How to Make a $1500 Sandwich in Only 6 Months
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used as a go-to example of how much hidden effort and infrastructure lies behind simple everyday things.
What it is
A man spends six months and $1500 making a chicken sandwich entirely from scratch: growing vegetables, making salt from seawater, milking a cow for cheese, grinding wheat, collecting honey and killing a chicken.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2016 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends stinkytaco · 2018-01 · on “Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories”
I think that far exceeds "a little effort", however. And there's the problem of access. I might be able to mine graphite, but where am I going to get a graphite mine? I enjoy the How to Make Everything channel on Youtube for this reason. Here's what's probably their most popular video, the $1500 Sandwich: [this video]
Cites benkarst · 2016-07 · on “Brian Eno: We've been living happily with AI for thousands of years”
Thoughtful article. Eno refers to hidden processes in systems as AI hinting at their similarity. I am assuming there are already digital systems in place that monitor "hidden" processes that make a chicken sandwich for example ( [this video] ). Such systems could monitor data points and possibly forecast the price (or a great many things) of a chicken sandwich.
Cites akadruid1 · 2019-03 · on “Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts”
There's the guy who spent $1500 and six months making a sandwich from scratch[0], including growing, collecting and killing the ingredients [0]: [this video]
Cites Balgair · 2019-07 · on “Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?”
HTME on Youtube also goes into the process of making seemingly simple things and the time and effort it takes: [LINK] One of the more famous videos is where it takes them ~$1500 and 6 months to make a chicken sandwich and they still used a lot of equipment that they didn't make themselves. [this video]
Cites MrMember · 2021-03 · on “On the impracticality of a cheeseburger (2011)”
How to Make Everything did something similar with a chicken sandwich. [this video] Though he didnt use quite as extreme a definition of "from scratch." Everything in the sandwich did appear to be made or acquired by hand, but it doesn't look like he raised the chicken or cow himself for example.