Lurker > M1Astray

TraurigAberWahr posted...

And are there any mainstream news covering this?

Nowhere near as many that should considering the "alarmists" are proving to be right by the stats coming in, but the answer is that yes.

Here's a Murdoch rag source for us breaching 1.5C as 2024 comes to a close
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/2024-certain-to-be-hottest-year-on-record-eu-monitor/news-story/ff031895bebb36ae685c4588d1724af5

Here's the ABC (Australian major "impartial" outlet) for the cloud situation I was talking about
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-12-06/clouds-climate-change-warming-planetary-albedo/104680446

I'll be blunt I put very little stock in mainstream media. There are sources but the stark lack of coverage on this topic has felt almost deliberate in nature the last two years (and I dislike having to visit more "doom'y" corners of the internet to find things, real drag on my mental health).

I noticed something was wildly wrong from the scraps of stories back in '21 (back when a few stories about record low ice shelf mass was being reported in the Antarctic. I also noticed that within a week of those news stories it vanished entirely from MSM coverage despite getting much worse as the year progressed).

Regardless there's two MSM sources on the things I've claimed. Both are sourced from scientific findings and research if you want to dig even further.

I'd be outraged but TBH it's debatable with everything going on right now globally if the 2034 world cup will even happen. I kind of hope that in ten years time everything is still "fine enough" that worrying about Saudi Arabia's human rights violations and corruption is big enough news.

Alteres posted...

this, people arent paying attention a nasty market crash and the man could be worthless (har)

That right there is why I still am skeptical about the theory that Trump's government plans on intentionally crashing the market via economic depression to buy up all the assets. A lot of those assets are going to be forever defunct and worthless once a depression happens and that includes a lot of Elon's wealth.

Haru my beloved. . .

Strider102 posted...

Oh god don't give him any ideas, he might think nuking Yellowstone would be a brilliant plan.

Who, me?

Could we make Yellowstone blow? Probably if we set our mind to it. Could we control it? In a word: lolno.

Besides once you start riding the lion that is geoengineering you don't get to ever hop off it. We're learning that the hard way with the reduction of sulphur emissions in shipping fuel and this current 0.1C annual increase potentially being almost entirely because of that change.

Tyranthraxus posted...

The destruction of the albedo effect is irreversible. If we all went net zero tomorrow we're still fucked.

Some people keep saying they want an asteroid to hit Earth and kill us all. The ironic thing is an asteroid hit is probably our best chance at long term survival right now.

To be fair the absolute destruction of the Albedo effect isn't here yet and we don't have the stats to show whether we've passed an outright tipping point on that or not (far too little research is being done on these matters). I'd wager not but I'd also wager that we'll pass that tipping point if we go anywhere beyond 2.2C (which is borderline locked in) since 2.0C seems to be where a lot of the major tipping points are.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

And climate change will be a rapid spike that came back to equilibrium in no time.

That is too optimistic. I used to believe like that until I spent a weekend doing a dive on the subject and found out what some of the bigger tipping points are.

We're still a long way from 4.0C even on the current pathways (we'll still likely all be dead before even 3.0C) but should we hit 4.0C there is some research that has projected clouds will cease to be able to form at all.

In light of the fact we're finding as of this year that certain types of clouds are in fact starting to form less frequently that prediction seems more and more realistic by the day. As does the followup projection which is that if the Earth ceases to be able to form clouds it would get another 6.0C+ degrees of warming on top of the 4.0C totally at least 10.0C of warming.

I used to believe humans would be destroyed before the proverbial apocalypse tipping points where equilibrium gets impossible to find (or rather the new equilibrium is one of a near-sterilized Earth) but now I'm frankly not so sure.

One thing I'm fairly certain of though is that if we as a species don't do something drastic soon we're going to go extinct in the near-term. No pockets of survivors, just plain extinct like the Dodos.

Enclave posted...

Dooming that the world is already over is completely useless and is just giving up.

I used to think that, after all one of the known psyops of the fossil fuel giants has been inciting dooming so the change is delayed.

Problem is the change cannot come soon enough (and also there might not be enough resources for it anyway, not at humanities population at any rate). We are entering what appear to be the final five years to effect change before things go from "restructure society but ultimately preserve some level of modernity" to "better hope the planet purging billions is before doomsday tipping points are passed."

