[HN Gopher] Is the world really running out of sand?
___________________________________________________________________
Is the world really running out of sand?
Author : chmaynard
Score : 348 points
Date : 2024-10-01 16:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (practical.engineering)
(TXT) w3m dump (practical.engineering)
| crmrc114 wrote:
| Bonus points for articles that start with a tldr and don't try to
| bury the lead
| anamexis wrote:
| FYI it's "bury the lede," a lede being the introductory section
| of a news story.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I would argue that there's no reason to continue misspelling
| "lead" as "lede" outside of a context where you are worried
| about conflating the "lead" paragraph with the "lead" piece
| of metal which was used as a spacer between words in a
| Linotype machine
| jzb wrote:
| It's not a misspelling, it's jargon. FWIW I prefer it and I
| think it's valuable to preserve in part because people who
| dig into it a bit learn about the history of the term and
| practice of putting publications (especially newspapers)
| together.
| Maxatar wrote:
| You can prefer one spelling over another, absolutely, but
| it's a bit too strong to say someone using the actual
| word "lead" is incorrect.
| jzb wrote:
| Oh, I wouldn't correct someone for saying "lead" -- or
| "intro" or any other variant that makes sense. Leed is
| right out, though.
| keybored wrote:
| If the choice is betwixt overloading a morpheme and
| having two distinct I shall take the latter.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _I would argue that there 's no reason to continue
| misspelling "lead" as "lede"_
|
| Does it still count as misspelling when "lede" is in the
| dictionary (Merriam Websters & Cambridge & Oxford)?
|
| Pretty sure it's just a word at that point, right?
| Maxatar wrote:
| The word "lede" was introduced in the 1970s as an alternative
| spelling for the word "lead" to resolve ambiguity between the
| leading paragraph of an article and the metal "lead" which
| was used in typesetting. It didn't even become popular until
| the 1980s.
|
| In fact, prior to the 1980s, it was indeed spelled "bury the
| lead". Here for example is an excerpt from a book about
| newswriting from the 1970s which uses "lead" as the spelling:
|
| https://books.google.ca/books?id=3IxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22bury+the+.
| ..
| havblue wrote:
| Meanwhile, the group "Led Zeppelin" also avoided the
| ambiguous spelling to prevent people from pronouncing their
| name "leed zeppelin". You can't win with lead.
| btown wrote:
| Huh, didn't know that! Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Led_Zeppelin#Formation:_1966%E... :
|
| > One account of how the new band's name was chosen held
| that Moon and Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup
| with Page and Beck would go down like a "lead balloon",
| an idiom for being very unsuccessful or unpopular.[21]
| The group dropped the 'a' in lead at the suggestion of
| [manager] Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the
| term would not pronounce it "leed".[22] The word
| "balloon" was replaced by "zeppelin", a word which,
| according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought
| "the perfect combination of heavy and light,
| combustibility and grace" to Page's mind.[21]
|
| It certainly doesn't help that in a rock context, "lead
| guitar" is very much pronounced with a long e! And one
| could be forgiven for thinking that a formation of flying
| things would necessarily have one member in the lead
| position. I'm glad they had the foresight to keep us from
| being led astray!
| samatman wrote:
| > _And one could be forgiven for thinking that a
| formation of flying things would necessarily have one
| member in the lead position._
|
| Indeed. In which case you would have the lead zeppelin,
| and the led zeppelins.
| btown wrote:
| Now _that 's_ what I call burying the lead!
| colechristensen wrote:
| The Washington Post headline:
|
| >'The Eagle Has Landed' - Two Men Walk on the Moon
|
| That is the entire story, in the headline as it should be. I
| want to know more! The first sentence should add the most
| relevant added information.
|
| It shouldn't be "As a child Neil Armstrong always dreamed
| about..." burying the next most important detail 2/3 through
| the article. The importance/relevance/interest should start
| high, end low. Inverted pyramid.
| roca wrote:
| I have a theory that a lot of journalists really wanted to be
| novelists. When they get a chance to write a long-form
| article they can't resist the urge to flex their stylistic
| muscles; "look at me, I'm a Serious Writer".
| colechristensen wrote:
| I was talking to a journalist who worked for a major venue
| and the metric she cared about was number of seconds a user
| stayed on an article. She didn't say "this is the most
| important..." she just talked about it for 20 minutes and
| the different results from different demographics and link
| sources so it was quite obvious.
|
| So that's what journalists are measured by these days
| apparently, how long a piece can keep the attention of a
| user.
