coolbreeze
Well-Known Member
...smoked a flower.
Random thoughts
- Thread starter Vicki
- Start date
Octavia
No thoughts, head empty
Humans have done surgeries for a LONG time (oldest discovered brain surgery was 3500 years ago for instance), but it was frequently a last resort tool rather than how we know them. I assume future medical practitioners will look at us with the same level of shame and derision in 100 years. Thankfully we all have the benefit of history to hopefully avoid making the same mistakes if we choose to reflect on the past rather than ignore or live in it.
Fun fact: there’s 1 infamous surgeon named Robert Liston who has a 300% mortality rate on a surgery where he killed the patient, his assistant (by slicing off his fingers) and a member of the audience (heart attack after his coat was sliced).
cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
I understand the concept of putting judges on a wheel to try and make sure that they are chosen randomly for any given case. However, am I the only one who believes that cases that reach a certain level of national import should not be administered by brand new, totally Inexperienced or minimally experienced judges? Maybe have two wheels of judges based on some criteria of case significance. But to put an inexperienced judge as the administrator for a case of such crucial importance to our very democracy seems a fool's errand.
coolbreeze
Well-Known Member
There's oversight. It's been effective in the past and hopefully will be as needed. I think the facts will prove so persistent that no skulduggery will be able prevent the inescapable.
But if we're talking about what I think we're talking about, how bitter will it be to draw one of 'your own' judges who really wants to help you but, typically, is incompetent to do so? How bitter will it be when 'your own' judge is forced to make the only possible (allowable) decisions in contradiction to an entire era of power based in magical thinking? Once again, an undersized hand in his own undoing.
cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
Sounds like college in the 70s...
florduh
Well-Known Member
Yeah, you're right. I was just thinking... if "germ theory" was announced this year, there would be a thousand TikTok's of people rubbing dog shit on their hands before they eat to prove it wrong. But that's more or less happening now in different forms.
Only 1% of people have schizophrenia. But 100% of that 1% have TikTok accounts. Apparently...
the moon makes you gay
ice giants are real
Outback Steakhouse is Satanic
Katy Perry is really a clone of JonBenet Ramsey
The Roman Empire never existed
And a shit ton more insane conspiracy theories. Or maybe it's not even schizo shit. Maybe modern humans just still have the exact same brains as medieval peasants. But European potato farmers 1200 years ago who were afraid of witches and trolls didn't have a TikTok.
Radwin Bodnic
Well-Known Member
I'm afraid Europe only discovered potatoes less than 500 years ago... but I'm pretty sure you already knew it.
Ramahs
Fucking Combustion (mostly) Since February 2017
That's exactly it. 1200 years isn't even a drop in the bucket of evolutionary time. We have basically the same brains as someone 1200 years ago. We're the same humans. No smarter, no dumber.
The only difference is we figured out how to document and transfer our knowledge to other future humans so that they can "stand on the shoulders of giants" and continue via "education". However, we will always have waves of anti-intellectual/anti-education movements. I just hope that those waves get smaller and smaller as time goes on.
florduh
Well-Known Member
I didn’t know what medieval peasants were harvesting. Took a guess. But in my defense I just took on a lot of psychic damage from watching a 30 minute video on TikTok conspiracy theories
You’re right. Probably the same brain as cave men too.
But it is a little disheartening because medieval peasants lived before the printing press was invented. So I gotta cut them more slack than people with access to the totality of human knowledge in their pockets who still believe in ice giants and Kim Kardashian clones.
Radwin Bodnic
Well-Known Member
They harvested mostly onions and wheat.I didn’t know what medieval peasants were harvesting. Took a guess. But in my defense I just took on a lot of psychic damage from watching a 30 minute video on TikTok conspiracy theories
Yeah I can understand the psychic damage, I am myself a lightweight regarding this type of content...
It has been proven that before the agricultural revolution and settlement of humanity, Homo sapiens had a better performing brain than nowadays.
Having access to the knowledge don't mean you can understand it. Elites always have been efficient at maintaining ignorance of the masses. It has ever been their only source of power.
After the discovery of America, when europeans introduced potatoes, tomatoes and peppers to europe, they had a hard time convincing people to eat them.
For starters, potatoes are from the solanum/tomato family, so their leaves are poisonous... tomatoes are poisonous to many animal species, they won't eat it in the fields.. and some peppers burn as hell!
