This is such a draft, but I wanted to get it written so I could point to this big compendium of things related to “now I eat/consume plants and not animals”, or “i went vegan recently, here’s some observations”. I ‘went vegan’ a few months ago, as of when I began drafting this document, collecting notes and thoughts. That was approximately May/June 2026. I wish I’d made the shift a decade earlier. I’ve got some thoughts, and in my standard write it now preference, I’m jotting thoughts as I go. I’ve been one of todays 10,000 plenty of times over the last few months, and it’s nice to sometimes document the unfolding, breadcrumb style or whatever. So, a few weeks ago June 2026, something shifted in my brain emotionally and intellectually about consuming animal products, and more things kept shifting since then. the eating patterns before I grew up deep inside of the culture of carnism. Grew up in a house where the flesh of dead young animals was a part of every meal. In 2017, i read the book Eating Animals, and stopped eating meat, almost, and almost all milk products. I still ate eggs (lots of eggs), heavy cream for coffee, sometimes used butter for baking, and various other “animal products”. I have always liked to eat plants and have had a mushroom/broccoli/lots more veggies in my egg omelette most days. I didn’t like the thought of exploiting animals, and I had a story in my mind that eggs were essential in some way to my nutrition, even as I stopped eating meat. the way some people feel about meat being an essential food component is probably how I felt about eggs being essential. I knew they were not technically essential, but my cooking and nutrition showed that in my actions, I found chicken periods essential to my food consumption. I always had a sense of wanting to eat less of animals. some days I’d eat no eggs, but by spending money on eggs, I was obviously calling into existence the exploitation of those animals. If I’m paying for something, I’m supporting it. I never liked that I was contributing to, calling into existence by spending money on, factory farming for cows to drink their milk, and factory farming for chickens and their periods, and the fish for their flesh. Even though I thought it was possible in theory to get milk relatively ethically from a theoretical farmed cow, and a theoretical farmed chicken, I knew that what I was getting was the standard factory farmed/CAFO(concentrated agricultural feeding operation) animal or ‘animal product’. and then something changed. a three-ingredient plant-based egg replacement/upgrade I remembered reading something that said, casually, off-hand, something about an ‘egg substitute’ that jumped out at me: mix the following: plant milk plant yogurt chickpea flour nutritional yeast spices mix it up and swap it in for anything an egg is called for. 🤯 on my next grocery shopping trip i got some soy milk & soy yogurt & chickpea flour at the grocery store (and some nutritional yeast). I tried it out, and it was perfect. Amazing. The taste, texture. After the very first ‘attempt’ at this new version of my standard, daily meal, I kept trying it again and again. I noticed as each day passed and I had not taken another egg out of the pile of egg cartons in my fridge. Then the first grocery trip happened, and I noticed with satisfaction that I had no need in getting more eggs - I hadn’t eaten any more of the ones already in my fridge. The eggs continued to go untouched. I noticed that I liked not eating the animal products - I also began experimenting with alternatives to cow-based heavy cream for my coffee. Turns out there are many great options. and I ‘went vegan’. I noticed, sorta watched it happen after-the-fact, as I eliminated animal products from my consumption, and then kept on going and now wish I’d arrived here a decade ago. I wish I’d not eaten those thousands of eggs, or drank those kilos of heavy cream, representing quite a lot of participation in the dairy and chicken industries. the “dairy industry” is really the beef industry, so even in eating a milk product, I was participating in the meat industry, of course. And the exploitation of the mother’s capacity to reproduce, but then stealing away the kid (and executing it or growing it up into another cow to make more milk) sidebar: due to a shitty situation with a past partner and a kid involved, I became aware of how miserable it is to feel like ones kid is being taken from you, and is being mistreated by the people who took it. I cried watching the videos of mother cows chasing after their kids, as the kids are being taken by the humans doing the exploiting. male baby cows are usually killed shortly after they are born. baby cows that can reproduce are raped (artificially inseminated) as soon as they’re old enough to reproduce, and when they have a baby cow, it’s taken from them, and they have their milk taken from them until it eventually stops, then it all starts over again (rape, stealing the kid, then stealing the milk) and repeats until the milk stops permanently, at which point the mother cow is killed. Its about the animals, not health I am no longer participating in animal exploitation for the animals. the thought crossed my mind where even if I had to feel marginally less healthy or found avoiding animal products to be inconvenient in any way, I didn’t care. An animal’s entire existance being torture and hell would never be fair, for a momentary taste of what? milk? butter? an egg? the switch was very easy. I’ve added chickpeas/garbanzo beans to my diet, and the full lineup of soy products. (soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, tempeh, soy-based “meat alternatives”). I love soy. Soybean yogurt has the same grams of fat per serving as cow milk yogurt, but I don’t know that anyone has tried to make a yogurt out of any other bean. Cashews and almonds (both are high fat) also get turned into milks and yogurts. I’ve always loved cashews and almonds, so I’m happy to eat more of those kinds of things, in the form of soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, and any other kind of plant yogurt/milk. bio-chemistry of whatever that ‘keto’ thing is I’ve long been interested in whatever the heck is happening inside the body when this thing called ‘ketosis’ is happening. My lay understanding is: ‘ketosis’ is a name given to a process in the body where the liver ‘decides’ to manufacture a collection of molecules that function similarly enough to glucose. the liver puts those molecules into the bloodstream, and eventually mitocondria pick them up and metabolize them for ATP. There’s I could write like two blog posts that fully encapsulates the several things I’ve picked up about the conditions that give rise to those molecules some people call ‘ketone bodies’, or the ways the body makes them and uses them. The three molecules associated with ‘ketosis’ are acetoacetate (whatever that is), acetone (yeah, like in nail polish and spray paint and stuff), and something called ‘beta-hydroxybuturate’. 1 there’s three molecules that can be measured, in three different ways, and I don’t know the relationship directly between all three. one is measured via blood serum testing, like blood glucose measured by diabetics, another is measured via urine sampling, and the last is measured via breath meter. this needs to be it’s own blog post. Those ketone-body molecules are made from fat molecules, which then get used inside of mitochondria to make ATP, supposedly in very efficient ways (300 atp?). Like, one sort of fuel that you would use in a stove vs a different one. A stove burner fuel vs a welding torch fuel, perhaps. the ‘krebs cycle’ or ‘citric acid cycle’ wikipedia, ‘krebs cycle’ is a name for the cellular energy/cellular respiration cycle. A bunch of biochemistry that talks about how something like glucose turns into ‘energy’. supposedly one glucose molecule makes 33 ATP molecules, a ‘chain’ of a fat molecule can go through the cycle like 7 times, one molecule being spent per cycle, and can make like 330 ATP molecules? I think it’s interesting. youtube: ‘ATP Yield in Fatty Acid Oxidation’ Ketosis has nothing to do with eating animal products or protein Something I dislike in some keto spaces (like the keto subreddit) is the odd obsession with meat. It sorta seems to self-describe as a ‘fat and protein heavy nutritional pattern’ but the animal protein piece doesn’t need to exist. If more protein (aka, some collection of amino acids) is wanted, augment with a scoop of plant protein, or tofu or lentils or any of the other dozens of sources of those amino acids. But I never saw dead animals as a necessary part of ketosis. Partially because of my thinking, but also obviously informed by my many years of eating like this, and relatively fine health. I’ve never had unwanted weight on my body, always been able to move around, climb, bike, walk, run around