Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | more dmazin's commentslogin

That’s a strange way to put it because it makes infrastructure more robust, the opposite of “crippling”.

A funnier version would be they’re in cahoots with AWS since robust infrastructure is more expensive.


In the States, frankly, if you are a clearly responsible adult, it is incredibly easy to get diagnosed: just describe your symptoms like missing deadlines etc. The psychiatrist said “yeah, sounds like adult ADHD. If the medication works, clearly you have it”.

There are tests they can run on you but no one has ever required me to do them, and I’ve been rediagnosed 4x when switching psychiatrists due to moving/switching insurance.

Note: last time I did this was 2020 or so, so maybe outdated. First time was 2014ish.


Meanwhile in Sweden:

Public healthcare queues for ADHD diagnosis range from 1 to 2 years. At the end of the process, many end up with a "You clearly have ADHD, but there are others that have way more issues than you, so therefore we can not provide you with a diagnosis nor medication". They prioritize diagnosing people who struggle enough with their economy or have children that they are unable to take care of.

I went the the private route, paying out of pocket to hopefully sidetrack the long queues. Sweden is very strict on diagnosis criteria and subscribes to the WHO standard. My result is "You very clearly have symptoms of ADHD, but you fail on the 'must have been present before 12 years of age' criteria". This is a ridiculous criteria when diagnosing ADHD in adults, with either parents who have passed on, or are in a mindset of "No, you were just lazy".

My only option is "beat it through willpower alone", which is hilarious when you have a massive dopamine deficiency with an executive function disorder.

Either that, or get medication off the black market, which is likely just sourced from some poor student who has to sell theirs off to make ends meet, due to Sweden's insane stance on drugs.


I also live in Sweden, and I also went the private route. Think it took me 6-8 weeks from initial contact to get the prescription.


I’m lucky enough to never had too much difficulty with access to meds. In your situation, considering the hugely positive impact they have in my life, I’d consider it worth it to try another country’s healthcare system until I get them.


"It's affecting my work, I'm worried about getting fired" -- this'll help, even if it's stretching the truth.


As much I loved this show growing up, an interesting thing about South Park is that they essentially defined the alt right (in the sense of a disenfranchised young man, often lashing out at marginalized groups and political correctness etc). Am I wrong or did there use to be an article called “South Park conservative” that basically described what eventually became “alt-right”?

Edit: found it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican


You aren’t wrong that there is/was a group of people that consider themselves South Park Conservative but the creators reject the notion that South Park is specifically liberal or conservative, because their intent is to parody any people they can. The creators dislike political correctness but they also dislike the forceful nature of conservatives applying their beliefs on other people. Read the South Park wikipedia page, it explains it pretty well.

Insinuating that South Park conservatives evolved into the alt-right is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Trey and Matt didn’t invent disliking political correctness.


I concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it.

For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.


Disliking political correctness isn't even limited to the right on the political scale. Bill Maher has spoken out against it for example.


I consider myself liberal on most issues - strong social safety, universal healthcare , pro vax, strong separation between church and state, and hate the demonization of other.

But this is political correctness gone crazy.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/25/politics/democrats-gender...

I as a Black guy was also put off by the forced indoctrination that BigTech did post 2020 (when I worked there) with all of the “ally ship”, “DEI” crap I had to endure. I just wanted to do my job, get my money, get my RSUs and bounce after 4 years.


I too believe in universal healthcare and welfare social nets to catch people who fall, but think we've focussed too much on "feelings" over facts or people wanting to score "social justice" points that don't do anything to fix the ills of society.

Here's another example of political correctness going too far, this time related to tech.

https://www.aswf.io/inclusive-language-guide/

Apparently "native support" is offensive.


How is this political correctness?

If the legal language mandates an equal split between men and women, where could that possibly leave non-binary people, other than without representation, right?

