Lol…yea, same thing happened to a comment I made a few weeks ago. Everyone started talking about all the drugs they take and it’s a chemical thing and that there’s no other hope without them. This is where we are at in this country. Look at all the drug commercials on tv. And then…you know, people against the vaccination drugs but that take tons of others. I’ve given up on people at this point. They are so lost.

Advice to OP. Just do anything besides what you are currently doing and that will change your trajectory. Like try not working at your desk and work somewhere else. Work different hours. Don’t work and do something else. Just don’t do what you’re doing - do one of the infinite amount of things you could do otherwise

Think of how much knowledge of the environment that we rely on to survive has been lost. Yea we’ve achieved a lot of amazing things, I won’t discount that, but our incentives could be better aligned with respecting and ameliorating, if not preserving, the “natural” world.

Mentally: It’s actually not that hard, you’re over thinking it. Just do anything else than the thing you don’t want to do. The thing you fall back on is a habit. It is one thing you do over and over, instead of the infinite other things you could otherwise be doing. Recognize in life these fallback habits and do something different. Take the same road to work? Take a different route one day. By breaking habits you open your world to infinite possibilities.

Physically: put your phone in your bedroom or wherever you keep it when you go to sleep. Don’t be in that room till you go to sleep. You break the habit of normally having the phone with you all the time. See what happens when it’s not.

Mentally: It is that hard. Executive dysfunction and ADHD are both fully understood physiological disorders that are only the domain of psych because the symptoms are psychological in their manifestation.

A would wager a fair amount of these people will be doomscrolling because they essentially have too little, or too much, dopamine, and while there are ways to get the body to prompt creation of it, often there are tangible problems in the number of neurotransmitters or the amount that is created that can cause this.

For example: Often I want to take a shower, but end up sitting on my bed for hours, essentially unable to move to complete my task. I wondered for a long time if this was me, if I just tried hard enough, maybe I could beat it. But the fact is, it isn't -- it's a tangible and measurable problem with the way my body functions that stops me from being able to move to complete the task.

The poster's description of this above sounds extremely, alarmingly similar to my experience, and those of my friends and coworkers with it. Personally, I wonder whether the widespread, common, and societally endorsed distribution of caffeine and nicotine -- both stimulants, have effects on the developing child. It would explain the sheer prevalence of it, and also the prevalance of the stimulants, as stimulants are drugs that are prescribed for managing ADHD* :)

* - most people who are diagnosed are found to already be weakly medicating themselves with stimulants!

I came here to agree with your post! I wanted to add that when you are having as much trouble functioning as someone with severe ADHD and a general lack of executive function no number of tried and true tricks that a neurotypical person uses are going to be enough to cause real change in your life. I was definitely a heavy caffeine user for years before I was diagnosed as ADHD and given access to Adderall which really helped me be more in control of my schedule.

I do strongly suspect I am ADHD, but avoid basically all stimulants (unless we count sugar as a stimulant, in which case I eat sugar sometimes. And lots of carbohydrates in general that aren't sugar)

I haven't sought a diagnosis or even been screened because I'm not interested in taking strong stimulants, even though I'm sure it would help a lot with some things, and besides a prescription I don't see any obvious benefits to having it "made official".

Have a few ADHD family members who have seen great success with their prescriptions though. All in all, I do feel like I am making a little improvement to my executive function over time through purely psychological means, but it can feel like pretty slow going sometimes.

I have bad ADHD. I basically can't code or do anything mentally tedious without pills. No matter how much sugar, caffeine etc I take, my brain doesn't want to. I have gone months without, exercised properly and tried low sugar diets etc, tried everything, nothing worked. I made some tiny gains, as do everyone, how you treat yourself still matters for handicapped people. But then I got those pills, and now I can happily code many hours per day, my handicap is gone, it changed my whole life, without it I would never have gotten a good software job etc.

Note, those pills aren't really "stimulants", they help you focus they don't make you stressed out or high like sugar or caffeine does, they just help you get into the "zone". Maybe they do get you high to some degree and that is why some use them as a drug, but they don't really have that effect in the dosages you take them for ADHD, the feeling I'd call it is "a kid on Christmas eve", that makes it hard to sleep since you want to do so many things, not like caffeine at all. The dosage which made a night and day difference for me felt like nothing to a normal person.

So at least give it a try. Worst case it doesn't help much, best case it changes your life.

So then how do you take showers or in general, how do you move on from being stuck and change activities? How do you motivate to do anything?

Given the advice in my first comment, and I guess counter to the other comment in this thread saying “neuraltypical” tactics don’t work, I was going to ask, have you ever said to yourself at the count of three you will get up and do the task you have in mind?

