Thanks to social media, canned sardines are a scarcity on the supermarket shelf
corneroffifth.studio
corneroffifth.studio
> The NOAA assessment estimated the Pacific sardine biomass will be at 27,547 metric tons by the summer – significantly less than the 150,000 metric tons needed to reopen the fishery to commercial fishing. Any fishery at less than 50,000 metric tons is considered to be overfished. The assessment estimates the sardine biomass was around 1.8 million metric tons in 2006.
Haha, damn. Fishermen must have visibly noticed such a decline. 1,800,000 metric tons to 27,000 metric tons. Two orders of magnitude. Wow.
0: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainabilit...
The Antarctic krill population is facing a similar decline due to influencer marketing (promoting Krill as a superior omega 3 supplement). Sardines and Krill are the foundation of the entire oceanic food ecosystems. This is not good.
As terrible as the influencer scourge is for society, I somehow doubt that it was a 3 day social media fad a couple of weeks or months ago caused the collapse of ocean wildlife.
Not disagreeing or anything, just thought it was a funny anecdote.
There is nothing inherently destructive with the lifestyle, and in fact many other animals are nomadic or have seasonal migrations.
(also that population replacement is failing, so it's not all bad.)
But the alternative "overthrow power" is costly enough that we usually procrastinate.
Things like Communism, Fascism, monarchy want to combine them, so the government/leader has the power and the money decisions.
The thing that makes communism (and fascism to a lesser extent) anti-capitalist are that it rejects the idea people should be allowed to own and control capital. So there is a clear incompatibility with communism even if the exact nature of capitalism isn't clear.
The ideology, such as it is, doesn't have to explicitly say that capital should have political power. It merely says that it's a moral outrage to prevent the rich from spending their money however they choose.
But the ideology is secondary to capital anyway. If we let the rich get rich enough, that's strong incentive for inventing ideological justifications for it; after all to be friends with the powerful gives an easy life, and to be their enemy give a hard one.
But that's the same thing. Because having so much money to spend is (one type of) political power.
"Money decisions" are also absolutely power decisions. The power concentration isn't even mainly in the decisions of the rich, but simply in that they are rich. You need to work building yachts rather than bake bread because the yacht buyers have so fabulously much more money to spare than the bread buyers. And the money they don't spend is even more powerful since it controls society's investments. Our society orbits around wealth, that's what capitalism is in practice.
> Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.
> We’re going to partner with the world’s best people and we’re going to dominate. You can be along for the ride or you don’t have to be.
> Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
> Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
> The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
> We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
> The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service.
This capitalist doesn't have a gun pointed to his, he instead feels a moral obligation to provide the state with a comprehensive surveillance apparatus and ability to kill enemies of the state while also decrying holding public figures accountable.
in reality it's all one system and it exists in reality. the system that exists in theory is just a model to carry around in your head.
We just have a really big one of those.
Estimates of catches, mortality, existing stock are prone to error because we don't really know much about how fish live and their overall population. But once that crash happens it is known and too late. Cod crashed in 1992 and still hasn't recovered
> we don't really know much about how fish live and their overall population
Absolutely yes. Orange roughy is a good example - it was caught by trawlers when they were massed in huge balls near the surface. Easy to get a big catch quickly. Turns out this was when they were spawning, so breeding cycle was being interrupted, which led to catastrophic declines very quickly.
That is very interesting, I wish this kind of things were taught in school. Too many people think that animals just exists in the current state for ever. When in reality it is a dynamic system that once changed cannot be brought back.
There's some amount of introduced pressure due to invasive species of both trees and pests but it's always been this way. Everything is in flux all the time.
Stable pockets exist but they're relatively rare.
But human civilization as we know it is fragile.
This species didn't just die, it was exterminated by humans. It is the difference between someone dying fro a sickness and from a bulled to the head.
> overindexing
How can be stop fishing species to extinction "too much"? How can you justify that way of thinking in this concrete case?