|
| Ironically she worked for what I would consider one of the
| best players in terms of not writing attention grabbing BS.
| (I won't mention which here)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's the "inverted pyramid" organization that is (or was)
| taught in journalism. The way it was explained to me is:
| imagine the reader stops at the headline. Or after reading
| the first sentence. Or after the first paragraph, etc. In any
| case, they should have read the most important facts of the
| story up that point.
| bregma wrote:
| Holy cow, don't look for recipes on the web. If you're luck
| any ingredients and instructions are only 2/3 through. More
| often 23 pages through.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I've been using this app "just the recipe" to avoid this
| problem. It's not perfect, but saves me 90% of the time. I
| think I found it on hn originally.
|
| I have no connection to the app, aside from being a happy
| user
| cole-k wrote:
| Your comment and my response exist in so many places on the
| internet, but I wanted to point out that most of the web-
| based recipes I use have a convenient "jump to recipe"
| button. I won't attempt to explain what
| SEO/copyright/whatever reasons there are for the excess
| prose at the beginning, though.
|
| What bothers me more about these sites is how heavyweight
| they can feel even with ads stripped. I wonder if they all
| use a similar, bloated JS widget that my phone cannot run
| smoothly.
| encom wrote:
| https://based.cooking/
| jzb wrote:
| Note that "bury the lede" isn't really about "make the reader
| get to the end to find out the answer" but when a
| reporter/writer emphasizes the wrong part of a story in the
| intro then you'd say they buried the lede. Like, if the first
| graf is all about a politician attending a ribbon-cutting
| ceremony in Podunk, IL and then in the third graf you have "at
| the rally, he called for all left-handed people to be put in
| jail" then you've buried the lede.
|
| If you have in the first graf "so-and-so proposed a radical,
| and illegal, prosecution of a minority group" it's not burying
| the lede to make the reader get to the third graf to find out
| it's against left-handed people. Annoying, perhaps, but not
| technically burying the lede. :)
| hinkley wrote:
| Burying the lede is in the same spirit as "the real wtf
| was..."
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Really interesting video. This is the first time I have seen the
| (apparently entirely fabricated) idea that desert sand isn't
| suitable for construction challenged. I had definitely absorbed
| that idea into my consciousness without enough due diligence.
| eichin wrote:
| Ironically, we just hit an entirely different "sand catastrophe"
| - https://mastodon.social/@mimsical/113232531800424706
|
| > the crucibles used to create ingots of silicon which become
| microchips are made from an ultra-pure quartz sand -- and 70% of
| the world's supply comes from just one place in North Carolina
| [Spruce Pine]
| voxadam wrote:
| Essential node in global semiconductor supply chain hit by
| Hurricane Helene | 196 points | 50 comments |
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701862
| diggan wrote:
| > and 70% of the world's supply comes from just one place in
| North Carolina
|
| A quick search seems to say there are more places available for
| getting that than North Carolina.
|
| Is it possible that this specific mine just happens to be the
| cheapest available right now, but in case they for some reason
| disappear, there are alternatives everyone would switch to? Or
| is the situation that if that mine disappears, there is no
| other alternatives at all?
| esmIII wrote:
| Could not even be the cheapest, Just the refinement process
| was developed for this particular sand. A different sand
| might have different impurities and need different processes
| to handle.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Almost all our modern tech has extremely long tails
| measured in decades.
|
| It's basic economics to exploit one source for as long as
| possible before feasibility changes, but that's a hard
| argument to make for anyone, even the most experienced
| personnel because it's all so site specific.
| hinkley wrote:
| If the particular impurities of this source can be chelated
| out with safer or cheaper chemicals, maybe in fewer steps,
| then the cost goes down.
|
| Of course jurisdictions with poor worker conditions can
| just use the less safe chemicals and externalize the human
| toll instead of using more complex safety procedures.
| ajross wrote:
| Yeah, this is being overblown. It may very well be that there
| will be a short term constriction as competitors ramp, but to
| argue that this is some kind of fundamental bottleneck in
| semiconductor production is ridiculous.
|
| It's _quartz_ : literally the single most common crystal on
| the surface of the planet. Now, sure, I'm sure this
| particular mine had great stuff, but it's not like it's hard
| to find.
|
| No, surely what we have here is a single source provider
| precisely _because_ the material is so cheap to mine (and
| therefore unprofitable to try to compete with from scratch).
