RoyalHenOil's recent activity
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Comment on Seedless blackberries and cherries that grow on bushes vie to be the future of food in ~food
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Comment on Seedless blackberries and cherries that grow on bushes vie to be the future of food in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentSo the problem with vertical farming is that there's a limited amount of sunlight per acre, which means there's a maximum amount of sugar/calories that can be produced on a given block of land. If...So the problem with vertical farming is that there's a limited amount of sunlight per acre, which means there's a maximum amount of sugar/calories that can be produced on a given block of land. If you're growing in natural light, vertical farming is not a space savings; you're just building an expensive structure that casts a shadow behind it, so you have to space your crop rows out more widely, and so it ends up being the same productivity per acre, just at a higher cost.
To work around this, you have to use artificial light, and that's very expensive. Your artificially-lit vertical farm is competing against thousand upon thousands of naturally-lit horizontal farms, and they're all going to be able to undercut your prices by a lot. The economics just doesn't work. Maybe you can use the vertical farming thing as a marketing gimmick and scrape by, but you're definitely not upending the industry.
There are some scenarios where vertical farming can make sense. For a backyard gardener or a restaurant or something, vertical growing a great way to take advantage of a sunlit wall, for example. Or if you're leading a country with extremely limited land, but you still want an agricultural industry as part of your defense strategy (e.g., to resist blockades), it could make sense to subsidize vertical farms. But these kinds of farms will never be economically self-sustaining on a commercial scale, and they are wholly inappropriate for VC funding. There are also very few places where this kind of investment could make sense — perhaps Singapore, for example, but definitely not a country where traditional farming is feasible. The US, as one of the top agricultural producers in the world, is a particularly silly country to try to jumpstart vertical farming in.
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Comment on Seedless blackberries and cherries that grow on bushes vie to be the future of food in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThey're just traits you can find in the wild variants of your backyard vegetables. Domesticated plants are extremely specialized and exhibit a very limited selection of traits compared to their...They're just traits you can find in the wild variants of your backyard vegetables. Domesticated plants are extremely specialized and exhibit a very limited selection of traits compared to their wild counterparts. For example, lettuce is in the thistle group, so wild lettuce is usually pretty spiky, and tomatoes are in the nightshade group, so wild tomatoes can contain nightshade toxins. These unpalatable traits have just been laboriously bred out of domesticated plants over hundreds or thousands of years.
The company I worked for was always looking for more obscure genetics, so whenever our resident plant collectors found a plant that looked particularly odd (like the floppy celery and the hairy tomato), they jumped all over it — because if a plant has one unusual trait, it probably has a lot more.
They particularly liked collecting from islands, deserts, hidden-away ravines, etc., because they were more likely to find isolated populations of plants there — and they spent a lot of money on funding nature preserves in countries around the world (especially countries that don't usually do much for conversation) to protect these diversity hotspots.
These collection trips were almost entirely focused on breeding more robust, weather- and disease-resistant plants, but I do remember a bit of excitement around a wild melon someone found growing in some roadside weeds because its stem turned red when the melon was ripe. It can be pretty tricky to time melon harvests correctly because the perfect harvest window is very narrow and there aren't a lot of external tells like there are with most other fruits, so a red stem would be a useful flag to the farmer. (I have no idea if this trait was successfully transferred to any melon products, since we didn't breed melons at the subsidiary where I worked.)
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Comment on I love Tildes in ~tildes
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI have a few of those old forum contacts floating around as well. There's one that's particularly entertaining to me: Some guy I initially met on LiveJournal probably around 2001, and we've been...I have a few of those old forum contacts floating around as well. There's one that's particularly entertaining to me: Some guy I initially met on LiveJournal probably around 2001, and we've been randomly/unintentionally running into each other on assorted websites ever since. I've yet to encounter him on Tildes, lol, but I'm not ruling it out.
(If you're out there, pavel_lishin, I'm using a different username here but it's meeee!)
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Comment on Seedless blackberries and cherries that grow on bushes vie to be the future of food in ~food
RoyalHenOil LinkOne thing that makes this trickier is that the big names in plant breeding also have access to CRISPR. I started working for a major international seed company in 2012, and CRISPR was already a...- Exemplary
One thing that makes this trickier is that the big names in plant breeding also have access to CRISPR. I started working for a major international seed company in 2012, and CRISPR was already a huge topic there by that point.
