Societal Collapse/ Extinction

Quote: lilredrooster

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nuclear war is very unlikely because of "MAD" - Mutually Assured Destruction

but I've always wondered if a nuclear bomb could be launched by mistake

i.e. - a country mistakenly detected a nuclear bomb headed towards them and responded by firing one off


There are nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons: Russia, United States, China, France, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. These countries hold the majority of the world's nuclear warheads.

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Quote: rxwine

Quote:

Population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones

1 billion in 1804
2 billion in 1927
3 billion in 1960
4 billion in 1974
5 billion in 1987
6 billion in 1999
7 billion in 2011
8 billion in 2022

'l start worrying when we're down to the last 100 million people.
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Quote: gordonm888

Quote: odiousgambit

we aren't going to run out of phosphorous

we aren't going to run out of helium

we aren't going to run out of oil

these claims come from journalists and also from activists with an agenda

the way things always work, these items become more expensive when the cheap sources run out. Sometimes, this easily leads to new finds. If you wanted to promote concern* or even panic**, you can point out the times this doesn't happen

* attention journalists/reporters
** attention activists
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The sustainability issue with phosphorus, is that it dissolves in water and washes away. When it rains the run-off from agricultural fields contains phosphorus (from the fertilized soil). The water flows downhill into creeks, rivers and eventually into lakes (or the ocean). So, the concentrated phosphorus in fertilized fields is redistributed in waterways and lakes.

The U.K has no phosphorus deposits and a recent study determined that it operates at a significant annual phosphorus loss.

The problem isn't that just that phosphorus needs to be recycled and reconcentrated. It's that its presence in water causes "blue-green algae" to grow. "Blue-green algae" isn't technically algae but a type of photo-synthesizing bacteria. Also known as cyanobacteria these organisms produce a liver toxin potent enough to kill dogs and make a swimmer vomit in a matter of seconds after an accidental gulp. Fresh-water fish and seafood are dieing. Livestock who drink the water are dieing. A number of humans have died.

In a bad algae year, blobs of this cyanobacteria have sprawled across two thousand square miles of Lake Erie. Even with recent public awareness and mitigation, the Lake Erie blobs have recently been as large as seven hundred square miles.

The Gulf of Mexico - seawater! - is also threatened. In 2019 the Mississippi River flood waters flowing down into the Gulf caused the closure of all of the State of Mississippi beaches during the summer because it was unsafe to swim in the toxic ocean water.

The addition of phosphorus in fertilizer greatly increases the crop yield. Politically, the tension is between the agricultural industry and the fishing and tourism industries (and clean water environmentalists.) I don't know what the solution is.
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Quote: EvenBob

Quote: odiousgambit

we aren't going to run out of phosphorous

we aren't going to run out of helium

we aren't going to run out of oil

these claims come from journalists and also from activists with an agenda

the way things always work, these items become more expensive when the cheap sources run out. Sometimes, this easily leads to new finds. If you wanted to promote concern* or even panic**, you can point out the times this doesn't happen

* attention journalists/reporters
** attention activists
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In the 1980s they were screaming that the oceans were going to be out of fish by 2,000. I still buy canned tuna for under a dollar can and I eat a can of sardines everyday. Every decade of my life there has been some emergency with something running out and we we're screwed. Kids in their 20s are so terrified of global warming that suicide in that group is at an all-time high because they don't see the point of living. It's been shoved down their throats since they were in kindergarten.
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Quote: ChumpChange

There's some shocking recent video coming out of China concerning the subject of metro banks shutting down and the ATMs shut down or they have very low withdrawal limits ($30). The gov't says nothing. People are left to wonder if their life savings have been totally confiscated and lost or if they'll get a digital wallet and a digital currency. Is this the great reset where everybody loses all their wealth and everybody will be given the same amount when the reset happens? People need their cash now and it's not there now according to the videos. There's news and social media blackouts all over. Posts go viral for a few hours in Chinese then they get taken down. This started 2 weeks ago.
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Quote: ChumpChange

There's some shocking recent video coming out of China concerning the subject of metro banks shutting down and the ATMs shut down or they have very low withdrawal limits ($30). The gov't says nothing. People are left to wonder if their life savings have been totally confiscated and lost or if they'll get a digital wallet and a digital currency. Is this the great reset where everybody loses all their wealth and everybody will be given the same amount when the reset happens? People need their cash now and it's not there now according to the videos. There's news and social media blackouts all over. Posts go viral for a few hours in Chinese then they get taken down. This started 2 weeks ago.
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Quote: ChumpChange

