and visa versa)
I hope you don’t teach English.
Redshirt
You Cudlips cannot see the future.
Let me tell you: The future is living in sealed bubbles on the surface of the Moon and Mars, or in vast cargo ships traveling to and from the asteroid belt. There will be little space or energy for regular food in the future.
Instead, we shall all live on a combination of shakes, pills, and infusions. Learn to love it now and adjust to our space-based future more easily.
The Red Pen
@Linda Featheringill: I have to say that the restaurant chain seems to be handling this the best they can. A Daily Kos diarist called a random “Wild Wings Cafe” in Charleston. It was the wrong location, but the manager said that he was really disturbed by the report and that corporate PR had told everyone not to discuss it — it seems like there was a freakout at HQ.
Chicken wings are one of the mid-market restaurant segments where there is growth these days, but there’s too much competition to survive being labelled the “whites only place for wings.” I can imagine that they are in full damage-control mode. I hope it’s backed by a sincere belief that racism is wrong.
catclub
@magurakurin: ” pissing me off.” Pun intended.
Pissing, not quite pissing off, is what is pissing you and me off.
catclub
@Gin & Tonic: Or Latin. How about international travel?
SFAW
@Redshirt:
No, the future is living in silos stuck into the ground, going about 150-floors-worth into the earth. Food might be the same as what you suggest, however.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Doesn’t stop me from sniggering like a 7th grader whenever I see it in the store.
PurpleGirl
I took a look at the promo materials and at one guy’s blog. They are touting a personalization for individual needs, but the general formula has a lot of carbohydrates in it. I wonder if they could make one that was mostly or all protein for diabetics who don’t want carbohydrates of any sort.
catclub
Doesn’t someone tell us to eat the rich. The rich often have a nice tan color.
Seanly
@Eric S.:
Was he raised in Vault 13? I’m 45 and almost of my cultural references are from the 70’s through 90’s with a smattering of 60’s TV shows that were syndicated in the 70’s like Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island & Batman.
The other option is that he didn’t grow up in the US. I dated a woman who was a true anchor baby – she was born in the US, but was raised in Hong Kong until her parents immigrated. Despite going to college in the US, she got zero cultural references. It was weird trying to explain baseball from the ground up.
Botsplainer
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Twice. I go twice.
I’ve been toying with the idea of a nightly catheter, just because I hate having to get out of bed in the cold of the night.
Southern Beale
Does it come in GREEN???? And WHERE’S MY SOMA!!!
scav
Actually, name rather made me assume they’re hoping for exactly the ironic hip nerdster demographic with their latest inevitable nutrition drink, thick variant. It’ll go next to the flavored low-gluten! energized! water in the stuffed cupboard.
SFAW
@NotMax:
You’re probably the kind of guy who, when a comely lass says “My doctor told me I have acute angina,” you respond “Yeah, and your ass is pretty nice, too.”
[Sorry for the (extremely) old one.]
Southern Beale
@greennotGreen:
There’s already something for those people, it’s called Ensure. My mother lived on it for two years after her stroke made it impossible for her to chew her food.
ruemara
@The Red Pen: Don’t speak heresy against the Jedi. We don’t eat Cheetos, we meditate, practice lightsaber and save the world. No time for Cheetos!
NotMax
@SFAW
Actually, more the kind who would respond “It never hurts to get a second opinion.”
/rimshot
MattF
I suppose the novelty here is in teh marketing. Otherwise, go ahead, torture yourselves. You will have to pry chocolate from my cold, dead hands.
Eric U.
@Southern Beale: I was amused to find out that there is a drug called SOMA. I hope it was named by someone with a sense of humor
@Roger Moore: first time I had it done, the colonoscopy itself was meh, but let’s just say I now understand why valium is abused. Next time they gave me some kind of narcotic, the kind where they say “count down from 30 and see how far you get before you black out.” Of course, I got to 28 or so.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@ruemara: Cheddar monks?
NotMax
@MattF
Tuck this link away in case of zombification.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Thanks, I hadn’t heard that one before. Will have to keep it in mind. (Mrs. SFAW, on the other hand, were she to register an opinion, would probably roll her eyes.)
