I would argue that if you recognize you lack the knowledge to form an opinion, you’re doing better than 90% of people online.

All good, I didn’t take it that way. We should be expecting more than the bare minimum, but even the bare minimum would mean people I care about having safer lives.

100% agree. My comment was more about how much easier it would be for someone who isn’t moved by compassion to just not be a gaping asshole by going “not my issue.”

My personal feelings are that there are people I care about who have aspects to them I don’t understand and that doesn’t keep me from caring about them or believing they have the same rights as anyone else to live their lives in a way that expresses their complete selves. Attempts to harm them because of who they are are wrong and I will always fight against those who want to keep people from being their true selves.

The most pragmatic view is “how does this affect me? It doesn’t? Who cares.”

Glad my brain is cracked the same way as at least a couple other people. I saw the Venus of Willendorf as well.

People who were already poor would remain so. Most people who aren’t wealthy can’t afford to own acres of land that doesn’t produce crops. If leaves suddenly became money, that would not change the fundamental needs people have of food and shelter. So you’d have the wealthy with vast swathes of forest that would slowly die as they carted out a lot of compost for use in markets, and people who live in apartments or other rental situations would never see a leaf on the ground again. You might see suburban homeowners get really good about caring for their trees and planting more, so that’s one possible benefit but overall this would be a nightmare.

There are old methods of getting lumber from trees by cutting them short and letting the limbs grow back. The Japanese “daisugi” and European “copsing” are two different styles of the same idea. The fact that we don’t see those done much in the modern era makes me think that the industrial-capitalist mind would not comprehend the idea of waiting for leaves to fall.

Do you have any insight into getting Linux to play nice with the different components of fusion drives? I have an old iMac and Mac mini both with Fusion Drive and after installing fedora or Ubuntu the SSD is seen and mounts fine but while the HDD is seen it doesn’t mount at startup despite setting it to mount at startup. I’d like to use these machines for some archiving and media hosting but that’s difficult if I can’t reliably access the much higher capacity drives.

You mention not having any human contact other than your family, that sounds really stressful especially if they’re on you for not having a job. Are there any opportunities where you are to do volunteer work, like at animal shelters, hospitals, or similar options? That would expose you to other people, could help with depression (helping others often does,) and might even give you some leads on jobs.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Glaciers formed over millennia. If they melt, they’re gone, even if we drop CO2 to pre-industrial levels. The Antarctic ice sheet is millions of years of snow that fell at the rate of a few inches a year and just didn’t melt. If significant portions of that fall off and melt, it’ll be millions of years more for the water it adds to the oceans to cycle back to the ice sheet again. The changes we have made will not be reversed automatically or in many cases at all.

Because it won’t work? That’s what I got from the article. I’m not sure what else you’re implying.

The question was “what word or phrase annoys you,” not “do you understand this phrase.”

I know what the phrasing means, it still bugs the shit out of me.

“Not me” doing something.

Just say you’re doing something, and accept that it may be a bit hypocritical or shameful that you’re doing it.

Short answer: yes

Longer answer: I would argue we’ve already had a few civil wars since the “War Between the States” in the 1860s. Reconstruction was arguably another civil war. The labor rights war of the early twentieth century included federal troops attacking organizing coal miners and federal agents along with private security forces attacking striking workers elsewhere. The violence of the civil rights movement (remember: the president had to call in the national guard to enforce integration) would also qualify as a civil war by some standards.

Listen to the first limited series of the podcast It Could Happen Here for an idea of how a more involved civil war could start. The idea is that there would not be clear battle lines drawn up because our divide now is more urban vs rural, and people in rural areas have opportunities to attack infrastructure that would have significant impacts on urban areas.

From what I understand it doesn’t matter, that’s just a label they assign to all the data they have about you. Attaching all of that to your real name is trivial once they have the profile.

<pushes glasses up> it was actually Flavor-Aid.

Also, in the broadway poster and the fan edit of the movie poster, the position of the hand communicates “I am telling this person a secret.” In the original movie poster the position of the hand communicates “I’m hiding a zit” or maybe “I have a toothache.”

Every day is some variation on shitty.

I want to remind you that you are reading fiction and that fiction writers bring all their biases with them when they write.

For a somewhat bitter antidote to the despair, I encourage you to read David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. One passage towards the end, in particular, really made me rethink some of my depression. They talk about how wars leave indelible marks in the fossil record, and throughout most of the record there are no indications of war: peace is the rule, not the exception. We seem to be in an anomalous period of human history, and getting back from the brink will require a lot of work.

The interactions you mention from the book don’t seem to be borne out by actual human experience. In times of distress people are more likely to help each other. Listening to accounts from the ground in Asheville is largely a tale of people who may not have thought much of each other a few weeks ago helping each other because they are all humans who need help. I don’t see any reason to think this would change if the scope of disaster was bigger. The key problem seems to come from people thinking they should be in charge, and that’s easy enough to deal with.

Can we stop reporting on Biden or whoever else using salty language unless it’s something along the lines of “I’m cutting off the fucking military aid.”?