Which species? The (non-extinct, not exterminated) cod fish whose ecological niche has been taken over to some extent by a small shark species?
It's like clear-cutting an old-growth forest, and then replanting acorns. The forest simply won't return to anything like its original state for many decades - if ever.
I can't find anything about niche occupancy replacement at all on the Web. Searches lead to information about the trophic decline in prey species after an initial boom when the North Atlantic cod went down to something like 1% of previous volume. Some mention of harp seals competing with younger smaller cod for available food (which is scarce now apparently).
Could be a case of a small effect earlier in the timeline masked by huge changes resulting from warming water &c.
Perverse incentives, generalising.
Climate change is pretty much the same.
The fishermen, of course, blamed the dab gum gubmbent for getting in their business. Anything but taking responsibility for their actions.
https://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/sustainability/social/s...
https://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/sustainability/social/s...
Anecdote, not data: I picked up the habit of eating sardines from my Dad who is 97 years young. It's not that he doesn't eat bad stuff, its just that in my lifetime I see evidence that many of the things he ate were healthier than we thought.
A colleague was even including rabbit in the «poultry» category …
They do have the best livers.
Unfortunately in the US I can only find them from fancy suppliers that are way overpriced. But if I were going to raise something in the backyard, it would be cuy...
If insects are high protein, then you're not solving the problem.
<https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of...>
It absolutely does until it's actually something normal people call "meat" which is still a long long way off.
Plus, meat is tasty. It makes perfect sense people look forward to lab-grown variants that are ethically sourced and have no adverse health effects.
> but do not provide significant protein or fats
Tofu, seitan, and tempeh all have protein, but they differ from animal protein in that they are "cut" with lots of carbs and fat. I am on a protein-sparing modified fast (PSMF) for bodybuilding goals right now, and there are no viable non-animal whole sources of protein (so, excluding pea protein isolate etc.) I can have. Even seitan is only ~81% protein by calories, which is too low. I am targeting 90% calories from protein right now.
They are definitely good options, along with lentils (which have a similar problem of having more carbs than protein), for vegetarianism+. But they are not a perfect substitute as you cannot get nearly pure protein from them. They also tend to lack the BCAAs that make up a large portion of muscle.
So, you can fulfill most dietary goals purely vegan, but it is harder and more expensive due to limited options.
That seems a small difference in contrast with the industries scales and the price comparaison will probably be the opposite in case of expended demand. Also most plant diet are already cheaper and that little supplement wouldn't make a difference.
> PSMF for bodybuilding
You may have not found a plant alternative for your needs but it seems you are on a quite unusual diet. "do not provide significant protein or fats" apply essentially to the group of people that are bodybuilding AND on a similar nutrient diet AND eating "whole sources" only. For anyone else, it's fine:
- sedentary: most plant protein will do fine, they are packed with fibers that helps transit the carbs/fat and regulate insulin
- sedentary with cardio/active life (commuting by foot/bike, running, swimming...): same as sedentary, as you noted you got all the carbs needed with the meal.
- bodybuilding not on a "whole sources" diet (milk, whey, chicken without skin...): Plant shakers are similar to their animal alternative, and protein isolate can be prepared of cooked the way one want.
You seems quite informed so it may not be that hard for someone as much informed as you, but I concede plant diets are not the norm and most people just don't know how because they learned to eat differently instead. As an athlete you probably know that it seems hard to change habits.
Regarding the price we don't share the same experience: proteins are cheaper, restaurants meals are cheaper and societal cost (subsidies) is cheaper. Some specific supplements may be more expensive but that's marginal.
That's where eating bugs comes in to save us all
I think a lot of people have gotten a really narrow idea of what health and fitness looks like and think it has to involve a barbell and a macro tracking app. You can also move your body in nature, run up some hills, carry 40 lb packs for days, and do yoga.
btw, how much protein do you consider recommended?