Comrade Mary
@ruemara: I think it is actually deliberately targeted at people with a modicum or more of pop culture knowledge.
Also, fixies. Beards. You’re welcome.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
No, the future is much like the present, except longer.
sherparick
@drew42: Okay, how many people here have watched “Soylent Green.” Obviously, not the inventor of this product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
Is it good to say that I saw its theatrical release?
As for the quality of Western Civilization, I just finished reading “The Birth of the West – the 9th and 10th Centuries.” One was considered “old” by age 30 in post Charlemagne Europe. That puts things in perspective.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Lemmy Kilmister.
The Red Pen
@Seanly: Another option is that someone was, for some reason, shielded from pop culture by parents/guardians.
In the case of my wife, she was under the care of her German-immigrant grandparents. The decided to let her watch the crappy American Saturday morning TV shows up until a particular “History Rock” short came on. No, it wasn’t “I’m just a Bill.” It was the one about the US western expansion called, “Elbow Room.”
I didn’t know this until she told me the story, but Hitler’s invasion of neighboring countries (particularly Poland) was due to Germany’s stated need for “Lebensraum.” This literally means “liferoom,” but is usually translated as “elbow room.” Her grandparents left Germany in the 1930’s because Grandpa was a Socialist Catholic and Grandma was a Jew, so when they saw this, they had a fit and refused to let their grand-daughter watch anymore “Nazi American TV.” As a result, she missed a lot of pop culture she would normally share with her cohort.
Having learned the sub rosa meaning of “Elbow Room,” I have to believe that this episode was a musical middle-finger to the network who probably asked, “Can you do one about America’s western expansion, without mentioning any of that slaughtering-the-Indians stuff or the ‘Trail of Tears’? K’thx.”
Jockey Full of Malbec
Ars was a really good technical magazine. Once.
KCIvey
I’d be happy to, er, eliminate two of the four activities in the last sentence. Doing away with some sleep would be good too. This is all assuming some method that magically has no ill effects.
Southern Beale
@Botsplainer:
As someone who gets up to pee at least three times a night, a catheter sounds like an awesome idea.
:-)
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Roger Moore:
The future will be like having bees living in your head.
giterdone
Yawn…another childishly simplistic masturbation post on the complexities of our world and military action as if it was a game of checkers or something.
And as to wr0ng way Coles latest wet kiss to Greenwald. Nuff said, once a Republican, always a person who cannot think for themselves.
Belafon
@giterdone: I think you’re in the wrong thread. Also, you need to add some more stuff to your random comment generator so it doesn’t sound like your other posts.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
“I think there’s a good future in it.”
“I say live it, or live with it!”
OK, back to the shadows, again, for me.
The Red Pen
@giterdone: Thank you for consplaining that to us.
Parrotlover77
OT: Fantasy Football. Who is interested? I want to run a BJ league again. The past few years have been a blast. I’m sure there are others who want to play or run a league. I created a page on my website to aggregate all the BJ-themed leagues. Not much time left, so join or create a league today! http://www.avianwaves.com/BJFL.aspx
Usually they fill up fast, so don’t be shy about commishing. It’s an easy job.
If a FPer could bump, I’d sincerely appreciate it. Otherwise I’ll just hit some open threads over the next few days.
SFAW
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Damn! Beat me to it!
SFAW
@giterdone:
Absolutely! Because persons who spout off “productivity” aphorisms like “git ‘er done” are such deep thinkers.
Linnaeus
Living on this would make using the toilet…interesting. Or it seems to me.
