9 ms·

The Microwave Economy

60 points by bengtan 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
readflaggedcomm 6y ago
A microwave economy sprouts from believing Sears catalogs were ritual artifacts and leads to Google defining our language. The convenience-craftsmanship spectrum seems orthogonal to these and decorating habits. Also: door knobs that beep? I guess I am going against the currents of society if that and owning a microwave is "all the same" household fixtures.
- madaxe_again 6y ago
  It’s cargo cults, all the way down. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey doesn’t care if it isn’t real, it just needs to look real to other monkeys. It’s not new, we’ve been at it for millions of years - it’s just been very effectively commoditised, as the ratcheting demand is infinite.
  - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
    Maybe so. My problem with the author's attitude is probably that: shabby goods don't fit in his decision matrix. He agonizes about keeping up with the Joneses, but blames it for sapping meaning from his life. Like Tyler Durden without the self-improvement. My coffee table costs an order of magnitude less than one of similar proportions at Ikea, yet it's both more durable and more disposable. It doesn't hold special meaning to me, either sentiment or disdain. It's shabby and functional, from which emerges a more meaningful existence.
noobermin 6y ago
On some level, it is due to the "invisible hand" as it were, that market forces in our current system optimize for convenience because that's what sells. On the other hand, it certainly isn't once the alternatives to the microwave-wares are eliminated because they don't sell well. An obvious example of this are SUV sales in the US. Car companies continue to sell non SUV vehicles in other countries where SUVs are too big but in the US where sprawl in abundant, SUVs sell more so car companies no longer sell them. But the thing is that was a decision the car companies made. Regardless, you're not going to like this suggestion but fundamentally the issue OP has is with capitalism. While capitalism more or less created the wonders of modern life of convience we have, it also destroyed the naive, idyllic past(at least for some) and continues to do so as businesses look for more and more to commodify and more efficiency to exploit in order to maintain profit levels. The article is geared towards individual action to find more spice in life, I guess, but like that figure from the scirep paper, the whole market of stuff you can find out there just like the SUVs are focusing in on the efficient which is outside of your control.
- rendall 6y ago
  I'm cheerfully open to a critique of capitalism but with sincere respect "it destroyed the naive, idyllic past" can only be a positive. By any measure, more people are living better lives, and the number of people living in grinding squalor diminishes steadily. Given that capitalism is the dominant paradigm, my conclusion is that this progress is due to it. Again, I'm open to new information (e.g. I do wonder if, say, slavery is an inevitability of completely unrelated markets; or perhaps exactly the opposite). I have little doubt that as scarcity itself diminishes, more people will have more time for contemplative, fulfilling experiences and activity. That such an article as this is read and discussed is definitely not a sign that we have lost something important, but that we are collectively gaining
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    I'm not sure if capitalism deserves the credit or not, but you are completely correct when you say that life is much, much better now than it was even in the recent past. To those who doubt this: Please watch Hans Rosling's talk first, which I will link below. I promise it is not a waste of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg
    - agent008t 6y ago
      In some ways it is better, in others it is worse. For example: in the 1960s it was common for a family of 4 to have 1 breadwinner. Now it is impossible for most to sustain a family like that. There are small houses in my part of town that were originally built as workers' cottages, for workers operating the railway, construction workers etc. As you can imagine, they are not the best of houses and not in the most picturesque location. Now, these houses are completely unaffordable to most, and cost well over a million. A job for life used to be a thing, where you didn't really have to worry about it. Now it isn't.
      - rendall 6y ago
        Yes. I'm not sure why that happened nor why that stopped. Capitalism? Crony Capitalism? Deregulation? Globalization? Finance capture?
p1mrx 6y ago
I've been eating mostly microwave meals (Factor75 & Freshly) for the past year, and found that they taste slightly better when baked in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Freshly only lists microwave instructions, so it's probably a bad idea to bake the plastic, but my Corelle plates are rated for 350°F, so I can flip and bake those directly. Corelle/Vitrelle is an interesting material. It's lightweight, microwave/oven compatible, and the couple times I've dropped it over the years, it just bounced, though supposedly the tempered glass can violently explode.
