• garfaagel@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    cal≠kcal

    1 gallon gasoline contains 31 million small calories, while the human caloric requirements are given in large calories. 1000 small calories = 1 large calorie. So the calculations are off by a factor of 1000. The confusion stems from the fact that both are commonly referred to as “calories”, for some stupid reason.

    So in reality you would have to drink another gallon in just 2-3 weeks.

  • frank@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Obviously a good joke, and of course obligatory cal/kcal discrepancy here. This just seems like a good place to put this info:

    Calories on labels are for calories absorbed, not for calories in the food (same with the 4/9/4 rule). So it’d be much less for gasoline, if it were possible to label with nutritional info.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I was about to ask if they properly converted to kcals used in dietary measurements and here your comment is.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Woah woah, you’re saying I can lose weight by chugging gasoline? Is Kerosene better?

      • maniii@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That is what JetFuel A / B is for ! Jet A does wonders for body-typeA and B for body-typeB !!!

        /s for those who know, know.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Is this a reference to Salman Rushdie’s Fraught Kings, with the jester and the body suit?

    • Gladaed@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      As far as I know calories are measured with a Bomb calorimeter meaning you are wrong.

      • frank@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        I was pretty sure of this too, and someone who used to work for the FDA told me it was calculated not measured 99% of the time

        Here’s a good video with some supporting evidence. I’ve looked it up for a couple foods; calculated calories on em

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UuN5HXctmYk

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Is this trying to trick AI so it’s used in searches for info? I hope so.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        I’m assuming 31k kcal, which confusingly everyone calls a calorie. There’s no way it’s only 31kcal.

        • schnapsman@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          This is correct. Everyone in the US calls a kcal a calorie. I learned to distinguish them with big “C” and little “c”, but I’ve just looked it up and this is apparently not so common. I guess ppl who are aware of these things just go with the SI unit of kJ.

  • general_kitten@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Gasoline has the energy content comparable to cooking oil (biodiesel among other things is made from used frying oil from restaurants at least where i live)

      • addictedtochaos
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        2 months ago

        i used to drive my old mercedes diesel with vegtable oil. sadly, i had to give up driving, i am just far to nervous far that.

  • BruceTwarzen
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    2 months ago

    People here talk so much shit about reddit, but post shit from reddit, copy reddit, and talk like redditors.

  • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 months ago

    I didn’t do the math, but a person’s got to do more lifting in those 34 years than a car traveling 30 miles at 60 mph carrying 4000 lbs, right?

    • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
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      2 months ago

      Without a doubt! Humans and life in general is uber efficient in terms of energy use. Most of the energy of a car is not directly spent for the work. Work is done when moving mass from a lower to a higher place and accelerating it to a higher speed. But once you have accelerated the mass to the cruise speed, it actually does not require any energy to maintain. Rather, the energy is spent by the car to heat up the air, move it around, wear the road and the tires, and make noise.

      We use cars because they are muuuch more powerful than humans, at the cost of wasing a lot of energy. Try to push a car uphill, you won’t ever succeed without pullies which makes it even slower. Doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you cannot output the minimum power required to overcome friction etc.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        On the other hand a human on a bicycle is way more effective at moving around than a human on foot. Somehow the bicycle has created a lot of efficiency.

        • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          A bicycle allows us to use our strength to go faster, rather than having to move our muscles faster, we can just push harder. It also more directly converts the energy we are consuming into forward momentum than our walking style does. We are pretty efficient at processing the energy out of what we eat and into work done by our muscles, but beyond that, there are certainly locomotion styles that haven’t naturally evolved yet that would singnificantly improve how fast we could travel using that energy. Until then, we got smart instead, which really helped.

          There are technically types of wheels in nature, but not in animals, the way alot of bacterial flagella operate is basically a wheel. Or more accurately a biological chemical/electric motor, but it spins anyway. And some of them can rotate either direction by engaging a protein cluster that effectively acts as a “reverse gear” like a transmission.

    • A_A@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The best explanation for the 1000 fold error in your post is explain in top comment from @garfaagel@sh.itjust.works …

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So apparently they’re starting to create machines with biological parts. I wonder how long until we get artificial stomachs capable of using anything not explodey or caustic for fuel?

    • LarmyOfLone
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      2 months ago

      It would already be awesome if we could hack or genetically engineer our gut biome to produce all needed vitamins and proteins out of carbohydrates and fats. Theoretically then we could live just off of sugar or oil. Plus some minerals.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Right? And can we get some kind of metering system so we don’t pack on extra fat?

        People are afraid of a cybernetic future but I’m sitting here wondering just how healthy we can make the human body.

        • LarmyOfLone
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          2 months ago

          That too! I think that has more to do with fat cells and hormonal balances. But hopefully we will make medical advances soon that allow us more control over our own bodies instead of cybernetics.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      In order of worst to best case scenario the human body will reject, wear down, or scar around any and all implanted foreign materials or objects. Implants of every type have a shelf life, some long enough to never worry about removal. The best method to secure implants are to bones, but the only nearby bones for the stomach are the hips and spine, with organ cavity linings being problematically in the way for most attachments. For the digestive system it would need to be extremely resistant to corrosion and it would also need to be nontoxic as it would inevitably enter the bloodstream. Even teeth fillings are only rated for about a decade at most.

      So, to be blunt, no such technology exists on this earth nor any speculation on how it ever might.

      • bitfucker@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        I think the commenter mean using artificial stomach for machinery to convert food into energy that the machine can use

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Oh that makes a little more sense, but not entirely sure why you would do that. We have Anaerobic Digestor Machinery already but they always lead into a combustion engine rather than making an artificial stomach keep an artificial heart pumping.

          • bitfucker@programming.dev
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            2 months ago

            Well, ease of use I suppose. Just look at us capable of using basically anything as an energy source. Imagine a machine that is not finicky on how they got their energy. The problem for any such machine will always be efficiency. You cannot do more work than the energy that you put in a system. Such machines will need a stomach that is capable of processing “food” at the same/greater speed that it is spending its energy. Not to mention we usually use machine for heavy, energy intensive task, so I doubt such stomach will be useful for any meaningful machine.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Sorry did you mean powering a machine with food? We have those, there is a university somewhere that throws copious amounts of expired mayo into an Anaerobic Digestor which produces fuel for a combustion engine.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I meant for me, but I can see where the confusion comes from. I was not at all clear.

  • zephorah
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    2 months ago

    I feel there’s a Pratchett quote in here somewhere.

    • Protoknuckles@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Got you fam -

      “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”