| coliveira wrote:
| You're right, but I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a
| bottleneck at least for a few months, generating a lot of
| headaches for some companies.
| tomrod wrote:
| Availability, production scale, and knowledge base.
|
| I think things will probably pan out okay, maybe a rough
| month or two as roads (even if rough cut new logging roads),
| utilities, and prioritized community services get fixed up.
| Synthetic option is available, apparently, just a bit costly.
| moomin wrote:
| >> and 70% of the world's supply comes from just one place in
| North Carolina
|
| > A quick search seems to say there are more places available
| for getting that than North Carolina.
|
| I mean, I deduced it straight from "70%".
| zahlman wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the implied argument is that, while this
| source _currently_ supplies 70% of the total, we aren 't
| actually _dependent_ on it - i.e. production could be
| scaled up elsewhere.
| ipsod wrote:
| Oh, cool. One of the most common glass batches (raw materials
| melted to make glass) used by artists is "Spruce Pine Batch".
| hinkley wrote:
| Wonder if it's the same stuff or if glass people get a
| different bin.
| mp05 wrote:
| I'm not sure that's technically irony but rather an interesting
| coincidence.
| hangonhn wrote:
| The majority of the earth's crust is believed to be made of
| silicon dioxide. I don't know how much I would believe that we
| would have a scarcity. It may all come from one source simply
| because of history.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I wrote this comment on an article that was on HN about 6
| months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818778
|
| Sadly, given the insane amount of devastation in western NC,
| I'll get a chance to test my hypothesis. That is, despite
| Spruce Pine going offline, the overall impact to the global
| semiconductor industry will be relatively unnoticeable.
| mkonecny wrote:
| A coincidence is not ironic
| throw0101b wrote:
| The book mentioned, _The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and
| How It Transformed Civilization_ by Vince Beiser:
|
| > _The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the
| hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more
| essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it,
| build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It 's also a
| provocative examination of the serious human and environmental
| costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received
| little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of
| the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning
| journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking
| readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to
| remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is
| so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter
| world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert
| fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an
| entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected
| and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with
| surprising characters._
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36950075-the-world-in-a-...
| WillAdams wrote:
| Another book on this is:
|
| _Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern
| Civilization_ by Ed Conway
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112974899-material-world
|
| >Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental
| materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed
| our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them,
| our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control
| them will determine our future
| criddell wrote:
| This issue has been discussed here in the past.
|
| One example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21869624
| Havoc wrote:
| I wonder if the desert kind of sand that isn't suitable for
| construction can be used for those thermal mass sand batteries.
|
| Seems like an obvious solution for storage to me but haven't
| heard anything on that front
| db48x wrote:
| You didn't watch the video.
| breakingrules3 wrote:
| the world is running out of sand if some crooked politician and
| his cronies can profit off of it. notice the pattern.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| The first time I heard about this, I wondered why we didn't just
| blast desert sand at itself to rough it up to give it better
| properties. Sure it takes some energy but the sand mafia probably
| isn't getting cheaper.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It turns we're all in the pocket of big sand. Which I guess is
| better than having big sand in our pockets, as that would
| scratch up our phones. Then, we'd need new phones, or at least
| new phone screens... either way, big sand wins!
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| dale gribble was the forerunner
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| you're forgetting how much damage it'd do in the charging
| port!
| telotortium wrote:
| That would probably cause the sand to become smoother.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I wondered why we didn't just blast desert sand at itself to
| rough it up to give it better properties.
|
| The grain size of desert (or most maritime) sand is already far
| too small, and if you blast it to pieces it will get even
| smaller - too small to be used for concrete.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Every time I watch a practical engineering video I like Grady
| more and more. Great presenter, interesting videos, great value
| for the time spent watching. Gets right to the point in the first
| sentence, and the rest of the video is _still_ worth watching.
|
| Add me to the long list of people who heard the bit about desert
| sand not being suitable for concrete and believed it. I'm happy
| to be corrected.
| stouset wrote:
| I loved how he tackled this from multiple angles.
|
| Manufactured sand has those rough edges, and is often a waste
| byproduct of rock crushing anyway. But also, in practice, you
| _want_ more weathered sand for ease of handling, since too-
| rough sand is less strong given the same level of workability!
| xnx wrote:
| > Gets right to the point in the first sentence,
|
| _Huge_ respect or the "tldr: no" right at the start.