after a frisbee, etc. Sooo I’ve been low carb, no-meat for a while now, and just flipped to vegan and low carb, and while the changes had nothing to do with how I thought my body would handle it, I now notice these dietary patterns feeling very nice inside my body. My explorations of ketosis deserves it’s own post, I’ll write that soon. I’ve written about it before. Mostly inside of these two pieces on continuous glucose monitors: cgm part 1, cgm part 2. The pieces that shifted I’d not watched intensely many factory farming documentaries before, maybe a part of me didn’t feel ready or willing to engage with the implications. I remember three things landing at the same time. Something about the ‘byproduct’ of factory farmed eggs, something about what happens to cows who can make milk. Consider watching dominion if you are friendly to the idea of no longer exploiting animals. for egg laying chickens, when the baby chickens are hatching, within hours of hatching, all non-future-egg-laying baby chickens are immediately ‘thrown away’ via being ground up or drowned in CO2 baths. (aka, the male chickens are tossed into a grinder, or put in racks and drowned in gasses). as a casual byproduct of hatching chickens, looking for chickens that can lay more eggs. Of course it is this way. Being a chicken capable of laying eggs ensures one lives a longer, and equally horrible life. The other piece - cows, mother cows, have horrifying experiences repeatedly to be made to have babies, and then having those babies immediately taken from them. then the milk intended for that baby is taken, and a few horrible experiences continue until the animal is ‘worn out’ and killed at the same slaughterhouses that kill all the rest of the cows killed for meat consumption. More could be said about the thoughts flowing around my head. I watched some of the documentaries about animal exploitation, and noticed how freeing it was to easily drop all animal products from my life. I’ve usually felt a bit grossed out by the thought of eating meat. Fish was exempted, but the primary animal meats, like cows, pigs, and chickens, don’t particularly appeal to me and its hard for me to even remember times that I did like meat. Obviously, to meat eaters, who like the taste of meat, they also find plants to be delicious, and if meat is embedded throughout plants, the taste profile can be delicious, but at that point I’m inclined to point out that some of/ much of what’s delicious there is the plants. Coffee: heavy cream plant based alternative I drink coffee, and often would add a few grams of heavy cream, for taste. I don’t vibe with that anymore. I spent a while sampling alternatives, testing different things, I’ve so far settled on coconut cream. I pour a can of coconut cream into an ice cube tray, and add a small amount to my coffee. Coconut cream works better than coconut oil (tried that), and plant based creamers are either way too sweet, or taste like almonds (I like almonds, but not almond milk in my coffee), or are oat milk based. update: coconut cream powerder is really good! it stirs into the coffee better. Also, any plant-based half-and-half. The one I’m currently using just mixes oat milk and coconut cream and it’s delicious, and it means I’m no longer directly exploiting the cow torture industry. My other main meal was already ‘vegan’ My second most commonly consumed home-cooked meal is sorta like an indian dal, and I’ve made that without any animal products for many years now. Since the egg alternative ‘fixes’ my most commonly cooked meal, and my second most commonly eating meal was already free of animal products, and my coffee was free of animal products, I noticed I was feeling a growing sense of internal consistency towards animals. I don’t know which developed first, though. over the next few weeks, I watched a few more of the standard ‘vegan documentaries’ and noticed even more of my distaste towards animal products/exploitation growing. Interesting observations as the shift happened I noticed when I first decided to get rid of the eggs, after they’d been sitting untouched in my fridge for weeks. It felt odd and quite nice, the first few times I went grocery shopping and kept not purchasing eggs or any animal products. Especially because I was loving the taste of everything else I was eating. So, I got rid of all the eggs but a few, in case I was going to bake a banana bread or something. (recipe calls for an egg, and I’m not so extreme that I wouldn’t use an egg while baking, right? right?). Another few weeks later I tossed the rest of the eggs, and the butter. Now I would rather have a ‘deficient’ baked product, one that doesn’t rely on any form of animal product, than change my stance on exploitation because of a preference. I don’t know why it took so long for me to make this shift, I’m 37, I wish I’d done this any time earlier than I did. I think i’m embarrassed that this thing was in such plain sight for so long, but I sorta hid behind not eating meat, even though everything else I ate contributed to the exact same systems in the exact same way as eating meat would have. Baking without eggs & butter My main baked products are sourdough bread and banana bread. Sourdough is just flour & water, of course, but banana bread wants eggs and butter, and lots of other baked goods do too. I’ve already described my egg substitute, I use that in baking as well, but I’ve not yet ‘sorted’ a butter replacement in the same way. It’s experimental, and sometimes the resulting loafs have a bit different texture than a ‘standard’ banana bread. I have enjoyed every single one. update: I’ve found a great substitute: if a recipe needs an egg & butter (lets say combined weight of butter/egg would be 130 grams) I take 130 grams of silken tofu, pulse it with an immersion blender, and then use it in the recipe. It works perfectly. I’ll throw a little coconut oil or peanut butter to up the fat content, too. Changes in texture or whatever isn’t a big issue. Guess what? It’s going just fine. my first experiment was ‘vegan’ banana bread, and it was excellent. Even if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be inclined to make it with butter or eggs. I’d rather not associate with those industries, yeah? Paying someone to do all that to so many others? What about nutrients or amino acids or protein? aka “but what about {some health concern}?” The animals experience nothing but endless difficulty, misery, sadness, and torture. it seems odd to not only demand that for them but to then put the stressed, sad, dead animal into one’s mouth and eat it. And chicken periods. I did the math recently on how many chickens have I functionally forced into existence and continuous bad existence. yikes. I’ve been “low-protein” for a decade and been just fine. I occasionally track my eating patterns out of curiosity and I have never eaten anywhere close to the amount of protein that some sources recommend. and you are right to care about health. Lets talk about 🍄 mushrooms I have drafted a part 2 of this post, sorta an update from another year or so: On Foraging Mushrooms at Cheesman Park I’ve long considered mushrooms to be a special part of my nutrition. I have eaten mushrooms with most meals for years, always getting a container of mushrooms from a grocery store, having mushrooms on hand for cooking. then I started foraging from a local park, in abundance. Then I saw a cool documentary about mushrooms, and felt all the more fond of them. Then I read a paper about how the kind of mushroom I eat (agaricus bisporus, 70% of farmed mushrooms are agaricus bisporus) are a ‘complete protein’, which means that they have some certain molecules called ‘amino acids’, some of which animal bodies (or at least human animal bodies) cannot make from scratch, so they need to be obtained from outside sources. I didn’t really know what ‘protein’ was, anyway. Supposedly ‘protein’ is a name for all of or any of like 21 amino acids. Glutamate, quite present in muscle, is a protein, ‘collagen’ is a collection of three molecules, all of them are considered ‘proteins’ . Anyway, here’s two relevant starting points for proteins and mushrooms: Nutritional and amino acid content of stem and cap of Agaricus bisporus, Bulgaria (PDF) Composition and Biological Properties of Agaricus bisporus Fruiting Bodies – a Review (PDF) sidebar on collagen/fascia maybe two years ago I started paying attention to my own tendon health. Barefoot sprints, isometric bar holds. Worked great. I kept hearing about collagen supplementation and thought about it as far as skin goes, but not as far as tendon health and such. I never did/still don’t do any sort of collagen supplementation - my primary action is to give myself high quality stimulus, so the body adapts and remodels itself. Heavy isometric barbell holds or plyometric barbell holds, or single/double leg jumping, counts as the