I’m curious especially as a black guy, why this wouldn’t land for you. Imagine a legal body obligated to be composed of equal representation, racially, that explicitly requires white, brown, red, and yellow members - but doesn’t mention black.

That hardly sounds fair, does it? So why deride efforts to institutionalize inclusivity, integration, and equal representation as ‘crazy?’


Well non binary people are still biologically male or female.

The UK for example doesnt legally recognise a non binary gender or sex.


It was a “policy” decision that had nothing to do with the law.

I would think it was just as crazy if the committee had language around they must have an equal number of Black and White members and if one person was a biracial …

If they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?

What happens in the case where they want equal representation if my mom had a Black father and White mother and my dad had an Hispanic father and Japanese mother?

But from a real politick angle, this was dumb and cringy knowing the mood of the majority of Americans. The job is to win elections. Bill Clinton invented the “Sister Souljah” moment and Obama followed suit by distancing himself from the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson wing of the party.

A lot of moderate Democrats and Republicans who have no issue respecting anyone for whatever life they decide to live, find that the left has gone too far.

As much as I distrust the police and the entire justice system for instance, I thought the phrase “defund the police” went too far and I understood the point they were making underneath.

It’s the same with enforced (he/him) labels on everyone and having to be really sure you aren’t accused of being some type of “ist” because you only speak in “heteronormative terms”.

If (hypothetical) you want to call out your preferred pronouns, go for it and I’ll respect them.


“This has gone too far” is the war cry of people enforcing that they refuse to educate themselves on the real meaning of the phrases and come to the table for discussion. It is a cop out and you will look back and think “why was I so unreasonable they weren’t asking for much”.

It is a sign that you aren’t really resistant to the ideas but looking for a way to resist because it’s change.

> if they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?

This is the entire problem with the “this has gone too far” crowd. You’re making up hypotheticals and claiming them as active truths. In your situation it’s pretty clear humans are capable of forming committee's relevant to the topic. You don’t have to over apply policy to make it fair. Furthermore, most of these types of committees are probably and have been historically staffed by white men. Why do they get a double standard?

Was anyone actually negatively affected by DEI policies? No. You just had a bunch of handwringing from “this is too far people” and executive leadership teams. No one has actually any proof of these so called negatives though. So much so they have black people saying “let the white man handle it again”.


The primary job of a politician and political committee is to win elections and accept facts on the ground. Yes the indoctrination went too far that I found at BigTech when they had “allies” and making sure that I wouldn’t be offended by “micro aggressions”.

> In your situation it’s pretty clear humans are capable of forming committee's relevant to the topic

You mean the same humans who are fighting to allow biological men in women’s sports?

The midsize company in the same vertical I work for now (cloud consulting) focuses almost purely on how much money we made, this is how it affects your bonus and this is what you can do to increase our profits - no ally ship, no “celebrating diversity” (for people who haven’t been keeping up, I’m black), no “you must label your profile with your preferred pronouns” nonsense. I go to work to collect a check. It’s not a social mission. I don’t go to talk about systemic racism, police brutality, etc.

But they do have Juneteenth as a company holiday, offer classes and reimbursements for our LatAm employees to become better English speakers because it’s a requirement to be promoted to the higher level positions that are customer facing and offer English speakers the chance to take Spanish classes (I’m currently around an A2 proficiency).

DEI is harming people because of the silly “right speech” like not saying “pow wow” or “war room” turns people off and has them voting for politicians that don’t serve your interest and actively harm you.

How the heck did Democrats go so far that even Hispanics Americans are increasingly voting Republican?


I really don’t give a shit if women are in mens sports or if men are in women sports.

That issue affects less than 1% of people. And was used by to rile you up to make you think an entire nation cared about very few incidents across the Us. Can you name one trans-athlete case that affected your athletic ability and career?

DEI didn’t negatively affect you. You just wanted to jump on the anti-woke train. How about you have life so good that you have nothing better to do than get angry at passive policies that were barely enforced and didn’t even affect you.

