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Life is pretty good in the mid 10's. -No nuclear armageddon -No plague -Almost no violence -Increased connectivity dissolving the flawed state-system -Cool new ways to treat diseases and live longer -lovely parts of the world getting less lovely slowly Prognosis: We'll last until the 2050's when we'll all die from a resistant strain of gonorrhea.
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Aug 8, 2016 05:47
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computer parts posted:And yet even in spite of that, these same apocalypse worries have been plaguing people for the past 200 years (and beyond, really). Honestly at this point I think humans are hard coded at the genetic level to always fear and prepare for the apocalypse. Throughout history we feared all kinds of plagues, natural disasters, and man made disasters as the things to eventually wipe us out. Yet it seems like every time we solve one we come up with a new apocalypse scenario. Its our heroin. 
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Aug 8, 2016 05:53
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slavatuvs posted:Life is pretty good in the mid 10's. slavatuvs posted:-No plague slavatuvs posted:-Almost no violence slavatuvs posted:-Increased connectivity dissolving the flawed state-system slavatuvs posted:-Cool new ways to treat diseases and live longer slavatuvs posted:-lovely parts of the world getting less lovely slowly What's going on in Argentina anyways?
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Aug 8, 2016 05:58
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Grouchio posted:Oh except for Ebola, Zika, leftovers of Swine Flu, everyday viruses in third-world states, still no AIDS cure and cancer - yeah no plague. *shrugs* Nothing plaguing the world today is even a fraction of as bad as historical plagues have been. The worst stuff today is orders of magnitude less terrible than even a normal year of smallpox 50 years ago. The exact reason the big brains at the CDC/WHO/etc. are very concerned about a big flu outbreak is because it would very quickly stop us worrying about anything else. Spanish Flu killed more people than WW1 and was horrific in absolute terms, and it had a pussy-rear end death rate compared to poo poo like the Black Death or the Antonine Plague. Nobody has smallpox today (we've also got rid of rinderpest in animals), and we're close to wiping out polio as well. Of all the things that still suck in the world infectious diseases are pretty loving low down the list. quote:Not gonna happen folks. Who knows, the system is clearly untenable and the cracks are growing obvious by the month. Could be something unexpected replaces it. Not likely, I grant you, but connectivity is certainly eroding the system even if not actually threatening it.
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Aug 8, 2016 06:19
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Grouchio posted:
Swine flu and Zika hardly constitute as plagues. Ebola was contained, and although a lot of people died our knowledge about how to treat and prevent it expanded greatly. You're right about no "cure" but the fact is for many people AIDS and metastatic cancer have become chronic illnesses rather than terminal, you pop a pill in the morning and go about your day. Cancer is a pretty innate part of life, but after you identify and eliminate environmental causes it isn't terribly common in people who aren't already near the end of their lives. Grouchio posted:Bull loving poo poo there hasn't been. Anywhere. We literally live in the most peaceful time in recorded history. About 150k people die each year in armed conflict, a number that is 150k too high; but considering what we did to ourselves in the last century it's definitely progress. Grouchio posted:we haven't figured out how to slow down our aging cycles yet. Aging and dying at 85 are good things. Grouchio posted:rise of facism in Europe Golden Dawn might get 8% !?!?!@!!!@!@!!! I really don't think we're looking at a civil war in Turkey, outside of the PKK insurgency of course. Definitely not in Brazil. ass struggle fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 06:42
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MRSA/VRSA are really the biggest known potential pandemic threats we know of. Sure stuff like Ebola and Marburg are more deadly, but if I remember my infectious diseases classes correctly they have short lifespans and are super easy to identify based on symptoms so isolation is simple as well. Same goes for the bird flu.
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Aug 8, 2016 06:43
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:Perspective is important. When compared to the life of say, a Russian peasant in the early 1900's, or a European in the 1940's, or a chinese peasant in the 1800's, or a Syrian today, my worst case global warming / resource war / resurgence of fascism scenario doesn't seen that bad.
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Aug 8, 2016 07:04
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ToxicSlurpee posted:If memory serves the popular vote should have put Ho Chi Mihn in power by a landslide but America and the south just went "lol nope." Yeah basically America agitated that they just wanted a democratic vote please guys  Then they realised that Ho Chi Minh was poised to win dictatorship amounts of votes, so they declared that the vote was rigged. Ironically enough Diem also rigged his opinion polls so the the US told him to "try and make it a more believable amount" - he won the hearts and minds of 133% of the population of Saigon.
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Aug 8, 2016 10:12
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slavatuvs posted:Prognosis: We'll last until the 2050's when we'll all die from a resistant strain of gonorrhea. LOL goons wish they could be in a position to have contracted an STD by 2050.