However the concern here is not just finding something tasty for humans to eat.
> some countries with shadow fleets
> Whales are dying because they are malnourished and that is an indicator that there’s barely anything left.
[1] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052026/pacific-gray-wha...
But more importantly, specifically Chinese fishing vessels aren’t exactly innocent either. They go dark to go and fish in waters where fishing isn’t allowed including eco sensitive zones. Part of the problem with the dark fleet is “how much they fish”. Claiming 200 vessels are fishing while allowing 1000 vessels will obviously lead to overfishing.
Then there is the whole “illegal fishing” including but not limited to hunting sharks and other endangered species, using banned fishing practices, threatening local fishermen across the coast of Africa to corner parts of the fishing grounds etc.
All of this is well documented. So it’s not about China bad, it’s about them skirting the rules.
> But more importantly, specifically Chinese fishing vessels aren’t exactly innocent either. They go dark to go and fish in waters where fishing isn’t allowed including eco sensitive zones.
> The idea that international waters are available for anyone and everyone to exploit is just wild.
Edit: Order of magnitude also matters here. Chinese fishing fleet is much larger than all the nations you mentioned combined. Any nation taking that much from the oceans which are a globally shared resource and a lifeline for the planet should receive scrutiny and pushback, regardless of who they are.
To the surprise of absolutely no one.
> Just a decade ago, tinned fish was hardly a premium product. Most Americans likely associated cans of tuna with thrift. But that has changed a lot in recent years. The category took off during Covid and now shoppers are shelling out for high end brands like Fishwife. Today's guest Becca Millstein started the company in 2020, positioning it as a distinct, artisanal product, more akin to one might find in European grocery stores. In addition to the sheer challenges of scaling, the nature of the business itself has changed, influenced by climate change and geopolitics (shortages have led Morocco to suspend frozen sardine exports for instance). We discuss the tinned fish supply chain and how a new brand positions itself in today's media market.
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-a-sardine-gets-fro...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP18fQi_CM
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/how-a-sardine-gets-from-the-o...
All of my local supermarkets in the US have a million cans of sardines from a dozen different brands each, ranging from like $1.50/can for e.g. Goya in soybean oil[0] to like $7/can for very fancy ones, with the average around $4.50/can for ones in olive oil. They're not gone, just more expensive than last year for nice ones.
[0] - sardines come packed in your choice of water, soybean oil, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, tomato sauce, or louisiana-style hot sauce with additional selection choices of containing herbs or hot peppers or olives, and olive oil ones always cost more than water or soybean oil ones for obvious reasons
Where are your sardines be sourced?
Goya: Spain
Bela: Portugal
Crown Prince: Morocco
Bar Harbor: Latvia
Brunswick: Latvia
King Oscar: Norway
Two responses:
1) And by what process exactly do you find a favorite? Clairvoyance?
2) If you can have a favorite, then the different brands must have different qualities. And if different brands have different qualities, then they will be differently good for different uses.
> "There isn't a single product I can think of where I'll buy the same thing from multiple brands."
They aren't the same thing. They're differently-prepared multi-ingredient products. They're often not even the same species of fish, because "sardine" is a general category not a species.
Weird, I'm the complete opposite. There's no product I can think of where I didn't buy different brands, if anything just to compare.
I don't even like Sardines but I definitely understand there's a ton of variety in flavors and packing styles and even the species of fish can be a little different.
* Alva (from Sainsburys) - 75p - Sardina pilchardus - Packed in Morocco, caught in Eastern Atlantic Ocean
* 'The Fishmonger' (from Lidl) - 59p - Sardina pilchardus - Packed in Morocco, caught in Eastern Central Atlantic
* Kingfisher (from Lidl) - 49p - Sardina pilchardus - Packed in Morocco, caught in Central Eastern Atlantic
I'd expect extremely high prices buying them this way.
I just wish I had a way to block all these bullshit news stories from ever crossing my eyes.