Lets be realistic here. The trend now appears to be +0.12C a year. That's 1.2C a decade. That means by 2035 we're at 2.8C warming. That's an utter catastrophe, especially considering all the alarmist predictions regarding things have thus far proven to be accurate (so odds are all the nasty things from 2.5C+ are on the cards).

I'm not seeing any way forward at this point. Trump just got in so at best renewable transition for the US (one of the big three polluters) is now on pause until 2028. That means it restarts in 2028, the transition needs to be finished by then to avert what's coming because the transition alone is going to take years even if it's done at an industrial scale and pace as if we were on a war footing (which frankly the world should be).

The US not doing the transition means all the other Western nations (including my own Australia) will also drift to the right and not enter the war-footing we need to start entering to avert change. China ironically is partially doing the right thing but India remains a problem, without all three of these superpowers on board things are dire.

Even if we're not all dead by 2045 from this the reality is we're marching towards our "World War 2." Climate change will be this centuries rhyme to the world wars. That's the positive outcome from what I'm seeing. Positive as in "at least we avoided an extinction".

Every time I see this topic title I keep reading "Luigi's Mansion" and it's doing my head in.

Okay, yeah, that sound a tad bleak? Welcome to my weekend. The Albedo effect dimming (loss of mass-white surfaces reflecting heat back out to space instead of the planet absorbing it) led to a bit of a rabbit hole.

I'll get the simple out of the way. We're fucked. No hyperbole. The numbers are in and we're actually screwed. And by "screwed" I mean "hope you weren't planning on surviving to the year 2045."

I'll list the key observations. I know it sounds extreme but I'm honestly making this topic because I hope every single conclusion I'm drawing is dead wrong.

-Between 2015 to 2020 about 80% of sulphor was taken out of the fuel of global shipping
-This pollution was masking (according to actual published papers) anywhere up to 0.6C of warming
-We might as a result have started a termination event where the planet cannot keep up with the sudden warming

That's the extreme TLDR. This is not a new theory either, but has been shouted down by some factions of the climate science community for decades.

I don't know if it's better or worse if this is the case though because if it's the case we're probably screwed but if it isn't the case then the following gets infinitely more disturbing.

-The mean warming of 2023 was about 1.4C straying into 1.5C
-The mean warming of 2024 was 1.5C and has strayed into 1.6C in November (expected to do so again in December), pushing the year average to over 1.6C of warming
-Over time an expontential increase in global warming is now extremely aparrent

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2e1007ed.jpg

This is the stuff that's got me overtly concerned though. We've blown past the Paris agreement almost 15 years prior to expectations and are still accelerating.

It gets scarier. We're supposed to be in the tailend of El Nino. The planet was supposed to either get slightly cooler or at least stay relatively static. Instead we've apparently blown past last year by over 0.11C.

We are now observing direct factors that might be tipping points (the Albedo effect dimming being the most obvious one, the ticking methane permafrost bomb is also out there and should that pass a tipping point every single human could die and it ceases to matter).

If we stay on current track we will pass 2.0C of warming by 2032 at the latest (that's if the acceleration ceases and warming simply becomes fixed at 2023 levels which we know it isn't.) We also know with the world burning more than ever that this is all going to get FAR worse over the next years (not even factoring in Trump either and we all know what he's going to do.)

We're rapidly approaching a point where calm change won't be enough. We're also rapidly approaching a point where severe sudden change won't be enough. I used to think we had until 2050 before shit hits the fan, looking at some of the stats and information we have now I'm starting to wonder if we're looking at an extinction event by 2045 (with a lot of awful years in the decade leading up to that).

SpawnShadow posted...

Has anything else that's been tried thus far worked?

As far as I'm aware most of the fights that resulted in positive progress for human rights was backed up with at least some threat of serious violence.

It's easy for us to condemn violence when we've been born into a time period where all the actual hard fights were fought and won before our birth.

I'm neither condemning him nor condoning him when I say this, but we will be seeing a lot more of his type in the coming years. The existential threats to our species are coming much faster than expected by accepted and calculated projections (the stats are in for climate change this year, exponential heating is now officially confirmed and we'll be blowing past the very last "safe" limit of 2.0C by 2032 at the absolute latest) and as that fact starts to become more common-knowledge (as in as we see the world start to show signs of its own mortality) you will see more people turn to desperate action.

HudGard posted...

He underestimated Pippins ability to fuck around

The real reason.