We used traditional pollination to do all our breeding (it's a no-GMO company). This means we spent a lot of time collecting wild plants, genetically sequencing them, breeding them in a controlled way to isolate and transfer specific genes, and then genetically sequencing all the progeny (many hundreds of plants) to pick out the ones with the exact right combination of genes we were looking for. I personally grew a lot of weird plants — poisonous tomatoes covered in hair, lettuce covered in spikes, celery that grew as sprawly vines across the ground, etc. — as intermediate steps in the process transferring desireable plant genes (like assorted disease resistances or climate predilections) without transferring the undesirable ones (like being poisonous or covered in spikes). This is a process is that CRISPR could help speed up.
I don't work there anymore and I don't know whether the company uses CRISPR on a commercial scale (possibly not, if they assume it will face legal complications in the future like GMO technology has), but I definitely know they were experimenting pretty heavily with it, and I imagine that all the other big seed companies were as well. That's pretty huge competition for a little startup — and it doesn't help that most of the major seed companies have also formed patent-sharing collectives (as a competitive workaround for all the insidious patent laws that Bayer/Monsanto has managed to get passed in different jurisdictions around the world), which makes it even harder for little guys to break in to the commercial framing industry. They won't be invited to the club until they can contribute meaningfully to the patent pool, and that's not easy for a small, young company.
It's not impossible, though! A small seed company can definitely upset bigger competitors in the ag industry (it's happened many times before, and I know the big players are all worried about it happening again) if it's managed cleverly. I'm not sure that the VC route is the ideal way to get there, though, since VCs tend to expect faster results than the ag industry is likely to provide. This is a business where a single crop variety can easily take 10+ years to develop, have its heyday for maybe a year or two, and then be superseded almost immediately. (Note, this is just based on my knowledge of the vegetable industry. I don't know much about orchards, grains, etc.)
...and technological fixes like vertical farms, artificial-intelligence-driven tractors, and less resource-intensive meat substitutes forged from plants or animal cells have struggled in the marketplace.
I found this part kind of funny. CRISPR is not like these other things. Some of those, like AI tractors, are solutions in search of a problem (something I have ranted about before) and some, like vertical farming, are downright laughable (something I will happily rant about here if anyone cares to read it but, if not, just know that vertical farming defies some principles of physics and economics).
CRISPR can absolutely be used in equally silly ways, and I have no doubt that VCs will jump at the silliest ones (silly ideas like these practically exist to convince starry-eyed VCs to fork over their cash), but it can genuinely help solve some pretty hard problems as well. If this company's founders are smart, they'll toy around with seedless blackberries or whatever to placate their investors, but they'll pour the bulk of their resources into the "boring" problems that farmers actually ask for.
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Comment on Browser fingerprinting demonstration in ~comp
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIt thought I was touch-typing, describing me as "steady and practised", even though I'm actually a hunt-and-pecker. (Really just a pecker at this point. I can type just fine on an unlabeled...It thought I was touch-typing, describing me as "steady and practised", even though I'm actually a hunt-and-pecker. (Really just a pecker at this point. I can type just fine on an unlabeled keyboard.)
My speed's a lot lower than yours, though, at 79 wpm. I think it must be over-emphasizing rhythm (mine was 0.4) and under-emphasizing speed.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
RoyalHenOil Link ParentWeirdly enough, I lean the opposite way. Although there are definitely topics I find boring and try to avoid, I think excess curation can be harmful exactly due to that echo chamber effect (though...Weirdly enough, I lean the opposite way. Although there are definitely topics I find boring and try to avoid, I think excess curation can be harmful exactly due to that echo chamber effect (though this mostly an issue for personalized-feed type websites, like YouTube, not Tildes so much).
I suspect blocking people is much less likely to cause that kind of issue — though this could be colored by the fact that I, personally, only block accounts that spam a lot, that engage in harassment campaigns, or that are very clearly bots/AI slop. Blocking people has never materially changed the type of content or the kinds of opinions I encounter online. (But curating my feeds absolutely has.)
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Comment on What is your Mandela effect moment? in ~movies
RoyalHenOil Link ParentOh, it could totally be something like that. I might have skimmed over a handful of headlines worded like "Warren Buffett investing partner dead" or similar and took it to mean Buffett himself was...Oh, it could totally be something like that. I might have skimmed over a handful of headlines worded like "Warren Buffett investing partner dead" or similar and took it to mean Buffett himself was dead. I don't really follow celebrity news too closely, so there could be all kinds of people out there I think are dead!