- kenneth 6y ago
  That sounds miserable. Why would you do that to yourself? Is it purely cost?
  - oezi 6y ago
    I can only image it must be time that OP is lacking, because cooking meals yourself can be substantially cheaper.
  - p1mrx 6y ago
    There are services that deliver raw ingredients, but that seems like a lot of work (inventory management, cooking, dishwashing) for less variety. This way I get 12 unique meals per week, made from lots of different ingredients with no wasted food. The grocery store is the riskiest place I go during the pandemic, and I only have to do that once a month for long shelf life items.
    - aquir 6y ago
      The last sentence is a good point in these COVID ridded times
- madengr 6y ago
  Oh, the Corelle will explode, it just takes a few years. I don’t know what the aging process is, but will no longer bounce, and explode into razor slivers so small you’ll wish you had traditional ceramic.
emteycz 6y ago
In Europe we have microwaves everywhere, but we don't use them to heat industrially prefabricated food; instead we re-heat food we made ourselves, or got at a restaurant.
- klodolph 6y ago
  These kind of blanket comparisons between Europe and (presumably) US tend to fall flat; my general impression is that’s the main use of microwaves in the US as well. US restaurants have fairly large portion sizes and people take the remaining food home to reheat eat later.
  - fladrif 6y ago
    To stray away from "blanket statements" and "general impressions", can we find the sale of microwave meals differences between the US and Europe? I would imagine that would be the most telling statistic.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      I think that line of reasoning is a trap. It is easy to come up with narratives that paint people in other countries as being “weird” in some way, but we shouldn’t. The UK has all its articles about weird EU regulations, the EU have articles about the funny things Americans do, and the Americans read articles about how weird Japan is. This isn’t a celebration of diversity, it’s an industrial process where you find something bizarre or distasteful about another country and amplify it for views on social media.
      - fladrif 6y ago
        I don't think that's the only result of that line of reasoning. We don't have to poke fun of other cultures in order to appreciate the differences. Sure, the lowest common denominator of these types of mass-produced articles are to ridicule or present as a freak show, but I feel that in a more curated and personal space like hacker news we can identify the differences and explore their deeper meaning without succumbing to the mean.
klodolph 6y ago
There’s a curious passage here about a chandelier which is not as colorful, complaining that “you see how synthetic the crystals actually are.” The crystals are, of course, synthetic. They are always synthetic. They are glass, made by artisans in workshops or by workers in factories, but made using chemical processes nonetheless. The question is whether you are allowed to call them “crystal”. But the author’s reaction is, “Oh, the chandelier is not good enough” rather than any alternative reaction which might range from “oh, of course it wouldn’t be high-quality crystal, my friend isn’t rich” or “oh, what a tacky chandelier” or “why do you even have a chandelier like that in the first place?” Getting high-quality furnishings (fittings, doors, etc) in a house requires you to have an opinion on what quality means for hundreds of aspects of your home. It’s not a problem you can simply throw money at. If you want to throw money at something in your home, there are plenty of suppliers for sinks, countertops, doorknobs, and cabinets that are happy to take your money. They won’t necessarily give you something much better, just something more expensive. The US also is in the bizarre position where land is relatively cheap, and we’re naturally tempted to get massive homes. The author never really returns to the introductory point about microwave meals. If you prioritize high-quality food in your life, you will take the time to learn to cook. If you care about interior decoration, you will spend time shopping for the right furniture. But, ask yourself if you really care about this stuff or if you are trying to keep up with the Joneses. It can be liberating to not care, to buy Ikea furniture and ready-made microwave meals.
- teraku 6y ago
  As often, the true meaning is in the comments.
- leoedin 6y ago
  When we were renovating our flat I was really astounded by the lack of quality. Everything sold in the mainstream kitchen and bathroom retailers is flimsy garbage. There's also really nice stuff available. You have to look for it though, and seek out alternative niche suppliers. That means that most people, when they fit a kitchen or bathroom, fit the mainstream crap. It's not even necessarily more expensive to get the nice stuff. Which inevitably is mostly metallised plastic or foil wrapped particleboard, and then after a few years it gets dented or cracked and has to be torn out and replaced. Once you start looking for crap fittings, its everywhere. It doesn't matter whether its a high end apartment or a cheap one - the fittings are equally shit. The only way to defend against it is to specify everything, because the default option for everything from plug sockets to skirting board to cupboard hinges is just crap!