NotMax
@Higgs Boson’s Mate
Whereas the past was living with WASPs at the head.
different-church-lady
Just read the comments at the Lee Hutchinson article: this isn’t a prank, it’s a crank mining the crowd-sourcing fad.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
OFF TOPIC
Time to jump on board the Impeach Hillary 2017 bandwagon kids
http://www.impeachmadampresident.com/
catclub
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I already have tinnitus.
different-church-lady
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I say live it or live with it.
hrumpole
1. Didn’t they drink this in the Matrix?
2. When are they coming out with Soylent “Green”? (Marketing fail).
Yatsuno
@giterdone: Once a herp de Durf, always a herp de Durf. Keep it up though, I’m sure one of these days you’ll shame him into not posting anymore!*
*or not.
different-church-lady
@drew42:
From the Soylent website:
That’s the shit that’s being mocked, not the “interesting idea”.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
Do you also live on *DUTCH ELM* street, in bee-yoo-tee-ful *THIS AREA*?
chopper
with you on the middle two.
The Red Pen
Back on topic: does anyone know why the nutrient/soporific/soylent drink in New Seoul in The Cloud Atlas is called “soap”?
chopper
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
and those will be the only bees left.
scav
@Yatsuno: The collected creative works of durf might someday accumulate to a fine postage stamp if he keeps at it like this. Good to see someome maximizing what potential they have.
Felonius Monk
I am guessing that the creators of this stuff realized that they could not subsist on Coca-Cola and Cheetohs forever and were too lazy to go to McDonald’s. This has the strong smell of geekademia. It probably won’t be pretty when the human body revolts from a steady diet of this concoction.
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
Seen a lot of revoltin’ bodies in my day, young ‘un.
Redshirt
Furthermore, as studies of The Greys have taught us, the future of human evolution is a diminution of the body and the expansion of the brain/head. Shrinking the digestive track is the way this will happen (along with cybernetic implants) and thus, Soylent Green is on the right track.
Shrink your intestines! Free your mind!
Felonius Monk
@SFAW:
Thanks for the “young ‘un” attribute. Nobody has called me young since I was in my early 20’s — some 45 years ago. You have made my day.
rikyrah
Oprah, Whitaker, Foxx to Join Obama for ‘March on Washington’ Events
August 27, 2013 by EURpublisher02 Leave a Comment
Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker will join President Barack Obama and former chief executives Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter at the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most memorable moments — the March on Washington.
Georgia Representative John Lewis, now one of the Democrats’ congressional elders but then an aide to King, will address the commemoration as he did the original march.
Soledad O’Brien and Hill Harper will host the anniversary celebration, whose title is “Let Freedom Ring.”
http://www.eurweb.com/2013/08/oprah-whitaker-foxx-to-join-obama-for-march-on-washington-events/
giterdone
@Belafon: Wholy fuck, someone finally figured it out.
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
Well, you’re welcome, but, in my own defense, you look a lot younger.
ETA: And, besides, there’s only ONE old fart what comments here.
rikyrah
August 27, 2013 06:00 AM
Ronald Reagan: Martin Luther King had It Coming
By John Amato
Rick Perlstein gave Steve Kornacki a real insight into the way Conservatives thought about Martin Luther King back in his day. And after listening to Laura Ingraham’s use of gun shot sound to denigrate Rep. John Lewis’ speech, I think those sentiments still resonate today with most conservatives today.
For some real historical context, this discussion on Up with Steve Kornacki this week-end is a must see. In the first segment, Rick Perlstein draws attention to St Ronnie of wingnuts’ comments after King’s assassination:
Pretty sure we wouldn’t hear that on Fox News of 1965 or 2013 either.
Nice one St. Ronnie, there isn’t a black issue that he didn’t race bait in his career.
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/ronald-reagan-martin-luther-king-had-it
MikeJ
@rikyrah: MLK was only a socialist when the Republicans aren’t trying to claim he was conservative.
rikyrah
Laura Ingraham Plays Gunfire Sounds During John Lewis’ Washington March Speech.
Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday railed about the commemoration ceremonies for the 50th anniversary of civil rights March on Washington, and then interrupted a recording of Rep. John Lewis’ (D-GA) speech with the sound of gunfire.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/laura-ingraham-plays-gunfire-sounds-during-j
rikyrah
Obamacare divides GOP against itself
By Steve Benen
Tue Aug 27, 2013 10:11 AM EDT.