We see from the Balrog chase that they were super close to getting through the mines without actual issue. Tons of danger but they did manage to almost completely navigate that danger.

The Mines were essentially an attempt to thread a needle. As others have said the Gap of Rohan was far too watched and dangerous, taking the Ring that way was basically handing it directly to Sauruman. The Mines however were perilous enough that the enemy forces wouldn't be staking it out intentionally but were hoped to be just safe enough for extremely careful passage. Didn't end up working out that way but I can't agree with the premise that it was a bad call from Gandalf's part. He was faced with two impossible choices.

The gaslighting and sheer audacity of this prick and the rest of his kind is why the rest of the planet is engaging in this "vitriolic" discourse to begin with and why they laugh when ill befalls the upper crust.

Guess this confirms the rich won't learn the lesson to be learned from this (stop taking the "peasants" for granted and treating them with open contempt) and will instead continue sucking the planet and its residents dry but with a tad more spent on personal security.

Why would I waste my very finite time of this modern age on a guaranteed-to-be-shit movie by a evil mega corporation when I could spend that time on any piece of actually-good media (of which the original is right there if I were interested in a good version of Snow White)?

This guy is never going to be caught and is going to become one of those historical mysteries isn't he?

No, but what's about to be wiped out is the ability for someone to progress up a wealth class.

It's already been increasingly difficulty for a worker to earn their way up a wealth bracket for, well, decades but especially these last six or so years. What's about to vanish is that.

The death of the middle class as a thing will likely come in the few years after that.

Global warming has officially hit exponential growth as of this year though so frankly none of this really matters because the timeline has accelerated so much now that we'll be lucky if vanishing wealth classes is the major issue in six years time rather than the complete and absolute collapse of modern civilization. We'l be lucky to even have wealth classes sooner rather than later.

Yes, for now. We're about to elect a far-right evil politician who wants to gut every single social service, destroy every single renewable contract, and then build nuclear power plants in forty years time.

There's limits to what he'll be able to do in that time but he'll continue the degradation of the health system that happens every time his party gets elected (and never gets unwound because Labor are a pack of gutless cowards and career politicians only in it for themselves).

To be perfectly blunt even getting some secret service detail for the 1% will only temporarily mask the situation.

Civilization as we know it seems to be marching towards a collapse very visibly now. The economy is being sucked dry by those at the top and people are getting increasingly agitated and leaning towards violence and civil disorder as a result.

I see 2042 is gonna be a great year going by those time traveler photos.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Well that's ironic as hell.

Oh if you want the irony to get funnier there's a very real possibility we crossed this exact tipping point because we cut down on sulphur emissions in shipping fuel a few years back.

LeCh0nk posted...

I'm sure once enough white people start dying the scientists will get enough funding to figure out a solution.

Aside from the obvious point already made (by that point so many major tipping points will have been crossed it makes humanity's output no longer relevant, the perma-frost alone has so much methane locked inside that global warming would continue until the equivalent of three times what we've already emitted since the industrial revolution began was released) I believe you grossly over-estimate the species.

Look at how people in the US reacted to goods and services getting marginally more expensive. They voted in a populist demagogue strongman because eggs cost a tiny bit more at the checkout and rather than cut down on things and budget effectively (like those of us who have spent out entire lives below the poverty line know to do) they lashed out.

If that's the reaction to something relatively harmless then just imagine what they're going to vote in once we have an actual honest-to-god famine in the Western nations.

The reality is instead of seeing an increase in funding during those darker times the leaders of the world will instead start ripping out all backing of scientific R&D and funneling it into waging wars over resources and controlling the remaining population through force.

So looking more into this I think we might just be screwed. As in "no, science won't save us either" screwed.

How do you even start to counteract the loss of the Albedo effect? Aerosols in the atmosphere are the only feasible option and that won't be done until it's way too late because of the worry about geoengineering (granted that worry is deserved, all this mess is because we are essentially doing geoengineering).

God what a mess this is.

Probably should back off for my own mental health at this point TBH. Going to need to recalibrate my plans for the next ten years a little but other than that nothing to really be done.

Speaking as someone who loves Persona 3 4 and 5 I dropped Metaphor the other day. Got to around the 40% (I think) mark and realized I was finding it a chore to boot up which is usually when I call it quits on a game.

