Yet another reason to break out the tumblers and guillotines.
Rich people paying to drink the water from the glaciers as they melt is so on the nose for this moment in time I think my brain just exploded. https://t.co/gXfNMl0LzL
— Erin Biba (@erinbiba) May 14, 2019
If you read the review of various over-priced bottled water brands, you’ll discover there exists a profession called “water sommelier”. Yeesh.
Meanwhile, in Flint, Michigan…
Pen and Teller covered this ten years ago on their HBO show “Bullshit” .
This was the same episode they debunked Feng Shui.
tumbrel
That’s one way to redistribute money from rich idiots to poorer people.
Speaking of Flint, what is the current status? Politifact has an update from a year ago:
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/may/01/michelle-wolf/michelle-wolf-right-flint-still-doesnt-have-clean-/
“testing in recent months has repeatedly shown that Flint’s water meets federal standards. At the same time, the city won’t be fully safe until its old pipes are all replaced, which is currently estimated to happen in 2020.”
Chigau…you can’t drink out of a tumbrel
Remind me when I make my tumbril, to have a water bar in the front. It’ll be empty, of course. But it’ll be a nice refrigerator where water would be, if there were water.
Not quite in the same league of stoopidity (at least cost-wise), The Bewater bottle – pretty, but requires you to swallow too much:
You get the drift. The price of this woo-woo depends on the pretty-looking glass inside, but is roughly an order of magnitude less than the nonsense in the OP, and so is around an order of magnitude more than bottled water, which itself is significantly more (another order of magnitude?) than tap water. (This assumes one is in a locale with safe reliable potable tap(or equivalent) water — which is not true for an astonishingly high percentage of the world’s population: An estimated 2 billion people lack this basic human right (Ye Pffft of All Knowledge).)
Ray Ceeya @1: It’s too bad we’ll never see a Penn and Teller debunking of libertarian bullshit.
I’ve been saying this for years: someone needs to sell “heavy water” (after all, it may have some actual heavy water in it) which is just water and caffeine in a nice quantum-looking bottle. Or maybe methwater. There’s probably some legal quantity of diet aid amphetamine that can be sold over the counter; put it in some water and add some coloring and sugar.
After watching Goop’s spectacular rise I’m convinced that there are people who will buy anything. That means that if you sell anything that has a broad enough customer-base, you’re in business.
Yeah, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! isn’t the best source to go to.
Rob Grigjanis@#7:
we’ll never see a Penn and Teller debunking of libertarian bullshit
Yeah, how would that work? It’d need a space-time warp so that an older, wiser Penn could go back and ruthlessly mock the current Penn. Assuming an older, wiser Penn is a possibility in this future.
A glass or two of glacier water would go well with an omelette made with California Condor eggs .
Marcus Ranum, how about Tactical Heavy Water™? The high level of deuterium makes it more tactical, because on the one hand it’s a refreshing beverage you can drink in your rich person bunker; but should the need arise, there’s also its extra functionality as a (ridiculously impractical) weapon. They would need to buy tons of it = tons of profit for you.
Or Heavy Tactical Water™, Heavy Tactics Super Water™ … whatever sounds best to the focus groups.
Re: radioactive water: It’s worked before, and we still have idiots, so you just needs the right marketing to make sure the FDA can’t shut you down.
Several years ago my MIL was obsessed with this fancy Italian water (in glass bottles). It was all she would drink at home, all she wanted to drink out at restaurants.
It was pretty expensive (not like these waters, but more than, you know, the tap).
So my FIL decided to do a blind taste test. If my MIL couldn’t tell the difference between the Italian water and Arrowhead (cheap bottled water) then they would stop buying the Italian stuff.
She couldn’t tell the difference.
As this recent BBC article notes, What exactly is premium water, and what’s behind the trend in so-called absence labels?, “you can now buy water that’s not only free of GMOs and gluten but certified kosher and organic. Never mind that not a single drop of water anywhere contains either property or is altered in any way by those designations.”