A few months ago, Noam Scheiber argued that the Affordable Care Act is quietly “killing” the Republican Party. The GOP’s “obsession” with the heath care law, he argued, may very well be “the party’s undoing.”
Three months later, that analysis looks quite sound.
The Senate Conservatives Fund launched this radio ad yesterday, blasting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for, as the far-right group put it, failing to “stand up to President Obama and join conservatives in pledging to oppose funding for the implementation of Obamacare.”
In other words, Flake doesn’t want a government shutdown, so the right is going after him. In all, the Senate Conservatives Fund, created to counteract Karl Rove’s project to nominate more electable Republican candidates in GOP primaries, is currently running attack ads against seven senators. All seven are Republicans.
Also yesterday, a far-right outfit called the Madison Project began its own ad campaign in Kentucky, targeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Would a self-proclaimed conservative ‘leader’ be undermining the conservative effort to defund Obamacare in Washington?” the narrator says in the spot. “Absolutely not. But that is exactly what Mitch McConnell is up to now.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/27/20213517-obamacare-divides-gop-against-itself?lite
? Martin
This is a grift to the Glenn Beck/doomsday preppers. They’ll fill their basement with this shit to they can bunker in when the Obamacare stormtroopers come to give the vaccines and take their guns. That’s market #1. From there they might go after something legitimate, but it’s basically a free market for them to take as seed money.
LanceThruster
There’s been plenty of times that I would have appreciated a Jetson’s-style food pill.
drew42
@different-church-lady:
That was one half-sentence out of a five paragraph summary of its purpose. And that half-sentence represents, by far, the least interesting of the uses/benefits they claim.
mistermix focused on that, in an effort to trash the entire endeavor. Why? I didn’t give any money to this project, but I don’t see the need to shit all over it.
The Red Pen
@MikeJ: Obama said that MLK would have liked Obamacare. Actual Freeper comment on the story:
rikyrah
‘A monopoly on stupid comments’
By Steve Benen
Tue Aug 27, 2013 10:54 AM EDT.
As the nation’s attention turns to the 50th anniversary of the March of Washington, Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee are at least making an effort to show the public the party takes race, diversity, and civil rights seriously. Whether these efforts have merit is a separate question.
Keli Goff reports this morning that Priebus took questions from a handful of African-American journalists following an official RNC luncheon yesterday, and Goff asked the party leader an interesting question.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/27/20213917-a-monopoly-on-stupid-comments?lite
? Martin
Here’s a question nobody in the NSA debate has bothered to ask:
If the Turkish government requests information on a US citizen, does Facebook comply with that? They have servers all over the world, so what jurisdiction applies? Turkeys because they’re requesting? The US because we live here and FB is headquartered here? If the data is on a server in France, would it be France? If the data is mirrored in multiple places (as it often is) can they choose the jurisdiction from among those?
Belafon
@rikyrah: Once again, Obama wasn’t praising Reagan for what he had accomplished, only pointing out that his presidency had changed the direction of the country. Obamacare isn’t going to fix everything about healthcare, but it will get more people better coverage, and it will change the direction of the country.
different-church-lady
@drew42: You got the idea he was trashing the whole endeavor where?
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Boy, when the Republicans decide to eat their own, they don’t mess around with this Soylent stuff; they go straight for raw
human heartconservative spleen.MikeJ
@? Martin: American companies who wish to do business in any particular country will turn over anything on anybody that a government asks for.
I’m old enough to remember when people thought the internet would make government prying harder because a company could simply say, “we don’t have any physical presence there.” There are too many things a government can do to make it hard on someone who is more interested in making another $100 billion than they are in their users.
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
As somebody has said, if you aren’t paying for the service, you’re the product, not the customer. Facebook, et. al. are more than happy to sell your information to private companies. There’s no reason you should expect them to be any better at protecting your privacy when faced with a court order.
drew42
@different-church-lady:
From his post, in its entirety:
Other than the back-handed: “There’s a certain engineering mentality that would be attracted to Soylent…” (which is more of a dig at engineers than anything nice about the product) which part do you see as not trashing it?
different-church-lady
@drew42: Yeah, I see what you’re saying: the second time through I completely picked up on the “feeding the hungry is a sucky idea” subtext. All I had to do was read past all the sentences that focused exclusively on the weird Vulcan-like cultural mindset aspects about food being a big waste of a person’s quality thinkin’-time.