Cast just doesn't hit it for me. They're not especially interesting (besides Heismay but his arc ended and I've played P5 so I know not to bother playing further just for him). The arcs aren't super interesting either, it's fantasy but it's super stayed fantasy. I read a fair bit of fantasy and so I can say with some surety that what I want from my fantasy stories is one of two things. Either I want high fantasy (lots of super arcane epic shit, think Stormlight Archive or Wheel of Time, or game examples including Tales/Final Fantasy/Xenoblade ect) or if it's grounded fantasy I want deep characters (think Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings saga including The Farseer trilogy and its various sequels).

Metaphor most of the time felt like it wasn't hitting that more fantastical element nor was it coming even remotely close to that character aspect. Louise was cool but he's not prominent enough that I'm going to slog through 8+ hour segments to get the next hit of Louise doing something while twirling his Magnificent Bastard mustache. Meanwhile the main cast is, to be blunt, boring as paint drying. Persona worked because the cast was vibrant to the point where even just seeing all the mundane interactions of the cast was appealing, in Metaphor it bogs the pacing down to an intolerable degree instead.

Music was also surprisingly meh considering Shoji Meguro's work on Persona 3 4 and 5 (and Digital Devil Saga). Kinda felt like it was aping Nier at times but without any of the subdued elements that make Nier Replicant and Automata's soundtracks special.

/my two cents. I went into Metaphor pumped given the creative minds behind it, and on paper "Fantasy Persona" sounds awesome but it just ain't for me.

Now if you're like me you might casually have been keeping up with the climate crisis and noticed we basically shot straight from 1.2C warming to 1.45-1.5C warming in the span of only two to three years, leapfrogging over a decade of warming in that timespan.

Well good news, scientists might have found what the cause was.

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-rapid-surge-global-due-planetary.html

TLDR: Albedo effect is going bye-bye.

Phew what a time to be alive. Climate crisis aligning with the more dark projections and the most powerful nation on the planet with the most ability to create the changes needed to save us basically deciding to elect a saboteur for what will probably be the last four years to effect non-drastic options like geo-engineering.

I think I'm going to go start Stormlight Archive 5 now and put this out of my mind for a night. >_>

Nope. I'm no scientist but I have watched my share of Kursgeshtat videos in my time and one thing is extremely clear from those snapshots of reality.

We humans know basically nothing about the fabric of reality.

The notion that we understand what lies above our reality (if anything) is pretty darn arrogant.

I was closer to atheism when I was younger but the more you dwell on reality the more you realize that mindset is just as dumb as the religious mindset. Maybe there's something, maybe there isn't. Either way it doesn't really matter to us creatures of Earth, we have the here and now and nothing more.

From what I've heard South Korea even jails its corrupt leaders! One can only imagine what the rest of the world would look like if it did that.

Yes Democrats, continue to consign yourselves to utter oblivion by caring more about supposed decorum instead of real policies and the fate of the people. Because that worked out so well for you during 2016 and 2024.

It's so frustrating seeing all the developed worlds democracies crumbling from the inside-out. TBH kind of wish we could just hit the fast-forward button and skip to the collapse of it all so we can begin building. Alas no, potentially another two decades of this slow slide towards the obvious finish line.

MFW I could've bought a few of them back when it was relatively cheap to do so and even considered it before passing it up because I wanted to import a few game OSTs I don't even listen to anymore instead.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f20cbddd.jpg

TBH this all comes back to the fact that we don't teach kids how to use the internet safely. I know we all grew up during the "wild west" era (and some of us fucked up and learned by the trials we instigated for ourselves) but the reality is barely-legal means not really fully developed maturely for a lot of men. There's a lot of ways this could potentially backfire on a youth and most freshly 18 year olds are not going to have the life experience to know what will and won't come back to bite them later in life.

Which is to say fair and one of the few good things this shitshow of a government did was deport her. Is calling her a predator going a bit far? Maybe, but she's definitely got some strange fetishes and if the boot was on the other gendered shoe there wouldn't even be a debate.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

It's very funny that you typed this sentence immediately after the previous one where you lamented how the world was about to be bird flu'd to death

I said potential, not certainty. The current pandemic of bird flu has been worrying parts of the medical field for a while now and has the potential to develop into a human-to-human strain.

That doesn't mean it will. Just that it's currently being watched and the threat is real enough that there's concern.

Hard to really care about WW3 in five years when there's a deadly Bird Flu pandemic potentially spawning and set to start ravaging the world within the next 12 months TBH.

