venal /vē′nəl/ adjective
Open to bribery; mercenary. Characterized by corrupt dealings, especially bribery.
This is a commentary on rage baiting news headlines. Yes. It’s as it always has been. That the world moves on despite the news saying the world is ending.
It will continue for precisely as long as it continues to work… (plus probably a bit longer to account for lag time).
e.g. one of the earliest historical writings on this planet made this statement perhaps 3,000 years ago:
There is nothing new under the sun.
But… we seem to still need to keep re-learning that, every few generations.
This is also the 1st time in history we could fuck up bad enough that it wont be recoverable. Climate change, nuclear war, biological experimentation, AI… it seems inevitable that we will erase humanity from the galaxy.
Pretty sure people though that in the 1910s, then again in the 1940s, then a few times in the 70s/80s, and now seems like a persistent feeling over the last 10-20 years or so.
Eventually we’ll be right, but humans as a group seem to have incredibly bleak outlooks.
Ya, by 1st time, i meant in the last generation of humans. Starting in the 30s or so when people started seeing the invention of the things listed above.
I didnt mean like just now in the 2023. Or last decade.
The 30s were about 3-4 generations ago…
Yup, it’s so weird even that we might also have the technology to save ourselves - like maybe AI should be ruling us instead of humans (bc that way whoever made the AI can be the secret king - surely that’s not new either:-P).
But history does tend to run in cycles, for whatever that’s worth. One day the sun won’t shine down on us anymore, but so far it always has, even if that doesn’t mean that it always will.
In any case, definitely some hard times coming up ahead, that much seems certain at least. Though extinction, while possible, is not a foregone conclusion. I mean, if even Kurzgesagt can find hope, it must be warranted.:-) video 1, video 2 focusing mostly on climate change
hey all our leaders up to now have been corrupt but I will just let God rule this land (through me)
I mean… kinda? If i do the math in my head… if there is a 1 in a million chance every day for something to happen. It seems like it wont happen.
But a million days is just about 2,700 years. The human race has been around maybe 100 thousand? Its a bunch of probabilities stacked on top of each other, in a way that reminds me alot of the Fermi paradox.
And we keep inventing new ways to do it and making the current ways easier. There are also plenty of non self inflicted ways it could happen. Commet or meteor, gamma ray bust, supervolcano, etc.
It really isnt a question of if, but when. Before or after we become interplanetary or better intersolar-system species. My hope at this point is just not in my lifetime.
It works in the long term on ending the world. Like south american forest felling, climate change in public news repressed for tens of years, big oil still geting subsidiaries…
To quote Talking Heads: Same as it ever was.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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Bring Back Bootlegging
Screw the 2020s! I’m gonna make my own 20s with blackjack and hookers.
It never left.
Sounds about right
Prominent singer-songwriter A. Rozenbaum, referencing russian classic writers Karamzin and Saltykov-Shedrin, once said:
If you put me to sleep and wake me up in a hundred of years, and then ask me, what’s going on in Russia, I’d say: drinking and stealing.
Another misquoted quote that’s probably invented by a comic Zadornov, but never losing it’s relevance, says:
Russia has two problems: them fools and them roads.
and some journalist add money, as they all start with D.
I find these predictions and writings, including those in time capsules, fascinating. Some of them either are too correct, or thinking too nice of us.
Why is this mildly infuriating? This is fascinating
Because everything except the bootlegging is still true in 2023 (and likely will be in 2024).
everything except the bootlegging is still true
Oh, I don’t know. In-demand mind-altering substances banned due to unrealistic policy goals inflamed by small-minded moral panic, leading customers to seek out a high-risk/high-margin black market that attracts violent criminals and results in adulterated product. Which year is it again?
How is this infuriating exactly?
That for a hundred years this joke got closer and closer to hitting just right, but because someone couldn’t be arsed to wait two and a half months for the entire century to elapse, they posted this thing about the year 2024 … in the fall of fucking ‘23!
I mean, the historians of 2023 are likely going to be the historians of 2024
To be fair, it will also be true in 2024 as well:-).
It’s spring.
FallAutumn was before winter.
100 years of the same shit