> So then how do you take showers or in general, how do you move on from being stuck and change activities? How do you motivate to do anything?

Because eventually the physiological system normalizes and you have enough dopamine to do things. It's functionally impossible to wrestle yourself out of being in an executive dysfunction spot, though.

> have you ever said to yourself at the count of three you will get up and do the task you have in mind?

Hahahaha, yes. Hundreds of thousands of times. I'm surprised you would have reason to believe that I hadn't tried this. It doesn't change that I do not have enough of a specific brain chemical in my neurological system to do something -- whether that's because I have a difference in my neurophysiology or the rest of my body's production of dopamine. And while having specific social structures, habits, and patterns in my life can help, they very very quickly fall apart because my brain will just forget about them, regardless of how much mental energy I expend on trying to maintain them (A dysfunction with object permanence is another problem that may present as a result of the physical condition of ADHD). Actually, it's funny -- it's been shown that the more effort is expended on focus, the less someone with ADHD is able to focus. Because the act of making the effort to focus in the first place expends dopamine!

> “neuraltypical” tactics don’t work

neuro- from the Greek for nerves or the nervous system

neurotypical -- The prefix joined with a word. Originally a colloquial term in autistic circles, but has been adopted by the scientific community. Describes the typical status quo of the brain in the wider sociological context. While there's no evidence for a specific anatomical "status quo" of the brain, there is a broader sociological context present whenever one considers "normality". Antonyms: neurodivergent, neurodiverse, neuroatypical

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

I have difficulty taking showers over scrolling everyday. I'm just too tired.

Children tend to be discouraged from drinking coffee. And non-adults tend to hate the taste so they don’t tend to be motivated to do it in the first place.

People still consider coffee and many other minor stimulants safe enough to be consumed during pregnancy, and that people might have largely stopped smoking during pregnancy, it doesn't alter the fact of mass exposure to and consumption of stimulants in the 20th century.

> People still consider coffee and many other minor stimulants safe enough to be consumed during pregnancy

I was specifically talking about children, addressing the theory that it can affect development.

> and that people might have largely stopped smoking during pregnancy

I was specifically talking about coffee.

> I was specifically talking about children, addressing the theory that it can affect development.

I was specifically talking about prenatal development, though. I am the person who wrote the original post you are responding to, and was/am clearing up that misunderstanding. Whether or not children are directly given coffee to consume does not at all apply to what I intended to say.

Got it. Thanks for clarifying.

This is precisely the thing I figured out when I finally eventually quit a long-term weed dependence: do anything else. It does not matter what it is (well, within reason). At first, I spent a lot of time staring at the walls, literally, simply resisting the urge.

Look up CCI in Colorado. They pay almost nothing for prisoners to work in industries like manufacturing. They then sell these products to businesses so they can claim it was made in the USA (so awesome!). It’s all slave labor essentially. Then, with the skills these people learn, when they’re released they can’t get hired because they have a record. Whole thing is a disgusting joke. Taking advantage of people that ended up in their situation because they never had direction or opportunities to begin with.

(Should mention they just got a new director and she is really awesome. Came from the women’s bean project. Hope she can make some positive change but she’ll have to fight a lot of bureaucracy.)

That’s a cool stat, but whatever…Just traveled (USA) via airplane. When I arrived at the airport, people were sneezing and coughing everywhere. On the plane, same thing. I’m my Uber, same thing with the driver. I tested positive after all this, albeit with mild symptoms. Seems everyone has it. Also seems like no one cares anymore (at least all these people). If Covid was a more serious issue, we’d all be doomed. Doesn’t seem USA govt thinks this is a big deal because otherwise they’d shut everything down. Know why there are no flight attendants and flights canceled, because everyone on planes is spreading it. And now the quarantine days has been reduced. Carry on people…

Here is what I think (US-centric):

- Most people are tired of masks and even if they use them, they are neither wearing them nor cleaning them adequately

- Vaccination/boosters are the only reliable defense for the average person

- In 3 years or less, people will wonder what all the fuss was about and simply will treat COVID-19 like a common cold. Your management and colleagues will expect you to show up for work, COVID or not.

I'm not justifying this behavior. Just stating what I think we'll see in the future.

At this point with Omicron, it's also that the messaging has gotten so damn muddy and contradicting. Here's what I mean.

* Get vaccinated to protect yourself. Well now we know you can get a breakthrough infection.

* Get vaccinated to protect others. Well now we know you can still infect while vaccinated.

