I don’t believe we will leave isolated, big, and diverse oasis of specimens to just repopulate vacant areas.
We are well into a huge (and particularly very fast) mass extinction event, sure only a few headline megafauna species get press coverage, but the amount of invertebrates alone that go extinct and in contrast a single or a few species temporary takes its place in turn expediting the imbalance levels & collapsing entire ecosystems is staggering.
Insect die offs really scare me, so many fruits and plants are pollinated by them, or things just up the food chain from them. Then I just can’t help imagining a chain of collapse from there.
I think humans will be the last living things to go unless we engineer our own extinction early.
Exactly. Plus the whole underwater portion of ecology we have basically no data on (yet it’s of huge global importance). Scary, sad, infuriating stuff.
Unfortunately I too think that we will outlive our consequences for long enough to take a proper mass extinction event levels of biodiversity collapse with us.
But let’s focus on the positive - biodiversity boom between mere 10 million years from now to like 50 or 100 million years from now (which in the scheme of things isn’t that long, just very unnecessary that it will come to that for something like capital/amassing of power of one species over others of the same species).
I think humans will be the last living things to go unless we engineer our own extinction early.
Evolution happens as long as there is life. Unless we turn the planet surface into a giant ball of lava, it is impossible to kill all life and it will continue without us. Even if there is only bacteria left after we go, they will simply evolve into complex life all over again, in fact it’s not the first time that has happened. In the grand scheme of what life has withstood on this planet, humans are a speed bump at best.
Yes, debates don’t really center on the issue of sterilizing the whole planet (fyi there are deep-rock bacteria everywhere so “just” molten surface isn’t enough), but rather on the loss we are causing.
Ie ending species that without us would have no issue evolving & continuing to be part of the ecosystems.
Also from bacterial life to complex fauna its easily a billion years (+/- a lot).
Ie ending species that without us would have no issue evolving & continuing to be part of the ecosystems.
That’s not true though. Even the animals we’ve created, like cats and dogs, can live on just fine without us. As can most small and micro herbivores like mice, rabbits, certain songbirds, and most of the “pest” insects; as well as mesopredators (middle of the food chain predators) like foxes and the aforementioned cats and dogs. Plenty of plants are asexual and do not require external pollination, including many of the invasive plants that we can’t kill despite our best efforts.
Actually, invasive species in general are a major counterexample. We’ve been trying to drive many of them to extinction, they are not going extinct. Australia is trying to kill feral cats, that’s not working. The US spends billions on herbicides against invasive plants, that’s not working and many argue that it’s doing more harm to native plants in some cases than the invasive plants themselves. They also tried to kill European sparrows and starlings which are also not working. Same with fire ants. Same with invasive fish. Same with invasive seaweed and algae.
In fact, in environmental sciences which I majored in, there is increasing discussion on whether calling species “invasive” even makes sense. Humans are also part of the ecosystem and of “nature” despite us claiming to be the masters of it. We are subject to its laws just like all other life, so if a mite can hitch a ride on a bird across the ocean and that’s considered natural migration, why shouldn’t a mouse that hitches a ride on a human boat across the ocean be considered natural migration? There is no morality in nature, it just is and everything is fair game, so we really need not worry “for nature,” we should be worrying for ourselves about losing our place in it by going extinct. Adapt or die, that’s nature’s one and only rule, so if we don’t want to die we need to adapt and clean up our act basically.
No. If cats dont have anything to eat bcs their food is also extinct then they absolutely cannot just continue fine without us.
Same with plants, all of them require eg water of certain qualities etc.
We are changing habitats (and killing species trough that), not killing specific species directly (eg hunting, pesticides, etc) and via the lack of them changing the habitats.
And by changing the habitats I mean at speeds far beyond what evolution can keep up with, so it comes to more of a reset. So the sadness of this wiki/Biodiversity_loss followed by booms like wiki/Cambrian_explosion, but ofc note the timescales.