Socializing has become people telling each other bullshit news stories that have almost nothing to do with reality.
Go to Aldi's, or better yet, Walmart, Kroger or a local large independent grocer.
That's specious, Trader Joe's is cheaper than other stores for plenty of items
What I want is non-premium-brand, not-Chinese sardines -- in mustard sauce. These brands can vary: Chicken of the Sea, Beach Cliff, and whatever the house brands of stores like Wal-Mart and Aldi are come to mind immediately. I adore these as a relatively inexpensive, healthy, and tasty shelf-stable snack -- not as luxury items. I will pay what I must, but I do not wish to spend very much money on them.
What I find instead are sardines in water, oil, and only rarely in tepid hot sauce. The more expensive or plainly-flavored they are, the more likely they are to be present.
The spots for all of the inexpensive sardines on the shelves are lacking, and the spots for every brand of mustard sardines are resolutely empty at every store I visit. The Kroger near my house has dozens of cans of reasonably-inexpensive sardines, but they're all in oil. The rest is picked clean like a covid-era toilet paper aisle.
It has been this way for months. It is not a hallucination, and I am not holding it wrong. I've been an avid consumer of mustard sardines for many decades. I am not vision-impaired. :)
Things are such that I take time to visit far-flung grocery stores when I travel regionally for work and also troll on Instacart looking for hits that will help me in the search of mustard sardines. It's been a nearly-complete non-starter; I've found only a couple of tins in the past few months.
[*]: As an unreferenced footnote, I'd like to preemptively note that I'm very particularly disinterested in hearing suggestions for other varieties of foods to eat instead. I am not in need of assistance, and this report of my own observations is not a request for help. There is nothing that can be added here that will change my proclivities on this matter, and there are no words that can magically restore mustard sardines to store shelves near me. I'd like to thank everyone in advance for understanding that neither my tastes for foods nor my regional market for sardines are things that can be controlled or adjusted by a comment on HN.
> not-Chinese sardines
Most of the sardines I get come from Poland. I very seldom see Morroco listed on the tins that I get. I do not understand how an unstated price can infer origin, or species, or the presence of only binary choice.
My preference is learned: Of the mustard sardines I've had from China, all of them have been fucked up somehow. They're fucking gross. They wind up binned. They do not deserve another cent of my money.
Your unwarranted questioning of my food preference has been noted.
(Please note that I have not placed any pressure upon you to defend your own preferences.)
This does not produce the same results as fish that have been cooked/canned in mustard sauce and left together for months (or years).
This difference is important to me. The old, fish-flavored mustard goop at the bottom of the tin is one of my favorite aspects.
You can find mustards in the "Condiments" section of your local market.
If that is a problem then perhaps you are living in the wrong place. Move to Texas where you will find canned mustard sardines aplenty on store shelves.
Other than their profoundly myopic nature, the notions you present are somewhat compelling.
Then we shall both remain happy and Texans a bit smarter, wittier and more observant on average.
And yummm, these mustard sardines are truly as tasty as you say - hadn't had any in awhile - thanks for reminding me!8-))
Y'all can have the canned fish.
A good brown mustard or just plain ol Tabasco are great on them. I even use quality olive oil sometimes. They actually taste way better doing it this way.
I'm no stranger to mustards. I've got a few varieties on-hand at any time. My favorite American yellow mustard is in rotation at all times, along with at least one bottle of backup mustard in the pantry. There's also always a tickly sort of Dijon in the fridge and I keep a random-brand discount store jar of coarse-ground imported mustard (usually from Poland) available.
I'm out of the extra hot version of Löwensenf, from Germany, at the moment. I need to fix this, but it's hard to find at a reasonable price. I'll find more of it soon enough.
When my favorite mustard once became impossible to buy in sane quantities, I found myself ordering an insane quantity: A box of six one-gallon jugs was easy to order from a local food service supplier and it was surprisingly quick and inexpensive to get it done. (Yes, six entire gallons -- nearly 30 liters -- of mustard, all at once. I bought extra pumps and made a couple of kits to give away to some people I know; the rest was for me.)