Gravenstone
@Belafon: Derf has always been about simple repetition. He seems to glom onto a catchphrase for a given personna (between bannings) and just beat it into the ground.
Lymie
@Belafon:
Totally sympathize. We had an instant empty nest last year when we dropped #1 son at college and then #1 daughter at boarding school. Lots of tears.
This past Sunday #1 son left for his sophmore year at college. I shed no tears, but have serious pangs of feeling forlorn. Did I hug him enough? It ties into my aging as well and all the depressing thoughts that go with that.
Gravenstone
@The Red Pen: Haven’t read the book/seen the movie, but perhaps it stems from a perversion of an old adage we had to learn in HS Spanish; “sopa isn’t soap and ropa isn’t rope” (and I’ve managed to forget the last refrain in the intervening decades). Anyway, long meandering way to say maybe its an intentional perversion of “soup”.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Well, Facebook does have to strike a balance there. The product they’re selling is your data, and right now they’re getting that for free without working very hard. If that product goes away because the users get pissed off, then they can’t sell it any more. Either way, the data in question is critical to the business model. They’ll push back more than say a GM would, whose user data is completely orthogonal to their business. Nobody is going to stop buying their cars if they give that data away, so what’s their incentive to push back?
shelly
Remember when we were eventually going to being living on pills? (And wearing capes and having our own jet packs..)
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@NotMax:
I like my vagina…
amy c
Be as condescending as you feel you need to be about this. But I am not ashamed to admit, I hope it’s readily available soon. I’ve got a lifetime of disordered eating behind me, and while I appreciate that food consumption is an unmitigated positive for those who have never lived the particular hell of an eating disorder, for me food is stress. Even a lovely gourmet meal is stress. Am I eating too much? Not enough? The wrong things? The wrong time? Will I shorten my life if I eat this? Will I shorten my life if I don’t? And it’s all day every day everywhere. It’s exhausting.
Food is a prison. I see I lot of potential enjoyment in being free of it.
This does not preclude my enjoyment of a good fuck, incidentally. Jesus.
The Red Pen
@Gravenstone: That’s a good theory. I haven’t seen anything to the contrary.
Your adage reminds me of this one time I observed an idiot in a Mexican restaurant demanding, “manteca.” Both the waitstaff and I suggested that what she wanted was “mantequilla” and not “manteca”. Finally, everyone gave up trying to argue with her, so the waitress brought her some lard.
She looks at it with distress and said, “I wanted butter!”
Also funny: people who think that since butter in French is “beurre,” then butter in Spanish must be “burro.”
rikyrah
Kremlin ‘helped Snowden from start’
by: Ben Hoyle
From: The Times
August 27, 2013 10:33AM
THE Kremlin became involved with Edward Snowden’s attempt to evade US justice earlier than previously thought and was assisting the information leaker before he flew to Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported.
According to the story in Kommersant, a pro-Kremlin broadsheet, Mr Snowden contacted Russian officials in June, shortly after he fled the US.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/kremlin-helped-snowden-from-start/story-fnb64oi6-1226704837725
Eric U.
@rikyrah: this is only because holding a noose fails on the radio. I have never figured out why anyone with a skin color duskier than the goths I knew in high school would vote republican.
Shakezula
@rikyrah: Ingram is one of many people who is directly responsible for the turn out at the March. Of course she’s small fry compared to the elected officials who have beaten their dog whistles into fog horns.
President Obama is scheduled to give a speech at the event tomorrow. We may well see peak wingnut.
C.S.Strowbridge
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Same here. There are times when I really busy I don’t have time to cook. It’s eat out, which is expensive and unhealthy, or eat some prepared meals, which is also expensive and unhealthy. I’m thinking of grabbing something like this for those days. I wouldn’t eat it all of the time, but it would be a nice option.