MarkusWandel 6y ago
To some extent the affordable alternative to the "microwave culture" is to surround yourself with good quality artifacts from earlier versions of it. I cherish a nesting set of Pyrex bowls in avocado green that I got from an elderly lady at a garage sale. Or a couple of "Flint Stainless" brand kitchen utensils that give me more satisfaction to use than any other alternatives. Or the cast iron pans in multiple sizes that are our primary cookware. Or the mismatched knives, some of which came from the thrift store. Or the framed art posters, some of which were curb picks. All those items were once generic, but having been removed from their era, are now interesting and distinctive. Even the house. I like the style of it, but it was built in 1970 in what was then a cookie cutter exurb out in farmland. But it has a 60x100 foot lot and mature trees in the front and backyards. Sure, it has the "paper thin doors" derided in the article, but it also has long-strip oak hardwood floor in most of it, again, high-end generic at the time, practically unobtainium now. You can have even more character by moving further into town, of course. But I don't want to move outward to the land of engineered floor joists and PEX plumbing, even if both actually work better and aren't just cheaper to make and install. None of the principal rooms' furniture contains any particleboard. But here I was lucky to have had an artisan father who made over half of it. Still, junk can be affordably avoided for the rest as long as everything doesn't have to be a matching set. Paint - after once painting a room in what ended up pretty close to "builder beige" I resolved never to do that again. The latest bathroom repaint is in a kind of orangey peach. A bit of WTF on the part of the spouse (who tolerates, and even appreciates, most of the above) initially, but even she likes the splash of colour in our lives now. As for the microwave: We have that of course and boy is it handy for reheating leftovers. But there is a toaster oven next to it that is used more. Did you even know how good toaster ovens can be? The thermostat in mine is spot on accurate (I checked with a thermocouple probe). I've baked cakes and pastries in a succession of toaster ovens, sometimes outside on the deck on hot days.
otikik 6y ago
I enjoy eating good food as much as anyone - too much, perhaps, given that I am overwheight. And yet if I could just stop eating, I would give it up in an instant. If I could somehow change my body so it syntetized the nutrients it needs from water, CO2 and sunlight, I would do it immediately. I would gladly give up my sense of taste and my digestive system, if the process required it, provided that I am still able to do all the tasks I do every day, and that the resulting alterations are not repulsive to my peers or myself. I find eating very pleasant and very enjoyable, but I don't think about it as something that "makes me human", the same way I don't think about ... "excreting the residues" or "having colon cancer" as deeply human. To me it is impossible to ignore that it is first and foremost something I am fundamentally obligated to do in order to prolong my existence, and I would give it away just not to have that obligation/dependency. I also happen to think that a lot of the impact we have on the environment and other species comes from our need to eat. It would be extremely beneficial to the biosphere if we all ate more plants, but it would be even better if we stopped eating altogether (or, if we only needed eating while growing up).
- evilos 6y ago
  I would also make this trade but I know lots of people who would recoil in horror at the prospect. For lots of people (even those who do not explicitly realize it) eating is one of their main sources of pleasure. This doesn't even mean the food they enjoy is necessarily fancy or good. I look forward to lunch even if I just have a PB&J sandwich waiting. I often think about how most vacations are an exercise in going somewhere far away to eat and drink new things. Sure they also go look at stuff but food is a huge part of it.
- rchaud 6y ago
  You say that you would gladly give it up, but you have no experience of the changes that its absence would cause. If by your own admission you are overweight, you already consume more than your caloric requirements. You are transitioning from a state of hunger to a state of satiety. That's a pretty big part of being human. Preparing and sharing meals with others is another key part of human connection.
amelius 6y ago
Also microwave meals are typically high on salt.
wazoox 6y ago
This article actually hints about how optimizing everything leaves no room to ... live? enjoy things? and above, all, resilience. That comes back to what N. N. Taleb called "antifragility". When something is really optimized, it will completely break away as soon as there's the slightest change in its environment. To be able to adapt, you need to keep some legroom. Some superfluous things that may change purposes when the need comes.