Anyway, sardines: I don't know if my grandparents ate sardines or not, but I doubt it. Out of countless meals and snacks, I don't really recall ever eating fish with them at all.
I cut my teeth on sardines at the kitchen table with my dad: He always kept a few tins of Brunswick-branded sardines (always in mustard sauce) in the cabinet. One day, when I was very small, he talked me into trying some, which started with a lesson in winding open a can with a key. After getting them open and overcoming a moment or two of confusion about the strong scents and flavors along with the texture (edible bones? wtf?), I found that I liked them quite a lot. We then frequently shared a tin of sardines together, just picking out little bits of fish with our own forks, which was lovely until things changed as I became a ravenous and disdainful teenager.
And of course I've tried putting mustard on more-plain varieties of sardines. I've tried it over and over again.
Mostly, I've previously experimented with this technique with sardines from Aldi: There, 3 or 4 varieties share the same SKU and arrive packed together in equal quantities, all in one box. This leads to the most-popular kinds disappearing from shelves while the less-popular kinds can become a sort of permanently-annoying surplus. My observations while digging through stock at Aldi suggests that mustard sardines are the most popular in my neck of the woods, because those are the ones that are always hardest to buy here.
So, thus: They historically have always had a ton of sardines in water and/or oil. And they were always priced right, because Aldi. And I always have (what I consider to be) good mustard available. It was obvious to try putting the two things together.
It makes me happy to hear that you think it's better this way, and I do wish that my own tastes were so easily placated.
For my part, I think it's far better when the mustard sauce and the sardines have both spent a lot of quality time together while sealed up together inside of the same can. I find that the flavors meld together beautifully, with the flesh of the fish becoming deeply mustard-flavored while the mustard goo becoming strongly sardine-flavored and a bit gelatinous. I enjoy this quite a lot as I scrape the last gloppy bits of canned mustard and fish out of the tin with a fork.
I find that this experience can't be sufficiently replicated by buying the two things separately and then combining them at serving. The packaged whole is greater than the post-purchase sum of its parts.
But, again: I'm pleased that it works for you and that it sounds like it might even be preferable.
It's always good to find ways to maximize one's enjoyment of sardines, and I think I'm doing pretty well on maximizing my own enjoyment.
The distribution SNAFU will either sort itself out, or it won't. :)
” The decision taken by the Council of Ministers earlier this week on the 2024 fishing quotas in the Baltic Sea is in many ways unique. It shows a remarkable historical short-sightedness, ignorance of the fish and fishing in the inland sea, inability to understand the scientific advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and - perhaps most of all: the ministers are bending the laws that regulate fishing, ecosystems and the marine environment to the limit.”
https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-he...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aqua...
[2] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-t...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
But it turns out, many fish farms use caught fish for (part of) the fishmeal and fish oil used to feed the fish they grow. Because many fish we eat turn out to be pescetarian.
All of this assumes that we have a pretty solid understanding of what this system looks like as we wrench it from one feedback loop into another, but it's the best we've got.
Farmers and fishers on top of that will always get cross partizan sympathy.
People just don't want to hear that the way they eat impacts and stresses the planet beyond its limits and that the producers of food get in any way penalized.
Truth is that we desperately need carbon taxes asap, to at least slow down the planet destruction. But it will never be popular.
For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Either democracy has broken beyond repair, or humanity averages to dumb. I'm inclined to the latter, because I believe that every individual, even if they can do smart things, is very dumb in other things.
Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.
In the past most societies had high fertility rates, which means there are relatively few elderly, relative to younger people, today. So the global death rate is relatively low as the the number of people annually exiting the stage is relatively low. But when low fertility generations start to die off, this gets turned upside down. You'll have large numbers of elderly dying off, and they'll make up the majority of the population. But this only happens ~80 years after the birth of the low-fertility generation.