quality stimulus. I can tell my joints and connective tissue is slowly getting stronger. I’m not rushing anything, supposedly it takes 6-9 months for the college to remodel itself, and I think I’ve got like three rounds of remodeling to do before I’m able to jump how I want. (I’m 1.5 rounds of remodeling in, I’m way stronger than I was two years ago, and I feel like I’m still in newbie gains territory) amino acids support collagen production, too. supposedly, almost 20% of a human animal’s weight is collagen, in the form of fascia. Every muscle fiber is wrapped in fascia. It’s super interesting stuff, deserves its own blog post at some point. I got from the library Fascia - What is it and why it matters Supplements Plant protein powder is as good as (or better) than animal protein powder. It also fully counts as a ‘collagen supplement’, because collagen is a protein, made out of amino acids. collagen is made up of three amino acids, so any pattern that includes complete proteins will have you/me covered on collagen. Or, again, one can get a plant protein powder. I use this stuff occasionally, and rarely eat more than a quarter serving at a time. So, eat mushrooms, for protein, or any of th regular sources of protein like chickpeas, any soy product like tofu, tempeh, soy milk/yogurt, etc. And then augment with a plant protein powder if you think it necessary. Vitamin D supplementation is reasonable. If you’re a person who deals with exercise at elevation, or regularly menstruates, maybe add an iron supplement like this. cooking occasionally or making tea with an iron fish taking some vitamin d might be helpful for me too. I do these things but I did them before I stopped eating animal products, too. Fermented foods could be considered supplements. Supposedly fermented food goes GREAT in the digestive tract (kimchi, kombucha, sourkraut, etc etc). Lots of the neurotransmitters that are used in the body are made as metabolic byproducts of gut bacteria eating fiber-rich foods. So, I consider fermented food to be essential. I eat kimchi nearly daily. I’ll eat it raw, or mix it into whatever meal I’m cooking. if you have any slight health complaint, a reasonable first intervention might be eliminating meat and dairy from your consumption. Considering how sad and tortured the animals are, even if I think meat overall isn’t unhealthy for a human animal to eat, nor eggs, I’d say the byproduct of those particular animals is probably quite unhealthy. I notice the propaganda of ‘eat meat to grow muscle’ is everywhere. I associate ‘growing muscle’ with sorta supremacist beauty ideals, so it’s never motivated me. However, i’d not considered that the most muscle-bound, strong animals we can think of are entirely plant fed. So maybe if one really, really does want to grow huge muscles, they should eat more like the big strong animals? Gorillas, hippos? none of them eat meat like any american eats meat. Those animals eat meat like vegans eat meat. Yet are huge. Soy propaganda I noticed that even though this year of 2026, I was still affected by what I’ll call “anti-soy propaganda.” (I grew up around people who made fun of people who didn’t eat meat, or who did eat soy, and while I recognize that nearly everything I heard growing up is bullshit, i’m still finding bits and pieces of it that I wasn’t yet conscious of) For instance, I’d often-enough eat tofu at a restaurant, but I wasn’t cooking with it all the time. now I have sometimes a block a day, and cook with it all the time. Soybean oil can be made not so different than peanut butter is made (grinding and squeezing) and olive oil is made (grinding and squeezing). Soy has all sorts of molecules in it. Plants make all sorts of molecules. Plants are so cool. I quite liked this books: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. Go eat you some plants and get these cool molecules directly! Soybeans turns into tofu, tempeh, soy milk, soy sauce, soy yogurt, soybean oil, miso, and more. No animal torture required. I noticed when I used to think poorly of it, because of the ‘estrogen’ thing. I’d not spent even 30 seconds looking it up more. my slight opposition (I was never opposed to tofu, I would always eat tofu at restaurants if a dish wanted a meat, but I didn’t make tofu a big part of my home cooking). I’ve now fixed that, tofu and tempeh are in my home cooking all the time, as well as soy milk amd soy yogurt. and soybean oil, as a high-smoke-point cooking oil. I notice that I still view olive oil as top-tier fat, right next to coconut oil, I love to eat lots of both, and now make sparing use of soybean oil when I occasionally want to use a high-smoke-point oil. Most global soy production goes to feed animals. Most global agriculture goes to feed animals. There’s ten times as many animals bread into existence, tortured, and murdered per year as there are people on the planet (ish). So by not eating animal products any more, there’s a big cloud of victims you’re no longer victimizing. lots of water consumption, too, is no longer happening on my/your request. skipping the animals and eating soy directly is a big deal in terms of which industries participate and how. I eventually watched documentaries after eliminating animal products from my consumption, I became willing to watch the ‘standard documentaries’ about animal exploitation. I hadn’t heard of some of these until recently, but I wonder if that was also me sorta trying to avoid them. Dominion, 2018, available on youtube I’d never heard about it until I watched it, just a few days ago (june). I had to do it in small chunks. Sorta like what baby chicks get turned into if they will not grow up into egg laying hens. I watched more documentaries, saved a handful into this playlist. Aside from Dominion there’s little emphasis on the factory farming side of it. It being in a playlist doesn’t mean I’m endorsing everything about it, but I found some parts of all of these videos motivating, interesting. I like how it feels in my body I’ve generally had good, or good-enough health. And over the last two years, I’ve sorted out improvements in physical training (barefoot sprints, isometric holds) but this new eating paradigm is good as heck. I feel more full after eating. Turns out the eggs were not doing it for me, but I didn’t know. I’m eating lots of chickpeas, I prefer those to beans. Satiation is high, I’m never hungry (that’s sorta more in the keto side of things vs ‘vegan’), Ketosis, again I have a breath meter that detects acetone in the breath, which is a proxy for ketosis. Low readings equate ‘early/mild ketosis’, mid-level readings are counted as ‘ketosis’, and ‘high’ readings are ‘deep ketosis’. My default eating pattern has me always in mild or regular ketosis, 100% of the time, nearly. If I eat tons of rice and bread and sweets for two or three meals in a row, my ketosis readings will dip or go away all the way, but pop back quickly, as I resume my normal eating pattern. If I do any sort of fasting, the ketosis readings get quite elevated, and I like it. This has been super interesting to me. In the last year I made a tiny change to my food consumption pattern and as an experiment I turned up my fasting, just a bit, playing with occasional 1.5-2 days fasts, and… my body fat has gone even lower (unexpected, unplanned, and while I don’t mind it was never something I tried to achieve. I don’t care, but I notice) and muscles/connective tissue seem a bit more present. No complaints. I feel strong, bouncy, overall. I play pickup ultimate frisbee at local parks, and have loved being able to run, cut, sprint, jump. I feel limber and quick-enough, playing frisbee, and it’s deeply enjoyable to experience. But it’s interesting that I am in ketosis not all the time, but way more of the time than I ever thought I was , and I spend more time than I thought in medium and deep ketosis, too. I think it’s been nice. if you bought meat the last time you went grocery shopping, or anything with dairy in it… next time you go grocery shopping, put anything in your basket but anything comprised of/containing animal products. Stock your fridge/freezer with tofu/tempeh, and swap tofu in anywhere you have a meal that wants an animal product. If I was drinking milk/yogurt I’d stop buying milk and I’d get soy milk, soy yogurt or almond or cashew yogurt. If I was eating cheese… I’ve never consumed much cheese, rarely purchased it, other than going out of my way sometimes to eat pizza with cheese (and plants) on it. since the before times, I’ve had like one slice of vegan pizza and it was fine. if I’m not eating at home, I’m probably eating indian food. For a decade, indian food is my favorite kind of food to get, if I’m eating at a restaurant. much of the menu is entirely plants. I’ve always eaten tons of veggies, and now chickpeas & tofu I love and have always loved veggies and mushrooms. I’ll eat every day