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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2026

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  • For anyone struggling with food prices, first, I empathize. I’ve been there. It fucking sucks. Second, when desperate, I put together a plan much like the following, and it helped me get through some hard times.

    USA prices 2026-09-16

    26 oz salt: $1, 0 calories, 0 protein

    200 lb dry beans: $120, 300000 Cal, 20000g protein

    200 lb rice: $50, 330000 Cal, 2400g protein

    360 tablets multivitamin: $37.50

    Annual cost: $208.50 Daily calories: 1726 (suitable for a sedentary person.) Daily protein: 61 g

    You can get even higher protein and lower cost if you have access to bulk soybeans. Multiply by whatever values you like to hit your calorie or protein needs.

    You don’t have to eat JUST this. But if this is the majority of your meals, you have enough to survive, and in the US, you’ll actually be healthier than most of the people around you.







  • It’s basically the same as any other rule: if everyone follows the rule, you get a better result than when the thing is voluntary.

    Imagine there are no taxes and no welfare programs. Spending resources on the welfare of others is entirely voluntary.

    Let’s say 20% of the population does this. What happens? The 20% of the population which is the most altruistic has fewer resources, some of which was given to the 80% least altruistic people.

    If you do this repeatedly, what happens? The least altruistic people end up with the vast majority of resources. This is bad.

    What do we do instead? We establish a governmental welfare program, and we make everyone contribute to it, regardless of whether they’re altruistic or not.


  • On an individual level, people mostly just follow the rules on their own. The spectre of some large and unknowable punishment is usually enough to enforce something like this. If 25% of people break the rule because they aren’t afraid… You don’t have to find all of them and punish them. You can just find a couple and punish them harshly, occasionally, decreasing the number of people who aren’t afraid of rhe consequences.

    Aside from that, this is implicitly a statement that school admins and teachers aren’t allowed to push LLM usage on students. That’s FAR more enforceable.





  • Definitely use bread flour if you make it yourself. The higher the protein, the better, because the protein is what you’re getting out of it.

    To get 4lbs of gluten (dry weight), you’ll need 30lbs of white flour. You’ll get seitan for about half the price if you make it yourself (assuming flour is $0.50 per pound)… but I honestly think it’s so cheap that it’s worth it to buy the pre-processed gluten powder. Also because I’ve tried making it myself from flour, and I just don’t get good results.

    4lbs of gluten is 4lbs of pure protein. If you eat 50 grams per day, it’ll last 36 days.