This is why Japan looks so catastrophic today even though their fertility rate is much higher than places like South Korea. They've had a mediocre fertility rate since the 60s which then went into collapse in the 70s. By contrast South Korea had a fertility rate of 6 in the 60s, and didn't fall below replacement until the 80s. So Japan has had a solid decade or two head start. The fact we still aren't at the life expectancy of the first below replacement generation in Japan also means today is still going to be seen as 'the good ole days' for them. And this is where most countries are headed.
If the current generation has a 1.0 fertility rate, that means the next generation will be half as large. If said generation now doubles it's fertility rate to 2.0 it will only maintain the size of that generation, all the old people will age out and be gone all at once.
Now you might say, fine, let's fix it, 4.0 fertility rate, that will only double the size of the next generation, meaning it will only fix one generation of 1.0 fertility. You have stabilized the population, not increased it.
Even if you do this, you now run into a huge bottleneck: parents need to take care of their old parents and their large family all at once. You fixed the biological problem but you're now running into economic collapse.
And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
It seems reasonable to assume kids having more positive economic power in the past played a significant role, but there's counter-examples abounds in modern times. Nigeria is heavily urbanized yet has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Or on the other end of the spectrum, Thailand has a very large chunk of people living off farming, yet has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
And all the while this is happening your economy is getting wrecked not only because suddenly you have far fewer people, but because your society turns into a giant retirement home, as fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. You can see this by working backwards. Again taking a fertility rate of 1 as an example, if we have 1 newborn then we have 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, 8 60-80 year olds, and so on. So you have a shrinking economy paired alongside an even smaller ratio of workers, and much greater social strains on that economy as well.
This is also why immigration isn't anything more than a very short-term bandaid. When you're speaking of population declines near 100% over such small windows of time, you end up needing to basically replace the entire population of a region. Doing this with immigration, let alone as this is increasingly a global crisis, just isn't realistic. And this is completely ignoring the social consequences of such actions.
It's only really sub Saharan Africa still growing.
Are you from the 1800s? Malthusianism has been discredited for decades, thanks to the green revolution and falling fertility rates. Not to mention all politicians that tried to do something (ie. didn't "ignore the problem") have a sorry track record - eugenics, one child policy, or forced sterilizations.
Infinite growth, in any form, is a fairy tale for economists.
The second is that the status quo on Earth is never sustainable. For but one example among many on this note, Earth has gone through multiple mass extinctions - long before humans arrived on the scene - and it will continue to do so; in fact we're rather overdue for one. So the idea of living in perpetual harmony with the planet sounds like a nice goal, but is itself also a fairy tale. This certainly isn't an argument to just YOLO away the Earth, but rather that doing things that are relatively self destructive for the sake of trying to achieve a perpetual harmony is unwise, because that goal is impossible to achieve.
The truth is that if we weren’t burdened with multi billionaires, we would have plenty of everything.
First we tried diesel gate.
Then someone had amazing idea to import Russian gas.
Now we are catching and taxing cow farts! Maybe bio methane could generate electricity!!!
AFAICT Germany actually came fairly close to assembling a club but failed because they wanted a club that would include the US but excluded China but couldn't find a reasonable mechanism to include the US. We should try again -- most countries would have no qualms about assembling a club that would exclude the US.
Or directly tax the things that cause it: Tax all non-biofuel petrol a certain amount instead of trying to calculate how much CO2 was emitted in its production.
Now, keeping the taxes suitably high as citizens go hungry, that's an exercise for the reader.
Increasing taxation might price poor people out of things, but then poor people aren't flying jets or helicopters, are they? They still have to drive to work, too. Mandating working from home was pretty effective in reducing CO2, though.
Thirty years later everyone involved agreed that it had saved the industry.
It's really convenient to blame the politicians instead of the people that vote for them.