some mix of cooked up broccoli, mushrooms, onions, carrots, brussel sprouts, asparagus, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, ginger, tumeric, anything else from the produce section that looks appealing to me. I prefer sweet potatoes to regular potatoes, and I rarely eat fruit. any fermented food, I’m game for. I’ve started regularly cooking a bag of chickpeas in the instant pot (dry beans, rinse, cook for 60 minutes at high pressure). I don’t always think to soak them overnight, but if I do then they go into the instant pot for just like 5 minutes. Chickpeas are amazing. My diet is now mostly mushrooms, veggies and chickpeas and tofu. Lots of olive oil, garlic, and spices. sourdough bread, often enough. Intermittent fasting I often-enough do almost “1 day fasts”, any time I am eating about 1 meal a day, and often enough out of curiosity extend those to two-day fasts. I’ll barely experience discomfort besides sometimes noticing barely perceivable sensations of hunger, which usually pass as quickly as they arrive. I can easily ‘do without’ an ingredient in any particular situation, because it’s easy enough for me to do without food for a long time. So finding alternatives to the last few animal products, and going without anywhere else I didn’t easily find animal products, was effortless. plenty of people who fast, eat meat when they’re not fasting, yet it seems particularly easy to not eat animal products if one is also comfortable with any sort of fasting/intermittent fasting. I lean keto, low-everything-but-fat and like seeing the keto breath meter return a really high reading, sometimes. There’s all sorts of literature (official and self-reported, for instance in books or the internet) about the several ways fasting sometimes feels nice. electrolytes fasting is uncomfortable if one doesn’t have electrolytes. Sodium, potassium, magnesium. headaches and weakness can crop up if one’s deficient. Since I’ve added sodium + potassium + sometimes magnesium I’ve not had any of those fatigue or headache type experiences. Sometimes I’ll throw a bit of coconut oil in a salty broth (sodium and potassium are both salts) and it’ll feel like a hearty meal, almost. Maybe the coconut oil makes it less of a fast, but I’ve always had bits in my coffee in the mornings anyway. It technically contributes to the creation of ketone bodies within the liver, as coconut oil is like half-by-weight “medium-chain tryglicerydes”, which feeds nicely into the krebs cycle inside of mitochondria. Also some ingested fats (like coconut oil) get a more-direct path to the liver and blood stream? via a lyphatic-system-based drain somewhere in the portal vein? between the stomach and the small intestine? (I need to expand this into a proper footnote, and look it up. Something about some sorts of fats don’t even go through the whole digestive tract, but get picked up very quickly and put to useful molecular work). So, coconut oil feels like pure fuel, while the rest of the system gets to stay in a state of…. not digesting a meal. It’s nice to experiment with. Oh and I’ll drink lots of coffee and tea, if I feel inclined, while fasting. Plants are so cool It’s less about eating meat, now. I look at enslaved animals and feel sad for them, and don’t want any part of them to be inside of my body. And then I look at plants, I think of how cool they are, and I absolutely want to make sure I’m getting those things in my body. For instance, mushrooms are cool, and great to eat. Plants overall do cool molecular synthesizing. Garlic as an example of an amazing-for-human-animals plant. Fermented food is cool, too. Kimchi, kombucha, tempeh, Gochujang. Food can be tasty or bland, easy or hard. Exploitation is optional. Sometimes people seem to use meat as the reason/excuse/opportunity to say the meal is good. It’s overall bland, perhaps, but since there is a dead animal on it, the whole thing is declared good. I’d rather sort out how to make good food, without ‘relying’ on the meat. I’m also willing to eat bland/burnt/untasty food, but I rarely do (I did forget squash in the oven recently, burnt it pretty good, and still ate the least-burnt parts of it and liked it). My spice game is good, and I view salt and MSG as a health food, so it’s always well seasoned. Lemon juice, spicy peppers, soy sauce, fresh green onions on top, etc. anything can be made delicious in several ways, I believe deliciousness correlates with health, in some ways, as a useful heuristic to guide people towards good stuff (garlic, olive oil, sourdough, tofu, well-seasoned and cooked veggies) and away from bad stuff (think of all the smells that induce a sense of anti-hunger. spoiled food, for instance, and many other things that smell bad are bad) I like tasty food, I always make tasty meals for myself. I’ve only increased the quality of my cooking, as I’ve flipped to vegan eating. I also don’t like prep or cleaning, so most meals require a single cutting board and a single cooking vessle, and usually a single burner, and minimal cleaning, but this is just my preferences. I aspire to someday like cooking more elaborate or complicated meals for myself or others. oh and an instant pot! I will fill it with beans and potatoes and veggies and a can of coconut oil, then cook it up, add tons of spices and blend it with an immersion blender. It’s like 15 meals worth of food, in a single pot. I feel strongly about it, but want to ‘talk nice’ about it. I see direct correlations between animal exploitation and human animal exploitation, and hate the settler-colonial system/participants that set up such systems of exploitations on so many lands. I’ve long been uncomfortable with electric vehicles because for so long much of the cobalt market was direct slave labor, and child labor. I did the math on how many pounds of cobalt was in a certain battery, and shuddered. I had/have a kid, I could imagine the three year old standing next to me having to live the life of a three year old in a cobalt mine or in the west bank or gaza. The ‘legacy’ of americanism around the world (“how to hide an empire”, “the jakarta method”, “blowback” by chalmers johnson) has always been horrifying to me, and now I notice my awareness of the many, many animals experiencing the same sort of horrors and worse and different. I’m also vastly less confident in the anti-human-exploitation messages many people hold, because if they’re willing to exploit animals for a momentary convenience, why would this person lift a finger to reduce the exploitation of human animals? The legacy of chattel slavery in the USA shows how some people will expend incredible effort to preserve exploitative dynamics. my own parents are my favorite example of this, but that’s another story. They would both prefer to assault children and torture children than do a smidge of inner work to address why they like bullying, assaulting, coercing children. fuck evangelicals and evangelicalism. the biggest legacy of evangelicalism in the USA is chattel slavery. I think once I stopped eating meat, I certainly noticed not looking well on eating meat. It happened again. now I don’t like to see any animal product consumed. I wish grocery stores could drop the meat section and replace it with tofu, and get rid of all the dairy products and replace it with plant alternatives. I don’t like to see others consuming meat. I’m distancing myself from people that freely participate in such exploitation, in the same way I’ve distanced myself from people that assault children (evangelicals) and from anyone else who displays distasteful, anti-social behavior. Anyone who’s ever been in the american military, for instance, is either an active murderer, or is at least complicit in the abuse of empire. cops in the usa began as deputized slave patrollers. gross. fuck animal exploitation, fuck the military, fuck police, fuck empire and colonialism, fuck human animal exploitation. fuck settler colonialsim. fuck american-style zoning. I don’t want to be complicit in the abuse of animals or humans. When I was vegetarian, I was complicit in animal abuse and exploitation. Now I’m not. I like that for me. Additional Reading Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows Dominion (documentary) I’ve been saving some videos to this playlist around eating plants instead of exploiting animals. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World white people in the usa were happy to see millions of people in other countries killed, so why wouldn’t they also be happy to see millions of animals tortured and killed? The USA/capitalism/colonialism needs, hungers for, the mass exploitation of millions and billions of animals. disgusting. supremacy runs the world. This shitty country is simple european-american supremacists showing up, deciding that they were entitled to whatever they want (land, bodies) and they kept pushing that energy everywhere. The energy with which american supremacists created sundown towns all across the USA is the same energy israeli settlers/supremacists have when displacing/murdering palestinians. disgusting. This book is excellent: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Here’s an interactive map that shows the location of sundown towns across this disaster of a country: sundown towns map I am angry. Footnotes ‘beta hydroxy buturate’ and acetoacetate are molecules that get fed into the krebs cycle resulting in the creation of ATP. Acetone, which is measured via a breath meter, is a result of those fat-based molecules being metabolized by the krebs cycle. I think it’s the metabolic exhaust, like CO2, being expelled via the lungs. ↩

