3 ms·

This sentence looks very weird and out of place to me as well. I mean, Apple used metal on MacBooks long before people jumped on the environment bandwagon. And

by rty32 2y ago

This sentence looks very weird and out of place to me as well. I mean, Apple used metal on MacBooks long before people jumped on the environment bandwagon. And Lenovo and HP use plastic on $200 Chromebooks not because they hate environment, but because plastic is cheap.

baliex 2y ago
Isn't that the point though? Plastic's only cheaper when you're thinking short term and have externalised any non-material costs – which is exactly how capitalism has set us up to think.
- dgoldstein0 2y ago
  In a few special cases plastic is almost certainly the best choice - single use medical supplies come to mind: while "single use" itself is bad, avoiding infection risk is likely worth it in hospital settings for items that a reusable version would be hard to sterilize. Of course the vast majority of plastic usage doesn't fall into this bucket but is more a matter of plastic having convenient properties while also being very cheap.
hollerith 2y ago
>Apple used metal on MacBooks long before people jumped on the environment bandwagon. Huh? My country (the US) jumped on the environment bandwagon in the 1970s.
- ajdude 2y ago
  This is unrelated but I've been noticing recently a great deal of comments both on HN and Reddit starting with "Huh?" Is this a developing slang or have I just been under a rock and only noticed it now?
  - dgoldstein0 2y ago
    Under a rock. That's been a common interjection for decades in casual conversation, at least in the US. I can't say for certain about it's commonality online in written form though.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Agreed. As an interjection, consider Scooby's 'Huh?' sound from the early 1970s cartoon series.
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    I believe that it means "I disagree". It seems common on platforms where language is not sophisticated, but rarely do I see these on HN.
    - wlonkly 2y ago
      It's worse than that, it's feigned surprise. "I disagree" is at least intellectually honest, "Huh?" is pretending that the position is so far off that they couldn't even understand it. I learned the term "feigned surprise" from Recurse Center's social rules[1]. It's related to, but not exactly the same as, that well-known XKCD about "today's 10000", too[2]. [1] https://www.recurse.com/social-rules https://www.recurse.com/social-rules [2] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Why is it feigned? Why can't it be (mild) genuine surprise?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Is this a developing slang or have I just been under a rock and only noticed it now? It communicates disagreement and pushback to perceived aloofness. Its archetypal form would be an academic making a Monty Python Witch Trial argument being refuted by an average Joe. You generally don't see it followed by a rigorous intellectual argument, because by its framing it's rejecting intellectualism. Put another way, it's a call to common sense. In reality, it tends to reflect an inchoate argument,.
kyriakos 2y ago
Plastic in a laptop you replace every 3 years is hardly anything like plastic waste coming out of a household. My family produces many times as much plastic waste every month just by shopping food and cleaning supplies at a supermarket and eventually getting rid of the packaging.
- justinator 2y ago
  It's not nothing though: 50 million tons of e-waste yearly, https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/waste/electronic-waste-facts https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/waste... Apple sells 21.9 million units/year: https://www.statista.com/topics/10435/apple-mac/ https://www.statista.com/topics/10435/apple-mac/ Large distances are covered with tiny steps.
  - dgoldstein0 2y ago
    E-waste is generally considered a separate category than plastic, as it contains small amounts of a lot of useful, hard to mine metals - much of which is in the chips, but also the lithium in the batteries. And many of those metals are toxic if ingested so we need to keep them out of the soil and water. Recycling those is probably far more valuable than recycling plastic, pound per pound. We just make so much plastic.

by rty32 2y ago

baliex 2y ago

Isn't that the point though? Plastic's only cheaper when you're thinking short term and have externalised any non-material costs – which is exactly how capitalism has set us up to think.

dgoldstein0 2y ago
In a few special cases plastic is almost certainly the best choice - single use medical supplies come to mind: while "single use" itself is bad, avoiding infection risk is likely worth it in hospital settings for items that a reusable version would be hard to sterilize. Of course the vast majority of plastic usage doesn't fall into this bucket but is more a matter of plastic having convenient properties while also being very cheap.

hollerith 2y ago

>Apple used metal on MacBooks long before people jumped on the environment bandwagon. Huh? My country (the US) jumped on the environment bandwagon in the 1970s.

ajdude 2y ago
This is unrelated but I've been noticing recently a great deal of comments both on HN and Reddit starting with "Huh?" Is this a developing slang or have I just been under a rock and only noticed it now?
- dgoldstein0 2y ago
  Under a rock. That's been a common interjection for decades in casual conversation, at least in the US. I can't say for certain about it's commonality online in written form though.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Agreed. As an interjection, consider Scooby's 'Huh?' sound from the early 1970s cartoon series.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  I believe that it means "I disagree". It seems common on platforms where language is not sophisticated, but rarely do I see these on HN.
  - wlonkly 2y ago
    It's worse than that, it's feigned surprise. "I disagree" is at least intellectually honest, "Huh?" is pretending that the position is so far off that they couldn't even understand it. I learned the term "feigned surprise" from Recurse Center's social rules[1]. It's related to, but not exactly the same as, that well-known XKCD about "today's 10000", too[2]. [1] https://www.recurse.com/social-rules https://www.recurse.com/social-rules [2] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    - hollerith 2y ago
      Why is it feigned? Why can't it be (mild) genuine surprise?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Is this a developing slang or have I just been under a rock and only noticed it now? It communicates disagreement and pushback to perceived aloofness. Its archetypal form would be an academic making a Monty Python Witch Trial argument being refuted by an average Joe. You generally don't see it followed by a rigorous intellectual argument, because by its framing it's rejecting intellectualism. Put another way, it's a call to common sense. In reality, it tends to reflect an inchoate argument,.

kyriakos 2y ago

Plastic in a laptop you replace every 3 years is hardly anything like plastic waste coming out of a household. My family produces many times as much plastic waste every month just by shopping food and cleaning supplies at a supermarket and eventually getting rid of the packaging.

justinator 2y ago
It's not nothing though: 50 million tons of e-waste yearly, https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/waste/electronic-waste-facts https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/waste... Apple sells 21.9 million units/year: https://www.statista.com/topics/10435/apple-mac/ https://www.statista.com/topics/10435/apple-mac/ Large distances are covered with tiny steps.
- dgoldstein0 2y ago
  E-waste is generally considered a separate category than plastic, as it contains small amounts of a lot of useful, hard to mine metals - much of which is in the chips, but also the lithium in the batteries. And many of those metals are toxic if ingested so we need to keep them out of the soil and water. Recycling those is probably far more valuable than recycling plastic, pound per pound. We just make so much plastic.