asciilifeform: as soon as you mention 'regatta' you're dealing with entirely opposing engineering tradeoffs.
asciilifeform: asciilifeform's argument was not that 'plastic is strong enough', entirely possible that suitable materials do not yet exist. but that ~NOBODY is seriously working on the problem at all. ~nothing's been seriously tried.
asciilifeform: lol, 'be happy with your stall and hay pile, worthless cattle' ?
asciilifeform: but thread wasn't re 'anything'. was re, say, 10,000 hrs, of asciilifeform -- ain't worth , per market, what a livable boat costs. whereas theoretically could kit build.
asciilifeform: no thread re rent is complete without this mega-insight.
asciilifeform: and yeah sure whatevers, folx who ain't mircea_popescu and can't make thousand btc / hr by farting in spare time, 'don't belong, oughta slice lengthwise!111' sure.
asciilifeform: by same logic, say, mircea_popescu drinking fine whiskey is -ev -- he ain't getting any fatter, martian farmer looking on earthlings as cattle will say 'why this fine specimen is being fed non-nutritive thing'
asciilifeform: it ain't -ev from the pov of the one doing it, tho
asciilifeform: incidentally pretty good analogy -- a handful of very rich ~and eccentric~ folx had personally-owned pdp8, say; but many in fact thought 'computer is neato, but only good for accounting, i'll buy one for office', just as mircea_popescu immediately went 'yacht is for whoring, wtf, idiot, to think of living in one'
asciilifeform: ( and certainly could not own in the customized form in which they get it )
asciilifeform: a kit build ( and oughta be interpreted broadly, e.g. gentoo entirely counts ) lets folx convert their otherwise not-monetizable spare time, into a product, which in many cases they could never otherwise own
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu of all people oughta grasp this
asciilifeform: '-ev to produce en mass for konsoomers' != 'not worth building'
asciilifeform: lol some modern derp bought the name?!
asciilifeform: and jurov laughs at 'car to be finished at home', but asciilifeform is entirely willing to convert 10,000 hrs of sweat into 0rent house.
asciilifeform: of building items that will still work 100yrs from now when 'west' is a bad memory -- also.
asciilifeform: fact : there is more than one way to engineer. e.g., you can engineer for rich, industrious idiots ('raytheon' style). you can engineer for rich, lazy idiots (yachts from rare woods, with diesel motor). for poor, lazy idiots: 'mass' konsoomer electronics. for poor, industrious, smart folx -- can also engineer. but ~0 precedent to work from.
asciilifeform: i know this because he did not start out with 'there exists NO suitable plastic, fool' but with vikings and galleons.
asciilifeform: this however is a political thread : it is not because of mircea_popescu's deep study of plastics, and the strain forces exerted by the sea, that he takes his position, but because This Has Always Been And Therefore Must Always Be .
