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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • It sounds counterintuitive at first, but if you think of real world examples, it makes a lot of sense. It’s the entire principle that casinos and blind bag toys operate on: you do the requested action (like placing a bet or buying the blind bag), you get something you didn’t want or expect, and you get a little mad that it didn’t go the way you wanted, so you do the requested action again. When it does end up giving you what you wanted, all the times you did the requested action get reinforced, not just the ones where you got the optimal outcome, like a big, “HAH! I knew I was right, I just needed to keep going until my ship finally came in!”

    I don’t know what other psychology concepts have similar reliability, but another really interesting one is “diffusion of responsibility” or bystander effect in which the more people witness something terrible, the easier it is for everyone to stand around doing nothing because they assume someone else is taking charge. It’s why pointing directly at someone and saying, “You, call 911!” helps.









  • It probably is still legal, but it’s not something I’ve looked for in like a decade. We do have products that use ground kernels, but those aren’t good to use on skin–the milling process doesn’t produce uniform particles and the pointy bits tend to compromise the barrier skin provides with very small tears.

    I completely agree that plastic isn’t necessary for good soap, I just like it. I would definitely buy soap made with ecologically responsible plantstic at least once.

    More importantly, using safer, scalable, completely biodegradable, algae-based polymers opens up so many more options for single-use products while simultaneously improving environmental quality. Farming algae and seaweeds removes a lot of contaminants from the ocean, like agricultural fertilizer and solid waste runoff. If we can truly scale up ocean farming responsibly, it’ll be its own “teal cascade” in which the benefits multiply with each step in the process.

    1. Farming algae/seaweed doesn’t require the use of inorganic fertilizers when you grow them alongside shellfish like oysters, clams, and scallops

    2. Increased protein production through shellfish reduces reliance on agricultural livestock for meat (which is incredibly damaging to the environment)

    3. Algae/seaweed can replace fossil carbon in fertilizers and plastics, and reduces cattle methane emissions by 20% or more when added to their regular feed

    At each step, we can take more and more petroleum out of the equation just by using methods that are better than sustainable, they actually remediate existing harm.

    Plus, I get my scrubby soap back.