I am still waiting for the evidence of the crimes committed against people through DEI policies. Where are the victims? There are none because you drink the kool-aid rather than getting informed.

People are going to still correct your speech. That was happening before DEI policies. In fact I think you’re conflating DEI with political correctness.

Again DEI policies weren’t implemented to the extreme you are claiming to have experienced. They were barely implemented before being rolled back.

> no ally ship, no “celebrating diversity” (for people who haven’t been keeping up, I’m black), no “you must label your profile with your preferred pronouns” nonsense.

None of those things you listed are either DEI policies or negatives either. They are corporate programs, none specified in the frameworks of DEI. At worst they are perhaps a little annoying.

It wasn’t just hispanics that threw the election it was hispanics and blacks. Again you’re uninformed and looking to blame some other group of people. Classic American.


> That issue affects less than 1% of people. And was used by to rile you up to make you think an entire nation cared about very few incidents across the Us.

Well, if you really want to go down the road of not caring about issues that only affect 1% of the people in the US, the percentage of people who identify as trans or non binary is around 2%. That’s not a road I’m willing to go down.

> Can you name one trans-athlete case that affected your athletic ability and career?

On the same note, if I should only care about issues that affect me as a decently high earning individual, who is 50 and whose wife is also 50 with grown kids, that means I shouldn’t care about reproductive rights, universal healthcare, a social safety net, affordable higher education…

As much as people threaten to leave the US if things go south, I actually have an exit plan. We are going to start spending a few months in Costa Rica every year starting next year and have looked at becoming permanent residence. My Spanish is around A2 proficiency now.

We’ve done the digital nomad thing domestically for a year before. We aren’t new to it. It’s kid about me.

> DEI didn’t negatively affect you. You just wanted to jump on the anti-woke train. How about you have life so good that you have nothing better to do than get angry at passive policies that were barely enforced and didn’t even affect you.

No matter how good my life is (and it is very good), I worried all of the time about my 6 foot 2 step son getting harassed by the police because he didn’t look like he belong in the suburbs we lived in (where I by myself made over twice the median household because I was working remotely for BigTech) that was a famous sun down town as recently as the mid 80s.

Yeah I lived here until 2 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0). We never had an issue. But let’s just say when I walked into the high school to pick my son up, they knew exactly who he was because he was only one of three black guys in the entire school.

> I am still waiting for the evidence of the crimes committed against people through DEI policies. Where are the victims? There are none because you drink the kool-aid rather than getting informed.

The victims right now are the entire country because moderate Americans were so turned off they voted before Trump.

> People are going to still correct your speech. That was happening before DEI policies. In fact I think you’re conflating DEI with political correctness.

It was the corporate enforced DEI mandates that got you chastised if you said “you guys” to a mixed group of people (even though women used the term too) and said that you had to put your preferred pronouns on your profile.

Like I said, at my current company the entire focus of the quarterly all hands is the business and how they make money and how it affects my money. That’s all I have ever cared about when I have gone to work for 10 jobs over 30 years.

> It wasn’t just hispanics that threw the election it was hispanics and blacks. Again you’re uninformed and looking to blame some other group of people. Classic American.

I’m not blaming Hispanics, I’m blaming policies and speech by Democrats who have made the democratic brand toxic.


LOL the only people that made DEI toxic was people like you who over apply and make up hypotheticals about the sky falling.

You have no hard data on this toxicity or victims of DEI because it’s coming from the side criticizing it. The pendulum will soon swing the other way soon.

Being against DEI policies because you don’t like all non-occurring hypotheticals and random social causes you can tie to it is the exact thing you’re complaining about “governing by feelings” not policies. These policies hurt your feelings.

The fact that you’re not willing to say “okay this was fair about the intent of DEI however we should work to improve these parts” is proof your understanding is shallow and uneducated on the topic.

