Now there is a guy who looks like his great-grand Pappy was drinking tea and eating bangers and mash on his break in Sheffield before going off to make more of the best steel in the world so the UK could build tanks to fight the Kaiser.
https://news.sky.com/story/doomsday-clock-moves-closer-to-midnight-what-does-it-mean-12794884
This story shows that technocrats can be idiots.
"The worst is closer to destruction than ever before" Really? You think so?
Closer to destruction than during the height of the cold war, when massive and new nuclear arsenals that don't even exist anymore were pointed at real targets and could have taken off at any moment? There were about 65,000 nuclear bombs, and today there's a tenth of that.
Closer than when Mao, who killed 100 million of his own people, who even the Soviets were terrified of, got his hands on nuclear weapons?
No, that's stupid. In fact, in a multi-polar world, the risks to our future go down instead of up because you don't have everyone pointing planet busters at everyone else.
It's also stupid because structurally we're not the sort of planet that goes to nuclear war at the moment. Our leaders are ancient and entrenched, our societies lack vital energy, around the world nobody really wants to go to war for the sake of their nation, and most of the people alive wouldn't be able to fight any wars that happen because they're too old or too fat or too nuts.
Wars are fought typically because vital societies have momentum that drives these things forward. The world wars occurred because of a young, vital, and dynamic set of societies that were excited to go out and fight for nations they cared about. Nationalism was still an important thing. Can you have wars with smaller professional armies? Sure, and they'll be smaller wars. The sort of total war that leads to global annihilation don't break out at times like this, instead you have shallower conflicts like the 30 years war which happened at a time of a less vital Europe and it wasn't anything like world wars.
Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm saying that wars need to be popular to occur. A lot of people on the ground didn't want the world wars to happen. What I'm saying is that the people of a nation are a kinetic force, and that force has a certain energy. If your battery is dead, you might be able to activate the starter, you might even be able to turn over the engine, but you probably won't be able to start the car without help, and even then you'll need to be careful because if you stall you might not be able to start again.
For empirical proof, look at Ukraine. Russia started a war in continental Europe. In a powder keg moment in history, that could have led to a world war. Instead, it's a regional conflict with conditional materiel support from others, not an all-out total war with everyone preparing to march on Moscow.
If China hits Taiwan, It too will likely remain a regional conflict with support from other regions, not a world war. Unlike World War 2, you don't have an imperial Japan with a fire lit under their asses by Commdore Perry's black ships and success in World War 1. India isn't part of the British Empire. And embarassingly, total war with China will result in the tide coming out with respect to global trade, and most countries will be discovered to have lost their swimsuits.
Could there be wars in the near future? Absolutely. Many nations are facing the final days of having any real vitality and in that late stage many are lashing out hoping to successfully eke out a few concessions before a long dormant era of rebuilding to help achieve additional stability. That's a sick cornered animal lashing out at a predator, rather than a predator in its prime on the hunt.
It's important to remember, history didn't start in 1938. We've been here before, and it wasn't nice, but it wasn't anything like the events that could end the world.
As for whether other forms of societal collapse could happen, I wrote a damn book about societal collapse, but this isn't the "societal collapse by demographics" clock, it's the "doomsday clock" that predicts the end of the world. We're inside the former, we're nowhere near the latter. Even if Russia dropped a nuke on Ukraine today, we're not getting a nuclear World War 3.
Even if we got that nuclear World War 3, I ran the math once, and if the US and russia used every nuke they have today at the same time, it'd be about the same as the volcanic eruption that caused the year without summer in the 1800s. Bad, but we survived the year without summer. In addition, that's a worst-case scenario, because volcanos can use that event to harm the climate with a very high efficiency that nuclear bombs (particularly distributed globally rather than in one spot) aren't capable of. As for fallout, in Japan people still live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima so fallout wouldn't be a perpetual issue.
