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Itt; people not understanding they are making an analogy
I had a bread maker and it drove me crazy. It was Schrodinger’s bread box. Put in ingredients, wait, and at the end it’s either oddly shaped bread or a brick. Seemingly absolutely randomly. I hated it with my whole heart and gave it to my neighbor, who could not cook so 75% or whatever was a good enough success rate for her.
Bread is not difficult to make by hand (well, sourdough at least is easy & forgiving) but it takes knowledge of how the dough should look and feel. Flour can act different on different days, the ambient temperature matters, and how old is your yeast, there is no way to absolutely standardize what is going into that machine.
Oh my, I just realized that we have now everything we need to cook food at home. We don’t need the restaurants anymore! The whole industry is going to be dead in few years.
I was a baker for some years about 23 years ago, I will tell any baker that they will make better money working for the company delivering the flour, probably have better hour and still get to eat baked goods all the time. Unless you are a craft baker you are just reheating frozen dough.
The quickest way to ruin the enjoyment of making food is to do it for customers. I’ve been told for those last 20ish years that I should open a restaurant, I always reply the same “I cook for those I love and like, not asshole customers”
I’ve heard “you love cooking? You should open a restaurant!” so many times and it’s such a horrible cliché!
Even if customers weren’t assholes, it would still suck. There’s no better way to kill your enjoyment of something than to do it for money!
Hospitality is both a satisfying and dreadful job at the same time. It doesn’t pay enough for what the work is. But the fundamental work is satisfying. The only chefs I’ve known who really enjoyed their jobs were private chefs for individual rich families. Both were well paid and had a lot of creative freedom.
There are some very rare professions for which it CAN work. Being an author writing books for instance. That is a job I would enjoy, all alone with my laptop on the couch just typing away. Pure bliss
All fun and games until you get writer’s block. The ideas won’t come but the rent is still due. Good luck enjoying the work under that pressure.
Also good times when your offerings are swamped by AI slop.
I really wish making food was a more viable commercial option. A few years ago I looked into setting up a food truck and holy shit are those things expensive. I occasionally go to food-truck-athons and even with how insanely overpriced their offerings are, I don’t see how they can ever be profitable. Around where I live, you can’t even get permits for a food truck unless you’re associated with a physical restaurant.
The quickest way to ruin doing most anything you love is to do it for a living.
That’s why I never committed to professional arsonist and just burn things as a hobby.
based
So you don’t take small commissions from private individuals?
Cash, no. However, if someone has an art project that I agree with and wants to donate the supplies I am open for commissions.
I mean, if the future generation of bakers learn how to bake from TikTok, Blake here might be onto something.
I cleaned out my kitchen about a year ago and got rid of the bread machine that had sat, taking up space, unused for close to twenty years in a bottom cabinet.
So, no, AI is not going to take over every job, and the way it’s looking, the current iteration of “AI” isn’t going to take over many jobs at all.
it will, however, create jobs
someone’s gotta clean up all the slop
i tryed to make a power point with copilot, i even gave a template as pptx file. it was horrible. it can not even put words in a table in the template.
For fun, I tried doing the same with a presentation I was thinking of doing for work. I work in a kindergarten, and I just… it’s like it was made by someone at McKinsey or something, every simple and plain sentence I had was drawn out into a glorious jargon-filled mess
End users aren’t the customer.
Baking bread has gone from an everyday job employing a significant fraction of the workforce to more of an artistic job that only a few people do. Bakers don’t really compete with mass produced bimbos, instead they offer a premium product for people who are willing to pay more.
I think it’s always like that when technologies get replaced. There are still people offering horse-drawn carriage rides, but it’s a specialty service now instead of a common job. Same with many of the things you find on Etsy.
Jobs being replaced by automation wouldn’t be a bad thing if the benefits were shared with the whole population and there were a social safety net for people whose jobs were eliminated. Unfortunately, the benefits always go to the people at the top. Some theorists have proposed economic systems where there are no people at the top, or where things are shared much more fairly. It’s a sad fact that those systems seem incompatible with human nature as it stands. Country-sized experimentation with anarchism or communism still leads to people at the top who take a lot more than they give. Those systems seem to work fine in small communities where everyone knows each-other. But, not when they are implemented in countries containing millions of people.
The most effective systems right now seem to be mixed socialist / capitalist systems where unions are strong and willing to call major strikes and shut the country down. You still get “haves” and “have nots”, but the “have nots” still get a voice and aren’t completely trampled by the rich.
There is no one human nature, humans have a lot of different natures.
But greed seems to be pretty universal.
Greed is not inevitable.
It’s a sad fact that those systems seem incompatible with human nature as it stands.
Eh, I’d say 20% human nature, 80% propaganda.
Tried multiple times, failed every time. That’s more than just propaganda.
Yup, and there are a lot less bakers around now that machines do most of it.
No, I think there are fewer bakers.
They’re also smaller
I don’t trust small bakers…
You don’t have a quarter, do ya? All I want is one more oatmeal pie
How can a 50 year old (66 by now) look that young? Witchcraft or technoheresy!
Is this a grammer thing? I’m fairly certain I can use “a lot less”.