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Aug 8, 2016 13:54
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Tesseraction posted:Yeah basically America agitated that they just wanted a democratic vote please guys Hahaha yeah Diem's election. Then when questioned on it his response basically was "Well maybe the people of Vietnam just love me that much".
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Aug 8, 2016 15:31
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Grouchio posted:
Resistant bacteria are easily outbred by non-resistant bacteria in non-adverse situations. To put another way: stop using [thing] for a little bit and the resistant ones go away.
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Aug 8, 2016 15:34
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Grouchio posted:Only the first part is correct. Sometimes I wonder if your entire posting identity is based around the world ending. ass struggle fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 19:20
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Imagine how depressing it must be to hope that the world ends but every day you wake up and the world is still there.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:30
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Hey, don't read my diary!
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Aug 8, 2016 19:45
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Thought I'd go ahead and post some good long-form articles on various hot topics in 2016. Feel free to put put them in the OP if you want. Brazil Perry Anderson on Brazil's corruption and crisis: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/perry-anderson/crisis-in-brazil United Kingdom Various authors responding to Brexit http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n14/on-brexit/where-are-we-now The Eurozone Wolfgang Streeck (always a pro-read on the EU); good general overview for 2016 happenings: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n07/wolfgang-streeck/scenario-for-a-wonderful-tomorrow Venezuela post-Chavez Venezuela https://newleftreview.org/II/99/julia-buxton-venezuela-after-chavez Japan Abe's domestic changes and his foreign policy goals. Good summary but obviously a little more polemical coming out of MR. http://monthlyreview.org/2015/11/01/whither-japan-seven-decades-after-defeat/ Global Left oppositions https://newleftreview.org/II/98/susan-watkins-oppositions There's probably a good companion on right-wing populist movements lurking out there. Other topics that I'm having a harder time finding long-form stuff on ATM that might be useful to post: Ukraine, India under Modi, Pakistan, SEA stuff, SCS, Mexico, end of FARC, terrorism in France, Chinese economic problems, Turkish coup, much related to Africa that isn't subsumed under global warming or financial capitalism or whatever. KaptainKrunk fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 20:21
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A Buttery Pastry posted:He said civil war, that kinda implies both sides are natives. One side just has additional bodies to throw at problems. That said, the post sorta seems to assume that the sides are otherwise equally matched, which doesn't have to be the case. Foreign volunteers could be required for one side to even stand a chance in the first place. Dunno, how did it go in Spain?
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Aug 9, 2016 00:19
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OwlFancier posted:Dunno, how did it go in Spain?
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Aug 9, 2016 05:18
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slavatuvs posted:Sometimes I wonder if you're entire posting identity is based around the world ending.
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Aug 9, 2016 14:00
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The Nationalists won, and they had the most foreign fighters. My understanding was that they had the bulk of the foreign state backing, the republicans were the ones with the international brigades which seemed to be what was being suggested.
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Aug 9, 2016 15:17
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OwlFancier posted:My understanding was that they had the bulk of the foreign state backing, the republicans were the ones with the international brigades which seemed to be what was being suggested.
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Aug 9, 2016 17:07
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A Buttery Pastry posted:That is true, but I don't really see much point to an argument that ignores the tens of thousands of Italians and Germans testing out their new toys. Not really sure what we're even arguing at this point, nor it's relevance to the overarching theme of this thread. I was sort of trying to point out that a strategy which relies on recruiting individual enthusiastic internationalist volunteers to fight a civil war, does not historically matter a great deal when fetched up against the likelihood of foreign state intervention.
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Aug 9, 2016 17:24
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OwlFancier posted:I was sort of trying to point out that a strategy which relies on recruiting individual enthusiastic internationalist volunteers to fight a civil war, does not historically matter a great deal when fetched up against the likelihood of foreign state intervention.