60 points by bengtan 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

A microwave economy sprouts from believing Sears catalogs were ritual artifacts and leads to Google defining our language. The convenience-craftsmanship spectrum seems orthogonal to these and decorating habits. Also: door knobs that beep? I guess I am going against the currents of society if that and owning a microwave is "all the same" household fixtures.

madaxe_again 6y ago
It’s cargo cults, all the way down. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey doesn’t care if it isn’t real, it just needs to look real to other monkeys. It’s not new, we’ve been at it for millions of years - it’s just been very effectively commoditised, as the ratcheting demand is infinite.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  Maybe so. My problem with the author's attitude is probably that: shabby goods don't fit in his decision matrix. He agonizes about keeping up with the Joneses, but blames it for sapping meaning from his life. Like Tyler Durden without the self-improvement. My coffee table costs an order of magnitude less than one of similar proportions at Ikea, yet it's both more durable and more disposable. It doesn't hold special meaning to me, either sentiment or disdain. It's shabby and functional, from which emerges a more meaningful existence.

noobermin 6y ago

On some level, it is due to the "invisible hand" as it were, that market forces in our current system optimize for convenience because that's what sells. On the other hand, it certainly isn't once the alternatives to the microwave-wares are eliminated because they don't sell well. An obvious example of this are SUV sales in the US. Car companies continue to sell non SUV vehicles in other countries where SUVs are too big but in the US where sprawl in abundant, SUVs sell more so car companies no longer sell them. But the thing is that was a decision the car companies made. Regardless, you're not going to like this suggestion but fundamentally the issue OP has is with capitalism. While capitalism more or less created the wonders of modern life of convience we have, it also destroyed the naive, idyllic past(at least for some) and continues to do so as businesses look for more and more to commodify and more efficiency to exploit in order to maintain profit levels. The article is geared towards individual action to find more spice in life, I guess, but like that figure from the scirep paper, the whole market of stuff you can find out there just like the SUVs are focusing in on the efficient which is outside of your control.

rendall 6y ago
I'm cheerfully open to a critique of capitalism but with sincere respect "it destroyed the naive, idyllic past" can only be a positive. By any measure, more people are living better lives, and the number of people living in grinding squalor diminishes steadily. Given that capitalism is the dominant paradigm, my conclusion is that this progress is due to it. Again, I'm open to new information (e.g. I do wonder if, say, slavery is an inevitability of completely unrelated markets; or perhaps exactly the opposite). I have little doubt that as scarcity itself diminishes, more people will have more time for contemplative, fulfilling experiences and activity. That such an article as this is read and discussed is definitely not a sign that we have lost something important, but that we are collectively gaining
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  I'm not sure if capitalism deserves the credit or not, but you are completely correct when you say that life is much, much better now than it was even in the recent past. To those who doubt this: Please watch Hans Rosling's talk first, which I will link below. I promise it is not a waste of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg
  - agent008t 6y ago
    In some ways it is better, in others it is worse. For example: in the 1960s it was common for a family of 4 to have 1 breadwinner. Now it is impossible for most to sustain a family like that. There are small houses in my part of town that were originally built as workers' cottages, for workers operating the railway, construction workers etc. As you can imagine, they are not the best of houses and not in the most picturesque location. Now, these houses are completely unaffordable to most, and cost well over a million. A job for life used to be a thing, where you didn't really have to worry about it. Now it isn't.
    - rendall 6y ago
      Yes. I'm not sure why that happened nor why that stopped. Capitalism? Crony Capitalism? Deregulation? Globalization? Finance capture?

p1mrx 6y ago

I've been eating mostly microwave meals (Factor75 & Freshly) for the past year, and found that they taste slightly better when baked in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Freshly only lists microwave instructions, so it's probably a bad idea to bake the plastic, but my Corelle plates are rated for 350°F, so I can flip and bake those directly. Corelle/Vitrelle is an interesting material. It's lightweight, microwave/oven compatible, and the couple times I've dropped it over the years, it just bounced, though supposedly the tempered glass can violently explode.