Hmm nvm, I don’t recognize the meme.
It is a grammar thing. You can have a lot less of a non-count noun, like sand. But you have to have fewer of countable nouns, like loaves of bread, or bakers of bread
Ahhh I see, thank you
This is a contested grammar rule that was based on one persons opinion in the late 1700s.
There are plently of examples in history and modern usage where less and fewer are used interchangably. It is not a fixed part of english grammar as much as an “internet gotcha” that is commonly repeated.
Looks better though. I know it looks better because I grew up with the rule, but it does look better.
Non-countable? I think some vampires might disagree.
I also thought Thor relevant but I can’t find anything to support that.
Whether something is a. Punt or non-count noun is more convention than actual ability to be counted
I know, but if I let reality impinge on my comments, it would get a lot harder to make stupid jokes.
You can use “less” when it’s a non-discrete plurality, such as water or sand (ignoring the technical fact that these can now be observed as discrete components below the macroscopic level) or money (the made-up kind, not necessarily the physical representations thereof). It’s vastly more messy to have 1.78 bakers, and their families get really upset about it, so it’s safer just to use “fewer.”
To be fair, knowing what the first mass production machines looked like, some families definitely got back .78 of their baker.
Jk tho, thanks for the correction.
OMG we are so
cookedbaked.Didn’t you hear? Elon announced the total collapse of the baking industry within the next 6 months.
Classic Pump and dump. You’re better investing in the fermenting industry in the long term.
This little machine is incredible. I disagree with OP’s premise, but this makes yummy little loaves.
I haven’t tried that particular model, but bread machines are, indeed, great. Instead of buying large loaves (which go bad in a few days) when I need bread I can just buy flour (which keeps for ages) and bake my own whenever I need it. The process of loading up the ingredients takes a few minutes but beyond that you can just hit a button and let it do its thing, and the resulting bread tastes better than what you’d get from a store.
Is it super loud, though? I had a bread machine years ago and I rarely used it because the noise was very unpleasant.
I love making bread. I’ve made a lot of bread. Bread takes hours. The best loaf of bread I’ve ever made I could have gotten for a few dollars at a store, and it would probably be better. Having said that bread makers are the closest thing to a food replicator you can get, throw some ingredients in, push a button, come back in a few hours and bam, fresh loaf of bread.
It’s likely cheaper and better when store bought because you’re trying to replicate the kind of bread that’s easily mass produced and greatly benefits from economy of scale. Lean doughs are so much less work, and they’re both cheaper and tastier when homemade. I’d even go as far as to say it’s less work than going to the grocery store to pick up a loaf.
Eh I’ve done all kinds and sure some are more basic and therefore easier and quicker than others but not by enough to matter in this case. You’re right that it’s all about the economy of scale issue, and they can duplicate success better than I can and I’ve been doing it for years.
except compared to before covid the exact same models with no updates or revisions have all tripled in price at least
A bit of a tangent:
Bread machines are the absolute best for one thing: fresh baked bread ready for when you wake up, without having to get up at 3 am to do it. Load that baby up at night, set the timer, and wake up to your place smelling amazing.
I can’t find a baker who makes loaves of bread to save my life. Even living near a major city, it’s all pastry. I just want to support a local business and have delicious fresh bread.
My neighbor is an independent baker. He makes “regular” bread in various types in addition to pastries.
He closed his retail business during COVID and never reopened it. He reports that it is significantly less hassle to sell directly to local businesses (restaurants, delis, etc.) and their only consumer sales are now made at local farmer’s markets. Your local bakeries only sell pastries because they’re the only things that sell. The reason for this is broadly speaking that individual consumers are whiny and entitled shitheads, and “the grocery store has it cheaper.”
That makes sense. It honestly is hard to compete with the grocery bakery. You can get macarons imported from France at Walmart. They’re about $5 for twelve and honestly aren’t bad. I’ve seen bakeries charge $40 for that same amount.
in germany bread baking is its own valuable branch of baking and it’s often treated with a lot of sincerity
Who’s baking disingenuously?
Grupo Bimbo Bakeries.
Which major city? I bake bread.
That’s odd, I live in a pretty small city and there are multiple local bakeries. I just wish there was one a little easier to walk to.
I was thinking the same thing but I’m guessing it’s the major city part that is the issue. Rent and labor probably make it too expensive in major cities.
I know it’s not exactly what you’re saying, but a lot of grocery store bakeries bake loaves of bread.
I remember reading about how in Australia we bake dough made in Ireland. As somehow it’s cheaper to mass manufacture shitty dough and ship it across the globe.
I’ll stick to a traditional bakery’s bread over a supermarkets if given the choice.
I just bake my own bread. It is healthier and with tastier flavor.
That’s interesting, there’s two bakeries with bread within walking distance from me. But they’re not square loaves, it’s sourdough and rodeo bread and challah and baguette and focaccia… And rolls, and yes pastries as well. Tbf, I live in Los Angeles so the unusual part isn’t variety, it’s the “walking.”
I used to have a naysayer coworker, and he was the most annoying shit. He’d always say things like, “In ten years, this building won’t even be here anymore.” Eventually, you just learn to say, “Okay, I’m just going to get back to work.”