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Aug 9, 2016 18:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:A significant change that's been happening for...oh, about 50 years or so relates to globalization. It's just plain easier to get messages across the world now than it was like 100 years ago. Mass media has changed how messages get out which makes it far, far easier for the news to grab pictures, video, and soundbites of the absolute worst things happening in the entire world. If memory serves we're seeing the most peaceful era of human history ever (or at least very close to it) but because you can just go to Google and say "war news" you can get a constant stream of war. As a point related to this, the vastly increased pervasiveness of media you mention is also responsible for having a much greater influence on peoples' political views. While there's not some shadowy backroom conspiracy where the Illuminati say "we should say X, Y, and Z in the media", you still end up with a situation where the interests of the owners of media (which are generally wealthy individuals/organizations, just like the owners of any large business) are promoted through said media. The practical impact of this probably isn't that the media directly seeks to promote the owners' interests, but rather that the media is unlikely to report in a way that can significantly harm the interests of owners. For example, media corporations probably don't decide things like "We should report on X because it makes the wealthy look good!" Instead, they simply generally avoid reporting in such a way that could cause very significant harm to wealthy interests. Just to clarify further, this obviously doesn't mean the media never reports on stuff that harms the interests of wealthy individuals/organization. The owners of different media organizations are different people with different political views. But while they may differ in many respects, they also share the same perspective as wealthy people (just like, say, black people have their own individual political views but, as a demographic, are unlikely to support policy that is racist). They may have different feelings about what is necessary to make the world better or improve their own situation, but they're extremely unlikely to ever do anything that is a significant threat to their position/wealth. One good way to explain this idea is that the media is effectively a buffer against public opinion ever shifting too far in a direction that could harm the interests of the wealthy. It (usually) doesn't explicitly seek a "pro-wealthy" result, but it would never promote a strongly "anti-wealthy" viewpoint. (One thing that bugs me regarding this whole point is that many people have this dumb idea that the media is some giant conspiracy to promote the wealthy/liberals/the illuminati/whatever, and it distracts from the fact that the media does generally act in a way that promotes or condemns certain views, but not because of some shady backroom conspiracy - it's just because people of a particular demographic tend to support ideas that don't harm that demographic, and simply by virtue of the way our economic system works the owners of media corporations are mostly wealthy people/organizations. There's no need for media owners to have a conspiracy, because they inherently share some of the same interests.) Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 18:05
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Grouchio posted:I have suffered PTSD several times in the past, including the entirety of December of 2012 because the thought of Armageddon cycled through my mind no matter how stupid it sounded in my head. If my arzying and questioning of events come off as gimmicky, then I apologize in advance. I don't think you can get PTSD from reading Tom Clancy.
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Aug 9, 2016 18:59
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slavatuvs posted:I don't think you can get PTSD from reading Tom Clancy. clearly you have never read any of his jack ryan stuff
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Aug 9, 2016 19:49
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Ytlaya posted:As a point related to this, the vastly increased pervasiveness of media you mention is also responsible for having a much greater influence on peoples' political views. While there's not some shadowy backroom conspiracy where the Illuminati say "we should say X, Y, and Z in the media", you still end up with a situation where the interests of the owners of media (which are generally wealthy individuals/organizations, just like the owners of any large business) are promoted through said media. It's funny how your attempt to sound learned and thoughtful here actually made you sound extremely credulous and naive. Do you seriously doubt that media corporations don't directly seek to promote the interests of their owners, or the friends and allies of their owners? There's no grand Illuminati council running a giant world conspiracy, but what does exist is thousands of local interlocking local conspiracies. Because the fact is that it's easier to get things done when you mostly keep everyone who might disagree with you in the dark. Whether it's the branch manager at your office maneuvering behind the scenes to secure a promotion by making his rival look bad, or Dick Cheney selling the media on a false narrative about Iraq, the fact of the matter is conspiratorial behavior is the default mode of politics and business, for very obvious and practical reasons. Society is rife with competition, knowledge is power, and conspiracies are all about controlling who has what information at what time.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:13
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Helsing posted:It's funny how your attempt to sound learned and thoughtful here actually made you sound extremely credulous and naive. Do you seriously doubt that media corporations don't directly seek to promote the interests of their owners, or the friends and allies of their owners? There's no grand Illuminati council running a giant world conspiracy, but what does exist is thousands of local interlocking local conspiracies. Because the fact is that it's easier to get things done when you mostly keep everyone who might disagree with you in the dark. You're correct, but when talking about the media as a whole I don't think it's possible to really prove some direct, explicit intent to benefit the wealthy. Obviously individual companies will act in the benefit of their individual owners/benefactors, but when discussing all media in general the main thing in common is just "the owners of media corporations are wealthy individuals/organizations." I guess I'm trying to say that the point I made is something that should be pretty self-evident, while it's not so easy to prove that media corporations are involved in more explicit unethical behavior (much less than there's any unified aim when looking at the whole industry as a whole). I generally try to focus only on arguments that I feel are very solid and difficult to deny (or, to put this another way, I'm very risk-averse when it comes to debate). It's much easier to persuade someone of the claim that "the owners of media corporations are all, by definition, a member of a particular social class/demographic and likely act to benefit that social class/demographic" than it is to persuade them of some specific openly malicious conspiracy.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:31
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If they're everywhere all the time they're not worth the word 'conspiracy'.Helsing posted:It's funny how your attempt to sound learned and thoughtful here actually made you sound extremely credulous and naive. Do you seriously doubt that media corporations don't directly seek to promote the interests of their owners, or the friends and allies of their owners? There's no grand Illuminati council running a giant world conspiracy, but what does exist is thousands of local interlocking local conspiracies. Because the fact is that it's easier to get things done when you mostly keep everyone who might disagree with you in the dark. Also I think this contains a strong argument for the decentralization of power that comes with capitalism. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 00:31
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