Child sexual abuse in the UK is soaring, police have said, with 1,000 paedophile suspects being arrested each month and the number of children being rescued from harm rising by 50% in the last five years. ...
Virtually none in civilized countries because for profit hospitals is an obviously stupid idea. Only Americans are both stupid enough to do it, and lazy enough to not burn the country to the ground because of it.
The federal government sometimes left people on Canada's no-fly list without lawful justification, according to a recently released report from one of the country's intelligence watchdogs. ...
The lesson here is that you should politely invite your local Karen over to dinner, to calmly and respectfully discuss the matter once and for all.
In between sips of wine and canapés, bludgeon her to death, flay her and wear her skin. Call the city impersonating her in order to cancel all previous complaints.
Then set your grill to 225F and smoke your long pork for 4 hours. Enjoy with a side of backyard veggies.
No CNS tissue. Just the meat. I mean, the whole point was to get free food from the sweat of your brow and teach the children lessons that needed to be learned.
The libertarian Republican from rural Kentucky has long been a headache for party leaders, but he’s taken it to another level by co-authoring bipartisan legislation that compelled the Justice Department to release vast troves of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. ...
Goeppert Mayer and her contemporaries explained these numbers by proposing that protons and neutrons occupy discrete energy levels, or shells. This model, which is still used to interpret many nuclear physics experiments, treats each particle in the nucleus as independent, but our best quantum theories assert that particles ...
Just as the community adopted the term "hallucination" to describe additive errors, we must now codify its far more insidious counterpart: semantic ablation. ...
"Ambassador", "diplomat" they are just meaningless words under Trump. We need new terms to reflect the new reality. I propose the free world refer to all American "Ambassadors" as Belligerent Politirapists. E.g.
"Thomas Rose, the American Belligerent Politirapist embarrased his country again by metaphoricaly smearing shit all over his face and removing any doubt that he is petty, cruel, stupid and incompetent."
When I figured out that a lot of people are going to spend their better years, wasting away, working jobs they hate every 40 hours of the week and 8 hours a day or longer. That is unless they either have been born with that silver spoon in their mouth or had at least been born with the tools of ambition to develop careers out of ...
Instead of discarding stock, companies are encouraged to manage their stock more effectively, handle returns, and explore alternatives such as resale, remanufacturing, donations, or reuse. ...
“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week. ...
WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found. ...
When there is no constitution, there is no "law". This means Trump is not "President", ICE are not "law enforcement" and "Judge", "Court", "Senator" and "Police" are just meaningless words.
They are now just uncivilized savages using as much political, military and economic violence as they can muster to fight each other over the remains of the dead corpse of what was the United States of America.
The dangerous part of that video is its a half-truth. It is ideologically driven to suit a particular biased narrative.
The "Demographic collapse" narrative chosen is framing today as glorious and tomorrow as catastrophic. Today, while impressive by many accounts, is already catastrophic. Earth's ecology has Planetary Boundaries, limits to what can be sustained. We have crossed 7 of 9 that have been identified to date. Human populations, multiplied by our consumption patterns and waste streams have conscripted nearly all usable land for human purposes leaving "wilderness" ecosystems as a rarity. We have killed off so much wilderness, that we call this moment The Sixth Great Mass Extinction. Yes, humanity's appetites are loosely comparably destructive on the level of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
The word sustainable, means "that which can be carried on indefinitely". Humanity is so far from sustainable, we have an official Earth Overshoot Day. A day that symbolizes when Earth's renewable resources have been consumed and humanity degrades the environment by "eating into our principle, rather than living off the interest" to borrow an analogy from finance.
If humanity were at 2.1 children today, the situation would be enormously MORE catastrophic. Think carefully here - a planet in overshoot that is living off all the ecological "interest" nature provides AND we eat into our principle as well, means next year, there will be even less principle to earn interest. With a stable population, that means each year you eat more and more ecological principle, until there is no principle left, and no interest either.
This is the other half of the truth omitted in that video. We are already more fucked from ecological overshoot, than demographic collapse. Climate change, pollution, soil depletion, groundwater depletion, biodiversity collapse and the conflict over what remains are all contributing factors.
The hope here is Degrowth. A sane, sober, ethical, scientificly based approach with a simple premise. Let's deliberately shrink humanity's ecological footprint until it not only fits sustainably on the planet (interest only) but lets reinvest a small surplus back into the wild so we can restore the ecological principle we so gluttonously consumed. Let's stop the 6th great mass extinction and slowly reverse it.
Now looking at the full picture, falling birthrates are a total and unequivocal blessing. It won't be easy or pleasant, but its the only chance we have to save humanity and some semblance of the natural world that nursed our species into existance. If we are lead by perpetual growthers, we will fight, try and die. If we Degrow, farms turn back into wild forests, savannas and grasslands. Suburbs not only empty, but are actively mined for resources repurposing their glass, brick and copper and aluminum to support our efficient, but smaller urban centres. Many mines are closed, as circular economies and a shrinking population can recycle metals infinitely. What is left can be retreived from the bloated dead corpse of our previous civilization.
Humanity has a collapse built in 100%. The choice before us, is do we Degrow - a managed deliberate attempt to get to a smaller sustainable future based on proven methods and technologies, or do you fight the inevitable and consume all resources until depleted and we are left fighting over the scraps until humanity is snuffed out as are most of the flora and fauna we knew and loved.
When humanity lives on the ecological interest only, then we can stabilize our populations, and maybe grow a bit and shrink as our abilities allow within a sustainable framework.
what makes you think a shrinking population won't be even worse than a growing population?
Short answer: An education in environmental science, ecology and systems theory that says that when faced with such existential challenges, everything, and I mean everything is easier when you take pressure off rapidly depleting resources. Edit: asking people to solve this problem with only consumption, is tying one arm behind their back. Asking people to solve 100% of the problem by just being poorer, presents its own problems and assumes that the problem can be successfully managed only that way. No one wants to be poor. Fewer people through a lower birthrate also means that you get closer to the goal without having to be quite so poor.
On a country by country basis, the low birth rate countries (that is, the rich ones) consume a lot more natural resources than the high birth rate countries.
You are selectively framing the question. I didn't say rich countries are forcing us into overshoot. I said we've already grossly dove into overshoot headfirst. The reckoning is baked in and unavoidable.
Those low consumption high population/birthrate countries are suffering biodiversity loss, groundwater depletion, have PFAS in their rain, microplastics in their brains and a changing climate that will be hostile to their needs. All we have left to do is decide if we want to have a managed collapse, or a chaotic collapse as we dick around with tangential issues at best.
Distrubution of resources, now, during our collapse and after with regards to anything remaining while important, are secondary to getting all of humanity's ecological footprint down to sustainable levels. This necessarily means fewer people AND less consumption. The exact number of people, aggregate consumption per capita and the distribution of consumption within that population are secondary. It's also a moving target. The longer we wait, the more permanent damage we do to earth's carrying capacity and the lower all those numbers become.
We must move with haste and purpose, or die trying. ;)
At a micro level, take the example of greenhouse emissions from the United States, which peaked in 2007.
Looking at CO2 during a selective period and deliberately limited space where they outsourced their emissions to poorer countries is not instructive. The emissions were just taking place in a way you chose not to measure. The waste was still there, but only made worse because we now get to add the emissions from shipping raw materials from Canada to China, goods made in China to the US for primary consumption then the garbage gets shipped to the phillipines for disposal as one of many similar examples.
Simply put, the relationship between birth rate and effect on environment is so loosely related...
Not loose. Complex but direct. People consume resources. Find me the example of people who don't and I'll concede this point.
The solutions are actual engineering and economics, not family planning and demographic policies.
Right-o. More business as usual will surely solve the problems it caused. We just need to double down on our current trajectory. Lol.
Something, something... problems solved.. something something... level of consciousness that created it, or something.
I'm not sure what you mean by Extinctionist. But I will say that many who understand the situation choose to go Vader and would rather go down the eugenics, pogroms and impoverishment of "others". Any good idea can be corrupted by assholes.
Overshoot has a price to be paid in lives through conflict and deprivation. I believe it is preferable for that price to be paid by people never having been born in the first place. It is a key pillar of Degrowth.
Edit: I'm fully aware of other variations and "solutions" to the predicaments we face. I'm just saying of all the possibilities and modalities, if you want to rank :minimize suffering" as a no. 1 goal. This is the way to go.
It's like you are deliberately misunderstanding. Degrowth is the voluntary, ethical managed reduction in consumption and people. Saying "Thanos snap", tells me you don't know what you or I am talking about.
There are a million important conversations to have about consumption and its distribution, they are just of a secondary order to solving the problem. Yes billionaires on private jets should not exist. But ~8.2 billion let's say for simplicity's sake, lower middle class (I'm assuming here your goal is not to maximize people at the expense of abject poverty and primitivity) are not going to fit in their environments in any environmentally sustainable fashion. It absolutely must be both population and consumption. You don't realize how far over the line we've gone.
The extact numbers depend on the details, but 1 billion mostly vegetarian humans living mostly in efficient urban centres defined by electrified economies, public transit, passivehouse can keep a modicum of techno-industrial civilization like modern medicine and probably not cross any planetary boundaries and can rewild much of the planet so the biodiversity loss gets plugged.
8.27 Billion poor humans you suggest, will collapse on their agricultural needs alone. The exhausted groundwater, soil depletion, chemical loading and transportation let alone the floods, droughts, and other extreme weather exacerbated by climate change will exceed earth's carrying capacity in many respects, let alone all the other consumption for human life that goes with those numbers.
Edit:
My point is simple: anyone who believes that climate change is solved by depopulation is dead wrong.
Fine. But that is not what I was ever talking about. Climate Change is one small facet of sustainability. Degrowth is about dealing with all the planetary boundaries we've crossed. Sustainability is all factors combined. Land use, soils, pollution, biodiversity, all of it.
Edit 2: Here is a thought experiment to illustrate. How many people do you think we can clothe sustainably? All our polyester, nylon, rayon clothing is shedding microplastics into the environment. You are full of them now. Fibres are shed each time your clothes go in the wash. So the sustainable solution is to use decomposable materials only. Mostly cotton, linen, hemp and wool. How many people do you think you can clothe with global production of just those materials, without synthetics? How much cotton can we reliable grow every year, accounting for floods and droughts etc...
In a sustainable world, are you still wearing your synthetic Nike Air Force 1's, or are you wearing leather shoes with leather soles? How many cows and sheep are you growing for those shoes? On what land, with what feed. Where do you put the cows emissions?
Tackling sustainability is an enormous job. Solutions are often difficult and limited and imperfect. But every single solution gets magnified and multiplied by having fewer people.
Collapsing birth rates, as required by degrowth are a big part of that solution.
Police arresting 1,000 paedophile suspects a month across UK ( www.theguardian.com )
Child sexual abuse in the UK is soaring, police have said, with 1,000 paedophile suspects being arrested each month and the number of children being rescued from harm rising by 50% in the last five years. ...
I wonder how much money the movie Risky Business made for hospitals from guys trying to imitate Tom Cruise.
Ready for anything
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Government couldn't always justify keeping people on no-fly list: watchdog ( www.cbc.ca )
The federal government sometimes left people on Canada's no-fly list without lawful justification, according to a recently released report from one of the country's intelligence watchdogs. ...
Which one is it!?!
They just wanted to grow food. Their suburban neighbors declared war. ( www.motherjones.com )
In 2013, Nicole and Dan Virgil lived in a lush, affluent suburb of Chicago. Dan had a good job. Nicole home-schooled their two kids. ...
‘You’re Going to See More Defections’: Thomas Massie’s Ominous Prediction for the GOP ( www.politico.com )
The libertarian Republican from rural Kentucky has long been a headache for party leaders, but he’s taken it to another level by co-authoring bipartisan legislation that compelled the Justice Department to release vast troves of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. ...
99% of adults over 40 have shoulder "abnormalities" on an MRI, study finds ( arstechnica.com )
The U.S. ready to make up, Europe ready to break up in Munich ( www.npr.org )
9hr flight, where are you sitting?
The mystery of nuclear 'magic numbers' has finally been resolved ( www.newscientist.com )
Goeppert Mayer and her contemporaries explained these numbers by proposing that protons and neutrons occupy discrete energy levels, or shells. This model, which is still used to interpret many nuclear physics experiments, treats each particle in the nucleus as independent, but our best quantum theories assert that particles ...
‘Daunting but doable’: Europe urged to prepare for 3C of global heating ( www.theguardian.com )
Advisory board member says adapting is ‘not rocket science’ but Europe already paying price for lack of preparation ...
Oops, I made Pizza Again!
I think that's a Brittany Spears lyric. ...
Minister Prévot summons US ambassador ( vrtnws.be )
Belgium's Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot has summoned the US ambassador to Brussels, according to Prévot's spokesperson speaking to VRT NWS. ...
How come in movies tv shows books etc at court they make it seem like swearing on the bible prevents you from lieing? If my family or I was in danger I would lie my ass off to get out of it..
Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is boring and dangerous ( www.theregister.com )
Just as the community adopted the term "hallucination" to describe additive errors, we must now codify its far more insidious counterpart: semantic ablation. ...
Group Sending Canadian Right-Wing Media Personalities on Free Trips to Israel Quietly Funded by the Israeli Government ( pressprogress.ca )
This goes all the way to the top
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts ( www.nytimes.com )
Human "biology was never intended to handle" ultraprocessed foods, former FDA head David Kessler warns ( www.cbsnews.com )
US ambassador's highly undiplomatic remarks spark controversy in Poland ( www.lemonde.fr )
Archive link ...
[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the moderator]
What are some depressing realizations or positive benefits about life you've learned growing up?
When I figured out that a lot of people are going to spend their better years, wasting away, working jobs they hate every 40 hours of the week and 8 hours a day or longer. That is unless they either have been born with that silver spoon in their mouth or had at least been born with the tools of ambition to develop careers out of ...
EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear ( environment.ec.europa.eu )
Instead of discarding stock, companies are encouraged to manage their stock more effectively, handle returns, and explore alternatives such as resale, remanufacturing, donations, or reuse. ...
‘South Texas will never be red again’: Home builders warn GOP over Trump’s immigration raids ( www.politico.com )
“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week. ...
Ultimate toaster design tier list
Based on decades of research. No feedback or change requests will be accepted.
‘Seasons have become confused’: the people struggling in UK’s relentless rain ( www.theguardian.com )
Do you reckon more blowjobs are given by straight women, or gay men?
Perhaps by gay women? Nah couldn't be.... ...
Discrimination
In your opinion have humans ever been cloned?
To better understand the sexuality of living organisms Kinsey studied gall wasps. What if we armed ants, or something, with what would be the equivalent of a nuke...?
Let's visit the grocery store before the movie
Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. ( www.reuters.com )
WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found. ...
That's a bit far-fetched ( media.piefed.world )
Happy Friday (*Finally*!)
Condom shortage hits Winter Olympics as supplies vanish in just 3 days ( www.nbcboston.com )