I was out and about by scooter a recent warm january saturday evening. Earlier in the week a few companies had been operating drilling equipment in the area. I’m not sure what they were doing, but they were scattered all about the neighborhood. The work was done, but traffic cones were also spread all around the neighborhood. Sitting on the curbs and such. TODO: add link to photo album of the before/after I’ve done a lot with cones before, of course. I’ve a refined process. technically compliant with any formal body that deems to consider itself authoritative. There were many, many more traffic cones in the vicinity than I used. I set the cones up on the way to a local climbing gym, did a board session, checked in on them on the way home. Every cone was exactly where I placed it. Shout out Silva construction, for sure, for the cones. So, the next morning, sunday morning, I was at cheesman, and from the park, one can see down maybe six blocks of 10th ave, and I could see that even the next day, the cones remained. TODO link to photos down 10th from cheesman? so I did the park thing, then walked from the park to corona, where I’d placed the cones the night before. I passed more cones, and dotted those into the road in spots that caused delination and a bit of attention to be attracted. Vast improvements for everyone. I decided to treat an adjacent junction with another bunch of cones, and thats what this video is of: It’s in a 4x timelapse. visible changes brought about Some phenomina is hard to even write about. It’s best seen with the video slider going back and forth, showing something about the path a car took on a turn or whatever. But it’s the internet, we all like lists, here’s a list: the changed width of the crossings. originally 30 feet wide on all four sides. post-treatment crossings reduced in size to half or less. reduced width means reduced time spent in the crossing. Much less space one has to be concerned about being inside of. Sharper delineations between the spaces. I reduced the area of the junction and increased the vehicle throughput, so these few cones improved the vehicles per square meter per minute calculation. Even if ‘only’ by taking it from say 60 square meters to 40 square meters. (i’m making up those figures, I cannot eyeball the dimensions. TODO: perform an actual vehicles/sq meter/minute calculation for the before/after), the efficiency would be proportionately improved. I note that it could be reduced in size quite a bit more than I reduced it in the video. before-size: 260 square meters. After-size: 1631 the sounds improved. It used to be that many vehicles were accelerating through the junction. It’s one block from a traffic light and super market exit and it looks super open and wide. With the cones, almost every vehicle coasted or at worst very gently accelerated through it. At one point in the video, one sees a vehicle on downing stopping to let passing pedestrians. my ideal junction treatment turns it into a ‘shared space’ (vs a car-dominated space) where the larger/motorized vehicles defer to smaller/non-motorized/leg-powered vehicles. (counting walking people as vehicles here) the experience for turning left and right off of downing is much improved improved turn radius for vehicles going right. Less taking the turn wide and carrying too much speed. Lots of dangerous situations created by those right turns. similar thing with left turns, especially because of the shadow. Bad visibility, really dangerous to carry too much speed into. The cones telegraph the correct turn, every single driver rallied and landed it. There’s a tremendous rear-ending danger in the original intersection design.2 If a car were turning right, for instance, and suddenly stopped, noticing a pedestrian in the space in front of it, and got rear ended, it could end up bouncing into the space the person was occupying anyway. this turning/rear-ending dynamic is common on junctions around denver/the greater united states. It’s made better when the trailing/potentially rear-ending vehicle knows that it cannot overtake and pass closely the vehicle ahead of it. These cones clearly telegraph that. many more things. manifesting Repair as a Service In this capitalistic hellscape we live in, I could imagine Repair as a Service, sorta like Software as a Service. (in some circles, SaaS is the stuff) if something were a service, that means it can be purchased, and this is america, so if something is available for purchase, that means it’s available at all. Currently, however, one cannot, to my knowledge, quite purchase a repaired junction, the same way one can purchase a repair to some commonly repaired physical items, like vehicles, houses, devices. In the spirit of write it now and the iterative nature of the internet, here’s two different options plausible ‘junction repair as a service’ solutions, and everything technically works so I can get this page live. the ‘let josh truthfully say at any point in the future “someone has hired me/is hiring me at this very moment to run a pop-up experiment right here”:’ option: 👉 purchase ‘Josh’s Junction Coning’ via Stripe. google pay/apple pay works A three-cheers-for-capitalism option. Includes above plausibility beard, and some recorded outputs and magical calculations: 👉 purchase ‘Josh’s Junction Repair Writeup’ via Stripe. google pay/apple pay accepted Additional Reading prior coning adventures the traffic bean calculating vehicle efficiency metrics Footnotes I popped this open on google earth. Not the clearest satellite images, this is my rough interpretation. Still, 260 meters to 163 meters is almost a 40% reduction in size. the junction was never ‘maxed out’ in terms of vehicles moving through it for a time frame, so a direct count of vehicles per minute doesn’t quite make sense, but the principal of it’s efficiency being unaffected even as the space required is reduced by over a third is, I think, clear enough. Here’s much more about this vehicles per square meter per minute value ↩ and of course ‘danger still persists’ with this treatment. ‘spot fixing’ a mobility network isn’t a thing. One fixes a route, for a vehicle class, at minimum ‘legs’ is a vehicle class, and ‘the other side of the street’ is a valid route, but most trips will include at least a few junctions in sequence. This treatment is best applied to junctions in sequence, a little of the video I have shows an adjacent junction a block away I fixed. I think three fixed junctions in a row is a nice thing, so doing two in a row is getting close. To appreciate three of these in a row starts with experiencing one. ↩

Introduction I’ve long liked to accrue certain lists of things I like within certain categories. to list appreciable books invites a similar list for movies and movie-like things. It feels strange to list all of these movies like this, in some ways, especially the first two documentaries, juxtaposed against some of the other recommendations I have around here. Some of these shows I found or watched on Netflix, or Jeff Bezos’ internet. Some I searched the pirate bay, and found them there. Example: https://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=homebodies+1974&cat=0. I’m using Folx as my torrent manager most recently, and NordVPN. Two documentaries I just finished an incredible documentary. One of the more substantial I’ve ever seen. By a distinctively-named Joshua Oppenheimer. Full warning, it’s about recent acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, a coordinated campaign of mass killing, in Indonesia. The Act of Killing The first is about recent, recent events in Indonesia. The Act of Killing, 2012, IMDB. It’s worth skimming the wikipedia page Useful additional contextual reading could be the book The Jakarta Method, and How to Hide An Empire 1 The Look of Silence Oppenheimer did another documentary, after that one, with a similar theme. The Look of Silence, 2014 Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries repeatedly land in unexpected ways. he shows interviews of the people who carried out the killing campaigns in Indonesia, and movies they direct about what they did. They speak very openly, and approvingly, of their own actions. The last ten minutes of The Look of Silence were distinctive. 