Besides this is largely sensational. The reality is Putin is going to be licking his military wounds for a good few years whenever Ukraine resolves and he won't be in any condition to take on NATO regardless of the US being jerks (and frankly in the long term it's probably better for the world if it stops relying on such a dangerous and self-absorbed nation anyway).

Not me. Under normal circumstances yes but Trump literally spent the entire campaign saying how he's going to come after and destroy his "enemies" if he's re-elected.

Trump doesn't play by the rules nor the law. If this was any normal transfer of government then yes, Biden should've stuck to his word but with Trump coming in he'd be pretty much condemning his son to years in prison on bullshit charges from a literal dictator.

Having said all of that this does highlight the real long-term dangers of Trump. So many of the tenets of democracy have been safeguarded solely by convention and once that convention is broken by either "side" good luck ever getting them back.

Call me weird but I'll be honest. Metaphor just isn't "it". I had high expectations of it going in but ultimately dropped it (around the island arc). The music is surprisingly weak considering Shoji Meguro's past, and not only is it weak the music in general "insists upon itself" and TBH doesn't know when to dial things down and stfu. You look at games like Nier Replicant and Automata with their very bombastic scores and they have loads of variety to things. Meanwhile Metaphor's dungeon themes all sound alike (and too bombastic), the town themes sound too alike (and bombastic, there's a reason most JRPGs make town themes chill), the battle theme is awesome for the first few times but lacking in a strong identity (which is the most surprising thing considering how good P3 P4 and P5's regular battle themes are).

Ultimately I just don't believe Metaphor deserves a nomination while P3R and SMTV:V get ignored when those two are frankly the better game (Metaphor only really winning on polish).

gamer167 posted...

Its unfortunate but true that this conflict has always been an unwinnable situation for Ukraine

Which is why I never understood the idea behind thinking Ukraine could hold Russia at bay and win a war of attrition. Even with unlimited funds its just too small of a country with too few people compared to Russia to make that strategy work and I think this article shows the Ukranians also see it that way

It was never about winning, the goal was just to massively deplete their excess storage of weapons. Trump has thrown that strategy into disarray ofc.

Frankly I think longterm this war will backfire more on the US and the Western allies than the Axis. All the drone tactics that have now been developed and are achievable for pence on the dollar compared to conventional arms means now the likes of North Korea can have a terrifying well-armed army very cheaply.

I don't want to say helping Ukraine was a mistake because objectively appeasement never ever works. But I think the consequences for this war are not going to be fully understood and realized until a decade down the road.

Baron_Ox posted...

I've heard some complaints about this but I haven't played it.

It's somehow even more barebones than the original Dragon's Dogma was. I won't say I didn't enjoy it for what it was, gameplay was refined to a point DD1 wishes it could've achieved. Unfortunately there's basically no story after the first hour, the world is a barren place with no real dungeons, and the last third of the game is ultra-mega-rushed.

Worse is the fact the head honcho has left Capcom so there's very likely not going to be a "Dark Arisen" that takes the bones of the game and gives them a great dungeon to explore. It's a shame because the bones of a truly fantastic game are all there but the devs didn't get the chance to actually make the "game" part and never will.

KiwiTerraRizing posted...

Our economy is based on debt. If people were responsible, lived within their means and saved the economy would collapse.

Take that how you will.

Parts of it are based on debt (good kind), but the economy wouldn't crash if people stopped incurring debt (bad kind). Most people can actually afford all the consumerist trash they buy without ever touching a credit card, they just choose not to and get bitten on their asses for being lazy with their budgeting.

IMO this is just a symptom of a larger issue: the slow stupification of the human spcecies (partially done intentionally).

I'm poor, I've never been through the education system, yet I've never had any issue using buy now pay later systems because I know to sit down and actually budget the payments into the four and eight week periods to ensure I'll pay it off with room to spare every week/fortnight.

It's common sense to handle all forms of debt that way.

The issue is that as a species I've noticed we're stripping out the core skills of life from the upbringing of children one step at a time. How many gen Z and gen Millennials know how to cook efficiently and well? Vs how many buy take-away because they don't and that was how they were raised?

The slow erosion and degradation of passing basic and important life-skills to one's offspring has been phased out over generations. Is it intentional? We'll probably never know but I cannot help but look at what the fossil fuel corporations covered up and how accurate that has turned out to be and think any of big business are any different (and certainly no less pure evil).