kenneth 6y ago
That sounds miserable. Why would you do that to yourself? Is it purely cost?
- oezi 6y ago
  I can only image it must be time that OP is lacking, because cooking meals yourself can be substantially cheaper.
- p1mrx 6y ago
  There are services that deliver raw ingredients, but that seems like a lot of work (inventory management, cooking, dishwashing) for less variety. This way I get 12 unique meals per week, made from lots of different ingredients with no wasted food. The grocery store is the riskiest place I go during the pandemic, and I only have to do that once a month for long shelf life items.
  - aquir 6y ago
    The last sentence is a good point in these COVID ridded times
madengr 6y ago
Oh, the Corelle will explode, it just takes a few years. I don’t know what the aging process is, but will no longer bounce, and explode into razor slivers so small you’ll wish you had traditional ceramic.

emteycz 6y ago

In Europe we have microwaves everywhere, but we don't use them to heat industrially prefabricated food; instead we re-heat food we made ourselves, or got at a restaurant.

klodolph 6y ago
These kind of blanket comparisons between Europe and (presumably) US tend to fall flat; my general impression is that’s the main use of microwaves in the US as well. US restaurants have fairly large portion sizes and people take the remaining food home to reheat eat later.
- fladrif 6y ago
  To stray away from "blanket statements" and "general impressions", can we find the sale of microwave meals differences between the US and Europe? I would imagine that would be the most telling statistic.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    I think that line of reasoning is a trap. It is easy to come up with narratives that paint people in other countries as being “weird” in some way, but we shouldn’t. The UK has all its articles about weird EU regulations, the EU have articles about the funny things Americans do, and the Americans read articles about how weird Japan is. This isn’t a celebration of diversity, it’s an industrial process where you find something bizarre or distasteful about another country and amplify it for views on social media.
    - fladrif 6y ago
      I don't think that's the only result of that line of reasoning. We don't have to poke fun of other cultures in order to appreciate the differences. Sure, the lowest common denominator of these types of mass-produced articles are to ridicule or present as a freak show, but I feel that in a more curated and personal space like hacker news we can identify the differences and explore their deeper meaning without succumbing to the mean.

klodolph 6y ago

There’s a curious passage here about a chandelier which is not as colorful, complaining that “you see how synthetic the crystals actually are.” The crystals are, of course, synthetic. They are always synthetic. They are glass, made by artisans in workshops or by workers in factories, but made using chemical processes nonetheless. The question is whether you are allowed to call them “crystal”. But the author’s reaction is, “Oh, the chandelier is not good enough” rather than any alternative reaction which might range from “oh, of course it wouldn’t be high-quality crystal, my friend isn’t rich” or “oh, what a tacky chandelier” or “why do you even have a chandelier like that in the first place?” Getting high-quality furnishings (fittings, doors, etc) in a house requires you to have an opinion on what quality means for hundreds of aspects of your home. It’s not a problem you can simply throw money at. If you want to throw money at something in your home, there are plenty of suppliers for sinks, countertops, doorknobs, and cabinets that are happy to take your money. They won’t necessarily give you something much better, just something more expensive. The US also is in the bizarre position where land is relatively cheap, and we’re naturally tempted to get massive homes. The author never really returns to the introductory point about microwave meals. If you prioritize high-quality food in your life, you will take the time to learn to cook. If you care about interior decoration, you will spend time shopping for the right furniture. But, ask yourself if you really care about this stuff or if you are trying to keep up with the Joneses. It can be liberating to not care, to buy Ikea furniture and ready-made microwave meals.

teraku 6y ago
As often, the true meaning is in the comments.
leoedin 6y ago
When we were renovating our flat I was really astounded by the lack of quality. Everything sold in the mainstream kitchen and bathroom retailers is flimsy garbage. There's also really nice stuff available. You have to look for it though, and seek out alternative niche suppliers. That means that most people, when they fit a kitchen or bathroom, fit the mainstream crap. It's not even necessarily more expensive to get the nice stuff. Which inevitably is mostly metallised plastic or foil wrapped particleboard, and then after a few years it gets dented or cracked and has to be torn out and replaced. Once you start looking for crap fittings, its everywhere. It doesn't matter whether its a high end apartment or a cheap one - the fittings are equally shit. The only way to defend against it is to specify everything, because the default option for everything from plug sockets to skirting board to cupboard hinges is just crap!