Now they are a huge portion of european cuisine, if you add corn for example, you cover 90% of the diet of the italians.
For starters, potatoes are from the solanum/tomato family, so their leaves are poisonous... tomatoes are poisonous to many animal species, they won't eat it in the fields.. and some peppers burn as hell!
Now they are a huge portion of european cuisine, if you add corn for example, you cover 90% of the diet of the italians.
cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
I'd love to think those waves had crested, but no, I think they're still building. I fear a tsunami in the near future...
florduh
Well-Known Member
I wonder how much of this comes down to the effects of mass communication technologies on society. The popularization of the printing press comes to mind.
After the printing press came the First Poster, Martin Luther. The first posting flame-wars between Protestants and Catholics eventually gave way to the 30 Years War. 20% of Europe died. It also saw the old feudal order give way to capitalism.
I think we're living through a similar upheaval now.
coolbreeze
Well-Known Member
I think the real issue we will have in the not too distant future is massive relocation of people toward the poles, beginning with a stampede from the equatorial regions starting soon. If this doesn't get the reactionaries riled nothing will. Combined with skyrocketing food prices and other stressors, they will have a field day. We really need to guard democracy with our lives and make our kids ready.
cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
I have absolutely no doubt that social media is a huge contributor to all of this hostility and violence that is expressed today against one another. And if you want to drill down even further, it's the anonymity of the social media. People don't do this sort of thing in person the same way they do when they can hide behind an avatar. It's not exclusively the anonymity as you can see in recent school board meetings, but it is mostly because of the anonymity and that has spilled over into those meetings as people have become used communicating in uglier ways.
I think we could reduce a lot of it by requiring the social media companies to identify us and make us post under our own real names. But I suspect that is not something the community would go along with changing.
olysh pops
Well-Known Member
We eat mostly wheat, vegetables, cabbage, carrots, starches, beans, pitch, fish, meat and lots of other things like frogs and snails
hahahaha
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florduh
Well-Known Member
Yeah it's gonna be wild to watch fascists go from "Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax" to "it's real and the (final) solution is to mass murder refugees".
I also wondered why we're spending a trillion a year (5 times more than ChYYYYna) on the military and zero dollars preparing our infrastructure to survive a changing climate. You know, stuff like hardening our power grids so Texans don't freeze to death every winter. Or a power surge doesn't lead to a mass casualty forest fire.
Then I realized.... duh!!! This IS our climate change plan! Stuff like dwindling freshwater supplies are gonna mean lots of new conflicts around the world. Plus the military could be useful for stuff like, mowing down refugees from global south nations we've been dicking over for decades.
Lots of cools stuff on the horizon!
I don't disagree. The problem is, social media companies make money by selling our data so giving them a picture of our government ID's is gonna be a tough sell.
olysh pops
Well-Known Member
I understand your point of view.
Some people also propose a slightly different solution, such as respecting anonymity for the weak and respecting transparency for the powerful. Sounds good to me too.
Maybe we cannot get some people to fully agree to accept that the globe is warming, given we are using recorded human history and it's too low of a sample, but we can surely do like when the ozone hole was an issue...
Get everyone to agree that warm climates are bad and we as a whole prefer a cooler climate, thus trying to kick a "human engineered global cooling era" where we would set goals as "every home should be fully solar paneled", "cities are huge concrete blocks that irradiate heat and we must cover them with trees and fountains to lower average temps", and stuff where we know we can take action and measure, like not using more CFC in our spray cans and then actually looking at the ozone layer heal.
Get everyone to agree that warm climates are bad and we as a whole prefer a cooler climate, thus trying to kick a "human engineered global cooling era" where we would set goals as "every home should be fully solar paneled", "cities are huge concrete blocks that irradiate heat and we must cover them with trees and fountains to lower average temps", and stuff where we know we can take action and measure, like not using more CFC in our spray cans and then actually looking at the ozone layer heal.
coolbreeze
Well-Known Member
I just saw that the USG will significantly fund a couple massive carbon capture plants in I think TX and LA, maybe? And recent developments in fusion are beginning to show promise but this is more than a tech problem and we will have baked-in consequences we must deal with and all of them will add stress. But humans are adaptable and nothing focuses your attention like saving your children. Voting is job one.