Certainly the fact that so much wealth is now being transferred to one specific group because of all the shortcomings in the kitchen and at budgeting doesn't escape my notice.

Because they had no time to cement a new candidate since Biden ran down the clock.

All the people with a serious chance at winning weren't going to enter the race at the eleventh hour when they have serious aspirations and know their chances are much better in 2028. That left the Democrats with only one option: a recognizable face and a prayer.

I watched the trailer and all I got from it was "Game of Thrones IN SPACE!" which is a pretty miserable and shallow interpretation of Dune and its five sequels.

The insistence to try and turn everything into a franchise is so dull and trite at this point, and in Dune's case outright robs the material of its purpose. What does it even matter of the events that took place ten thousand years prior to Dune? There's no reason and purpose to go back to that past (besides money, obviously), in a more generic scifi or fantasy setting maybe but in Dune's case with its emphasis on studying the progression of humanity as a species there is an even greater purposelessness in prequels than usual.

S23 Ultra. Plays my gachas like a dream, I would also consider making it my music player but the quality of sound from my S10 was utter dogwash so I'm not going to go through the frackar of getting the necessary adapter to do that. I have good Audiotechnica's, you very much hear the audio difference if the sound cards aren't up to snuff.

Cotton_Eye_Joe posted...

What's stopping someone from buying a PS5 Pro or Switch 2 in Japan and scalping in America?

Prices being raised internationally like they were every other time tariffs caused inflation in the US.

008Zulu posted...

Path of least resistance. The consumers will buckle, they always do.

This has been increasingly not true. "Enshitification" has started to fall apart as the costs of living coupled with boredom are seeing people start to turn away from franchises that took quality control for granted whilst thinking they can charge ever-increasing premiums for their ever-worsening products.

Besides there's a very real possibility if Trump implements some of these more harsh tariffs the world will be plunged into a steep recession or potentially even a depression (I have doubts on things getting that bad but a harsh recession is extremely likely). First thing people cut out when times get tough are discretionary purchases, which get fewer and more picky over things like quality. As things get even worse they stop buying entirely and start cutting out essentials as well.

Stock Bros are certainly behaving like the consumer market has no breaking point but rest assured it absolutely does and we're actually incredibly close to it. People voted in a Wannabe-Nazi-Republican party over the relatively minor inflation of the last four years, so just wait until we see inflation of over 20% across the board overnight.

The dude is 78 years old and lives pretty unhealthily. I think people should just wait a few years before worrying about "third terms."

You should be much more concerned about Trump appointing an "heir" than him either living to a third term or having the health to actually run again. Running for and being President is utterly draining and every single man who takes the job visibly ages every single term from the stresses of it. This is very likely Trumps final term one way or another. Biology cares not for the ego of man.

action52 posted...

"While it may be true that tariffs have resulted in higher prices for consumers basically every time they have happened in the past, we can't be 100% sure this will be the same as every other time until the tariffs actually start. Therefore when democrats say tariffs will make prices go up, this is a half truth."

-the "liberal" media

Dayum they were playing the semantics game as hard as a teacher grading an essay of a student they dislike lol.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

The short of it is, tariffs are bad for everyone except the US government and the producers of the world's most inferior products.

Probably not even them TBH. The economy trickles up not down. The only winners will be Trump Musk and Murdoch.

buddah86 posted...

Yeah, it was very rocky for a while. Our last election almost felt like what the US went through.

Fortunately, we were smart enough to not put a cheap Trump knock off back into power. Especially when he wasn't voted in by the public in the first place.

There needs to be something in place, that if this kind of back stabbing happens, the vote goes back to the public on who should steps up.

I'm not sure Albo is doing a good job currently. His latest things he's pushing are certainly choices. He wants to ban kids from social media, some online games and similar things. Which will then impose those companies or the government to request you to prove your id or something.

Politics in general are fucked, no matter what way you go

TBH I miss that stretch of Aussie politics. At least the general spectacle of it provided some humour.

I'm not convinced we're past what America's going through though. Aussie politics is usually on a delay to the US equivalents so if anything we're about to get our "strongman far right conservative" *Looks at Dutton*

Ah well at least we'll be able to meme that Lord Voldemort is running the country for the next few years.

As an Aussie that's zero surprise to me.