You think DEI is dead but we will keep pushing for it and implementing it in other ways, other policies. Renamed, a new beast. It’s not going to stop because a large group of people can act like toddlers about it.

> It was the corporate enforced DEI mandates that got you chastised if you said “you guys” to a mixed group of people

This wasn’t the federal policy though. That is political correctness. So you’re wrong in saying it is Democrats fault. They didn’t design a policy that said “police speech” in the office. There may be extremists in Democrats and Republicans that take things to far, none of them were the people at the federal level or at the DNC. To blame the entire group of people for that is again looking to place blame on emotionally.

Which makes sense, most people haven’t read the constitution why would they read the actual text in the DEI effort.


You keep missing the point and it’s the reason that liberals are out in the wilderness.

Look up Clinton and Sister Soulja and what happened. He was a good enough politician to know that he had to distance himself from policies that the middle found offensive to win elections.

The first job is to get elected. We see the same now with what’s happening in California. Texas is gerrymandering the hell out of Texas. But Newsome is getting push back when he is trying to do the same. Republicans know how to win elections. Democrats are high on “ideals”.


Texas gerrymandering won’t even help them in the long run. Again you are missing the point. The pendulum will just swing back twice as hard. Whether Republicans gerrymander an already deeply red state or not. Newsom is getting push back as is Hochul, so what? Doesn’t seem to be actually stopping anything.

I think you’re smoking something if you think Democrats are high on ideals. There is no democracy if you gerrymander out your opponent. That’s why maps are redrawn every 10 years. So Republicans aren’t winning elections for democracy or to shove it Democrats. They’re gerrymandering to remove your right to even have a choice or a democracy. You’re stuck knee deep in a culture war designed to keep you too preoccupied to see this.

Keep kicking and screaming about social posturing issues that go no where.


Texas has been going blue now any day now for 30 years. A deeply red state still had blue districts that could turn the house blue. Are you suggesting that we just turn the other cheek?

Gerrymandering is easy for Republicans since Democrats cluster in cities while Republicans are in rural areas and the burbs.

Democrats and leftists are high on ideals not understanding that this country has never cared about ethics or ideals. Despite what Michelle Obama says, this exactly who we are. It’s who we have been since slavery, Jim Crow laws that my still living parents grew up in, the Willie Horton ads, and the “Hatishs are eating your pets”.

Social postering hasn’t gone anywhere. In 2025, my 6 foot 2 son is still going to be looked at with suspicion by the police for living in a neighborhood “he doesn’t belong”. Even though he’s lived in the upper class burbs all of his life.

It’s Democrats focus on ideals that keeps them in the wilderness. They lost every single swing state last year. Your solution is just to do more of the same.


I never suggested doing more of the same. Democrats lost swing states not because of your “they only govern on vibes” bs you keep trying to push. They lost them because low information voters make up most of those states.

People just vote which ever way the economic wind blows. Trump was able to lie to a lot of people and they ate it up. That will cause the pendulum to swing back. Your suggestions about some Democrat legacy of not getting it right when they’ve mostly kept power in the last 40 years is a romanticization of these times and how you think the rest of the country operates.

It’s Republican focus on taking advantage of the lower classes that keep them in the wilderness. That’s why they’ve lost elections in previous years. Your suggestion is to just do more of the same.

Your insistence that Democrats need to just do the things Republicans means that there would be no difference between political parties.

Perhaps one is nicer than the other, but it doesn’t mean that people want meaner people governing over them. My mother votes Red every time because she’s a low information voter and believes in the Republican party because thats how she’s lived her whole life. It has nothing to do with Republicans being “clever” and willing to say “retard”.


And once again, you aren’t focused on dealing with the facts on the ground as they exist. You can blame low information voters or anything else. But you don’t win elections by turning a blind eye to reality.

Conservatives love the fact that Democrats won’t fight dirty and are letting states like Florida and Texas run roughshod over them and still think they are in the 60s where MLK told people if they let the police beat them long enough and march “peacefully” it will change hearts and minds. What did BLM change? What did “going high while they go low” change?