2 Scooter-themed Of course I will find something arbitrarily more interesting than otherwise if it involves a Vespa-style scooter, in any way. I like scooters, of course. I once looked through a few lists of movies having scooters in them, and have since watched at least a few from the list. That’s how I encountered some of the following. Super Cub Super Cub is about that super classic motorcycle-style vehicle that is very similar to a scooter. It’s a peaceful show (sorta gives Studio Ghibli at times) about a kid who gets a moped and the unfolding of adventures around it. I found it on Crunchyroll. Here’s a youtube video about the series. The Interpreter From the same list (‘all movies that feature scooters in any way’), I encountered The Interpreter, 2005, and quite liked it. It ended up having satisfying and subversive messages throughout, in my opinion. I have a page of notes I took, as I watched it, I might add here or in it’s own post. The protagonist’s mode of transportation is a scooter, which is how it got on the list of movies I considered watching. I ended up liking the movie a lot more than I expected! The person’s use of the scooter is unrealistic in only one way - at one point there is a vehicular chase, and the people in the car are able to keep up with the person on the scooter. I kept wishing the scooter user would pass through a gap too narrow for the car and ‘solved’ the problem that way, instead of failing to utilize it’s primary beneficial attribute. I liked many other parts of the movie, too. Amalie wikipedia 2001 French-language romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet absolutely delightful in 100 ways. One of the best I’ve ever seen. Totally unexpected. I was moved, watching it. The description only touches on a portion of what is delightful about it. It’s about love, indeed. Robert-Moses-themed movies I still maintain Robert Moses as a delightful conceptual compression for ‘why are things the way they are’ (I.E, why do the greater united states not have any functioning inter/intra-city rail system? why are highways virtually always approved with dollars and permissions and signed contracts and rights of way, seemingly of their own volition? Why is the american urban transit system devoid of the people that built the tram systems of the 1920s?) Robert moses ran those kinds of people out of the industry. Not only did he employ thousands of engineers, and would fire anyone who advocated for rail transit solutions, but he would instruct the people he issued contracts to, to not hire those people either. The theme here is movies directly featuring Moses and/or his slum clearance/urban renewal/ethnic cleansing-via-displacement programs. Often enough reading about it feels very academic, talking about him as an urban planner. He’s so worth discussing because his effect on the world was not academic at all. I discuss Robert Moses quite a bit more here Motherless Brooklyn, 2019, Edward Norton Motherless Brooklyn, 2019 film written, directed, produced by edward norton a bunch of well known actors, including the person playing robert moses himself. I wish I could cut the scene that is lifted directly from the power broker. Robert Moses (called Moses Randolph, in this movie) is in a very distinctive way bullying the mayor into giving him another board seat, for instance. It’s all about Robert Moses, and the way he was destroying a neighborhood and community in pursuit of whatever it was he was pursuing. Told in a film-noir murder-mystery style. I’ve not (yet) read the book it’s based on (the book titled motherless brooklyn, but I have read the other book it’s obviously based on, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York City) “I Won’t Go” a 1960s-era 25 minute comedy show, titled “I Won’t Go”, available on youtube from the 1960s, depicting a 1950s-era event - the destruction of housing in order to make way for a piece of a highway, an approach to the George Washington Bridge. I cannot help but think of the land of Palestine, and the many different forms of settler colonialism/occupation pushed into that area. The kinds of justifications used for this sort of action, all around the world. the many similar themes (bulldozers, the different authorities and permits and men with guns) about an entire municipality and police force evicting an old lady from her house, and her various ways of trying to remain in her own house. Episode ends with her pointing out to everyone where her house used to be, under what was then turned into an approach road for one of Robert Moses’ bridges. Homebodies, 1974 satirical comedy horror Homebodies, 1974 satirical comedy horror film The film centers on a group of elderly residents in a Cincinnati tenement building who resort to murder when their building is condemned in the wake of urban redevelopment. (wikipedia) It is, in short, a close up and personal, look at what it was like for the residents of a single building, as they were being made to be without housing. Please note how similar the scenes in that movie are, and the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the palestinian people. The buildings, the torn up streets. It’s a lovely film. To find it online, something like this might work. Or Jeff Bezos’s internet, i believe. Lots of bulldozers, urban renewal, wrecking balls, destruction of neighborhoods for highways and luxury apartments. This movie is entirely centered in robert moses’ world. So many poignant scenes. A cool depiction of a certain use of power, defensive power, perhaps. No particular theme Maybe anime? Delicious in Dungeon Delicious in Dungeon A delightful show, prominently featuring cooking, food prep, foraging, creative problem solving, and lots of other nice things. It keeps delivering delight. Suzume Suzume is a delightful film in 100 different ways. I’ve seen it at least three or four times, probably will watch it at least three or four more times. The Way of the House Husband wikipedia, also delightful. Synopsis: Tatsu, an infamous and feared yakuza boss nicknamed “the Immortal Dragon”, retires from crime to become a househusband so that he can support Miku, his kyariaūman wife. The episodic series depicts a variety of comedic scenarios, typically wherein Tatsu’s banal domestic work as a househusband is juxtaposed against his intimidating personality and appearance, and his frequent run-ins with former yakuza associates and rivals. It’s delightful, at least the first season or two. I feel like I remember some of the later episodes of the latest season sometimes trailing off, but overall an incredible and delightful show. Subversive in delightful ways! Charlie Wilson’s War The story of a person named Charlie, and the war he wanted and got. Charlie Wilson’s War on IMDB. Based on the book by the same title. Similar theme be said to emerge with Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. I believe a movie or a show was released, based on the book, but I’ve not seen it. Anything by Chalmers Johnson is thematically similar, like Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire America’s/american attitude towards the rest of the world is similar to ‘its/their’ attitude towards native people (genocide, displacement, reservation-ization, not unlike Palestine) and the enslaved people that found themselves existing within ‘its’ borders, among “them”. War, death, enslavement. What a disaster to have unfolded on this continent. I wish it had never been like this. Additional Reading Recommended Reading (and watching) A Love Letter to Studio Ghibli Footnotes I view all acts of mass killings as some enactment of supremacy. I dislike the concept of refinements in the USA of some sorts of supremacy as ‘white supremacy’. The phrase ‘white’ cedes too much to the supremacists. Supremacists of all flavors commit acts of dehumanization, of all flavors, against all/most/enough people they encounter, and themselves, of course. I’ve always been interested in how and why (and THAT) things go wrong. Have you yet crossed paths with the Hutu massacre of the people of Tutsi heritage/ethnicity/class? The 1991 genocide in rwanda? in a small number of days, many people were murdered, often-enough by machete. It’s close enough to the distinctively american tradition of night riding. ↩ I’d first written horrifying, in a slow, unfolding way. The subject, who murdered a lot of people and then made a documentary about it, determined that because he played a role in a movie, being pretend-tortured and pretend killed, he had appreciation for the experiences of his victims, and thus was forgiven for his actions!!! Maybe I’m wrong. You watch it and tell me if you get something else. ↩