Some of the history of is hilarious, as discovered by The Angry Chef, The Shocking Truth Behind Clara Gluten-Free Water:
That was back in 2016. Since(?) then, actual in-it-for-the-profit$ $cammer$ have actually sold .
“Sook! Sook sook!”
When I was in Iceland I was told you can always tell a river from glacier melt by the color. Rivers are clear. Glacier melt is brown with sediment. Not something you want to drink. Unless you filter and purify it, and then it’s just, uh, water.
@7:
I have a Penn Jillette page at my Critiques Of Libertarianism wiki. Anybody is welcome to suggest other links.
My summary is: “A popular libertarian entertainer, with some glib, bullshit explanations of how he is in favor of libertarianism because he is ignorant of what is best for all people and because he wants to reduce violence. A typical wealthy entrepreneur who doesn’t understand what ordinary people need, and conveniently overlooks that what he needs from government is violence to protect his fortune and create the environment in which he earns it.
Penn very conveniently forgets that all his freedom, rights, security and property are only enforced by men with guns. He wants to freeload on that system by pretending that his blissful life is natural, and not a product of force in society. This is a basic philosophical problem of pacifism: that it ignores the reality of the violent basis of freedom, rights, security and property. Pacifism is like avoiding vaccination: a certain amount can be tolerated without losing herd immunity. Too much pacifism, and the population is at risk. We can afford to allow Penn and the tiny minority of pacifists their delusions of non-violence: we don’t need everybody to hold a gun.”
It can probably be proved, by someone less lazy than me, that every molecule of water we drink was at one time or another in a glacier. Who is to say it doesn’t remember?
My favorite is the free soda machine that they installed in the cafe at my office. It’s a big refrigerated machine hooked up to a water supply with a CO2 bottle, an internal ice maker and a selection of syrups. There’s a touch screen on the front, from where you can call up whatever you want from a large selection and the machine will make it for you.
One of the options is “Dasani(R)”
Have a look at this photo and think about it for a minute.
Guillotines it is.
Best thing we ever got is a Sida Stream, as the family prefers spakling water, but finally no more bottled water in this house.
Heavy Tactical Water™ would have to consist of 2xDeuterium+Oxygen-18.
$600/liter would be very cheap.
@24
well it would depend on the actual cost of production and of course the concentration
my thinking would lean toward extreme dilution as to be none existent with very carefully worded add text and labeling. same as with this glacier water actually
uncle frogy
I’ve drank glacier water before, but I waded out into the cove and chipped it off a small iceberg myself.
Reminds me of “artisanal water” (look for it on YouTube.)
aziraphale@20:”Who is to say it doesn’t remember?” Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
I keep bottled water for emergencies. Drink a bottle of vodka, then fill it with tap water. Maintain a few litres per person in the household.
Rob Grigjanis #29
Good plan.
I am in an unfamiliar location, so I must google-map “nearest liquor store”.
just in case
uncle frogy, good idea…. Homeopathic Heavy Tactical Water™
That’s the stuff.
[begin cheesy video montage] Fully glaciated and neutronized, diluted to maximum potency, individually hand-crafted by generations of skilled beverage artists, and very tactical. Whether you’re looking to cool down at your private beach or perform an emergency exorcism, our team of scientists has ensured it’s easy to mix with the energy drink or controlled substance of your choice, because here at Homeopathic Heavy Tactical Water, we care about your freedom.
Is deuterium safe to drink? I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be, given its makeup, but I’m no chemist.
It has certain effects, and is toxic in high doses.
Forget about eating the rich. Just drown them instead and make them pay for the water.
A friend of mine showed me a water bottle which, he claims, “restructures” water so that you don’t need to drink as much. He presents as an intelligent person. I have devices which restructure water: a freezer and a kettle.
S. S. van Dine’s mystery stories featuring Philo Vance are really pretty bad. But he managed to get one written within a year of the discovery of deuterium in which [SPOILER] heavy water is used as a poison (there’s even a walk-on part by a fictional Princeton chemist). It’s The Casino Murder Case.
We have managed to come full circle. Uncle Frogy is suggesting a market for homeopathic WATER.