But the DNC is focused on having equal representation of males and females and making sure the right pronouns are on a committee


> But the DNC is focused on having equal representation of males and females and making sure the right pronouns are on a committee

No they did not. DEI was one policy out of many that went through with Dems during the last admin if you think that’s all Democrats are focusing on you have drunk the Trump-brand-koolaid and have no good faith arguments here.

As for BLM it changed a A LOT. Again you are demonstrating lack of evidence and understanding of those events. I’m sure you stayed inside and criticized the people protesting. I marched during that time in Nyc. And we accomplished the following:

- Repeal 50A - a law that protected police officers at the state level from taking any legal repercussions for their actions

- Forced NYPD to stop using stop and frisk plain clothes units

- made police choking and strangleholds illegal

- force Nypd to stop using kettle tactics

- Removed the NYPD from school security duty

- spread awareness and helped change the narrative about violent police corruption

BLM was such a big deal that people like you scramble to list any benefits. This is your lack of knowledge and understanding of people that keeps you pushing for more violence. The type of cognitive dissonance that makes you say “BLM was nothing, I hated it” when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And since your entire argument is based around some generalization and inability to separate Potus admin from a political party. And political party from voters, I do not see any reason to continue this discussion based on false bad faith generalized premises.


Really?

Let’s look at NYC.

https://www.nyclu.org/data/stop-and-frisk-data

> While comparatively fewer stops occurred during the de Blasio administration – nearly 135,000 – enormous racial disparities have persisted every year. In 2022, the first year of the Adams administration, the NYPD made over 15,000 stops, reversing the downward trend of stops occurring during the de Blasio years. In 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, the NYPD made over 25,000 stops, a fifty percent increase from 2023 and the largest number of stops since 2014

https://policeviolencereport.org/

But Democrats still want us to sing old negro spirituals in the street like “We shall overcome” and pray that we can change hearts and minds.


A comedy show is just a comedy show. We're all responsible for who we become. If some purposefully terrible animated pixels inspire me to be a disgusting person, that's on me. If I play a shooting game and end up hurting someone, that's on me too (or my parents, if I'm young!). And if I spend too much time on HN, thinking AI is garbage, and then lose my job because I fell behind, that's also on me! (As well as starting to write my own comedy here on HN, knowing exactly what I'm getting into!)


If something in the water makes a million people into disgusting mass shooters, we should look into it


> If something in the water makes a million people into disgusting mass shooters, we should look into it

You're using a completely made-up extreme example to make your point, but we're surrounded by real-world examples of free speech being heavily impacted. We don't need to invent scenarios.


They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManBearPig

More to the point, you haven’t heard about their current season’s Trump episode?

The alt right aren’t exactly deep thinkers. It’s just like the police glorifying the Punisher.

https://www.newsweek.com/punisher-police-blue-lives-matter-s...

Or MAGA conservatives playing “Born in the USA” without listening to the lyrics.

South Park mocks everyone.

https://www.salon.com/2017/09/15/why-south-park-is-better-ar...

The “alt-right” have always been part of America or have you never heard of Jim Crow and segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”?


> They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.

Eh, I wouldn't say that. Nor would I say they were really taking a stand on climate change in the first place. They just thought it would be funny to have Al Gore tilting at windmills (and indeed it was), and then thought it would be funny to have him proven right (and indeed it was). One of the things I appreciate about Trey and Matt is that they do what they think is funny first and foremost, rather than try to make the show a mouthpiece for their beliefs as many creators do.


They were definitely as it’s climate change skeptics and changed their minds. They admitted as much.


They have publicly said it was about climate change.


It’s interesting that alternative meat consumption in the U.S. is struggling but taking off in Europe.

One thing I noticed after moving to the UK: alternative milk is normalized here. Like, it’s so common to avoid milk that if you order coffee without specifying, you will be asked what kind of milk you want.