still sorta drafty, but also its entirely possible the point is easily apprehended, and I’m way over-explaining Introduction Elsewhere, I’ve been referring to a ‘vehicles per square meter per minute’ calculation, when talking about junctions on mobility networks. The first place was this substack piece, A Pattern of Repair: The Traffic Bean, then more recently this traffic bean concept applied specifically to 17th & Monaco piece. I’ve noticed wishing for better ways to calculate some of the stunning differences in efficiency of certain road junctions. I’ve put this together partially by cutting the relevant pieces of other posts, and aggregating it here. In some circles, it’s necessary or helpful to be able to put on a very engineering-coded hat. Remove all other components of a conversation, and make some possibly judgy comparisons between things. If one was doing that, one could imagine a metric for evaluating junction efficiency, for comparing different junctions, or junction designs against each other and themselves. It allows someone to say something like: configuration A gave 1 vehicle per 20 square meters per minute throughput. Configuration B gave 3 vehicles per 20 square meters per minute, and was preferable in many other ways, so we’re going with configuration B. or: the current junction moves .5 vehicles per 10 square meters per minute It allows two different junctions, of different sizes, to be compared. If one junction moves 30 cars per minute, and a different design moves 45 cars per minute, which one is better? If the 2nd junction is twice the square meters of the first one, it’s less efficient per square meter, even though it moves more vehicles. How To Calculate Vehicles per Square Meter per Minute every junction moves vehicles, and can move a certain number of vehicles through it, in a certain time, and that junction has a certain shape/area. First, determine the size of the junction I think this is the easy part. Crack open Google Earth, and draw boxes around junctions. I’ve got a bunch of examples of other junctions here: https://zoningverydifferentthanours.substack.com/p/traffic-congestion-as-solvable-part-510 There’s a few different ways a junction could be shaped. Everything is full of tradeoffs! Consider reading that piece (or the entire series) as context for this junction efficiency metric. It lets one say: such-and-such junction is 290 square feet/26 sq meters, and such-and-such number of cars moved through it in five minutes. (3-5 minutes is probably the minimum time you’d want to do counts on a junction to get a per-minute time. One probably doesn’t need to count for a full hour to get an accurate time) If a junction was 600 square meters, and in a 5 minute time at rough hour counted it as moving 150 cars, we could calculate it’s ‘vehicles per square meter per minute’ value. in this case, it would be: v/m²/min = 150 vehicles / 600 sq meters × 5 minutes = 150 / 3000 = 0.05 thus, it could be expressed as: .05 vehicles per sq meter per minute or could be expressed in square meters per minute per vehicle: 1 vehicle per 20 m² per minute Who knows yet what the actual values are we might see for a junction. The expression seems reasonable enough, aids in reasoning about different junctions or plans. I think it might make more intuitive sense once we start looking at certain junctions. Calculating vehicles per square meter per minute of the 17th & Monaco junction What do you think the value might be for the junction in question, in terms of vehicles per square meter per minute? How many square meters do you think the junction is? These are the two questions I posed in the above drone video. Without actually doing the counts or looking yet at google earth, my predictions are: the junction size is probably about 40 meters in both directions/on two sides, which is 1600 square meters as far as throughput: The vehicles in 5 minutes is probably ~150. Thus, 150 vehicles / 1600 square meters / 5 minutes would be how many vehicles per square meter per minute? ≈ 0.01875 vehicles per square meter per minute gonna round that to .02, which is two percent of a vehicle per square meter per minute! Or flipped: 1 vehicle per ~53.3 m² per minute rounding it to 1 vehicle per 54 square meters per minute. Or 1 vehicle per 580 square feet per minute I contend that 1 vehicle per square meter per minute (1 vehicle per 10 square feet per minute) is a better reasonable expectation for an efficient, performant junction. I’ll accept getting half-way there as a mid-point. :) this 1 of a vehicle per square meter per minute goal would be like two orders of magnitude higher than it currently is. that’s a ludicrous improvement, i say impossible in the USA, but i’ll settle for half of that improvement. 1 half of a vehicle per square meter per minute, or 1 vehicle per two square meters per minute. This is, I think, realistic. A typical sedan is 90 square feet. 1 square meter is 11 feet. so, a normal vehicle is about 10 square meters. or 10% per square meter per minute. This isn’t the first intersection I’ve done this evaluation for, I’m developing an ability to estimate, the last time I did the math on Colfax & Franklin, the final figure was atrocious. Like 2% of a vehicle per meter per minute. :( I’m going to watch the video again and count the total vehicles for a five minute period. The video is running at a 3x timelapse, in a continuous fashion, so every vehicle can be counted. It was taken at the peak of a morning rush hour. On my scooter I’m unimpeded by traffic, so it’s effortless for me to pop out to somewhere, even when traffic is maxed out. five minutes is 300 seconds, and since the video is a 3x time lapse, that means I’m going to count the total number of vehicles that pass through the marked polygon in 100 ‘video seconds’: Before we start counting, lets determine exactly how large the junction is: Lets see the square foot value for both of those polygons. We’ll do the math all the way through for both, of course. Above is the view of this junction in google earth. Next I’ll use the measuring tool to open a polygon drawing menu. The image below is what this looks like: So the ‘larger’ polygon is 1691 square meters. Lets look at the smaller option: Simple enough, the smaller polygon is 1230 square meters. I’ll pause here for now, but the next step will be to measure the vehicles entering that shape. I’ll use the video I mentioned before, starting from when the intersection comes into view at the 15 second mark and continuing to the 115 second/1:55 mark, which is an equivalent of 5 minutes of real-time car counting. How I do the counts Feel free to check my math or methodology. I’m sorta counting by light cycle. Pausing and replaying sections as needed, counting all the vehicles in that particular part of the light cycle. 13 cars in initial light cycle, as the junction pans into view 38 cars on the southbound leg 9 cars on the northbound leg, ‘second blob’ after the start of the counting. 11 more on the next cycle going east 9 vehicles on the westbound cycle 13 more vehicles on the east-bound cycle, some turning south on monaco, some going west on 17th, some ending up north-bound monaco. I’m at the 59 second mark on the video, that’s about half-way through the five clock minute sample. We’ve got 93 cars that I’ve counted going through the intersection at this point. I’m absolutely going to count twice. I’ve also paused to serve myself some food. Dinner’s ready. […] 32 more cars on the next southbound monaco light cycle 14 cars on the same northbound monaco light cycle (approx 59 seconds to 1:23 in the video) 9 more cars on the westbound cycle 8 cars on the matching eastbound cycle ooh, the video pans away for a few seconds, so need to pause the vehicle counting pans back into sight at 1:39, there was 5 seconds of missed light cycle time (15 real-time seconds. I’ll extend the ‘end point’ that we time to by 5 seconds. We’re now going to the two minute mark) 27 cars in the south bound monaco cycle, that’s visible 11 cars north bound almost at time 2 more eastbound 17th 7 more westbound. We’re at time, lets count it up: 110 more vehicles, in this second half of counting. There was 93 in the first half, so 203 vehicles passed through this junction in that five minute time span. “about 203” is true, might be 195, could I have over-counted? Or 208, maybe I under-counted. And maybe under some certain situations, like a bit more traffic from one direction, more cars would have gone through the junction because there WAS some time it was green and no one was using it. oh, what a sidebar, the amount of time a junction direction is usable but empty, or the time there are people waiting to use the junction, AND the junction is completely empty, as a percentage of the time it’s in operation. The junction was completely empty while there were vehicles waiting to enter 28% of the time or something like that. So, like we’re discussing, how many vehicles in 5 minutes? 