Comment on People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

• Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Even if the soil is preserved, we’ve been mining the micronutrients from it and generally only replacing the 3 main macros for centuries. It’s one of the reasons why mass produced produce doesn’t taste as good as home grown or wild food. Nutritional value keeps going down because each time food is harvested and shipped away to be consumed and then shat out into a septic tank or waste processing facility, it doesn’t end up back in the soil as a part of nutrient cycles like it did when everything was wilder. Similar story for meat eating nutrients in a pasture.

  Insects did contribute to the cycle, since they still shit and die everywhere, but their numbers are dropping rapidly, too.

  At some point, I think we’re going to have to mine the sea floor for nutrients and ship that to farms for any food to be more nutritious than junk food. Salmon farms set up in ways that block wild salmon from making it back inland doesn’t help balance out all of the nutrients that get washed out to sea all the time, too.

  It’s like humanity is specifically trying to speedrun extiction by ignoring and taking for granted how things work that we depend on.

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  • Almacca@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    But won’t someone think of the shareholders dividends!?

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  • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Why would good nutrients end up in poop?

    It makes sense that growing a whole plant takes a lot of different things from the soil, and coating the area with a basic fertilizer that may or may not get washed away with the next rain doesn’t replenish all of what is taken makes sense.

    But how would adding human poop to the soil help replenish things that humans need out of food?

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    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      We don’t absorb everything completely, so some passes through unabsorbed. Some are passed via bile or mucous production, like manganese, copper, and zinc. Others are passed via urine. Some are passed via sweat. Selenium, when experiencing selenium toxicity, will even pass through your breath.

      Other than the last one, most of those eventually end up going down the drain, either in the toilet, down the shower drain, or when we do our laundry. Though some portion ends up as dust.

      And to be thorough, there’s also bleeding as a pathway to losing nutrients, as well as injuries (or surgeries) involving losing flesh, tears, spit/boogers, hair loss, lactation, finger nail and skin loss, reproductive fluids, blistering, and mensturation. And corpse disposal, though the amount of nutrients we shed throughout our lives dwarfs what’s left at the end.

      I think each one of those are ones that, due to our way of life and how it’s changed since our hunter gatherer days, less of it ends up back in the nutrient cycle.

      But I was mistaken to put the emphasis on shit and it was an interesting dive to understand that better. Thanks for challenging that :)

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      • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Thank you for taking it in good faith and for writing up a researched response, bravo to you!

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