We're also in an era where we're actually the most aware and the most proactive of environmental issues ever. In the 1950s, it was still considered totally acceptable in both the western world and the communist world to utterly destroy the environment. In America, rivers were so disgusting you'd get sick just standing next to them. In The USSR, the soviet union caused some of the largest environmental disasters in human history. Meanwhile, today even the Chinese are trying to clean up their act under intense pressure from their populations. Are we using more carbon today? Depends where you are, but in many countries the total carbon use is down and as the population declines the energy use will also decline. We're not in the same level of danger environmentally as we arguably were in the 1950s and 1960s either.
And to be clear about something, I don't need absolute confidence to be able to make this criticism, I just need confidence that their absolute confidence is misplaced. Big difference. I don't need to say everything is going to be fine and nothing bad will ever happen to say that it's stupid to attack a measurement indicating that we are predictably closer to the end of the world at this moment than ever before. An awful lot of bad things can happen -- including nuclear war or climate change -- without invoking doomsday.
This story shows that technocrats can be idiots.
"The worst is closer to destruction than ever before" Really? You think so?
Closer to destruction than during the height of the cold war, when massive and new nuclear arsenals that don't even exist anymore were pointed at real targets and could have taken off at any moment? There were about 65,000 nuclear bombs, and today there's a tenth of that.
Closer than when Mao, who killed 100 million of his own people, who even the Soviets were terrified of, got his hands on nuclear weapons?
No, that's stupid. In fact, in a multi-polar world, the risks to our future go down instead of up because you don't have everyone pointing planet busters at everyone else.
It's also stupid because structurally we're not the sort of planet that goes to nuclear war at the moment. Our leaders are ancient and entrenched, our societies lack vital energy, around the world nobody really wants to go to war for the sake of their nation, and most of the people alive wouldn't be able to fight any wars that happen because they're too old or too fat or too nuts.
Wars are fought typically because vital societies have momentum that drives these things forward. The world wars occurred because of a young, vital, and dynamic set of societies that were excited to go out and fight for nations they cared about. Nationalism was still an important thing. Can you have wars with smaller professional armies? Sure, and they'll be smaller wars. The sort of total war that leads to global annihilation don't break out at times like this, instead you have shallower conflicts like the 30 years war which happened at a time of a less vital Europe and it wasn't anything like world wars.
Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm saying that wars need to be popular to occur. A lot of people on the ground didn't want the world wars to happen. What I'm saying is that the people of a nation are a kinetic force, and that force has a certain energy. If your battery is dead, you might be able to activate the starter, you might even be able to turn over the engine, but you probably won't be able to start the car without help, and even then you'll need to be careful because if you stall you might not be able to start again.
For empirical proof, look at Ukraine. Russia started a war in continental Europe. In a powder keg moment in history, that could have led to a world war. Instead, it's a regional conflict with conditional materiel support from others, not an all-out total war with everyone preparing to march on Moscow.
If China hits Taiwan, It too will likely remain a regional conflict with support from other regions, not a world war. Unlike World War 2, you don't have an imperial Japan with a fire lit under their asses by Commdore Perry's black ships and success in World War 1. India isn't part of the British Empire. And embarassingly, total war with China will result in the tide coming out with respect to global trade, and most countries will be discovered to have lost their swimsuits.
Could there be wars in the near future? Absolutely. Many nations are facing the final days of having any real vitality and in that late stage many are lashing out hoping to successfully eke out a few concessions before a long dormant era of rebuilding to help achieve additional stability. That's a sick cornered animal lashing out at a predator, rather than a predator in its prime on the hunt.
It's important to remember, history didn't start in 1938. We've been here before, and it wasn't nice, but it wasn't anything like the events that could end the world.
As for whether other forms of societal collapse could happen, I wrote a damn book about societal collapse, but this isn't the "societal collapse by demographics" clock, it's the "doomsday clock" that predicts the end of the world. We're inside the former, we're nowhere near the latter. Even if Russia dropped a nuke on Ukraine today, we're not getting a nuclear World War 3.
Even if we got that nuclear World War 3, I ran the math once, and if the US and russia used every nuke they have today at the same time, it'd be about the same as the volcanic eruption that caused the year without summer in the 1800s. Bad, but we survived the year without summer. In addition, that's a worst-case scenario, because volcanos can use that event to harm the climate with a very high efficiency that nuclear bombs (particularly distributed globally rather than in one spot) aren't capable of. As for fallout, in Japan people still live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima so fallout wouldn't be a perpetual issue.