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Comment on Neuroscientists find logical reasoning does not involve language-processing parts of the brain in ~science
RoyalHenOil Link ParentAh, that makes sense! It sounds like we probably think in very similar ways then, except that my inner "narrator" is usually silent (or occasionally off on some unrelated musical tangent) until I...Ah, that makes sense! It sounds like we probably think in very similar ways then, except that my inner "narrator" is usually silent (or occasionally off on some unrelated musical tangent) until I call for it.
Edit: Actually, I do have one more question. What does your inner narrator do when you're listening to someone else speak?
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Comment on Neuroscientists find logical reasoning does not involve language-processing parts of the brain in ~science
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI can think in language, but I have to make an active effort to do so. For me, it's a much slower and less intuitive way to think unless I'm specifically thinking about language (e.g., planning...I can think in language, but I have to make an active effort to do so. For me, it's a much slower and less intuitive way to think unless I'm specifically thinking about language (e.g., planning how I'm going to say something), and it's not really compatible with most of the thoughts and inner experiences I have.
Most of the time, if I have some kind of inner monologue that I'm not actively forcing myself to have, it's just some lyrics or something stuck in my head. My actual thoughts are somewhere else and in a completely different format (I would describe it as visual-spatial, but mostly spatial, particularly for abstract concepts). Reciting lyrics in my head in no way inhibits my ability to think about other things.
I have a really hard time imagining what it must feel like to think in words all the time. How do you think about non-linguistic concepts or about things (e.g., complex emotions, novel sensory experiences, non-language-based puzzles) that words can't adequately describe? Or do you?
Does it force you to think in a very slow, linear way (at the speed of speech, one word after another)? Can you have multiple thoughts in your head?
How do you get new ideas or learn new concepts? What happens inside your head when you're presented with something you don't know the word for and don't understand well enough to describe?
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Comment on Is it time to include pronouns? in ~tildes
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIn the most widely spoken English dialects, "they" is used for humans of undetermined gender (typically when their gender is not known). It is not intended offensively; it's simply grammar....In the most widely spoken English dialects, "they" is used for humans of undetermined gender (typically when their gender is not known). It is not intended offensively; it's simply grammar.
Granted, historical style guides pushed everyone to use "he or she" (or even sometimes just "he"!) when gender was unknown and considered singular "they" nonstandard. Yet singular "they" has still been widely in use for hundreds of years, across many different English-speaking countries and regions, despite presciptionist efforts to stamp it out.
Not every English dialect uses singular "they", just as not every English dialect uses plural "you" (instead opting for "y'all", "y'uns" "youz", or one of the dozens of other regional variants), yet it's fully possible for speakers of all these different dialects to come together and communicate productively. It just requires people to take a less prescriptionist approach and resist the urge to police each other's inoffensively-intended grammatical rules.
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Comment on Is it time to include pronouns? in ~tildes
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentIs your offense at "they" specific to your language, or does it extend also to other languages with different grammatical rules? Many languages do not have gender-based pronouns at all. Usually...Is your offense at "they" specific to your language, or does it extend also to other languages with different grammatical rules? Many languages do not have gender-based pronouns at all. Usually the differentiation is between inanimate (equivalent to "it") and animate (equivalent to "they").
English's ancestry is male/female-based, but it's been moving toward animate/inanimate-based for a few centuries now, so we're currently in this awkward between state where both pronoun systems are used simultaneously and employed under different circumstances (for the most commonly spoken English dialects, based on whether an animate object's gender has been determined or not). This makes English very flexible for non-native speakers from different linguistic backgrounds, because their pronoun mistakes generally don't inhibit understanding, but probably also pretty frustrating, because English pronoun usage is abnormally nuanced and the connotations of these pronouns likely differs quite a bit from their native language.
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Comment on What is your Mandela effect moment? in ~movies
RoyalHenOil LinkFor some reason, I keep thinking Warren Buffett is dead. I swear he's died three times now — but then he shows up in the news again and I'm all, "Wait... what? Didn't he die, like, a year ago?"...For some reason, I keep thinking Warren Buffett is dead. I swear he's died three times now — but then he shows up in the news again and I'm all, "Wait... what? Didn't he die, like, a year ago?"
One of these days he's going to die for real and I'll think he's still alive.
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Comment on I don't really like the "Human-made" badging trend in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentYeah, the way some people talk about grass, you'd think it was created in a lab. There are ~12,000 species of grass, and grasslands are one of the most widespread biomes on earth. In places with a...Yeah, the way some people talk about grass, you'd think it was created in a lab. There are ~12,000 species of grass, and grasslands are one of the most widespread biomes on earth. In places with a suitable climate, the only thing you need to have a lawn is a lawnmower or a grazing animal. It won't be some super manicured lawn like the ones you see on TV, but these mixed-species wild-type lawns are the most common kinds of lawns you see in places where grasses grow naturally and homeowners aren't subject to absurd lawncare regulations (like you see with some HOAs, but HOAs are far from universal).
