Cellulose Shoes Made by Bacteria | Hacker News Reader

Cellulose Shoes Made by Bacteria

nature.com

79 pointsmontalbano21 comments

As a person advocating for the rights of single-celled organisms, I find this bacteria slavery troubling. The only ethical shoes are graphene-based.

LOL, what a troll!!! (ROFL)

This is nothing short of a call to slavery for those yet- undiscovered quantum organisms we just can't detect yet. How does it feel to be a fascist? /s

OMG I can't even walk now. Who knows what I'm untangling. HOW CAN I FLOAT???? Parent username highly appropriate

We meet again, Tom! I know you jest, but I legitimately know folks who would sit down and have a lengthy chat about whether bacterial products should be considered vegan.

(I personally tend to fall on the side of "don't eat factory farmed animals" side of vegetarianism. Know the farmer? Animal was raised with plenty of space and care? Enjoy. Mass produced beef from a CAFO? Avoid.)

I do love seeing advances in microbiology and fermenting novel products. Brave robot, for instance, produces milk from engineered microorganisms rather than cows. Makes for a pretty tasty vegan ice cream! The future is wild.

I am completely in line with your thoughts on eating animals. I used to call myself a farmer but the truth is I can't even slaughter any of my chickens, and was shattered when one died last year. It's a luxury belief. I am also sympathetic to those who don't have that luxury.

I do know the farmers we buy meat from. I am grateful for what they and the butcher do for me.

TBH I have also worked through the ethics of bacteria but eventually came to the same conclusion Ben Franklin did. He was a vegetarian for quite some time. In his autobiography he describes seeing someone cut open a fish and seeing inside it the three fish it had eat recently. He went back to eating meat after realizing we're all on the food chain.

I have even thought about the research showing almost-sentient behavior, or at least chemical reactions, in plants. It troubles me a little. Again, they would have no compunction about consuming me if I were available to them in consumable form. I am certainly never going to advocate against eating plants though.

I have been living with similar thoughts for most of my life and it's been keeping me somewhat unhappy. My mere existence results in plenty direct and collateral damage. Big animals, small ones, microscopic. Growing plants kills other plants, etc. Eating cheese and even bread is not exactly vegetarian.

I might be mellowing down to a wimp.

> ‘All life,’ said the Buddha, ‘is sorrowful’; and so, indeed, it is. Life consuming life: that is the essence of its being, which is forever a becoming. ‘The world,’ said the Buddha, ‘is an ever-burning fire.’ And so it is. And that is what one has to affirm, with a yea! a dance! a knowing, solemn, stately dance of the mystic bliss beyond pain that is at the heart of every mythic rite.

-- Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

What /u/mandmandam says below. But life is brutal and unfair. If you try to do too much to "give back" you sometimes end up doing more damage than if you did nothing. Brother, it's just hard to be a good citizen these days. Try to stay employed, try to keep your kids out of trouble, try not to suckle too much at the public teat if you can avoid it. If you do those things most of the time, as far as I'm concerned, you're golden.

Also, does it help to judge yourself with no more harshness than you do others? Do you feel the people around you who don't have the same self-doubt as you are being unreasonably destructive? If so... maybe give yourself a break.

The stuff we're learning about mycelium networks and plants these days is incredible.

It's really great getting to meet your farmer and butcher. Buying a whole animal and learning how to use the cuts and what goes into raising the animal is fascinating.

Is that a jab against veganism? Totally uncalled for

Plants would say otherwise.

The Jain version of veganism is interesting, similar to veganism but also don't kill plants, just eat the bits of them that grow back. So no onions, potatoes carrots etc. Thats a simplification though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism

Why? Shouldn’t every human philosophy be available for parody?

"Rapid biodegradation of renewable polyurethane foams with identification of associated microorganisms and decomposition products" (https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0595/5878/9298/files/1-s2....) is a somewhat related paper about the Soleic foam used in the shoes sold here: https://blueviewfootwear.com

Why is shopify.com hosting scientific papers?

Perhaps it's because people (who run Shopify stores) put them there.

The paper is linked from the other website in the parent comment. That website is built on Shopify.

This is fantastic.

I switched to minimal shoes just over a year ago. While they are great, they wear holes in the sole after just a few months.

The shoe is fine, the laces are fine. Throwing them away feels like an absurd waste. But the holes do make them unwearable.

I wouldn't feel as bad about throwing them out if I knew the materials were renewable.

The shoe in TFA is the opposite of minimal. Honestly I don't know how people are supposed to walk in shoes when the heel extends so far back. I feel like I'd die going down stairs.

They probably did that to make them look particularly trendy instead of just boring shoes. Makes them more interesting to talk about.

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