4 ms·

There are three people in my household. Between us, we drink 30-40 (depending on the week) 2L bottles of soda a week, as well as a couple of 12-packs of soda c

There are three people in my household. Between us, we drink 30-40 (depending on the week) 2L bottles of soda a week, as well as a couple of 12-packs of soda cans, maybe an 8-pack of gatorade/powerade, and 15-20 half liter bottles of water. Food is not the largest part of what we bring back from the store. There are a lot of opportunities lost when you can't carry more than, well, you can personally carry. The "white cheddar mac & cheese" brand that everyone in the house likes as a meal base is on sale? With a car, I can easily choose to just buy 40 of them to throw under the counter to last us for the next two months. Without a car, I can't take advantage of sales like that. With a car, I can decide to suddenly throw clothes in a suitcase and drive to Florida or Delaware (I live about halfway between those). Without a car, such things would have to be planned well in advance. With a car, I can drive 3 hours to Atlanta to pick up a monitor arm with my two friends in the car for company. With a car, I can go to the home improvement store and pick up lumber so my friend can build a nice gaming table for D&D days. Is a car a luxury? Sure, from the perspective of 1920. So are 4K screens and guest bedrooms and mini-fridges and king-size beds and neighbors whose walls are not your walls, but that's not a reason to feel as though people should reject any of those things.

aoloe 10y ago
What you are describing is 100% the contrary of my daily life and of what I aspire to become in the future. No wonder that I am more than happy with a good bicycle and a yearly ticket for all public transportation in my country. Of course, I don't own a car. I drink tap water, no "white cheddar mac & cheese" but as many fresh vegetables / meet / cheese as possible (ok, and lot of pasta). If I want to go to Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Vienna, Rome, London or Berlin there is a (more or less direct) train every two hours. Just buy a ticket over the internet, print it, and jump on the train (And while I wonder where Delaware is and why I would want to go there, I can take my laptop with me and keep on working during the whole ride to Paris). I need a monitor arm? Just choose one in the internet shop and it's delivered tomorrow morning at my doorstep. Or I can pick it up later in the afternoon at the delivery place 10 minutes from here. If I want to go and play table tennis with my friends, there are public parks where we can meet... Basketball? Checked. Football (you would probably call it soccer)? Even easier. Want to have a swim together? In the lake or in the river in summer or in a public pool if it's cold. No 4K screen, no mini-fridges, no king size bed, no cold walls... but i agree a real guest bedroom would be nice! Owning a car is for me just unpractical. And for the few times a year I would need one, I can find alternative solutions or book one through car sharing. It gets to the point where I wonder if owning a car or not shapes your life in such different way or different choices in life makes you own a car (or not)...
- randallsquared 10y ago
  I don't disagree that there are lots of places in which a car is less practical, and where there are a lot of services which make up for that, at least mostly. I have lived without a car for periods of my life, and done a lot more walking, and scheduled my life around public transit time. A Thursday afternoon train of thought upon being asked if I want to go to an event with work friends in 2009 in DC might have gone like: Hm, it looks like the last line back leaves station B at 12:30AM, and so to connect with that I could take the yellow to B from A at 11:55PM... no, that one arrives at B at 12:20, so if it's a little late I won't be able to get on the 12:30 from B... let's see, the next earlier leaves at 12:05AM, and if I get on the train at A at 11:30PM then I'll still have only 10 minutes leeway, but I can just take the 12:30AM train if I miss the 12:05AM. I need to get to B a little early because when I was there late last year they'd locked one entrance at 10PM and I might have to walk a few more blocks to the other side. So, best case I leave the event to walk to station B at 11:00PM and arrive home about 12:30AM... the event starts at 10PM, so an hour and a half of transit to spend an hour there and miss the second half... "Hey, everyone; I'm just gonna head out. You guys have fun, though." Automated shared cars will probably completely change this. As long as I can walk out of my house and get in a vehicle and go exactly where I want to go without waiting, considering schedules, making connections, or stressing constantly until I'm safely on the last one about missing a connection and being late, I don't care about whether I am taking "public transit" or my own car. At least we have the pasta in common. ;) You probably do not want to go to Delaware at all; it was the first place that came to mind because I went there recently, and Florida (which apparently you do know...) is about the same distance south. I should have used Orlando / Disney World and Philadelphia, perhaps, for better name recognition. > No 4K screen, no mini-fridges, no king size bed, no cold walls... Well, my point was more separation than temperature... :) > It gets to the point where I wonder if owning a car or not shapes your life in such different way or different choices in life makes you own a car (or not)... I would argue that both are true. In many places one could live, a car is an enormous asset. In places without good infrastructure or with very high costs, a car might well be more trouble than it's worth. But owning a car will give options which weren't available before, so in that sense it shapes your life as well.
- walshemj 10y ago
sdk77 10y ago
Just counting the bottles, soda intake in your household works out to 3350cc/day*person, on average. If you're not exaggerating, you have a very unhealthy habit.
- randallsquared 10y ago
  Most of it is accounted for by two of us. My typical fluid intake is around 6000cc/day, including soda, coffee, bottled water, and tap water. The myfitnesspal site claims 2L of Coke Zero has 70 C, which would imply that a total (after coffee creamer) of ~200 C a day just from soda consumption. Apart from that it's just slightly acidic salt water, so I don't think I'd characterize it as "very" unhealthy. Perhaps "somewhat". :)
driverdan 10y ago
> we drink 30-40 (depending on the week) 2L bottles of soda a week, as well as a couple of 12-packs of soda cans, maybe an 8-pack of gatorade/powerade, and 15-20 half liter bottles of water WTF?? That's a very unhealthy amount of sugar. Why would you buy bottled water?
- randallsquared 10y ago
  There's no sugar in any of that. Or, trace amounts. It's all "zero" and "diet". I buy bottled water for two reasons. The reason I started buying it was that I wanted to drink more water and less of everything else (I was using a ketogenic diet and there's some question about whether some artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response, and to what degree that would partially defeat the point of the keto diet). Most of the time during most days I'm in front of some screen or another, with a glass of Diet Mountain Dew or Coke Zero nearby, and I only really pay attention to the drink when I have it in hand and notice that it's empty, whereupon I get up and refill it. This process keeps me drinking enough not to be dehydrated during the day (much more than enough, obviously), but if I don't do this, then I will at first be distracted by not finding my nearby drink, which pulls me out of whatever I'm working or playing on. This would be fine if it happened every thirty minutes, but it happens basically as soon as I stop thinking about it, which is difficult to work through. After I've adjusted to that, or if I'm in an environment in which I don't expect a drink to be nearby, I have the opposite problem, where I can sit in the same position typing and mousing for far too long. So, having a drink nearby prevents dehydration and soreness, by keeping me drinking unconsciously and prompting me to get up and walk around every thirty minutes or so. Now, at this point you are probably thinking, "No problem! Just fill the glass with tap water and everything's the same!" In practice, however, that turned out not to be the case. For whatever reason, I was unsuccessful at training myself to drink water this way. Instead, I would find myself dehydrated and stiff with a full glass of water nearby. At some point about five years ago, though, I found that if I had a small bottle of water (a half-liter, say) instead of an open-top glass of water, I drank that automatically and only noticed when it was empty. So, rather than fighting whatever part of me is uninterested in open glasses of water, I just bought a bunch of 0.5L bottles. Since I just put them next to my desk, I don't actually get up to refill anything, but drinking one every 45 minutes or so will force me to get up and walk in any case, so it's all good. At first I spent some time refilling these bottles rather than buying new, but it was more trouble than it was worth: trying to train myself not to toss them, trying to be gentle (they're quite fragile), washing, filling, and drying them, keeping track of one or more containers (the plastic they come wrapped in is not a reusable container), and worst of all, keeping track of whether I need to do a refill or will run out during an upcoming stretch of work... I'm willing to pay a few bucks a week to just not have any of that. So, I still do some of that, but have returned to drinking a lot of soda, as I mentioned, rather than 12-16 0.5L bottles every day. A 12-pack of them lasts me several days, now. The other reason I still buy them is that sometime while I was drinking them almost exclusively I got in the habit of keeping one or two by my bedside, which solved the wake-up-with-dehydration-headache problem I had for the previous ~20 years, without any further conscious attention. Probably too much detail. But that's why.