There's some shocking recent video coming out of China concerning the subject of metro banks shutting down and the ATMs shut down or they have very low withdrawal limits ($30). The gov't says nothing. People are left to wonder if their life savings have been totally confiscated and lost or if they'll get a digital wallet and a digital currency. Is this the great reset where everybody loses all their wealth and everybody will be given the same amount when the reset happens? People need their cash now and it's not there now according to the videos. There's news and social media blackouts all over. Posts go viral for a few hours in Chinese then they get taken down. This started 2 weeks ago.
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Quote: caldris

Quote: ChumpChange

The Chinese digital wallet rollout failed and was to only work for the rich and well connected and exclude everyone else. The rich and well connected have since disappeared and unplugged their phones and fired their servants. You can imagine the rest of the country is going without by now. Billionaires are trying to flee the country with their money and are running into roadblocks.
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It is really amazing how myopic most Americans are. Your country is very visibly collapsing in a quite dramatic way. This is very obvious if you watch international media. Yet here you are waffling on about how bad other countries are.

Quote: odiousgambit

you guys need to buy commercial time on cnbc forecasting doom and gloom to sell your inside knowledge of when *exactly* it will happen ... but don't forget to include a prediction that the market will boom too. In other words, predict both things and when one happens, claim you predicted it . There is always a guy on there doing that, the one now has been on too long and he is getting boring; I think you can knock him off

as for China, there is said to be a money supply problem, very technical M2 thing. Stories about not being able to access cash held in bank accounts are not coming up with regular searches

as for my predictions, I predict there will be a big bust, and also a big boom. Send me some money and I'll expand on that.
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Quote: EvenBob

Quote: odiousgambit

you guys need to buy commercial time on cnbc forecasting doom and gloom to sell your inside knowledge of when *exactly* it will happen ... but don't forget to include a prediction that the market will boom too. In other words, predict both things and when one happens, claim you predicted it . There is always a guy on there doing that, the one now has been on too long and he is getting boring; I think you can knock him off

as for China, there is said to be a money supply problem, very technical M2 thing. Stories about not being able to access cash held in bank accounts are not coming up with regular searches

as for my predictions, I predict there will be a big bust, and also a big boom. Send me some money and I'll expand on that.
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Throughout my life I have noticed that for every person that predicts Doom and Gloom and can give you reasons, you can easily find somebody who predicts boom and Good Times and gives reasons. Predictions are worthless, with a prediction and $1.50 you can get a coffee at McDonald's. Maybe. I can't count all the predictions I've heard in my lifetime from so-called experts that never came even close to coming true.
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Quote: AutomaticMonkey

No one is good at predicting the future. Heinlein's famous 19 Predictions were quite ludicrous in retrospect. Only #11, and to some degree #2 came true. Heinlein was smart and put a lot of research into his writing but that profited him nothing as a futurist.

https://www.writerswrite.co.za/robert-a-heinleins-19-predictions-for-the-future/

The reason why is despite being able to reckon the arc of technological advancement and what may be eventually possible, we cannot predict what we will still want to do in the future, and which things we will no longer be sufficiently interested in to put the requisite work and investment into them. In 1970 we all imagined bases on the moon in 50 years, and didn't consider that it would actually be satellite launches and deep space probes that are routine, and that we satisfy our curiosity about Mars not with men walking on it but robots. We thought of curing cancer and the common cold, but then we got so much better at treating cancer and extending human life that treating Alzheimer's and other forms of age-related dementia seem more imperative now. We imagined big things but our most advanced technologies have to do with making ever smaller features on semiconductors.