If people had a long term vision, politicians would too.
One of the major roles of elected officials is to take responsibility for what's happening, that's the major point of representative democracy. People would be responsible only if they had the right to enact and endorse laws directly. This is really basic stuff, should be understood by everyone older than 7.
Not to mention that in the real world, all candidates are equally disinterested in the lives of people or fish. It doesn't matter who people vote for.
> If people had a long term vision, politicians would too.
Talk about putting the cart before the horse. People don't have to have long term vision, that's politician's job, they all promise good things but never deliver and keep blaming the guy before them instead.
Authority and responsibility inherently and unalterably lie with the people; that they either by explicit delegation or tacit toleration allow others to exercise power on their behalf does not relieve them of either. This is the basic thing that everyone ought to understand.
You don't have long term version?
I can't believe a weight-loss fad is going to take "my" sardines from the shelves.
Also, why only sardines? Any fatty fish will serve the same purpose. I guess a fad is a fad.
Plus because they're eaten whole, you also get bonus stuff like calcium and phosphorus from the bones.
Meanwhile I hope the social media influencers leave herring alone and move on to mackerel.
I don't really like fish. I watch his videos more for the vibes. I did buy a can or two to give it a chance but I still just can't stand it.
I must admit though I agree with you - the videos are kinda amusing !
[0] https://www.mbari.org/news/from-sardines-to-anchovies-and-ba...
There are now areas of the world with overtourism. Santorini, arguably Venice, Machu Pichu and maybe even Barcelona have more tourists than they can support. It's becoming a huge problem. Why is this the case? It's in part because people have disposable income to visit these places but I think there's a larger issue of why people want to visit these places. I think there's a FOMO element and the idea is pushed by social media in particular and media in general.
As another example, I blame at least in part the crazy NYC rent situation on Sex and the City, particularly on rents in the West Village. If you've lived in NYC you know there's so many SATC girlies living out their NYC dreams and not all of them have trust funds. You see this reflected in rents too. One side of 14th Street is Chelsea. The other side is the West Village. Rents on the Chelsea side are significantly lower than the other side because people want to be able to say they live in the West Village.
On a smaller scale you see this where people seem to view themselves as the main character in a movie or TV show and they're living out these scenes in their heads, typically to video and post online. They can be really inconsiderate about it too. Like just today I saw a video that someone in a public beach "dared" go in the water while someone was trying to get a photo of themselves and that other person got in frame. It really is main character syndrome [1].
I think what made a lot of things good in the past was lack of information (and the resultant FOMO). You've seen this in food trends too when Omega-3 became big and fish stocks suffered or when palm oil became big and that's a big problem.
Interestingly, China has a system to try and prevent everyone flocking to one or two cities ("hukou") and it's hard not to see the argument for this.
I have several triggers when I'm doomscrolling. One of the worst is when someone says "I'm trying the viral (restaurant, dish, bakery, bar, whatever)..." I've always hated this because whatever it is is never worth it. But the psychology of people wanting to show off this way is fascinating. It really feels like people's lives are that empty that they just want that external validation.
[1]: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-main-c...
Highly relevant: <https://www.thecut.com/article/nyc-west-village-neighborhood...>
I remember walking down a street in Istanbul, there were many restaurateurs saying "My friend, look at menu" (I joked after the trip "How was Istanbul? I met many of my friends there!"). Now I want to see "influencers" touting their products in the style of these restaurant touts.
Or, as we used to call it, 'keeping up with the Joneses'. The odd thing is that most people that go to the overly-touristy places have very little to say. Sure there are the pictures for social media, however, these are of what the food is like and what the beverages are like and these could be taken anywhere.
There is no adventure involved in tourism, and adventure satisfies in ways that tourism never will. With adventure there is no knowing what to expect, there are logistics problems to solve and there is purpose, namely to get from A to B, preferably in one piece, which is not a given.