Biodiversity loss and the loss of all life are two completely different things. Biodiversity loss and mass extinction has happened numerous times in the history of life. The one caused by us isn’t even the most significant one. We’re not even the most significant group of organisms that has caused mass extinctions, that probably goes to the myriad prehistoric species that caused the initial rapid rise in water and atmospheric oxygen levels which ended up killing most organisms including most of themselves (whom we owe our own existence to by the way, when species die out other species fill their place). Obviously not saying that we shouldn’t do something about our ecological impact, but the idea that unless WE fix ourselves all life is doomed is just not true and is a pretty “white knight” attitude. The reason we should clean up our act is for our own survival, we shouldn’t delude ourselves that all life on Earth is counting on us. “Nature” or “the ecosystem” as an entity really doesn’t care what happens to it, nor does it have any ability to care.
We have maintained huge megafauna populations though, who are ready and able to take over the moment we go. Cows, sheep, and yes, horses like shown in the comic, are prime examples. We’re also doing a damn good job of killing all their natural predators, namely wolves and big cats.
Horses have actually become an invasive species in some parts of the Americas and driving out native large herbivores. Ever heard of American wild horses? They’re technically “feral horses” because they did not exist in this hemisphere before Europeans came.
You need only look at how our species treats one another, despite claiming to know better, to understand why. Endless styles of cruelty of the many by the few in the name of greed, gluttony, power lust, and schadenfreude. The few voices of sanity and compassion assassinated, mowed down, blacklisted, and threatened into contrition. Literally destroying civilization pumping carbon shit into the air, fully aware of what we’re doing, to continue stoking the ego scores of a handful of sociopaths.
I do think there’s something positive about being the only species we know of with the intelligence and knowledge developed over generations to even realize these things and much such judgements. The plants that filled the atmosphere with oxygen killing almost everything couldn’t know any better or do anything about it. Past species and humans before modern times changed their environments and caused extinctions without even knowing. And while we might not end up doing so, we do have the capabilities to do better.
I’ve thought about that and to me it makes it worse. We have glimmers of knowing better, of doing the right thing, just enough to demonstrate that we *can, * but 99 times out of 100 we don’t.
You can’t get angry at a lion for following it’s genetic programming, it doesn’t have the capacity for introspection about its nature. Its sentient, but not sapient. We can know better, with our cognitive abilities combined with tools of historical recording most of us do know better, but when presented the chance to take either our share of the pie with our brothers and sisters, or to take the whole pie and leave them hungry, we pick the latter like clockwork.
The tragedy is knowing that we have the capacity to be a great people that accomplishes wonders together, but we still choose to fight one another for the biggest banana pile like impulsive beasts almost every time throughout recorded history. We refuse to learn. We refuse to heed the lessons of history for longer than a single generation. We can glimpse enlightenment, but choose the easy dopamine hit. It’s maddening.
I am fine with it but I feel they should have alternatives. Some people don 't have a device, connection. Or have issues with using technology for whatever reason, being old, incapacitated, etc.
If they don’t have a good internet connection available for free for customers with a good mobile website, why would anyone visit and actually struggle through the ordering process?
It’s a niche probably imaginary scenario they want to strawman. If a place has shit cell service or no Wi-Fi then they clearly aren’t using QR codes and just shrugging their shoulders confused at every customer.
Then they don’t eat there. I don’t see the problem. Might be the owners problem. But hopefully it was taken into cinsideration. If not, though luck again.
That’s not quite how accessibility regulations are structured. Wouldn’t surprise me if there are requirements on this in any given jurisdiction. Perhaps not a ‘thou shalt have printed menus’ but some kind of reasonable accommodation I think isn’t absurd.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to require restaurants to spend a little money to print menus, and even a little more to get braille ones. There’s millions of people who might have some difficulty or another using a browser based menu, certainly we can do better than saying “sorry, tough luck.”
Have you switched to Firefox for privacy? Sold your gas guzzler and started biking so you aren’t climate changing? Canceled Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Xed Twitter so you aren’t ripped off? Installed bidets so you aren’t killing trees to wipe your shit?