MarkusWandel 6y ago

To some extent the affordable alternative to the "microwave culture" is to surround yourself with good quality artifacts from earlier versions of it. I cherish a nesting set of Pyrex bowls in avocado green that I got from an elderly lady at a garage sale. Or a couple of "Flint Stainless" brand kitchen utensils that give me more satisfaction to use than any other alternatives. Or the cast iron pans in multiple sizes that are our primary cookware. Or the mismatched knives, some of which came from the thrift store. Or the framed art posters, some of which were curb picks. All those items were once generic, but having been removed from their era, are now interesting and distinctive. Even the house. I like the style of it, but it was built in 1970 in what was then a cookie cutter exurb out in farmland. But it has a 60x100 foot lot and mature trees in the front and backyards. Sure, it has the "paper thin doors" derided in the article, but it also has long-strip oak hardwood floor in most of it, again, high-end generic at the time, practically unobtainium now. You can have even more character by moving further into town, of course. But I don't want to move outward to the land of engineered floor joists and PEX plumbing, even if both actually work better and aren't just cheaper to make and install. None of the principal rooms' furniture contains any particleboard. But here I was lucky to have had an artisan father who made over half of it. Still, junk can be affordably avoided for the rest as long as everything doesn't have to be a matching set. Paint - after once painting a room in what ended up pretty close to "builder beige" I resolved never to do that again. The latest bathroom repaint is in a kind of orangey peach. A bit of WTF on the part of the spouse (who tolerates, and even appreciates, most of the above) initially, but even she likes the splash of colour in our lives now. As for the microwave: We have that of course and boy is it handy for reheating leftovers. But there is a toaster oven next to it that is used more. Did you even know how good toaster ovens can be? The thermostat in mine is spot on accurate (I checked with a thermocouple probe). I've baked cakes and pastries in a succession of toaster ovens, sometimes outside on the deck on hot days.

otikik 6y ago

I enjoy eating good food as much as anyone - too much, perhaps, given that I am overwheight. And yet if I could just stop eating, I would give it up in an instant. If I could somehow change my body so it syntetized the nutrients it needs from water, CO2 and sunlight, I would do it immediately. I would gladly give up my sense of taste and my digestive system, if the process required it, provided that I am still able to do all the tasks I do every day, and that the resulting alterations are not repulsive to my peers or myself. I find eating very pleasant and very enjoyable, but I don't think about it as something that "makes me human", the same way I don't think about ... "excreting the residues" or "having colon cancer" as deeply human. To me it is impossible to ignore that it is first and foremost something I am fundamentally obligated to do in order to prolong my existence, and I would give it away just not to have that obligation/dependency. I also happen to think that a lot of the impact we have on the environment and other species comes from our need to eat. It would be extremely beneficial to the biosphere if we all ate more plants, but it would be even better if we stopped eating altogether (or, if we only needed eating while growing up).

evilos 6y ago
I would also make this trade but I know lots of people who would recoil in horror at the prospect. For lots of people (even those who do not explicitly realize it) eating is one of their main sources of pleasure. This doesn't even mean the food they enjoy is necessarily fancy or good. I look forward to lunch even if I just have a PB&J sandwich waiting. I often think about how most vacations are an exercise in going somewhere far away to eat and drink new things. Sure they also go look at stuff but food is a huge part of it.
rchaud 6y ago
You say that you would gladly give it up, but you have no experience of the changes that its absence would cause. If by your own admission you are overweight, you already consume more than your caloric requirements. You are transitioning from a state of hunger to a state of satiety. That's a pretty big part of being human. Preparing and sharing meals with others is another key part of human connection.

amelius 6y ago

Also microwave meals are typically high on salt.

wazoox 6y ago

This article actually hints about how optimizing everything leaves no room to ... live? enjoy things? and above, all, resilience. That comes back to what N. N. Taleb called "antifragility". When something is really optimized, it will completely break away as soon as there's the slightest change in its environment. To be able to adapt, you need to keep some legroom. Some superfluous things that may change purposes when the need comes.