With tourism there are no such problems, people have 'slaves' wait on them for the duration of the trip. There is no need to interact with the actual natives, just the hospitality workers, as in the 'slaves'.
In the past, a lot of work went into getting time off for the working man, with local-ish tourism to take people out of the smog filled cities and to the seaside (in the UK and elsewhere). A few generations on and this has been baked in, nobody takes their time to enjoy the house they pay to live in, there is this default action of going on some type of package holiday.
The typical package holiday is for the time poor, with so many big sights that have to be packed in, always the same tourism trail. For example, Brits visiting the USA might imagine this road trip, to hire a car in LA, to drive to Vegas, on to spend 20 minutes at the rim of the Grand Canyon and then on to Flagstaff, as if there is anything to see there.
They get back having seen nothing except car parks and the Interstate. The mad dashing around means they get the required photos but there is no adventure. So they have to go on another trip. How about Machu Pichu, next time round?
So, off they go. They come back to their normal life and have nothing to say, apart from what the hotel, flight and food was like.
It is an industry made possible by cheap flights and cheap rental cars, with none of them being that cheap if externalities are to be included. Given where the world is going regarding the 'war for oil', this tourism is going to vanish quite quickly.
People will believe anything.
I will say any 3 day diet weight loss is going to be water weight, though
Is it feasible to farm sardines?
Whether that's a technical barrier imposed by the biology of sardines being unsuited for how we do fish farming today, or more of a barrier of "it will never make financial sense to do this because so many in each batch would die" I don't know.
The really stupid thing about fad diets like keto is you either just start craving carbs because food is miserable without them, or you develop an eating disorder. The only thing anyone should do is eat normal, delicious, home-cooked food made from mostly plants.
Here in the UK, for my lunch I've just had a 49p tin of sardines in tomato sauce from Aldi - I used to each smoked mackerel about 3 days a week for either breakfast or lunch, then some years ago turned to tinned. Then in the last year tinned mackerel moved to £1 a tin, from 50p before, so I gave sardines a go and I love them even more.
I usually have the ones tinned with tomato sauce, then 60g full fat Greek yoghurt, 100g carrots, 100g cucumber then cherry tomatoes and green salad. A really delicious and filling lunch, at less than 400 calories and with over 25g of protein. Plus costs less than a £1 a meal. Just not one to eat on my office days...
I had been feeling rather proud of this, especially avoiding meat for lunch, but maybe I need to find a different protein source.
(49p is a cheap tin though, and I'm not sure Aldi has a fish counter? Observation conducted at Waitrose with £1 tins and 3 by weight for 80p.)
Sadly Agent Smith was not wrong there.
See mouse and grasshopper plagues, feral cats, etc.
Wachowskis just don't know any better. You think it's air your breathing now? Oxygen? More like plant waste product.
Also no ecosystem is in perfect harmony. It's basically jenga tower where you pull a piece on a long enough scale it looks eternal.
Some stores are out entirely, others will alternate through available brands over time, but often have slim pickings. I'd suspected an issue with fisheries, and am very sorry to see this confirmed.
This shortage has been discussed for years - long before overconsumption was even a drop in the bucket compared to the fish oil supplement industry.
Consider that we now have more tons of ships in the sea than there are bony fish:
More and more miles from shore every year
Since they told me I can't sell no stripers
And there's no luck in swordfishing here
I was a bayman like my father was before
Can't make a living as a bayman anymore
There ain't much future for a man who works the sea
But there ain't no island left for islanders like me.
It's just too hard to check my posts when I'm weaving between traffic on the highway
There used to be only 3 TV channels or so. You had things like Johnny Carson jokes causing a toilet paper shortage.
In Britain, Delia Smith's How to Cook caused 10% swings in egg sales, far more abundant and harder to affect than something like inventories of sardines. https://www.bbcamerica.com/blogs/british-icon-of-the-week-de...
> Look what you've done, dumbass
Kippered herring is in stock, though.