| airstrike wrote:
| I don't even care about sand but he's so great I couldn't stop
| watching it
| jayrot wrote:
| That's the sign of a truly great "content creator". I've
| found myself watching a lot of different YT channels on
| topics I would NEVER have thought I had any interest in.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I almost feel like his videos are anti-clickbait. On my YouTube
| recommendations page, often his title and cover image are the
| least eye-grabbing, but the actual video is always satisfying.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| His water infrastructure videos always get me because the
| thumbnail shows off the very cool model that he built just
| for it :)
| jhwhite wrote:
| > Add me to the long list of people who heard the bit about
| desert sand not being suitable for concrete and believed it.
| I'm happy to be corrected.
|
| Cristobol and Hank's whole business strategy down the drain!
| (From Barry)
| czstrong wrote:
| He's got a great book as well. I got it because my 4 yo is a
| Grady fan but I enjoy it and learn a lot as well. "Engineering
| in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed
| Environment"
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I love his book too. I ended up buying a copy for my sister who
| kept asking me how I knew all their weird details about things
| like sewer systems :-)
| sideway wrote:
| If you found this article interesting, definitely give "Material
| World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future" a read. One of
| the most eye-opening books I've read in the past few years.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Agreed, I read it earlier in the year and found it
| enlightening.
| caust1c wrote:
| Grady is a hero in engineering reporting and documentaries. I've
| learned so much about how the world works in other engineering
| disciplines from Practical Engineering, and often in neglected
| fields that are losing talent faster than it can be replaced.
|
| It gives me hope that teenagers are watching his videos and
| becoming inspired to go into infrastructure. More than anything,
| I appreciate his calm and reasoned perspectives that are so
| lacking in video content in this modern day and age.
| FredPret wrote:
| 100% - he calmly explains various approaches and their
| tradeoffs.
|
| He's not exactly a traditional journalist, but this is what I
| want the future of journalism to be like. People with subject
| matter expertise explaining their thing simply and clearly.
| justinator wrote:
| We're running out of most everything, in a very The Limits to
| Growth/World3 kinda of way.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Isaac Asimov was an early writer on this, noting that if the
| earth's crust was converted into biomass the limiting element
| was phosphorous --- look at USDA photos of food crops grown w/
| and w/o fertilizer including that element for a very sobering
| view.
|
| Currently, we expend up to 10 calories of petro-chemical energy
| to get 1 calorie of food energy (depending on food) --- peak
| oil is still worrisome given how much of the input for
| fertilizers is from oil.
|
| Sometime in the last century we crossed over from their being
| more weight in bony fish in the oceans than shipping tonnage to
| the latter predominating: https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/
|
| My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was
| outlawed --- I worry my children will live in a time when
| commercial fishing is no longer feasible.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > I worry my children will live in a time when commercial
| fishing is no longer feasible.
|
| I worry that my parents lived in a time when commercial
| fishing was no longer feasible, but no one noticed and kept
| siphoning all the seafood anyway.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_nort
| h...
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >I worry my children will live in a time when commercial
| fishing is no longer feasible.
|
| We are already well into it unfortunately. I've seen enough
| anecdotal evidence from old fishermen that we have already
| depleted and disrupted the sea biomass so much that it is
| already changed forever.
|
| - Old sushi chefs talking about how there are numerous fish
| they can no longer get at any price that were common when
| they were young.
|
| - Old fishing photos show smaller and smaller "prize" catches
| over time.
|
| - Old fisherman talking about how they used to fish by
| slapping oars at the bay then simply hand/net catching the
| fish types they wanted near shore.
|
| - Old whalers talking about how they could simply go out and
| pick what type of large catch they wanted and bring it back.
| Now they can go days or weeks without a single catch of
| anything.
| hinkley wrote:
| The best solution we have so far is outlawing all fishing in
| certain areas of the ocean. Picked well, the fish are safe
| there to breed and recover population numbers, and you only
| harvest schools that leave the exclusion zone due to
| crowding.
| rpigab wrote:
| > If we use the US Department of Agriculture's soil textural
| triangle, sand is any granular material that is at least 85%
| sand...
|
| Cool, I just added a single grain of sand to a tonne of snow, now
| I have a tonne of sand. How convenient.
| ses1984 wrote:
| If you add a single grain of sand to a tonne of snow, it's not
| 85% sand.
| hinkley wrote:
| Seems somebody slept through Intro to Logic.