Here in hill country Texas, even Walmart sells MorningStar corn dogs. H-E-B carries most of the Impossible line including meatballs. I made some dirty rice with the IF ground "beef" and it was awesome. There's almost no oil in it, browning onions and peppers required adding some avocado oil (never use olive oil for high temperature cooking).

PS: I'm a lazy vegetarian who will eat a real burger every few months. When vegan parm and swiss cheese get as good as the real stuff, then I'd go vegan.


> never use olive oil for high temperature cooking

This is a myth and needs to die. Olive oil is fine at high temperatures, even EVOO.

https://www.seriouseats.com/cooking-with-olive-oil-faq-safet...


350 degrees is not high temperature cooking. Stir fry for instance is 500+ degrees and even higher

All this in F of course


I do a lot of stir frying on high heat. Olive oil would create plastic-like compounds at these temperatures.


I use avocado oil but even that can struggle with stir fry.


Yeap. I don't like using too much heat because then you're just creating toxic compounds to breathe in and eat unnecessarily. It takes longer but oh well. I really see the difference on AQM VoC and PM2.5 ans PM10 for various cooking techniques and ingredients.


Part of their financial woes might come from them paying for shelf space at retailers and/or making sale guarantees. A grocery chain will gladly carry a poorly performing product if the manufacturer is paying them to do so.


> There's almost no oil in the ground beef, so adding some avocado oil while browning onions and peppers was required.

Their sausage works well for that, no added oil needed.


Recipe called for ground beef. It was the most appropriate texture product for the recipe.


> When vegan parm and swiss cheese get as good as the real stuff, then I'd go vegan.

Cheese I really doubt will get there any time soon. It's pretty doable to make milk-free cheese alternatives with eggs - at least in terms of taste - which is probably per gram a lot more sustainable than proper cheese, but there wouldn't be any market for it.


I feel like people who want milk-free cheese may not particularly want egg-based products either.


Hence why I said there wouldn't be a market :)


Can you say more? I've got milk allergies and I might want to try making this just for me.


You can make vegan cheeses with nut milk.

Here is a video for vegan blue cheese[1]. The basic idea is nut milk and the culture for the blue cheese.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cxMAl_LiSUU&pp=ygUZR29ydW1ldCB...

Channel is “Gourmet Vegetarian Kitchen”


Sorry, I wanted to know about the egg cheese


Caveat: This is only in terms of taste, not necessarily texture. And cheese of course has a massive range of styles on its own. Below targets something like a proper parmesan cheese.

Make soy sauce marinated eggs ([1] Korean version, but there's Japanese as well). Boil them a bit more so the yolks get crumbly rather than runny. Crumble those yolks. The result tastes similar to grated/powdered parmesan or grana padano, and the texture isn't too far off. Which makes sense given the similarities between fermented soy sauce and cheese, in their glutamates and fatty acids (see e.g. isovaleric acid). It doesn't work as well with tofu, there might be a food chemist here who knows their stuff and can explain why, I assume it's something inherent to the animal proteins.

Proper Thai fish sauce (nam pla) also shares quite a bit of its taste profile with cheese. It's no coincidence that all of these are fermented foods.

[1] https://tiffycooks.com/korean-marinated-eggs-mayak-gyeran-ea...


I posted this to give you another option since you can’t have milk at all. If you watch that channel, there’s lots of high quality recipes. Thus my sharing it with you.

Egg cheese recipes tend to have milk in them any way, so you would likely not avoid needing a milk substitute.


> vegan parm

Have you tried nutritional yeast? I use it everywhere I’d put parm. The taste is a bit different but as much delicious.


It's not all of the UK, you get asked in London, not in the countryside. Same in the Netherlands, you get asked in Amsterdam but not much outside.

I guess San Francisco also has much more oatmilk latte's than rural villages


I don't know I've been in Bristol and Cornwall last week and was always asked. I guess you can extend that to anywhere they might reasonably expect a Londoner to turn up.