PurpleGirl
@amy c: Right now the stuff can only be bought from the company and orders made now will not be filled until December 2013. Go to the promo link and see their explanation of the reasons for this. It doesn’t look like this stuff will be available generally for some time.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Sure, but the users have already signed away their data when they signed up for Facebook (or Google, etc.). There’s no particular reason to think the people who are freaking out about the government getting its hands on it are anything more than a small, disgruntled minority. If there’s a choice between pissing off a small minority and pissing off a government with the power to shut down their operations in a whole country, there’s no serious question about which way they’re going to choose.
fuckwit
OT, but I guess medical insurance is so broken in this country, that people have resorted to this: http://www.giveforward.com/
BruceFromOhio
@Belafon: There with you in spirit. My oldest is a sophomore thisyear, so the edge has worn off, though not completely. Here’s what I did (and still do somewhat):
– Your kid is in college. That’s a feat! It means she/he made it through high school with enough moxie to clear the next hurdle, getting into college. You helped with that. Way to go!
– Your kid is on the way to being a self-sufficient adult. That’s the outcome of decent parenting, and it sets your kid(s) up for life. This is a good thing.
– You get used to the empty spaces. Not right away, it takes a little while. Guess what? He/she is probably feeling it too. It means you are a family, because families feel the empty spaces. In a backhanded way, this is also a good thing.
– DO NOT HOVER. You push the youngling out of the nest so she/he can learn to fly. OK, you pushed, now get of the way. Answer when called, and keep calls you initiate to as small a minimum as possible.
– EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE. Your kid will be fine. You will be fine. Things worth doing are always difficult.
Even though your immediate colleagues may not be much support, trust that you are in good company.
? Martin
@Roger Moore:
I’m not one to give Google credit too easily but much to their credit, Google chose the users. So did Facebook and Twitter. They’re all blocked in China and China is no small market. And they’re all services that are highly dependent on user data.
BruceFromOhio
@amy c: Oh, well said.
Misterpuff
Of course, its just Soylent.
If it was Green, then it’d be some eco-plot to take away your freedom to eat people.
Lymie
@BruceFromOhio: Excellent advice.
celiadexter
From looking briefly at the perspicacious comments above, it’s obvious I’m not the only one who thinks this is, ahem, not real. I realize that movie is 40 years old — but still…
pseudonymous in nc
Beige food product. It’s basically the autistic spectrum disorder diet, isn’t it? No weird textures, no weird colours, no need to go out and shop, no need to cook.
@drew42:
And you don’t see those claims as post facto justification for making Beige Food Product? If they were honest, they’d mention that there might be benefits there:
sm*t cl*de
No-one ever recognises Sam Beckett’s priority.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rRl7piJ9LA4/UVJxC6c86JI/AAAAAAAAMD8/oi46ZXRF1Ho/s400/watt.PNG
lojasmo
@The Red Pen:
Ted & Helen bots? A whole comment section full of them? Strange.
soylentH
I’m pretty sure mistermix is spot on here. Spock dudes aren’t purely rational consciousness fettered by meat constructs that science will eventually free them of. The sooner they realize they have bodies with irrational feelings and orifices that need tending the less we’ll have to deal with the fallout of their furious denial and sublimation of these needs.
People with specific disorders about food are something else, of course.
Visceral
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Man, I’m not even 30 and this is exactly how I feel. Anything to shorten the list of crap I have to do every day.
@pseudonymous in nc:
I have to admit I laughed it this. Sounds right up my alley, though.
lojasmo
@catclub:
Funny thing. I deposited the ashes of my mother and grand mother in the lake on which our family owns land. One was very tan, one was very tan-gray.
Age? Who knows?
lojasmo
@SFAW:
As a cardiology nurse of ten years (and formerly an ER nurse) I have never heard the term “acute angina” mostly because angina is stable, unstable, atypical, or accelerating.
ChristianPinko
I want to start my own business making Soylent, for the one and only reason that I want to call my product I Can’t Believe It’s Not People.