Still love my car, but public transit for commute is the way. Die the rest, actually yeah, apart from the bidet. I saw that on Reddit all the time too, maybe it really is such a life changer. Did you know they are really cheap and can be bought as add-ons to your existing toilet?
If he does his job well, he can get the money. Deal?
This means being responsive and responsible when issues happen with water, heating, electricity, mold and vermin. It means making sure that if they repaint an appartment, they don’t just set a bomb in there to splatter the place. Actually remove the cupboard doors before painting. It means not painting over electric outlets.
It also means not cutting the water for three days a month, replacing the toilet when it breaks, not a week later. It means maintenance on the building’s laundry room. Clean shared spaces. Secure entrance that actually locks, and actually unlocks.
Those are only some of the issues I had when renting. It is demeaning to be treated like that, and then be asked for money.
I realized very early on that renting is incredibly expensive and that getting my own place was the most important step to having any sort of financial security. Even if it was a shithole, it was my shithole for storing my equity. I hear these stories of people who rent the same place for 20-30 years and end up paying fivefold what it would have cost them to live in a much nicer place with no cunt landlord to pay fealty to.
Obviously, if you’re paying for a service and not getting it, you have a right to complain. If your landlord provides reliable shelter for an agreed upon price, I don’t think it’s fair to consider them the scum of the earth. People have a right to own property and do what they see fit with it.
Yep, I basically got a very cheap rate from my landlord because he’s currently living thousands of miles away so he doesn’t really know the market rate for my area and he basically just told me just send him the invoice for any upkeep that I need to reduce my rent based on that.
If more landlords are like him, people’s sentiment on landlords would be better.
That’s an option that is actively being removed by massive firms. Empty houses are common, but available houses are few and affordable available houses are very rare.
Can’t. Rich assholes and massive firms are buying them at insane prices so they can rent them out at double what a mortgage would cost. And that drives more people to apartments which drives their prices up.
There’s a housing shortage in my area, and 30 percent of houses are empty. But if you jack up the rent enough, you make more money off those that can pay the ransom than you would by lowering the rent to get all units rented. It’s an artificial scarcity created by landlords.
I work in municipal development and literally every single-family project that’s approached the city in the last 18 months is for rental only, because they figured out that mortgages don’t go up and eventually end, so why sell the houses at all?
You make use of someone’s services, you pay for it. If you hate landlords, don’t indebt yourself to landlords. I started off with nothing, now I’m a homeowner.
If I’m so fucking clueless, how come I have a mortgage and you don’t?
I lived in a basement suite, followed by a dump of an old house, before I found a slightly less dumpy old house to purchase in a rural area that most city folk would absolutely hate. This was all before the age of 20. Sold my old house about 7 or 8 years later to a younger man who had a very similar starting plan.
Now I have a 5 bedroom house on two acres. It’s not in some heavily populated area, it’s out in the country and it’s affordable.
Anyway, if you’re a single parent over 40 working at McDonald’s, you’ve made far too many bad decisions in life for me to be of any help.
How did you buy the basement suite? Or did you rent it? Almost nobody graduates high school with enough cash to buy a house, so…
far too many bad decisions
Hard disagree. I work as a programmer which pays well enough to be comfortable. The work doesn’t suit everyone, and even if it did, we need people doing other things than programming for the world to work! That includes fast food, retail, etc. The cliche is teenagers and college kids, but in fact over half of people making minimum wage are older.
That includes a lot of single parents – spouse left, now they have to scramble for income even before child support kicks in. They’re not all just jackasses you can dismiss with “bah, they made their bed”.
My problem with your advice to “just buy a house” is that it’s not actionable for at least half the population.
“I’m so sick of these people who won’t stop thinking or talking about people who won’t stop thinking or talking about annoying guy” say people who are talking about people who won’t stop thinking or talking about annoying guy.