It's more about the density of hipsters than Londoners per se. Lots of Londoners go to Canvey Island for a holiday, but you probably won't get oat milk there, because it's not that kind of Londoner. Bristol and the West Country are crawling with their own local hipsters.

(actually, you probably will oat milk on Canvey, it really is everywhere now)


> Bristol and the West Country are crawling with their own local hipsters.

So it isn't only London then?


It’s very normalized in any of the medium to large cities in the Netherlands.

(take “medium to large” with a grain of salt given that means population of 100k)


Obviously it depends on the venue. We visited many coffee shops on our recent trip through the Baltics and then across Ireland, and were always asked which of 6 "milk" options we wanted.

On the other hand, we were staying in larger cities, stopping in towns along major transit routes, and going to the "kind of coffee shops" where you would expect such a thing.


I feel like most coffee shops here in California always ask what type of milk you want, too.


What part of the UK does this happen in? I've never been asked this. I can only assume you're in London?


Woops, sorry, yes, this is in London.

According to Good Food Institute (which is a plant-based food lobbying group), 35% of UK households purchased plant-based milk at least once during 2023 and 33% of UK households bought plant-based meat alternatives at least once during 2023.

https://gfieurope.org/blog/plant-based-meat-and-milk-are-now...

For a less biased source, a 2022 ipsos poll found that 48% of the UK uses alternative milk and 58% " use at least one plant-based meat alternative in their diet".

I think things dropped a bit since then due to cost of living crisis.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/almost-half-uk-adults-set-cut-in...


> 35% of UK households purchased plant-based milk at least once during 2023

I'd estimate my household purchased ~200 litres of cow's milk in 2023. We also "purchased plant-based milk at least once" or twice when we had guests over that don't drink cow's milk.


As a counter, I cant remember the last time I wasn't asked what milk I'd prefer. In fact, I now prefer oat milk in coffee to regular milk


Having lived in both the US and Europe, I have to imagine at least some of that comes down to cost. In Europe, the plant based alternatives (at least where I lived) were actually cheaper, and meaningfully so.


Also, they taste better? I have been a vegetarian since 1999. Even in the small village I lived with my parents, the local supermarket had a meat replacement section. Later I moved to a larger city and the product selection at supermarkets is very large and nice. A few years ago, supermarkets also started carrying Beyond Meat products. We tried them a few times, but they taste absolutely horrible compared to local offerings that have been developed for decades now.


In my neck of the woods you can easily find plant-based alternatives, but I've found that the best ones are those that don't try too hard to mimic meat.

From a "macro" nutrition perspective they're also much, much better (more protein, less carbs) and don't usually contain a bunch of weird oils and other crap.

However, they're usually a bit more expensive than actual meat.


Interesting, in Britain it's completely the opposite. Alternative milk is way more expensive.


This is only true if you buy the chilled branded stuff, most of the big supermarkets sell generic soy, oat, almond, coconut for £1/litre


Here in Korea where soy milk has been a staple forever, its price has more than doubled over the last 5 years, now ~$1.4/L. Still cheaper than milk currently at ~$1.7/L, but it used to be twice as cheap as milk.


Same in Germany (~1€/l for milk, 2€/l for pretty much all milk replacements.

You can obviously buy more expensive milk to, which would give it price parity... But there are also more expensive replacement products. On average, the replacement products cost about 50-100% more.

The only way to save money via vegetarian meals is by making everything yourself and not the finished products from the supermarkets (at that point the relationship reverses - making meat meals about twice as expensive)

And I feel the urge to point out the obvious: the reason why the vegetarian replacement products get ever more space in supermarkets is precisely because they've got a gigantic profit margin, whereas the "traditional" milk/meat products have razor thin margins


Lidl has oat/soy milk for 99 cents, and the NoMilk clones for 1,50. In fact, Lidl had a respectable replacement line up now. If you only buy Alpro Milk then yeah, it's gonna be more expensive, but prices have come down tremendously, especially once the discounters hopped on that train.