This may be the real reason why we never see (extraterrestrial!) aliens. We might believe going to other stars and galaxies is the ultimate achievement. But perhaps long before societies develop capacities for interstellar travel, they discover new ways to use their resources that are even more interesting to them, and that we can't even imagine and exactly because we are not advanced enough yet to fathom it.
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Quote: AutomaticMonkey

No one is good at predicting the future. Heinlein's famous 19 Predictions were quite ludicrous in retrospect. Only #11, and to some degree #2 came true. Heinlein was smart and put a lot of research into his writing but that profited him nothing as a futurist.
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Quote: rxwine

As far as predicting the future. Sure, eventually machines will take all the jobs. But the downfall comes when they start asking for tips.
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Quote: ChumpChange

WSJ headline: Bartenders, showgirls and blackjack dealers in Las Vegas say their tip income has shriveled since last year, in some cases by more than half.
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Quote: ChumpChange

People are screaming on TikTok and other places that their electric bills are skyrocketing. Bills have doubled or tripled recently. I must be living on the edges of that because it hasn't hit me yet. But there's a bunch of states with the PJM Interconection (PJM's footprint includes all or parts of the following states and the District of Columbia: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.) where prices are being jacked up year after year now. People can't afford these new electricity bills unless they were already rich.
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Quote: ChumpChange

I'm seeing memes that only the first $25,000 of tipped wages are going to be used as a deduction. Tips above that amount will be taxed. This tax feature is only valid until 2028. Minimum wage for tipped employees continues to be $2.13/hr.
Door Dashers do not get paid an hourly wage, they work for tips.
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Quote: AZDuffman

Quote: ChumpChange

People are screaming on TikTok and other places that their electric bills are skyrocketing. Bills have doubled or tripled recently. I must be living on the edges of that because it hasn't hit me yet. But there's a bunch of states with the PJM Interconection (PJM's footprint includes all or parts of the following states and the District of Columbia: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.) where prices are being jacked up year after year now. People can't afford these new electricity bills unless they were already rich.
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More and more of the USA is getting to where the median income earner cannot afford a median life. It is very complicated, but all boils down to there is so little profit at the bottom of the market anymore. Ray Kroc made a killing catering to the lower end customer. Levittown created affordable housing. Chevy II and Ford Falcon sold right into this market. Now that market is ignored.

This is a huge reason for lower TFR though still only a part of it.
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Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: AZDuffman

Quote: ChumpChange

People are screaming on TikTok and other places that their electric bills are skyrocketing. Bills have doubled or tripled recently. I must be living on the edges of that because it hasn't hit me yet. But there's a bunch of states with the PJM Interconection (PJM's footprint includes all or parts of the following states and the District of Columbia: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.) where prices are being jacked up year after year now. People can't afford these new electricity bills unless they were already rich.
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More and more of the USA is getting to where the median income earner cannot afford a median life. It is very complicated, but all boils down to there is so little profit at the bottom of the market anymore. Ray Kroc made a killing catering to the lower end customer. Levittown created affordable housing. Chevy II and Ford Falcon sold right into this market. Now that market is ignored.

This is a huge reason for lower TFR though still only a part of it.
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This is hardly new. We are only a century removed from men traveling the country in empty freight cars as itinerant laborers. Nothing was marketed to them, save overalls and chewing tobacco. Up to that point most laborers earned little more than subsistence.

The more disturbing shift I see in economics is a low-competency class being propped up economically as low-intelligence consumers for low-value products. If you are flogging cheap junk from China on social media, marked up 5000% because it's a fad item, who do you want your audience to be? Someone like you or like me, or someone with no skills or ideas but following a herd? It used to be that economics provided resistance to that, in that the wise had much more money than fools and their higher sales resistance was balanced out by higher assets when you did make a sale. But with the welfare state, and certain corporate, government, and academic policies that employ and advance the less competent at the expense of the more competent, and our cities now babble with young people making low to mid-6 who have no skills beyond blogging, gossiping, and marijuana.

The Twentyteens jihad on major social media (specifically Facebook, the old Twitter, and various Google properties) against [those of a certain political orientation] was not so much about partisan politics but ridding these marketing platforms of those who are analytical, discerning, and skeptical of soi-disant authorities. More or less: the people who make sure the felt says 3:2.
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Quote: AZDuffman

More and more of the USA is getting to where the median income earner cannot afford a median life.

Quote: gordonm888

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Two weeks after Jaysen Carr spent the Fourth of July swimming and riding on a boat on one of South Carolina's most popular lakes, he was dead from an amoeba that lives in the warm water and entered his brain through his nose.

His parents had no clue the brain-eating amoeba, whose scientific name is Naegleria fowleri, even existed in Lake Murray, just 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of Columbia.

They found out when a doctor, in tears, told them the diagnosis after what seemed like a fairly regular headache and nausea took a serious turn.