aoloe 10y ago

What you are describing is 100% the contrary of my daily life and of what I aspire to become in the future. No wonder that I am more than happy with a good bicycle and a yearly ticket for all public transportation in my country. Of course, I don't own a car. I drink tap water, no "white cheddar mac & cheese" but as many fresh vegetables / meet / cheese as possible (ok, and lot of pasta). If I want to go to Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Vienna, Rome, London or Berlin there is a (more or less direct) train every two hours. Just buy a ticket over the internet, print it, and jump on the train (And while I wonder where Delaware is and why I would want to go there, I can take my laptop with me and keep on working during the whole ride to Paris). I need a monitor arm? Just choose one in the internet shop and it's delivered tomorrow morning at my doorstep. Or I can pick it up later in the afternoon at the delivery place 10 minutes from here. If I want to go and play table tennis with my friends, there are public parks where we can meet... Basketball? Checked. Football (you would probably call it soccer)? Even easier. Want to have a swim together? In the lake or in the river in summer or in a public pool if it's cold. No 4K screen, no mini-fridges, no king size bed, no cold walls... but i agree a real guest bedroom would be nice! Owning a car is for me just unpractical. And for the few times a year I would need one, I can find alternative solutions or book one through car sharing. It gets to the point where I wonder if owning a car or not shapes your life in such different way or different choices in life makes you own a car (or not)...