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Comment on I don't really like the "Human-made" badging trend in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI also suspect that Californians are overrepresented online, and it seems that a lot of them are unaware that their climate and environmental issues (such as water shortages) aren't universal. One...I also suspect that Californians are overrepresented online, and it seems that a lot of them are unaware that their climate and environmental issues (such as water shortages) aren't universal.
One I very, very often see is the idea that grass is "unnatural" and anyone who has grass growing in their yard must be wasting a lot of water to maintain it. But in many places around the world, there are plenty of native grasses (and also plenty of invasive grasses) that happily grow by themselves without any human input. Natural rainfall is enough.
Where I live, it actually takes a lot of work to keep grass under control and stop it from choking out other plants. It's by far the worst weed in my garden. I wish I had to water grass to keep it alive!
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Comment on Survey: The temperature in my room now is _____ and it feels _____ in ~talk
RoyalHenOil LinkIt's currently 14°C (57°F) indoors, 5°C (41°F) outdoors. It feels chilly. I'm in the southern hemisphere.It's currently 14°C (57°F) indoors, 5°C (41°F) outdoors. It feels chilly.
I'm in the southern hemisphere.
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentYeah, that makes sense. I think particularly when the cover letter is getting filtered through some kind of recruitment apparatus first, adhering to some kind of standard formulation for it might...Yeah, that makes sense. I think particularly when the cover letter is getting filtered through some kind of recruitment apparatus first, adhering to some kind of standard formulation for it might be necessary? (Not sure.)
For the jobs I apply for, I write it in a more casual tone, like how I'd write an email. I might even inject a bit of humor. I figure if that gets me filtered out, I probably don't want to work for whoever filtered it out; they're way too rigid for me!
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentI've noticed that stuff written by Claude (not super sure about ChatGPT) uses em dashes in places where I would never use one; I would use a semicolon there instead (unless I already have another...I've noticed that stuff written by Claude (not super sure about ChatGPT) uses em dashes in places where I would never use one; I would use a semicolon there instead (unless I already have another semicolon in the sentence, and I'm just really adverse to breaking it into two sentences for some reason).
There are plenty of people who use em dashes that way, though. Or double-hyphens. (I use true em dashes when I'm writing on my phone, like right now, or on my PC where I have an AutoHotKey script to make typing them easier; I edit a lot of technical documentation for work, so I need easier access to all my punctuation than Windows offers standard. Otherwise, I also use a double-hyphen, but I've noticed a lot of software automatically converts that to an em dash anyway.)
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentI've always been a big em dash user (and semi-colon user, though I don't think I've ever seen that one in LLM writing?). And, um, an over-user of parenthetical statements. I use way too much...I've always been a big em dash user (and semi-colon user, though I don't think I've ever seen that one in LLM writing?). And, um, an over-user of parenthetical statements. I use way too much punctuation.
Believe it or not, I used to be much worse about it when I was a teenager (waaay before LLMs). Back then, I even used to abuse ellipses...
I have admittedly tried to cut back on my em dash usage since LLMs became common, but they're really useful and instinctive for me. At least I use them a slightly nonstandard way (straddled by spaces), since I was taught on AP style in school, rather than Chicago style or whatever. All of the LLM writing I've seen lacks the spaces (I assume because they've been fed on a lot of books and formal writing?).
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Comment on How has climate change affected your life / plans? in ~enviro
RoyalHenOil LinkI'm trialing a lot of plants in my garden that, by rights, shouldn't be able to grow in my climate. Those trials are going alarmingly well. I just planted my most daring trial yet — a tropical...I'm trialing a lot of plants in my garden that, by rights, shouldn't be able to grow in my climate. Those trials are going alarmingly well. I just planted my most daring trial yet — a tropical indoor philodendron in a relatively unprotected position (east-facing, partially covered by a deciduous tree that is currently leafless).
It's mid-winter right now (equivalent to late January for those of you in the northern hemisphere), and my roses are still blooming and putting on new growth. On a more annoying note, I'm still having to watch for mosquitoes. We've had plenty of frosts, but no proper killing frosts yet, and I'm starting to wonder if we will this year.
We haven't had a single snow day here since early 2020, even though we had multiple snow days per year every year before that.
Sure thing, check out my reply to BigBadWolf! (I did tone down the ranting-ness.)