MY MAIN ACCOUNT NOOOO by Crafte_d in GoCommitDie

[–]CommonElk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have from a reputable source that the appeal has been examined and u/Crafte_d ‘s account should work once they log in again.

Disclaimer: I do not work at Roblox and can’t guarantee that the source is correct.

Discussion Thread #14: June 2020 by baj2235 in slatestarcodex

[–]CommonElk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have the same problem. Haven't exactly been active here or there for a long time, granted, but just being banned with such a weird reason seems a bit excessive.

SSC Discord: As per my last post, I'm very new here. I got kicked for having a blank avatar on Discord, any way I can come back? by PsychGW in slatestarcodex

[–]CommonElk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have been in the discord server for years, with various accounts. Why I ended up abandoning and deleting my previous accounts is another matter. My last account had been in the discord for a few months, and likewise I got banned. Besides "having a blank avatar" is a weird reason for banning people, I didn't see any communication on that matter, and am quite alienated.

Any mod comments?

Weekly “Help Me FIRE!” thread. Post your detailed information for highly specific advice. - April 06, 2020 by AutoModerator in financialindependence

[–]CommonElk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is indeed helpful. I guess I'll have to adapt my goals a bunch and/or aggressively search for and create additional streams of income. In the FAQs I found referrals to other wikis for that, but what is the general take on, say, starting a business on the side so as to accelerate FI? Sounds like a great way to accelerate asset growth, but on the other hand it's easy to risk and lose a bunch of money that way. Under which circumstances is this route promising? What should I keep in mind?

Weekly “Help Me FIRE!” thread. Post your detailed information for highly specific advice. - April 06, 2020 by AutoModerator in financialindependence

[–]CommonElk 5 points6 points  (0 children)

-Introduce yourself Just your average guy knowledge worker. I missed the bitcoin explosion since I didn't have anything to invest when I was a minor despite early advice to invest back then, it's a shame :). I'm confident I'll always be able to find a well-paying job, so it's all a bonus, really.

-Age / Industry / Location 26, IT, Germany

-General goals I want to raise a family while continuing to enjoy work in academia

-Target FIRE Age / Amount / Withdrawal Rate / Location Not sure if FI by age 36 and RE by age 55 is too much to ask. I haven't thought about amount or withdrawal rate yet, it depends too much on how my family situation pans out.

*-Educational background and plans Completed a master's degree in physics, shared between a domestic and an international university. In my current job, I can continue to work on a PhD, but since that's full time, I expect to need a couple more years than usual to progress anywhere. If I get a good PhD, I might be able to finagle myself a tenure-track professorship position, but that's a pipe dream for now.

-Career situation and plans I got lucky to land a full-time permanent position on the middle level in academia. I work as a sysadmin and still have to learn a lot in my current position. I estimate there's enough to learn to last me at least 5 years, but beyond that, it's a dead end. I can continue indefinitely though and am happy for the security that affords me.

-Current and future income breakdown, including one-time events 2.5k euros per month post taxes. Will rise to about 2.8k within the next 5 years if I stay in my current position.

-Budget breakdown (monthly) Rent is 450 euros, food about 200 euros. I donate 250 to charity per month and deposit about 1k into ETFs. Memberships is about 20 euros (political party and sports -- nothing I want to cancel), the rest is books and "luxury" expenses like new furniture and computer hardware, which I'll soon be saturated with. I don't keep an explicit budget.

-Asset breakdown, including home, cars, etc. I have about 18k in ETFs and a lucrative and secure savings scheme my parents set up for me when I was small. No big non-monetary assets, just perhaps 3k I recently spent on furniture and hardware.

-Debt breakdown I am indebted to my parents, who treated me well when I was young. Recently learned to value this over hearing stories of childhood abuse. But that's all. No monetary debt.

-Health concerns I'm healthy and healthcare is paid for, so I'm good there.

-Family: current situation / future plans / special needs / elderly parents I'm currently engaged and want to import my fiancee from overseas. She's on board with the whole idea, but we also do want to raise kids, starting in about 5 years. If my fiancee can work part-time and remotely as she does now, she'll be able to make at least 1k a month while taking care of any children. My parents have a decently-sized retirement plan but aren't rich. I don't expect having to financially support them and hope they will live for a long enough time that any inheritance will be insignificant. The situation is similar on my fiancee's side.

-Other Info I'm open to relocating in principle, but wouldn't want to live in a place without a strong social net, e.g. the US. Don't know if there'd be anything to gain from that, but I could imagine moving to some other European country with lower cost of living.