We're also in an era where we're actually the most aware and the most proactive of environmental issues ever. In the 1950s, it was still considered totally acceptable in both the western world and the communist world to utterly destroy the environment. In America, rivers were so disgusting you'd get sick just standing next to them. In The USSR, the soviet union caused some of the largest environmental disasters in human history. Meanwhile, today even the Chinese are trying to clean up their act under intense pressure from their populations. Are we using more carbon today? Depends where you are, but in many countries the total carbon use is down and as the population declines the energy use will also decline. We're not in the same level of danger environmentally as we arguably were in the 1950s and 1960s either.
And to be clear about something, I don't need absolute confidence to be able to make this criticism, I just need confidence that their absolute confidence is misplaced. Big difference. I don't need to say everything is going to be fine and nothing bad will ever happen to say that it's stupid to attack a measurement indicating that we are predictably closer to the end of the world at this moment than ever before. An awful lot of bad things can happen -- including nuclear war or climate change -- without invoking doomsday.
It took me uncomfortably long to realize you were actually talking about horses.
I thought I'd share because I think that's kind of amusing.
I thought I'd share because I think that's kind of amusing.
I'm not sure that the data necessarily bears that out.
Ontario is largely nuclear, and prices are higher than in Manitoba and Quebec which are largely hydroelectric.
Ontario is largely nuclear, and prices are higher than in Manitoba and Quebec which are largely hydroelectric.
The first time I saw that, it was shocking to the conscience.
"Who does your baby want to have sex with?"
Jesus Christ, nobody what's wrong with you?
I have seen paper forms asking the sexual orientation and gender identity of a newborn. Not computer forms, paper. Someone had to design that, had to look at it, and nodded to themselves that this was correct.
"Who does your baby want to have sex with?"
Jesus Christ, nobody what's wrong with you?
I have seen paper forms asking the sexual orientation and gender identity of a newborn. Not computer forms, paper. Someone had to design that, had to look at it, and nodded to themselves that this was correct.
In terms of new kids shows that I just don't think have a culture war angle, I've had no problems with hot wheels: let's race.
I'm thinking it might be related to the fact that Hot Wheels has never been this sort of franchise that you go to if you are trying to achieve power. It's a franchise about cool looking cars. I found that in spite of the fact that there are things that if you wanted to nitpick you could complain about the diversity, but same sort of diversity that you would have seen from an '80s cartoon so who cares, it's just a dumb cartoon for trying to sell toys kids and I'm here for it.
Honestly, trying to sell toys is not a bad thing. I want to buy toys for my son. And the best thing would Hot Wheels is that they're cheap -- you can get them at the dollar store for two bucks, and that's not two freedom dollars, that's two canuckistani kopecs. I bought the game associated with the series on pc, and it's fantastic, I can hand the controller to my son, and he can basically play with one button because it has Auto steering and auto acceleration.
I'm thinking it might be related to the fact that Hot Wheels has never been this sort of franchise that you go to if you are trying to achieve power. It's a franchise about cool looking cars. I found that in spite of the fact that there are things that if you wanted to nitpick you could complain about the diversity, but same sort of diversity that you would have seen from an '80s cartoon so who cares, it's just a dumb cartoon for trying to sell toys kids and I'm here for it.
Honestly, trying to sell toys is not a bad thing. I want to buy toys for my son. And the best thing would Hot Wheels is that they're cheap -- you can get them at the dollar store for two bucks, and that's not two freedom dollars, that's two canuckistani kopecs. I bought the game associated with the series on pc, and it's fantastic, I can hand the controller to my son, and he can basically play with one button because it has Auto steering and auto acceleration.
I finally had to replace the filament holder I printed on my delta kossel (shown in gray) and replaced it with something printed on my Tevo Tornado. Took the chance to make it much wider, and after a failed print of a previous revision I took out a lot of fancy design elements which made it flimsier, and printed it on its side which made it far more robust but also easier to print on a big bed printer like the tornado. I also flipped the orientation.