For those Americans who don't know we had a period between 2008 through to whenever the fuck Scott Moriscum (2015 I think?) took over where every year or two we had the sitting PM knifed in the back by their own party and replaced (in the span of those seven years we had six different PMs lmao).

Political parties don't generally knife the sitting leader to win. They knife them to save some of the furniture when they inevitably lose, because generally by the time a political party has gotten to the point where they're even considering it things have gotten dire for them.

I've only seen two leaders win outright after a change of leader this way and both times it was because there was a lot of time between the deposition and the actual election which allowed them to reset the narrative (also one of those times involved knifing an insanely unpopular conservative and replacing him with a generally-liked "moderate").

The Democrats sealed their fate the moment they and Biden left this to the last six months. Biden was talking about being a one-term transitionary President prior to getting elected and he should've stuck to that promise and let the Democrats have a robust primary selection process. Only a complete reset would've allowed them to win.

Speaking again as an Australian (someone used to seeing political parties try replacing their leader and the fallout that always brings) the Democrats were utterly finished the moment they started openly panicking and looking incompetent. People vote for the government that looks most competent (emphasis on the word looks), the moment you start looking like a disorganized rabble you have already lost the next election. People do not vote for weak leaders.

NEET (or rather NET) so purely speculative but I really don't see AI replacing the fields I'm eyeballing when I (hopefully) finish the road to qualification and employment.

People overhype the heck out of AI and what it's actually capable of. It's going to be used for "Big Brother always watching" surveillance (which already existed to a degree before recent advancements) and I can ironically see it massively altering the creative industries landscapes (not killing them though, I think there's going to be a backlash on AI-created media after it's been mainstream for a time. People are already ditching mass produced media like Disney shit) but any job that requires any kind of analytical thought, any job that requires assessment and interpretation of information and decision-making is likely going to be safe for the rest of our lives.

AI's just nowhere near as advanced as it's hyped to be. A handy tool and nothing more right now.

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

You do realize that any such "die off" will disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable groups such as people living in the developing world, the disabled, mentally ill, and trans people *who won't have access to hormones or other trans-affirming care* right? In addition, countless numbers of children will die from starvation and a lack of access to basic medical care, as small children are far more vulnerable to such things than adults.
What you are cheering for is absolutely reprehensible and offensive. You are cheering for the deaths of many CEmen and their current and future children, including me.

Cheering is a strange word to describe someone who has come to understand the brutal nature of life and has reached a form of acceptance about it. I don't cheer for it, I just take some measure of solace that whatever happens to us in two decades the species continues (and probably does learn its lessons).

Do you believe I think I'm going to be a survivor of these mass die-offs? The answer is: probably not. I am after all one of those "poor groups" (relative to the first world). If I do it'll be because I fought for it and won against the odds. Same for the rest of the survivors.

Putting things simply you are mistaking my displaying acceptance (the last stage of grief) as "cheering". I take some small measure of peace from the knowledge that the species continues after the collapse (perhaps even flourishing into a stronger civilization next try). Don't mistake that for eagerness for that collapse.

This doomerism is why the fight for climate change is already over. It's easy to point to the doomerists and just handwave it aside and there's good reason why some suspect it's all a conspiracy by big oil to prevent people taking action.

The irony is the fact things are as bad as they are is why our extinction isn't a sure thing. We saw during covid the relative reduction in annual emissions did in fact move the needle. So it stands to reason that if a mass die-off were to occur very quickly the needle would move a fair bit, and the die-offs start well before we're into the extinction timeline.

Dark clouds indeed, but unfortunately it seems the powers-that-be have chosen the bloodiest of options for the species (for no actual material gain on their part I might add) so silver linings are about the only positive to be drawn from the current state of affairs.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Tech ain't moving anywhere near fast enough for that. The billionaires don't realize it yet but the house of cards is coming down very very soon (at the rate we're going I wonder if we'll hit 2.0C warming before 2030), well before the tech will exist to make that sort of thing feasible.

On top of that a lot of the tech manufacturing is only really feasible and practical when you've got entire massive industry behind it, so they can kiss all that "luxury" goodbye once things start breaking down.

EmanOn4life posted...

What the fuck were they supposed to do? This is a capitalist society and a fascist just took office.. Get allllll the money you can.

Maybe, but people seem to finally be getting both "slop" fatigue and franchise fatigue so this series success certainly isn't as assured as it would've been even three years ago.