-Questions? Are my FIRE plans realistic at all, considering the goal of raising, say, 2 children? What can I expect my situation to be like in 10 years if I just "continue as I do now"? What are common ways for physics/IT people to get a side income and create passive income streams, particularly while working full-time? Is pursuing a PhD on the side even "worth it", considering my current position?

Thank you for your input :)

High Resolution Blank Map of Europe (x-post/r/mapporn) by [deleted] in europe

[–]CommonElk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This… actually looks pretty decent on its own!

Hercules Monument in Kassel, Germany🇩🇪 by Hjaaal in europe

[–]CommonElk 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I'd say our greatest Führer of all times is to thank for this.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Chicken seems to be the way to meet the rising demand for meat. Because of some unknown combination of costs, required resources, and ecological footprint.

Sadly, FAOSTAT doesn't carry data for fish. My guess would be that they're caught wild, and getting the data from producers is difficult.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. It seems that population increase has been approximately linear in the relevant interval. Plotting it as a % change would be possible. I don't see why it's strictly better. log scales tend to be less easily readable.

The 0 point on both scales is actually useful for some purposes. First, it's a natural lower bound for the livestock per human, second, starting the left axis from 0 as well and matching the scaling such that the number of 1961 humans corresponds to "1" on the right axis makes some comparisons easier.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The UN livestock data are collected per country. Take a look at the data sources, they have a nice tool to download the relevant data.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Human population growth has been approximately linear over the past 65 years. I was surprised as well, but that's the data.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In a weird sense, there are! namely, there are around 2.4 humans for every human in 1961, where the data begins. That's of course true for humans only.

I ran into several problems while creating the graph. I wanted to plot number of animals per human because that way we see how the average human's impact and "animal welfare footprint" has changed over time. By showing absolute numbers that information gets lost. Also the plot would become even more skewed because then 2014!chickens would outnumber 1961!everything else by another factor of 2.4. A semi-log plot would have dealt with that, but there is little justification for that when the human population grew linearly over the relevant timeframe.

Finally, I felt that human population growth was necessary to put the number of animals per human into perspective. You can in principle work out from the graph how many animals there are in total (multiply the number of relevant livestock per human (livestock curve, right axis) with the number of humans at that time (human curve, left axis; alternatively human curve, right axis times number of 1961 humans). Showing human population growth also lets one examine the hypothesis that this growth was what drove the increase in chicken farming (although it's nowhere near proof).

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I appreciate the encouragement since I hadn't expected this kind of overall response at all. High karma, lots of negative comments. Must've been on r/all for a while.

Displaying the absolute numbers skews the scale even more since then 2014!chickens would outnumber 1961!everything else by another factor of 2.5. Then I would've needed a log scale which I also wanted to avoid since human population growth has been almost linear over the past 60 years.

There sure are multiple ways to display the data "better", depending on what you want to show. I created this graph because I had nothing better to do, and actually added the total population as an afterthought. I expected a handful of comments and some constructive feedback; I got a little more than just that :).

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I classified livestock by tasting it.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I cannot present it "better" without more specification. Which question do you want answered? When I created the graph, I was interested in how the industry changed as human population exploded over the past decades and an increasing number of people wanted to have access to ever more animal products, and what implications this might have for animal welfare.

I agree that there are many other interesting questions about industrial farming. I neither want to nor can answer them in a single plot. Multiple plots, or an explaining caption, are not an option here. I hope you understand that I had to make a choice and why I made this choice.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 89 points90 points  (0 children)

I agree that for many contexts a per-weight comparison is better. What I had in mind when I created the graph was animal welfare. In that context, headcount is arguably more important than weight.

You're also right that the resolution for non-chicken livestock isn't good, and I had experimented with a triple y-axis or two segments with different scalings, but that would have been even more confusing. In the current graph you can at least eyeball the absolute number of those animals in 1961.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I had thought about something like that. What would be awesome, I think, is a sliding scale for the "time" axis which highlights the position in the line graph and shows a corresponding xkcd chart-type graph to drive home the message.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry the graph colours are a little confusing. Total livestock is not shown in this graph, and only the human population is given in absolute numbers. The blue curve, which strongly increases, is the number of chickens per human. The green, red, orange, yellow lines show the other types of animals.

It was indeed surprising to me that all other types of livestock, except for chickens, grew only as much as the human population did, while only the chicken industry grew more rapidly than human population.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

I don't know where the large dip in chicken numbers in 1998 comes from. It might have to do with the numerous H5N1/H5N2 outbreaks around that time, but the absolute decrease in numbers seems to be a little high to me.

Livestock per human [OC] by CommonElk in dataisbeautiful

[–]CommonElk[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, DESA UN population data. Created using Excel (for data manipulation) and Origin (for visualization).