Interesting Links for 05-12-2020

[andrewducker]

How Coronavirus Attitudes Fit into Britain's Ideological Landscape

(tags:Pandemic politics UK society viaPatrickHadfield )

Arecibo Observatory collapse video

(tags:video astronomy fail )

Sex workers attack Scottish government for 'harmful moralistic view' towards prostitution

(tags:law prostitution sexwork scotland )

Innovation is awesome, Innovation-speak is not - A Modest Proposal for Building the Future

(tags:innovation thefuture society )

The world's first lab-grown chicken burger costs $35 to make and tastes like chicken

(tags:chicken food )

Indoor dining study shows it's really not safe - amongst other insights

(tags:restaurant research air pandemic )

Your yearly reminder: Do not give to the Salvation Army

(tags:charity fraud religion )

Here's what happens when a bee stings you directly in your eyeball

(tags:eyes bees aieeee! )

Comments

[cmcmck]

I'm told that most odd living things taste like chicken if you're hungry (or desperate) enough but what would I know? I'm veggie. :o)

[alithea]

I have a theory that what's actually the case is that people are most familiar with bland chicken breast and therefore compare anything else that doesn't have a strong flavour to it, when actually they just mean it's bland.

[dewline]

3. Putting the sex workers in danger is the whole point of the exercise. Objecting to being endangered is convincing the proposal's advocates that they're doing the right thing. Am I wrong?

4. Wait for the complainers who really want to say "but if we give you what you need to do your best work, we lose the power to end you". They're reworking their cover stories right now in reply to this article.

7. Not planning on it. Not ever again.

[andrewducker]

I think some people really do fall for the Nordic model as being The Answer. But nowadays there's so much evidence to the contrary.

[dewline]

No doubt some are true believers. Others...?

[anna_wing]

The 'yuck' factor is actually the oddest part to me. How can some nice, clean, vat-grown protein be worse than something that came from the death of a living thing? Not to mention the frequently vastly unhygienic (and exploitive of the workforce, quite often) conditions of its raising, slaughter, transport and packaging for sale.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I happily eat meat (of non-endangered species), and wear and use leather, fur and silk, so it's not that I can't tolerate the deaths, I just don't ignore that they are part of the price for my wardrobe.

[andrewducker]

Yup. I'd be happier if it was a price that went away, and I'd pay a premium to make it happen.

(Not $35 per burger though)

[cmcmck]

Funny thing is that I don't eat meat not for any political or moral reason- I just don't like it very much, so I suspect I wouldn't like the 'created' stuff any more than the farm produced or hunted.

[danieldwilliam]

I reckon $35 a burger is pretty much game over for livestock reared meat.

$2 bucks a burger feels like a price where vat-grown meat would be cost competitive with lifestock reared meat regardless of other considerations.

For example, if it exhibits the same learning curve effect as solar PV at 15% per doubling then it need 18 doublings to get to a cost of $2 per burger.

8 doublings gets the cost below $10 a burger - which is probably a price you can sell these things at to some actual punters on a regular basis. One would think that with current low production levels we could see 2 or 3 doublings per year for a while.

I'm not sure that learning curve impacts are going to be the main driver of cost reductions. I think this might now (or very shortly be) a volume thing with scale economies of facilities and feedstock being the main driver of cost reductions. Which implies a more stepped but probably faster cost reduction path.

So my pessimistic guess is that scale economies dominate initially and the cost halves and halves again over 2-4 years, and then learning curve effects kick in and the cost drops by 10-20% per doubling with an annual volume of sales increase, which doubles every time the cost halves. Roughly, we're looking at $3.50 a burger in 10 years time and $2 a burger in 20 years time with the costs continuing to fall gently over time.

A more optimistic assumption of the cost halving every year for while gets us to $2 a burger in 5 years.

[danieldwilliam]

I reckon $35 a burger is pretty much game over for livestock reared meat.

$2 bucks a burger feels like a price where vat-grown meat would be cost competitive with lifestock reared meat regardless of other considerations.

For example, if it exhibits the same learning curve effect as solar PV at 15% per doubling then it need 18 doublings to get to a cost of $2 per burger.

8 doublings gets the cost below $10 a burger - which is probably a price you can sell these things at to some actual punters on a regular basis. One would think that with current low production levels we could see 2 or 3 doublings per year for a while.

I'm not sure that learning curve impacts are going to be the main driver of cost reductions. I think this might now (or very shortly be) a volume thing with scale economies of facilities and feedstock being the main driver of cost reductions. Which implies a more stepped but probably faster cost reduction path.

So my pessimistic guess is that scale economies dominate initially and the cost halves and halves again over 2-4 years, and then learning curve effects kick in and the cost drops by 10-20% per doubling with an annual volume of sales increase, which doubles every time the cost halves. Roughly, we're looking at $3.50 a burger in 10 years time and $2 a burger in 20 years time with the costs continuing to fall gently over time.

A more optimistic assumption of the cost halving every year for while gets us to $2 a burger in 5 years.

[andrewducker]

So, 5-20 years before the world changes significantly on this.

Awesome. I shall look forward to seeing what they come up with.

[danieldwilliam]

I reckon.

Certainly worth thinking about divesting your stock portfolio of traditional meat producer's soon.

And think about which industries benefit from cheap arable land.

[andrewducker]

Solar panel placement?
Feed stock for the steak printers?

[danieldwilliam]

Solar PV sites is a good shout.

[andrewducker]

I wonder how long until we hit this point
https://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=41586,

[danieldwilliam]

Not soon I think.

I think we are more likely to move to a synthetic meat substitute that is better than simply vat-growing and directly based on any existing meat.