“I’m so sick of these people who won’t stop thinking or talking about people people who won’t stop thinking or talking about people who won’t stop thinking or talking about annoying guy” say people who won’t stop thinking or talking about people people who are talking about people who won’t stop thinking or talking about annoying guy.
Perhaps in the short term regarding albedo, though IR still largely shines through. Once the smoke dissipates soon though, it’ll be back to “normal”, except now with a large boost in CO2 levels, leading to more heating. Except it won’t be normal because the blackened forests then decrease the albedo even further than it was before. Burnt forests also get less snowpack, which again further reduces albedo. Anyone who’s dealt with heavy wildfire smoke knows the smoke tends to trap heat under it like a big blanket, too.
Wildfires (especially as big as we see them today) are definitely a net bad thing for the environment, health, communities, etc.
Wildfires are actually an important part of a forests life cycle, and they have always been around. They kill off massive swaths of old forest allowing new forest to grow, and diversifying the environment. They have been around since the forests have been, and there is a reason why they are not cited as one of the many things that is so bad for the environment. It is because they are necessary. The native Americans used to do controlled burns which would allow us to coexist with the forest fires without damaging either life form. We Americans, however, killed the vast majority of them so we could take this land. This is why it has gotten so out of hand today.
Yes, this is all correct. It was my intention to differentiate the extreme hell-blazes we often see today that completely destroy forests (soil and all) from the much smaller healthier, and more regular fires that merely thin them. Fires are important, but because of gross forest mismanagement, now for forests to undergo their natural burn cycle is to completely burn to a crisp.
As I suspected it appears they tortured the snails somehow (my guess is electric shock) to create traumatic memories. This has been done with caterpillars I think to see if they retain memories after turning into butterflies and they do, despite basically turning into primordial goop in the cocoon. They do, and it’s tested by seeing if they retain aversions to certain areas of their cages that are electrified.
Then something about enzymes created which associate memory with pain and being able to target them.
Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I’d like erased.
There is debate about how the therapy works and whether it is more effective than other established treatments.[1][5] The eye movements have been criticized as having no scientific basis.[6] The founder promoted the therapy for the treatment of PTSD, and proponents employed untestable hypotheses to explain negative results in controlled studies.[7] EMDR has been characterized as a pseudoscientific purple hat therapy (i.e., only as effective as its underlying therapeutic methods without any contribution from its distinctive add-ons).[8]
I read about that fifteen years ago and dismissed it as pseudoscience. Wikipedia confirms. Pass (thanks though, don’t mean to be rude)
‘Glib’ - when the words come out your mouth are fluent, but insincere and shallow.
McDonald’s Sprite tastes good, it has just the right sweetness and fizz. It’s always exactly the same wherever you go yet somewhat fake and hollow. Similarly, hotel conditioners in my experience, are cold and effective - in the way a walk in fridge is designed to keep meat fresh. Purely functional and devoid of tangible comfort. ‘Glib’.
Ok, but my workplace has a walk in freezer and that place absolutely has “tangible comfort” in abundance when it’s 95° outside and the air conditioner barely keeps up with the ovens…
I worked in a kitchen at a cult on a compound in Texas for a year and that summer was a hot one. One those 100F+ days I’d head into the kitchen on my off hours and hang out in the deep freeze walk in. This was 20 years ago, but if memory serves it was set to something like -10F, and god was it wonderful to cool down in. I’d stay in for 5 or 10 minutes and come out ready to go again. I loved it.
I’m not sure if I understand how hotel AC functionality is devoid of comfort. Wouldn’t a functional AC also be indicative of comfort? Definitely better than a Non-functional AC i suppose.
I dated an “Argentinian” girl in college called Julia Göring. She told me that unlike most families with Nazi related last names, hers decided to keep theirs per her grandmother’s insistence.
We can make a single ray of light hit a wall and go through two or more windows at the same time, then interfere with itself. No magic, just don’t look too closely at the windows or it stops working.
We can also make two perpendicular polarizers stop blocking all light by adding more polarizers in between them. Also not magic, but the brightening is not linear, don’t ask why.
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