randallsquared 10y ago
I don't disagree that there are lots of places in which a car is less practical, and where there are a lot of services which make up for that, at least mostly. I have lived without a car for periods of my life, and done a lot more walking, and scheduled my life around public transit time. A Thursday afternoon train of thought upon being asked if I want to go to an event with work friends in 2009 in DC might have gone like: Hm, it looks like the last line back leaves station B at 12:30AM, and so to connect with that I could take the yellow to B from A at 11:55PM... no, that one arrives at B at 12:20, so if it's a little late I won't be able to get on the 12:30 from B... let's see, the next earlier leaves at 12:05AM, and if I get on the train at A at 11:30PM then I'll still have only 10 minutes leeway, but I can just take the 12:30AM train if I miss the 12:05AM. I need to get to B a little early because when I was there late last year they'd locked one entrance at 10PM and I might have to walk a few more blocks to the other side. So, best case I leave the event to walk to station B at 11:00PM and arrive home about 12:30AM... the event starts at 10PM, so an hour and a half of transit to spend an hour there and miss the second half... "Hey, everyone; I'm just gonna head out. You guys have fun, though." Automated shared cars will probably completely change this. As long as I can walk out of my house and get in a vehicle and go exactly where I want to go without waiting, considering schedules, making connections, or stressing constantly until I'm safely on the last one about missing a connection and being late, I don't care about whether I am taking "public transit" or my own car. At least we have the pasta in common. ;) You probably do not want to go to Delaware at all; it was the first place that came to mind because I went there recently, and Florida (which apparently you do know...) is about the same distance south. I should have used Orlando / Disney World and Philadelphia, perhaps, for better name recognition. > No 4K screen, no mini-fridges, no king size bed, no cold walls... Well, my point was more separation than temperature... :) > It gets to the point where I wonder if owning a car or not shapes your life in such different way or different choices in life makes you own a car (or not)... I would argue that both are true. In many places one could live, a car is an enormous asset. In places without good infrastructure or with very high costs, a car might well be more trouble than it's worth. But owning a car will give options which weren't available before, so in that sense it shapes your life as well.
walshemj 10y ago

sdk77 10y ago

Just counting the bottles, soda intake in your household works out to 3350cc/day*person, on average. If you're not exaggerating, you have a very unhealthy habit.

randallsquared 10y ago
Most of it is accounted for by two of us. My typical fluid intake is around 6000cc/day, including soda, coffee, bottled water, and tap water. The myfitnesspal site claims 2L of Coke Zero has 70 C, which would imply that a total (after coffee creamer) of ~200 C a day just from soda consumption. Apart from that it's just slightly acidic salt water, so I don't think I'd characterize it as "very" unhealthy. Perhaps "somewhat". :)

driverdan 10y ago

> we drink 30-40 (depending on the week) 2L bottles of soda a week, as well as a couple of 12-packs of soda cans, maybe an 8-pack of gatorade/powerade, and 15-20 half liter bottles of water WTF?? That's a very unhealthy amount of sugar. Why would you buy bottled water?

randallsquared 10y ago
There's no sugar in any of that. Or, trace amounts. It's all "zero" and "diet". I buy bottled water for two reasons. The reason I started buying it was that I wanted to drink more water and less of everything else (I was using a ketogenic diet and there's some question about whether some artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response, and to what degree that would partially defeat the point of the keto diet). Most of the time during most days I'm in front of some screen or another, with a glass of Diet Mountain Dew or Coke Zero nearby, and I only really pay attention to the drink when I have it in hand and notice that it's empty, whereupon I get up and refill it. This process keeps me drinking enough not to be dehydrated during the day (much more than enough, obviously), but if I don't do this, then I will at first be distracted by not finding my nearby drink, which pulls me out of whatever I'm working or playing on. This would be fine if it happened every thirty minutes, but it happens basically as soon as I stop thinking about it, which is difficult to work through. After I've adjusted to that, or if I'm in an environment in which I don't expect a drink to be nearby, I have the opposite problem, where I can sit in the same position typing and mousing for far too long. So, having a drink nearby prevents dehydration and soreness, by keeping me drinking unconsciously and prompting me to get up and walk around every thirty minutes or so. Now, at this point you are probably thinking, "No problem! Just fill the glass with tap water and everything's the same!" In practice, however, that turned out not to be the case. For whatever reason, I was unsuccessful at training myself to drink water this way. Instead, I would find myself dehydrated and stiff with a full glass of water nearby. At some point about five years ago, though, I found that if I had a small bottle of water (a half-liter, say) instead of an open-top glass of water, I drank that automatically and only noticed when it was empty. So, rather than fighting whatever part of me is uninterested in open glasses of water, I just bought a bunch of 0.5L bottles. Since I just put them next to my desk, I don't actually get up to refill anything, but drinking one every 45 minutes or so will force me to get up and walk in any case, so it's all good. At first I spent some time refilling these bottles rather than buying new, but it was more trouble than it was worth: trying to train myself not to toss them, trying to be gentle (they're quite fragile), washing, filling, and drying them, keeping track of one or more containers (the plastic they come wrapped in is not a reusable container), and worst of all, keeping track of whether I need to do a refill or will run out during an upcoming stretch of work... I'm willing to pay a few bucks a week to just not have any of that. So, I still do some of that, but have returned to drinking a lot of soda, as I mentioned, rather than 12-16 0.5L bottles every day. A 12-pack of them lasts me several days, now. The other reason I still buy them is that sometime while I was drinking them almost exclusively I got in the habit of keeping one or two by my bedside, which solved the wake-up-with-dehydration-headache problem I had for the previous ~20 years, without any further conscious attention. Probably too much detail. But that's why.