| fwip wrote:
| How does that one grain become 85% of a tonne?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I don't understand how you got that conclusion -- 1 grain of
| sand is not 85% of the [ton of snow + 1 grain sand]
| sakras wrote:
| I think OP wanted to construct "sand by induction", but I
| also think you need more than one grain. If you have 9 grains
| of sand and add one snowflake, you now have something that's
| 90% sand and is therefore 10 grains of sand. Take your 10
| grains of sand and add another snowflake to create 11 grains
| of sand. Continue with each snowflake one by one, and you've
| inductively created a sand pile.
| timando wrote:
| You don't need to construct sand by induction. Just notice
| that snow has the right particle size to be considered
| sand.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Betteridge's law never fails! (At least in this case the author
| immediately answers the question.)
| manav wrote:
| Don't we have to move to GaN anyway?
| tminima wrote:
| I noticed that the two bars were breaking differently under the
| hydraulic press. One was _crumbling_ and the other (manufactured)
| was _exploding_. There was no mention of this effect in the
| video. It couldn 't be the due to force because in the 2nd half
| the manufactured bar broke at a lower force. Could this factor
| has consequences on how manufactured sand concrete behaves with
| natural phenomenon (hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, etc.)
| ars wrote:
| Exploding means it was keeping its integrity for longer (i.e.
| not compressing), and then releasing it when it couldn't
| anywhere.
|
| Crumbling means it was falling apart.
|
| A paper book will explode in a press because it does not have
| any way to compress and release any of the force on it, until
| it releases all of it in one shot.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I just got back from the beach and my car is full of it if anyone
| needs some.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| I recently bought his book. It's as great as you'd expect it to
| be.
| neeleshs wrote:
| Learned so much about sand in 20 minutes! He mentions nebula.tv
| at the end. Does anyone have feedback on the content over there?
| phyzome wrote:
| Yeah, I subscribe to Nebula -- and he's actually the reason I
| did. They have a decent size catalog although my interests are
| narrow enough that I only actually follow a couple of channels
| there. But that's certainly been worth the price.
| neeleshs wrote:
| Thank you.
| mcculley wrote:
| One thing that surprised me when I started running a tugboat
| business: A country can be both an exporter and importer of sand.
| Sand of one type goes from the U.S. to The Bahamas to be used in
| concrete. Sand of another type goes from The Bahamas to the U.S.
| to be used in aquariums. Specialty sands go to make regulation
| volleyball courts.
| lb1lf wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| Then there is all kinds of specialty sands - say, when
| replacing the sand in our local athletics union long jump pits,
| I learned that one should use sand from river beds (as opposed
| to sand crushed at a plant) as the river sand is much less
| likely to cause abrasions, seeing as all the sharp edges have
| been worn away as the sand has been shifted back and forth by
| the river current...
|
| Sand is not just sand.
| blitzar wrote:
| The sand people have over 50 different words for sand.
| larsrc wrote:
| We fools here in Germany sometimes _pay_ to get rid of excess
| electricity when it's very sunny and windy. How about having some
| rock crushing machines that instead use that cheap electricity to
| make more sand?
|
| Thanks for the puns, too.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's quite likely that the cost of idle capital is much higher
| than the cost of paying others to accept electricity. Depending
| on the price swings, a battery may be a much better investment.
| outlog wrote:
| better make it a sand battery:
| https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/03/10/sand-batteries-
| cou...
| Someone wrote:
| Free power doesn't mean free production.
|
| There's also labor, wear on the machines and the lost
| opportunity of using your money to do something else. Building
| such crushing machines and only use them x% of the time (for,
| for now, fairly small values of x) may not be a good
| investment.
| cdchn wrote:
| I hate to say this, but why aren't the Bitcoin miners jumping
| all over that?
| niklasbuschmann wrote:
| I assume there are taxes and transmission fees on top of the
| spot electricity price
| throwup238 wrote:
| Metal foundries in Europe generally have dibs with large,
| long term power purchasing contracts. IIRC there's even some
| legislation that favours them since they're a national
| security resource.
| applied_heat wrote:
| Because the mining equipment is expensive and the duration of
| free electricity intervals are outweighed by expensive
| electricity intervals
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I was in Vietnam on holiday a few years ago and dredging sand out
| of the Mekong was obviously big business. You could see ships
| full of it going down the river. Apparently it was supposed to be
| protected, but that didn't seem to be stopping anyone (there
| seems to be a lot of corruption in Vietnam). We were told it was
| causing houses to fall into the river, due to erosion.
