Trump: "I got better things to do, like stuffing my pee-hole with tic tacs, or having syrupy sex with a maple tree. Anyone else got anything to say?"
This is one of the best things I've seen on the internet so far
mozz
joined 2 years ago
There are quite a few wonderful stories about the AIs continuing after humans are gone. "For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny, and the whole of the Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, are some great ones.
That being said one of the critical points of "For a Breath I Tarry" is that the machines are just doing what they're programmed to do, maintaining the infrastructure for no one and just sitting in their orbits keeping the power grid going and all, and are actively hostile to any effort to bring the humans back because that would make things complicated and isn't in their programming (since although superficially they can converse and act "intelligently," more so than humans, they can't really grasp the purpose of things.) Also, "With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson is another perfectly realistic one.
Cod fishing on Canada's eastern coastal waters was halted in 1992 for two years, with the plan being that the population would recover and they could start fishing again. Did you think the population recovered and they just decided not to start fishing again because they forgot? Or that they just had woken up one day and decided to take the drastic step of banning fishing and throwing 30,000 people out of work and destroying one of their thriving industries because nothing had happened to the fish?
The collapse happened before the ban, not after. And they took long enough to notice and implement it that the fishery was driven to total, semi-permanent collapse before the ban, to an extent that they didn't fully realize until several years had gone by and the fish still hadn't recovered.
Here's a pretty detailed summary of the before and after. In 2005, after 13 years of the ban, the cod biomass off Canada's coast was still about 3% of its pre-industrial-fishing levels. That's why there's still a ban: Not that they just hate sending out boats and bringing in fish, but that the population's still fucked and not really recovering, and so any fishing would be simply giving some additional cleaver-whacks to the already dead golden goose. I don't know what the numbers are now, but I would be surprised if they are dramatically better, and I think the chart I cited is an extremely honest and vivid picture of the results of overfishing, and not loaded or anything else as-fuck.
It's funny how this never gets brought up as far as non rich-white-person crime.
Like hey, this guy robbed a liquor store, but for the good of the community I think we should set him free. See? Doesn't work. But for someone reason when it's a much more dangerous type of criminal who's part of the "tribe," everyone starts nodding their heads and saying yeah, the good of the community, that makes perfect logical sense now that you put it that way.
Not exactly; it collapsed, then they closed it once it was too late, and now it's still fucked, 30 years later.
In the early-1990s, the industry collapsed entirely.
In 1992, John Crosbie, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, set the quota for cod at 187,969 tonnes, even though only 129,033 tonnes had been caught the previous year.
In 1992 the government announced a moratorium on cod fishing.[12] The moratorium was at first meant to last two years, hoping that the northern cod population would recover and the fishery. However, catches were still low,[16] and thus the cod fishery remained closed.
By 1993 six cod populations had collapsed, forcing a belated moratorium on fishing.[14] Spawning biomass had decreased by at least 75% in all stocks, by 90% in three of the six stocks, and by 99% in the case of "northern" cod, previously the largest cod fishery in the world.[14] The previous increases in catches were wrongly thought to be due to "the stock growing" but were caused by new technologies such as trawlers.[13]
Where I grew up, the city wanted to hire a bunch of trucks to drive around spraying malathion into the air. They had a vote, and the town voted overwhelmingly that, fuck no they did not want that, please don't do that, that sounds awful. Then they did it anyway.
Same thing; now there are pretty much 0 fireflies.
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that Israel actively funds Hamas, and helped them defeat their domestic opposition.
Netanyahu has the option of a more peaceful partner, but he didn't want that. He wanted the more violent people in charge, and as far as I know, is still helping them stay in power. The whole theater where he's concerned about what happens to the hostages is a whole heap of bullshit.
Here's a video of one of his allies trying to visit an Israeli hospital, and a family member and a doctor who just spent time dealing with wounded or dying people because of their policies screaming at her to get the fuck out. Which she does, not looking at all upset by the carnage or their reaction, just kind of inconvenienced.
I came in here to talk about what a piece of shit Netanyahu is, and to say it actually might not be a bad idea for him to come talk to congress, because of the potential for backlash which it seems to me would outweigh any benefit I could see this carrying for him (like literally I can't really see any productive point to it -- he's already got his weapons; drawing any more attention to himself and giving people a reason to get pissed off at him and say it directly to his face in a fashion that can get onto the news can only lead to bad things for him).
Instead I found myself encountering the word "Biden" for literally no reason at all. You realize that being so transparent about trying to twist around any news story into your favorite conclusion to draw from it, is just throwing into sharp relief how little of a fuck you give about anything that's not related to your project to try to get Trump elected, yes?
Here's a fun one about the fish:
The sounds, too.
I was talking with my dad walking near to a place that had frogs croaking, and he got a little emotional and excited to hear them over the phone. Normally it's just traffic noises now, and silence.
There's a very serious game of brinksmanship going on right now in the South China Sea, with China playing this (to me) weird and bitchy game of using military vessels to damage other countries' vessels or people, but with the "not weapons" parts of their military vessels (water cannons or flares or etc). To me it is just fuckin weird pussyfooting "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you" behavior, but they're doing it to countries like the Philippines that have defense agreements with the US which is the kind of thing that has the potential to escalate in sudden and unplanned fashion sometimes. This is a pretty good overview. I agree with you that it would be terrible for both countries, but sometimes weird and unplanned shit happens when weapons and big nations are involved.
Also, this statement from the OP article I don't think is fully accurate:
The US doesn't have a longstanding position on Taiwan, other than that we give them weapons and like to talk loudly and pointedly about democracy and how much we like them. We've spent 60 years refusing to say one way or another whether we think they're part of China, or whether we would defend them if China attacked them with military force, and for some reason that's been working so far. Diplomacy is weird.