Central office will be able to ignore crimes with 10, perhaps 1000 times the efficiency!
[User was jailed for this post]
[User was jailed for this post]
You know, the memes are true.
-27 this morning and we're both leaving the house with hoodies on.
-27 this morning and we're both leaving the house with hoodies on.
Even when Martin Luther nailed his criticisms to the church, he was aiming at a constrained and conservative form of Christianity rather than a liberating one.
I moved to Ottawa for 6 months one time, and even moving from the sticks out to ottawa, it was so much wetter in winter, it would chill you right to the Bone for no good reason, because it sure as hell wasn't cold.
https://youtube.com/shorts/l0Hqp7Y6Eoo
I made the comparison of law enforcement to a black bear.
Where I live, it's relatively routine to see black bears. As long as you do all the right things come on as long as you follow the rules of being around black bears, you're going to really have an uneventful time. Act big, make lots of noise, keep your distance, me absolutely sure to never get in between a bear and her cub.
Again, as long as you follow the rules you'll probably get to see a hundred bears and never have any problem. But if you don't follow the rules, that bear is bigger than you, it's stronger than you, it's faster than you, and it doesn't need fancy tools like a gun to kill you. It has big teeth, it has big claws, and even without those and has strength that is considerably greater than most of the strongest human beings on Earth. Fuck up, and you're just dead.
Same way with cops. There's a bunch of rules to interacting with cops. Don't mind your sudden moves. Don't run them over with your car. Don't pull out your gun. If you follow the rules, you can get away with a surprising amount around cops and still make it out of the interaction one hundred times out of 100.
Now people can argue that it's unfair that you should have to change the way you behave just because there's a black bear there, and maybe you're right, but if you have your right in one hand and you're dead in the other, guess which hand stops mattering?
I made the comparison of law enforcement to a black bear.
Where I live, it's relatively routine to see black bears. As long as you do all the right things come on as long as you follow the rules of being around black bears, you're going to really have an uneventful time. Act big, make lots of noise, keep your distance, me absolutely sure to never get in between a bear and her cub.
Again, as long as you follow the rules you'll probably get to see a hundred bears and never have any problem. But if you don't follow the rules, that bear is bigger than you, it's stronger than you, it's faster than you, and it doesn't need fancy tools like a gun to kill you. It has big teeth, it has big claws, and even without those and has strength that is considerably greater than most of the strongest human beings on Earth. Fuck up, and you're just dead.
Same way with cops. There's a bunch of rules to interacting with cops. Don't mind your sudden moves. Don't run them over with your car. Don't pull out your gun. If you follow the rules, you can get away with a surprising amount around cops and still make it out of the interaction one hundred times out of 100.
Now people can argue that it's unfair that you should have to change the way you behave just because there's a black bear there, and maybe you're right, but if you have your right in one hand and you're dead in the other, guess which hand stops mattering?
Imagine for a second, asking Google Gemini what is 1+1. You light up internet architecture spanning thousands of miles to a data center where you activate hundreds of gigabytes of memory, activate multiple top end GPUs, utilize non trivial pumping and water taken from a nearby river, and it responds back
"Hi, I'm Gemini, the helpful AI assistant. I'm afraid I don't know how to do that yet."
"Hi, I'm Gemini, the helpful AI assistant. I'm afraid I don't know how to do that yet."
Bit of a shower thought: in the pilot episode of Star Trek the next generation, McCoy shows up briefly, and he wanted to take a shuttle craft because he didn't trust the transporter. Whoever he was with told him that transporters were safe, but how many transporter accidents showed up in TNG?
Really, if the right was smarter about this, they'd focus on the reality that the rioters are in fact acting as pawns for a dominant elite faction, and if they ever came within a country mile of successfully achieving something like revolution, they'd be Jan 6th so fast it'd make your head spin.
Useful idiots, and I bet more than a few of them could be driven off if it becomes clear it's not a revolution, even if legally it's an insurrection.
Useful idiots, and I bet more than a few of them could be driven off if it becomes clear it's not a revolution, even if legally it's an insurrection.