Jaysen, 12, fought for a week before dying on July 18, making him one of about 160 people known to have died from the amoeba in the U.S. in the past 60 years.

As they grieve their son, the boy's parents said they were stunned to learn South Carolina, like most other U.S. states, has no law requiring public reporting of deaths or infections from the amoeba. The lake wasn't closed and no water testing was performed. If they hadn’t spoken up, they wonder if anyone would have even known what happened
*******************

In the Wikipedia article on Naegleria fowleri it says that the amoeba eats neurons and is more commonly found in warm lake water.
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Quote: DRich

Quote: AZDuffman

More and more of the USA is getting to where the median income earner cannot afford a median life.

I don't believe they can't afford it for any other reason that they are not willing to work harder. People are so lazy today that they think if they work 40 hours that they are working too much. I know I am the old curmudgeon now, but back in my day people worked 50-60 hours.
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Quote: billryan

Quote: DRich

Quote: AZDuffman

More and more of the USA is getting to where the median income earner cannot afford a median life.

I don't believe they can't afford it for any other reason that they are not willing to work harder. People are so lazy today that they think if they work 40 hours that they are working too much. I know I am the old curmudgeon now, but back in my day people worked 50-60 hours.
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And that was after walking twelve miles to their job, barefoot, in the snow.
I'm a big believer in working more than forty hours if you want to get anywhere. If you are giving 25% to the government, 25-30% for rent/mortgage and 15% towards retirement, it doesn't leave you a lot. Earn an extra 20% a week or more, and you'll be okay.
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Quote: ChumpChange

People are screaming on TikTok and other places that their electric bills are skyrocketing. Bills have doubled or tripled recently. I must be living on the edges of that because it hasn't hit me yet. But there's a bunch of states with the PJM Interconection (PJM's footprint includes all or parts of the following states and the District of Columbia: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.) where prices are being jacked up year after year now. People can't afford these new electricity bills unless they were already rich.

The narrative being pushed is that AI is eating up all the electricity and electric cars will not be sustainable growth-wise. I'm looking at faulty smart meters and people need to document how many kw-hrs are being used and the rates charged on the bills instead of just complaining about the size of the house or apartment and saying the bill has never been near this high before.

I went shopping for a new computer. The new video cards are rated for 1,000 watts. What? That's like running an air conditioner 16 hours a day all year. Maybe it actually uses less and that's just peak power when gaming. My current computer barely uses 100-150 watts despite a new 500 watt power supply installed. It just needs extra power to start up, or the old 350 watt power supply was failing after over 10 years.
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Quote: billryan

Quote: ChumpChange

WSJ headline: Bartenders, showgirls and blackjack dealers in Las Vegas say their tip income has shriveled since last year, in some cases by more than half.
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I've cut down on most of my tipping now that it is not taxed. I've no idea why the tipped class deserves special treatment other than Nevada being a battleground state. Why should Mr P. have to earn $25 to take home $20, which he leaves as a tip to Mr Y, who gets to keep all his earnings? I still tip, just not as generously as I had been.
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Quote: GenoDRPh

News reports of brain-eating amoebas are commonplace in the summer, and have been for years.
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Quote: ChumpChange

It's disaster movie time!
8.8 earthquake off Russia. Tsunami watches and warnings going up across the Pacific. Some reports of 20 to 40 foot waves on the way.
The entire west coast should be on alert. Check your local west coast TV stations. Cable news seems stuck on the usual.
Here's a map of LA's tsunami watch zone. Time expected 1am PDT on Wednesday. 😱

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Quote: GenoDRPh

\
I'll work as many hours in a week my employer wants. Are they going to pay for each and every one of those hours? Are they going to pay OT according to the law? In the US, time is money.Otherwise, they get 40 hours a week from me, unless they ask me to work more and are willing to pay. If I have more than 40 hours in week to work, I'd rather take those extra hours and go back to school and get an advanced degree to make me more marketable. As well, as a boss, I've never ever been impressed with people who work over 40 hours a week, unless asked to do so. I'm giving you 40 hours worth of work to do, and I'm only paying you for 40 hours to do it because that's how much I have in budget to pay you, especially since I have to answer for being over budget. If you need more than that, I'll just assign the extra work you didn't do to someone else and send you home at the scheduled end of your day-doesn't cost me OT. And then I'm going to wonder why you can't get your work done on time on a consistent basis. Second jobs I can see.
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