* Wear a mask to protect yourself. Well now we know that masks don't really do a damn thing unless you wear an N95 properly, even then it's not super effective against Omicron.

* Wear a mask to protect others. Again, we now know that masks do little to protect others with this variant.

The frustration in all of this is, as a young and healthy person, I'm not worried about COVID. And if there is nothing I can do to protect others, please just let me sign the liability waver already. If I get sick and die, that's on me, just please stop enforcing mandates "for my own good".

Just because something is not 100% effective does not mean that it should be abandoned entirely. All of the measures you mentioned still have some degree of efficacy.

The fact that breakthrough infections sometimes occur is not a valid counterargument against vaccination.

This is right. Whether masks work or don’t is irrelevant. The policy failed.

If an individual wants to not get Covid, the only solutions are vaccination and distancing.

> If Covid was a more serious issue, we’d all be doomed.

Or maybe people stopped caring because they realized that it's not a serious issue?

People in the comments making all sorts of excuses.

Tech has massive opportunities to organize and align data to make things more efficient in all these areas and it is.

Concerning profits - if the model focuses on sustainability - doing something that exists currently that is better for people and planet, and at lower cost - then there should be plenty of profit.

I agree, thanks for calling me out (not sure if you were referring specifically to me). I amended my comment.

Sup…nice company. Definitely filling a need that is very beneficial to an ignored group :) I run a digital recruiter and can tell you for what you are offering - work from home at $24 per hour, that is a very excellent and competitive wage across numerous markets in the US. One thing to note is that, in one example, people who were in heavy labor don’t want to go back and want to try something new because of the pandemic. Something less hard on their bodies per se. so what I’m trying to say is that you should also have a good sized talent pool at the moment. If you are willing to hire younger people and give them a chance - low skilled and young labor is asking around $15-$20 hour which is really high for their level, but for the type of talent you’re looking (I’m assuming) you’d be a standout match and be able to accommodate. There’s also lots of justice involved individuals (those that were formally incarcerated) that need jobs and you get tax discounts for hiring them as full time employees. Not sure if you have security issues with them but this segment would very much appreciate a job such as this. Best of luck - if you can market your positions well, you will not have an issue getting talent unlike everyone else right now…

Tl:dr - you’re paying a very good and fair wage for what you’re offering and should probably have many interested candidates when recruiting.

Visited your website but I don’t speak that language so I couldn’t understand it, but looks like you use a method similar Nelson and Pade…? One thing we did to increase rev per area of space was inoculate wood with mycelium and hang it above the water. You could harvest market desirable mushrooms along with your produce and protein. Also, incorporating shrimp to further add to the process of breaking down the ammonia particulates during the transformation to nitrate can be beneficial and another rev stream. Are y’all profitable and scalable with the ops you’re running?

I’m kind of bummed because I was hoping there were going to be a lot more people focused on this and scaling it, but in this thread there are not…

The build log I linked to is in English. We will also publish more in that if you want to follow it.

This is a pilot facility, but looks similar to what Nelson and Pade offers at a quick glance. The commercial scale facility will be very different than this. The scale is 50-100 times larger and you can think of the growing area of this as one layer in a multi-layer facility.

This small scale pilot is far from profitable. Generally we think you need to be at up to 1000 m2 growing area if you have a facility which is a side business and you take care of it alongside your farm. If it is a business by itself with external distribution you probably need it to be about 10 000 m2. (Of course this depends heavily on your local conditions, what you can sell, at what price etc.)

We are focused on scaling, but that is another story than a demo and pilot plant. :)

This is obviously nothing less than astounding. I can’t start to describe how incredibly knowledgeable and skilled this person is.

Because the topic of hydro and growing food and all that is on HN here, I wanted to leave the following comment on a higher level.

Ten years ago I was super dedicated to problems surrounding water, which of course include food and all the issues we have with our food systems. At the pinnacle, I was working with a half acre aquaponics greenhouse in Watsonville, CA. We had 8000 striped bass and produced and incredible amount of fresh produce. It was pesticide free because of you put chemicals on the plants it would get into the water and hurt the fish.

It was more “natural” than hydroponics. You weren’t using fertilizer imported from all over, everything in the system could be produced on-site. The more biologically diverse the system was, the more resilient and productive.

Both hydro and aqua phonics - the latter of which has been practiced for thousands of years, definitely save a ton of water. But I think aquaponics has a massive chance of being mainstream, especially as automation and all the advanced tech and robots get better.

It’s about ecological engineering on a local scale - you are maxing out the ecology to human and nature’s benefit, and there are so many relationships to learn and exploit.