| chris_wot wrote:
| So... this is really about costs? If costs increase for more
| environmentally destructive sand production, then other sand
| production gets relatively cheaper... and as he says, industry
| starts to use more appropriate materials that suddenly become
| relatively comparable in terms of costs to concrete?
|
| I'm not an engineer or an economist, does this sound like a fair
| summary?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| The whole idea of making your own sand is not sound. It will cost
| more, perhaps many times more. Seems clear when you think about
| it: hard to beat the cost of 'natural' sand because you just
| drive over and load it up. Add any more to that process, it's
| gonna go up in price. Including crushing rock etc - energy-
| intensive, then sieving. All add cost over and above, well, just
| hauling.
|
| And vague comments about 'couldn't find the science behind river
| sand being less useful' (because it's rounded not jagged). That's
| no kind of science.
|
| This guy is lauded but I"m not so sure he's someone to listen to.
| "I hit some rocks in my garage and made my own sand!" isn't any
| kind of interesting. At what cost? At what scale? It's all about
| money, baby. Anything that doesn't add up cost is just
| storytelling.
| emilecantin wrote:
| Haven't read the article, but I watched the video. He goes on
| to say that it's not the full story, and he also does some
| tests where instead of optimizing for a particular water ratio
| in the mix, he optimizes for a specific texture when mixed,
| which is termed "workability". If you keep "workability"
| constant, you can put much less water in the mix, resulting in
| a stronger concrete when cured.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Did you watch the entire video? I ask because Grady discusses
| EXACTLY this point.
|
| He explains that the whole 'more expensive' thing is really
| just noting the _actual_ cost of sand versus ignoring the
| externalized costs of mining it. When you dig up a river bed
| there is a cost there that isn 't necessarily reflected in the
| cost of the sand you mined from there, sometimes because that
| cost is passed on to someone else who has to remediate the site
| after you mined it (like taxpayers). He empirically points out
| that different sands need a different water/cement ratio and
| also points out that the papers on sand use in concrete
| understand that. The 'bug' seems to be that people just add 'x'
| water to the mix and if the sand changes they might get
| different results.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Just like the US debt is about to collapse on pepl and kill the
| economy, but ... ... it never happens.
| FredPret wrote:
| Public debt is more like a brake that gets worse and worse
| really slowly over time.
|
| And then it suddenly explodes - more and more of the budget
| goes to interest payments instead of procurement.
|
| At one point the government has to borrow to make payments on
| the debt, and then you've got a very bad spiral.
| topspin wrote:
| The US has had a long way to fall. In a wealthy economy can
| suffer a great deal of public finance abuse: there are many
| wells that need to be dried up. The progression of the US
| toward that goal includes, most recently: progressively
| shifting to ever shorter term notes to finance deficits and
| large scale monetizing of deficits, such as during the Great
| Recession and COVID.
|
| We'll get there. You'll know it's over when you get "bailed in"
| and the treasury starting minting trillion dollar coins.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| So I'm confused. How are we to differentiate sand for
| semiconductor from sand for fiber optics? Or say sand for
| windows?
| undebuggable wrote:
| Didn't know artisanal sand is a thing.
| m463 wrote:
| Reminds me of the Onion:
|
| https://theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running-out...
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > I tried to track down the original source of this idea ...
| Beiser cites an article from the UN, which itself cites a 2006
| paper about using two types of desert sand from China in
| concrete. But that paper doesn't mention the roundness of the
| particles at all.
|
| This seems to be a fairly common pattern where a citable source
| (Beiser's book and the UN article) makes a mistake, that then
| propagates everywhere as common knowledge even though it's
| incorrect. There are many well-researched blog articles like this
| out there, where the author has dug deep, done the hard research,
| and found mistakes at many levels, but because it's not in what
| academia or Wikipedia considers a "citable" source, the mistaken
| assertion continues to be propagated. Until someone manages to
| present it in an academically acceptable format, if that happens
| at all.
|
| Solving the "what should be a citable source" problem is
| complicated, but in the interim, I hope we can at least find a
| way to transfer these well-researched findings and corrections
| from non-academic sources to citable forms regularly and easily.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| The problem is that what defines a "citable source" for
| Wikipedia is loose at best and malicious at worst. There are
| many examples where "improper" sources are accepted, especially
| in social matters, because they benefit a certain viewpoint.
| STEM is, for the most part, decent, but anything covering the
| life of people needs to be considered carefully due to the lack
| of several types of important sources and the biases present on
| many people's pages.
| emeril wrote:
| great new yorker piece on this
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/the-world-is-r...
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