203 vehicles in five minutes Let’s plug these values into the formula: 203 vehicles | 5 minutes | 1690 square meters 0.0240 vehicles per square meter per minute Or flipped: 1 vehicle per 41 m² per minute 41 square meters is about the size of: A small studio apartment (6.4 m x 6.4 m) Half of a tennis court A single parking space (with buffer) plus some sidewalk Half of a tennis court to move a single vehicle in a minute? Seems ‘obviously inefficient’ to me. The way to make it more efficient, at first pass, would be to simply find a smaller area for the junctino. A square piece of asphalt controlled by lights does the job, sort of, but so too would a much smaller, circular junction with access/departure points for all directions of travel as needed. earlier I said, I contend that 1 vehicle per square meter per minute is a reasonable accomplishment. How might we get closer? The first pass would be to improve the number of vehicles that can use the junction, in a few ways, and reduce by a significant percentage the amount of space directly allocated to the junction. If we could get 30% more vehicles through it, and it was half the size, we’d have accomplished technically a stunning increase in efficiency. A first pass would be to reduce the junction size. Ironically, to reduce the size (and allow the continuous flow type design) would probably also increase the number of vehicles that can fit through the junction, but the number doesn’t have to budge for this to still be a gain in efficiency. If the junction was smaller, and the volume of vehicles stayed the same, the efficiency would obviously go up, relative to the reduction in junction size. For instance, compare the following: 203 vehicles | 5 minutes | 1690 square meters 203 vehicles | 5 minutes | 550 square meters 203 / 5 * 1690? 203 / 5 * 550 203 / 8450 = 0.024 203 / 2750 = 0.054  40.6 vehicles/minute 1690 sq meters = 0.02 vehicles per square meter per minute 40.6 vehicles/minute 550 sq meters = 0.072 vehicles per square meter per minute That second value would be 3x the efficiency: 0.23704142 animation of what 3x efficiency could look 3x the efficiency could be achieved purely by making the junction much smaller - 500 square meters vs 1600 square meters. Here’s a way this could be visualized. Do you see a the way that this exhibits better efficiency? This is only one possible way the difference can be viewed, obviously. This isn’t how junctions work exactly, but it perfectly shows one of the dimensions of efficiency improvements. Intersection Efficiency Comparison If you had limited space and needed junctions in three different places, and nothing else about the space could be used for anything BUT moving these vehicles, which would you want more of? Both intersections process 203 vehicles in 5 minutes const canvas = document.getElementById('efficiencyCanvas'); const ctx = canvas.getContext('2d'); const zones = [ { x: 50, y: 100, w: 300, h: 200, area: 1690, color: '#d0eaff', label: 'Large Zone (1690 m²)' }, { x: 450, y: 100, w: 150, h: 200, area: 550, color: '#ffd6d6', label: 'Small Zone (550 m²)' }, ]; const totalVehicles = 203; const duration = 5 * 60 * 1000; // 5 minutes in ms const vehicleRadius = 4; const vehicleSpeed = 0.5; // pixels per frame let vehicles = []; function spawnVehicle(zone) { return { zone, x: zone.x, y: zone.y + Math.random() * zone.h, dx: vehicleSpeed, color: 'black', }; } function drawZone(zone) { ctx.fillStyle = zone.color; ctx.fillRect(zone.x, zone.y, zone.w, zone.h); ctx.strokeStyle = 'black'; ctx.strokeRect(zone.x, zone.y, zone.w, zone.h); ctx.fillStyle = 'black'; ctx.font = '14px sans-serif'; ctx.fillText(zone.label, zone.x + 10, zone.y - 10); } function drawVehicle(v) { ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(v.x, v.y, vehicleRadius, 0, Math.PI * 2); ctx.fillStyle = v.color; ctx.fill(); } function update() { ctx.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height); zones.forEach(drawZone); vehicles.forEach(v => { v.x += v.dx; drawVehicle(v); }); vehicles = vehicles.filter(v => v.x { const rate = totalVehicles / duration; if (Math.random() My desire with the traffic bean isn’t even necessarily to move more cars through - it’s to reduce certain forms of pollution, difficulty, distress, waste, excesses. I think of the potential harm to everyone of a crashing car as a form of pollution. Conversation with the people who live in that house indicate that everyone has become extremely aware of all sounds/implications of passing vehicles. One notes intrusive thoughts when one hears the sound of a whining, high-speed engine, wondering if it’ll take the turn or crash into a building. click here to read about how this plan handles the wide range of potential inbound speeds Different ways the efficiency could be expressed ≈ 0.081 vehicles per square meter per minute Or flipped: 1 vehicle per ~12 m² per minute Part of the reason the traffic bean would be so much more effective than a light-controlled junction is there is no need for the junction to ever be completely empty, while there is anyone queued up to use it. So, a traffic bean allows anyone to go if there is room for them to proceed, no waiting around for a light to change. The space needed would be JUST a single lane in a large enough circle/bean shape to wrap around the center island, which would be be ‘hollow’, the inner space being returned to non-car uses. It being hollow like this would allow the junction size to be considered even smaller. Instead of a fully enclosed volume of space being allocated to the junction, JUST a unified connecting travel path the width of a medium-sized car lane running in a circle. The inside and outside would be unavailable to cars, so the junction square footage could be so much smaller. There’s some image mock-ups below. I’m thinking lots of space could be carved out, on the inside and outside of the ‘bean’ thing, which is how I’m getting to such a low square meter value: 260 vehicles 5 minutes 400 square meters An audacious goal Lets see if a workable junction of that size could be achieved. Can we replace this 1600 sq meter junction with a 400 sq meter junction that moves even more cars per minute? If so, it would give us: 0.13 vehicles per square meter per minute Or flipped: 1 vehicle per ~7.7 m² per minute Which might be good enough for now. That gets us the 10x improvement I want. It’s such a ludicrous improvement, that even if it came with zero other benefits, it would be worth trying, but in reality this traffic bean thing comes with TONS of other benefits. An order-of-magnitude-improvement on efficiency, larger potential throughput, and reductions in all forms of emissions (noise, tailpipe, tire rubber microplastic, brake dust). (this is the result of the slow, non-rushed procession of vehicles through the junction, please refer to the poynton videos I have elsewhere on the page) Achieving a 400 square meter junction to get this junction, we’d want something bean shaped, with the inner shape hollowed out, like a doughnut. This frees up lots of square meters. The following shape is 147 sq meters: So, this inside space can be subtracted from the outer space. Lets jot down a shape that could work for the outside. It needs to be only a single lane wide, with entry/exit points wherever needed. How would you feel about this shape? its 360 sq meters, which of course includes the 147 sq meters we’re gonna count as ‘for the people’ and not as space for cars: its 360 sq meters. so, less the inner area that doesn’t need to be counted, 360 sq meters (outside shape) - 147 square meters (inside shape) = 213 square meters I had proposed that this junction could be 400 square meters, and we’ve used only a little more than half. I don’t think it will take 200 square meters to provide the access points for vehicles. the main shape could be clear now, I think, thus ‘the vibe of what I speak’. Lots of the remaining space would need to be ‘shaped down’ with traffic cones, until the right shape was found. Here’s a very crude example: The red inner lines are 11 feet long, which is certainly not a wide lane, but isn’t super narrow, either. The dimensions here are pretty comfortable, even for commercial vehicles, I think. A normal sedan is almost 6 feet wide (and 14 feet long) A cement truck is 9.5 feet wide, including the mirrors, or 8.5 feet not including mirrors. The above was my super wonky first mockup. Can you see what I’m aiming for, even as it’s obviously not the exact right shape? The junction has sorta widely-separated inputs and outputs, so this is a sorta extreme example of the paths that would be ‘carved out’ of the existing junction space. Additional Reading the traffic bean my first pass at this calculation, looking at a junction near my house “Traffic Congestion” as Solvable, Part 4: Junction Repair: Decrease Dangerous Complexity by Increasing Safe Complexity Traffic Congestion as Solvable, Part 3: Intro to Path Shaping Footnotes