It’s strange how impactful this could be on a grand scale - see some Dan barber Ted talks [1]

Just really need to get some investment on this on a big scale, like the hydro houses in Canada. No one has, from all that I know, really built aquaponic systems on a grand scale that are economically viable. But I see it coming and after I wrap up my current company, I’m jumping right back in to working on this.

We are just going to be doing what nature did best before we murdered all of it…but maybe Mac it out super hard and super quick compared to what it could do.

Lastly, with all the climate stuff: Don’t forget, you can’t put a price on the systems that produce the food, water and clean air we breath, cuz you know, we’d be dead. Well maybe we can, but we sure aren’t trying.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with...

I saw a segment 15 years ago about "biodynamic" hydroponics. Not sure if that's a real term or whether I'm even remembering it right, but as I recall the concept was that your grow is more or less a completely closed system that involved fish circulating nutrients through the system. As you say, you don't add nutrients from far off places. The fish feed the plants and the plants feed the fish. In that segment, the fish were tilapia. It seemed perfect and has captured my imagination this whole time.

Just for the reference, "Biodynamic" refers to Rudolf Steiner's method for growing food. It's a quite common ritual in Europe, mostly for wine but also for other type of plants. It j's related to Anthroposophy, an new-age/esoteric movement from the 1930s' which somehow lived and grow until now and is still quite active. IMHO they're a bit frightening as they are now quite powerful (they have a bank (La Nef) many schools in western Europe and their own pharmatical lab (Weleda), all of them making a LOT of money) and clearly have highly conservative political views (one of their leader ran for president in France a while ago with an homophobe and racist project). Most documentation is in French or Deutch so if you wanna dig it's probably gonna take some translation. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58830 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/07/MALET/58797

They really are a scary bunch. Moreover, it's terribly annoying how most people in Europe seem to have labelled them as harmless. They're very much considered "ah, those weirdos, I don't agree with them but surely we should just let them do their thing". It's frightening – the Steiner guys are dangerous.

What do you mean by dangerous exactly? I was briefly involved with some people from the Steiner philosophy (the school) and while some people could definitely be labeled as a weird bunch with esoteric tendencies, none of them seemed dangerous at all.

Everything seemed very open and accepting to people different than themself. In a positive way, not in a "join my cult" way.

They form most of the anti-vax movement in Europe (there are documented case of a presumed-extinct disease killing children in Steiner schools) and are also deeply sexist and homophobic due to their beliefs in a mystical balance between "Man" and "Women". They also actively infiltrate medical institutions in France, Germany and Switzerland to favor meds from their official medicine (and private labs), and some country allow them to be officially sold as medicine with reduced controls in regard to efficacy. Oh and they successfully lobbied the French state into shutting down it's own observatory of derives in cults, known for having rose many alerts against Steiner schools to the govt over the years.

Thanks for the information. It does seem like the anti-vax movement is a lot larger within the Waldorf-community than outside. I never really thought about that.

They spread bullshit in a seemingly innocuous way. That's dangerous stuff that undermines society.

This is the first I've ever heard of this, I normally give my kids Weleda cough mixture and always pretty much saw the whole movement as basically a slightly better commercialized version of homeopathy.

Not going to mention any of this to my wife though - it'll just cause fights :)

i saw a youtube video on that kind of system within the last few years so yeah it's definitely something. you just need to make sure the fish are happy

> It was pesticide free because of you put chemicals on the plants it would get into the water and hurt the fish.

Funny how on a smaller human scale ("our bass will die and our food production will be in danger"), the problem and solution seem obvious. Once you scale it up to world terms, where you're only lightly polluting a very large amount of animals, humans no longer instinctively comprehend it. Much like empathy and compassion only hold a group together up to a certain size.

I live in Canada but haven't heard of the hydro houses you mentioned ("hydro" here is confusingly a synonym for electricity so google isn't helping either), can you provide specifics?

Canada has enormous hydroponic vegetable growing operations. They're quite impressive. I don't know really why they have built so much more than the US, but my theory is that there may be regulatory issues with importing fresh food from the Salinas valley, where much of the American vegetable crop is grown, and hydro is the best way to grow in the Canadian climate.

One company you can check out is Windset Farms.

Have you seen the weather up here?!? For most of this country, growing things indoors in completely artificial environments is the only option. There may be regulatory issues at play, but mainly I would think it’s a climatic necessity.

Indoors is more about solar insolation than climate. Southern Ontario is same latitude as northernmost california.

Check out Leamington Ontario and there are some big greenhouses.

But there’s a part of Spain where the whole city is a greenhouse: check out el ejido.