> [profit margin]

Sure, but if nobody buys them, a 1000% profit margin won't get them very far. So I think that it's a good enough indicator that more people are buying these products.


Yesterday I bought some oat-based milk-like at Aldi for 90c/l (regular price). It's labeled "oat drink", so might not substitute milk. The (literal) "almost milk" product is listed online for 1,09€/l. They also had options based on other stuff for a similar price.

First time I noticed them there, but mind I don't go to Aldi that often.


I live in the US and it's normalized here as well. Not sure where you lived but there's ample variety of dairy alternatives that are offered at grocery stores, coffee shops, etc.


It's just the prices. Normies here are never going to spend more to get an inferior-tasting thing. If it saves money though? Suddenly it's on their radar.


Some high street chains already make some of their products with plant-based milk by default. I was shocked to hear the cow milk being an "option".


Strava and GPS watches and Apple Watch make this really easy, even back in 2015.


Thank you! I wanted to know from the author.


I respect digital sovereignty but I'm also giggling at the shock the non-nerds are going to have at Linux desktop/the tech support hassles for the IT teams.


Windows is so bad these days I actually expect this kind of problem to go down.

Literally half the reason everyone complains their computers are not working is because of IT putting random crapware monitoring/security software on managed windows devices. Go away with windows the crapware goes away too and users have less problems.

And that is just on top of the normal windows 11 crapware and bad UX.


There will be full of crapware available if enterprise starts adopting Linux on a wide scale.

e.g. Crowdstrike is already there.


I dunno, MacOS has that IT crapware too and it is not _nearly_ as bad as windows IT crapware. And MacOS is used in enterprise at scale.


There will be s short term transition issue, but once Linux is installed and people have got used to it it should have fewer hassles.

I have been told its harder to manage config at scale but have not experience of it, and there are products that claim to do it.

Most non-nerds barely notice the desktop. its just a launcher for the handful of applications they use.


Ho hum. Does this create demand for integrations/distributions/new software geared towards government and state/municipal employees across Europe?

I suppose this space is already well catered by large multinational consultancies?


The depth it is possible to dig oneself into a dolgostroy with OSS is unlimited. OTOH, if governed properly, it gives an option to actually solve the problems that you face.

With Microsoft and other corps you are in an abusive domestic relationship with a nacissistic sociopath.

Agree on the initial confusion, but, I do not think the forced upgrade to W11 went unnoticed, either


What are you talking about? My iPhone 13 Pro works perfectly on the newest OS. It’s actually hard to justify upgrading. I know lots of people who simply don’t upgrade anymore.


I wonder if this is why I find that I have preferred Claude for every generation. I feel like it gets me and I get it, in a strange way.


Yeah, just putting the structure in the rules and telling it to always specify the full path in commands was enough to fix any multi repo issues for me.


My understanding is this turned out not to be true. People were used to label stuff for new stores, but the actual implementation did not depend on some sort of fakery.


That was the original idea, and that's what Amazon claimed, but IIRC they never got over 70% automated.

Phrased differently, 30% of all transactions were still entered by a human overseas watching cameras at the time they decided to pull the plug, years after the initial launch.


Interesting that they can automate some of the transactions and not others... Wonder what was special about those other 30%.

There was a 2 year period in which I bought lunch at an Amazon Go daily. I was naive to the magic so I thought it was the greatest innovation ever.


I imagine it's possible the truth was somewhere in between. But if it worked, why did they stop using it in their grocery stores after putting so much money into it?


In the UK at least the grocery stores are completely empty. I've barely seen anyone in them. Bizarrely they are shutting loads down in London but opening new ones at the same time. Absolutely no idea what the strategy is, they must be throwing out the majority of the fresh food stock they have.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: