One poll this year found that almost one in three Americans say they may never retire. The majority of the nevers said they could not afford to give up a full-time job, especially when inflation was eating into an already measly Social Security cheque. But suppose you are one of the lucky ones who can choose to step aside. Should you do it? …
But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action? You can have a packed diary devoid of deadlines, meetings and spreadsheets and flourish as a consumer of theatre matinees, art exhibitions and badminton lessons. Hobbies are all well and good for many. But for the extremely driven, they can feel pointless and even slightly embarrassing.
That is because there is depth in being useful. And excitement, even in significantly lower doses than are typical earlier in a career, can act as an anti-ageing serum. Whenever Mr Armani is told to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labour, he replies “absolutely not”. Instead he is clearly energised by being involved in the running of the business day to day, signing off on every design, document and figure.
Who exactly is this article being written for?
Clearly, it’s not written towards anyone working the average job. It presupposes that your job must be the most fulfilling and useful thing you could do.
It even calls out tech professionals as retiring early. But how many programmers can’t think of a more useful or fulfilling open source project to work on than what they do at their day job?
I got a taste of early “retirement” thanks to Covid. Being unemployed can be stressful, and having less money is also not great, but god it was amazing.
It hurt my finances a bunch, but it changed something in me for the better, and it changed my perspective on my career. Work is still important to support myself and my family, but it is not part of my identity and self worth.
Going months without my family, pets, and hobbies is simply not an option. But going months without work would be great to do again, if the money were not an issue. And I really like my new position and the company!
The more practical version of that is: fuck long hours, stress, and fighting for a promotion to managing or whatever. I’d get a bit more money but enjoy my life less.
Software engineer here. There are so many projects that I’d love to contribute to, but can’t because my regular job gets me so mentally exhausted and I can only switch context so much. My job is fulfilling, don’t get me wrong, but there are so many other projects that are desperately in need of help but can’t get any because it’s not profitable.
I’m looking forward to the day that I switch to a more relaxing job so I can do some more side projects. I know exactly what my retirement is going to look like. Fuck the economists for telling us what’s important and what isn’t. They only think about one thing: money. And as long as it makes money, it has purpose in the world. They can’t possibly fathom that there are important things in the world that don’t fit into their one dimensional economic view of the world. Fuck them so hard!
i imagine there are a lot of people, if not most, who feel like you do.. it seems like enormous untapped creative potential waiting to be harnessed by the internet..
Bacteria multiply crazy fast… as long as the food source was uninterrupted I’d almost guarantee you most people’s microbiome would be fully recovered in just a few hours and they’d not even notice.
And the big thing that fucks people up is not only the high loss but also the antibiotics slowing or stopping additional reproduction. That keeps the population depressed for an extended period and then you get the shits.
They would probably feel bad for at least a week or two since half of everyone they know also died. On average, of course - maybe some folks were just lucky and no one they knew died so they might feel grateful to the dice rolling entities.
I think is depends on which micro-organisms get destroyed.
The snap didn’t always kill 50% of the people in an area. Sometimes it was just one or two people out of dozens and other times it was all except one person in an area.
How do the forces behind the infinity stones classify and quantify different micro-organisms? would it treat the good kinds and bad kinds equally? Would it distinguish between different kinds of micro-life at all?
I said this farther up in the thread, but in some places the infinity stones killed all except one person in an area full of people, and in other places it was just one or two people that got dusted out of dozens. What if it’s a situation like that inside of people’s gut biomes? Like some people getting all their good bacteria killed and some people only getting their bad bacteria killed?
How long can gut microbiomes survive after the host is dead? Wouldn't a dead host essentially mean near 100% fatality for the gut microbiome meaning that anybody killed by a Thanos snap would also mean a 100% kill rate of their gut bacteria, leaving any survivors to basically keep all 100% of their gut bacteria?
Well the implication in-universe is that the actual snap was killing 50% of all life, not any death afterwards. If we’re counting bacterial life as individual living beings in this 50%, then it shouldn’t matter whether the host itself got snapped or not, since the bacteria are “separate” and would be left behind after a snap…
Right so then couldn't it follow that human survivors may have no impact on their gut bacteria? If there are only two people and their microbiomes, and the snap kills 1 person and their entire microbiome, then the surviving person would have no or microscopically small impact on their bacteria assuming an even distribution of bacteria across the two people. Basically the OOP is assuming that of the people that died, half of their bacteria would survive, impacting survivors' microbiomes, rather than assuming 100% of bacteria would die with their hosts, leaving the surviving population's bacteria intact.
Even better, your microbiome covers your entire body (anything exposed to air) and into any organs that are part of the waste processing system.
So briefly after the snap you would see a vague outline of the creature, with a well defined digestive tract (mouth to anus), eyes, nose, ears, sinus system, and bladder. Because bacteria, viruses, and fungi are all quite small, the cluster of gut organisms would probably fall, and the rest would drift away. Imagine being in a crowded space and just breathing in all those bacteria, viruses, and fungi… 🤮 I bet a lot of people would die from infections.
If the creature had any parasitic infections, like a tapeworm, that could also be left behind.
Our doubling time isn’t that bad either. We reached 4 billion in 1970s. If we round up the current population to 8 billion that’s about 50 years. That’s all that thanos would add by the snap. Even less probably because we have better medicine now so it would be easier to reach that number.
I kind of expect developed countries would maintain the current trend of being slightly below replacement value. Probably depends on the psychological impact of the snap. People tend to have fewer children when they know the ones they have are safe.
It depends on how the snap worked. It was 50% of all life in the universe. Was that 50% of every species? Or just 50% of all living things? If it’s the latter it’s possible some species were missed entirely while others were completely wiped out.
But no one lost 50% of their own cells, so clearly if it’s alive and can be classified as a single organism. Is the gut micro biome an independent body of organisms, or is it just like any other organ of the human body, and thus would have been unaffected by the snap?
Either everyone lost almost exactly 50% of their gut biome, or, about half of all living organisms lost 100% of it, or, no one lost any part of it. Those are the only three possibilities.
The more interesting question is were viruses affected? Or did the magic stones not consider them life?
Depends on the micro-biome actually. An expert chef that’s always taste-testing new things would have a very healthy micro-biome, but a lot of autistic people that only like eating a very short list of things would have their micro-biomes wrecked really bad
I feel like I would probably spend much of my time contributing to existing open source code or try making games if I did not have to work for a living. I do like what I am doing but when it becomes the only thing I am doing, its not so great.
That’s assuming that half of the gut biomes of all humans was just left floating around. No, it’s more likely that the biomes were snapped out of existence with their hosts.
well when you get snapped all that’s left is dust. perhaps that dust is all the microbes in your body that survive the snap. It clearly takes up far less space that if it just disintegrated you.
This and the replies here are actually kind of inspiring. I guess I dont work right now and its very stressful because I feel stuck in my parents home, I dont have the power to craft my life the way I like just yet. But if I never had to work? It’d be so cool to just make art about what life feels like. I’d probably try harder at improving the social experience around me, as opposed to being so confident I need to move away in order to ever be important or build wealth.
I think the real problem would be ecosystem collapse.
Ecosystems evolve as complex, interdependent systems with nonlinearities. What happens when you kill off 50% of pollinators in a single instant? 50% of plankton? 50% of grasses? The problem with nonlinear systems is that killing off half of A and half of B won’t have a linear effect if the relationship depends on having minimum levels of A. Assume it’s a random function such that we kill off half of all plants and on top of that half of all rhizobium bacteria which fix nitrogen for many plant species. Now we’re killing off potentially all plants that depend on having a stable population of rhizobium bacteria, which will have a cascading effect throughout the already devastated ecosystem. It’s all about tipping points and sigmoid curves and such.
The truth is that it was a completely stupid idea, and it was what finally broke my love of the marvel franchise. Either you have runaway ecosystem collapses, or the populations will simply return back to their original levels to hit their ecological carrying capacities again. Kill off half of termites, and you’ll probably be back to the same level of termites in a decade or less. Even with people (using the word inclusively across all technological species), you’d have a population surge that within less than a century or so would be brought back to carrying capacities. Populations self-regulate via interaction with their ecosystems. You’re either going to end up with 100% extinctions or system recovery to current levels within a very brief period via normal reproduction and evolutionary dynamics.
It was a massive effort undertaken by an immortal and massively intelligent person that is inherently flawed because the marvel writers apparently never took Biology 101-102. I’m not saying it was GoT season 8 levels of bad, but after watching those last couple of movies I not only never rewatched them, but I checked out of the mcu pretty much entirely after having rewatched the previous movies multiple times each.
The movies did a great job at presenting thanos as an extremist that sincerely wants the greater good by questionable means, but it falls apart because his grand plan is just so stupid. The only way to reconcile the sympathetic character with the dumb plan is to point out he’s “THANOS THE MAD TITAN”, not “THANOS THE TITAN THAT FULLY CONSIDERS THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ACTIONS”
Would have been much better if they just kept his original motivation from the comics: Death is a hot lady and horny thanos does the snap as a gift to her
My problem isn’t that he’s a Mad Titan, but that the plot makes Ready Player One look like Les Miserables. It’s basically a concept script you’d expect to see coming out from the writer pool from 30 Rock where Tracy Jordan has a six armed alien outfit.
We all know GoT died the death it did because they had absolutely no idea how to wrap it up and just wanted to be done with it. The mcu money should have been more than enough to do a proper job with transitioning the storyline, but they felt the need to do something blockbusting with it. I would rather have had a Watchmen style conclusion where some people move into retirement homes while the next generation comes forward, but their need to go over the top just turned it into a ludicrous script.
I really don’t care that much. I was getting a bit tired of the franchise anyway (although the new GotG was pretty great), but it always kind of sucks when you can tell that the creatives involved just don’t care anymore. Contrast that with something like the final episode of MASH.
Snapping half the life forms also snaps half of the world’s gut bacteria. If we removed half of the gut bacteria from those who weren’t snapped, that would be removing 75% of the universe’s gut bacteria, not 50%.
Why assume that though? The Infinity Gauntlet isn’t a Monkey’s Paw, it reads beyond the words and answers the intent of the wielder. So much so, in fact, that it even includes subconscious thoughts and feelings as part of its interpretation. I see often these ideas predicated on the Gauntlet working on Monkey Paw logic despite that being clearly and specifically not how it operates within canon.
50% of what Thanos considers life since it was powered by his will. Since he seemed to imply that nature (plants and animals) where not part of this it’s safe to assume it was sapient life only.
Except animals definitely were - remember endgame, Barton went into the office looked out the window to a small garden and found birds had appeared. Very indicative that the snap included animals
Do we know if Thanos believed in life at conception or birth? Does someone with a donated organ count as one life, two or zero since they wouldn’t be alive without the organ. If I only ate one foot, or how about one toe, does that make me a cannibal?
Yeah, the Gauntlet wouldn’t leave anything that can’t survive on its own, like gut bacteria, nor remove anything that’s needed for the proper functioning of another lifeform. It’s why there weren’t any fetuses falling to the ground after the pregnant women vanished.
I would assume that conjoined twins would be a both-or-neither situation, since removing one would leave a gaping wound in the other even if they could have survived independently with surgery,
It kinda sidesteps the whole thing, since the standard is life that is dependent on other life to survive is not counted separately. Like the conjoined twins thing I mentioned.
Which is, of course, just a bullshit justification. Reality-altering power, and your solution is to kill people? Not create more resources, or make it so living things require less resources? He’s an unimaginative idiot.
Wait. If that is how it happened that means when half the population came back they all came back with 0% of their gut bacteria. Holy shit that would be horrible. The population doubles overnight and every single person and animal has the worse runs of their life. Meanwhile they can’t get the nutritional needs no matter how much food they eat. Spend the next few months while their family cries as they wither away surrounded by food.
No, the desired effects was to undo Thanos’s snap, not double the human population. This means that all of the gut bacteria got unsnapped exactly the same as everyone else
Yeah you’re correct, my bad. In the films, however.
edit: I guess they kind of tackle the issue, although they for some reason seemed to focus more on where these people go rather than how to handle the sudden resource strain
Don’t worry, the litter of bodies from people that were on planes or high speed trains, or on ships will provide nutrients for the starving masses.
Then suicides and murders as people return to find their loved ones remarried or dead because they committed suicide, should also provide another nutritional bump in the following weeks.
Then the following World War should deal with everyone else.
This is one of the many reasons why I say Tony Stark is a bigger villain to the universe than Thanos.
A sudden LACK of mouths is much more favorable than suddenly DOUBLING them.
I order to keep his family alive, he just brings them all back, many years out of place in a universe completely and totally unprepared for their arrival. Not to mention all the people who died AFTER the snap, as a direct result of the snap, will still be dead.
Tony stark is supposed to be smart. So he should know the consequences of his action, and completely disregards it.
And the series pretends he did the universe a favor.
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