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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#61

Post by j0057 »

> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh

And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a more future-proof elevation.

Worst case if Greenland's ice sheet melts, that adds 7 meters to sea level, and Antarctica's another 60 meters. I won't see that in my lifetime but my children might.

Re: Oh, 2022

#62

Post by maxerickson »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #54
maxerickson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'll block you on twitter for politely quibbling with his presentation of facts.

I'm not a twitter user, but this is the equivalent of "I'm not interested in being notified if this person contacts me again" right? Like me putting a Gmail rule in place to move messages from a specific source, say a specific mailing list thread that I'm not interested in out of my inbox. Is this considered taboo on Twitter?

That's mute.

Block prevents the blocked user from seeing your tweets from logged in contexts and ability to reply to any of your tweets and so on. That it sort of curates a feed by limiting replies can go in both directions of course.

Re: Oh, 2022

#63

Post by astrange »

maxerickson wrote: post #13
jodrellblank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also a HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross

He'll block you on twitter for politely quibbling with his presentation of facts.

Good. You should block everyone who replies to you on Twitter. It's the best way to use it.

(This includes compliments. They're bad for you.)

Re: Oh, 2022

#64

Post by aerovistae »

Personally, I stopped reading after this:

> If the SARS family of coronaviruses had emerged just a decade earlier it's quite likely we'd be on the brink of civilizational, if not species-level, extinction by now—SARS1 has 20% mortality among patients, MERS (aka SARS2) is up around 35-40% fatal, SARS-NCoV19, aka SARS3, is down around the 1-4% fatality level. I

It felt sensational to me to the point the I could no longer take the author's view seriously as something worth reading. We survived the bubonic plague and the author himself quotes these diseases as having far lower mortality rates than that, yet then extrapolates it to the extinction of humanity. Huh.

Re: Oh, 2022

#65

Post by walrus01 »

j0057 wrote: post #61

> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a…

the immediate personal need to not live in a flooded zone is one thing to consider

another thing to think about is the global geopolitical/civil war/economic possible disruptions and consequences of something like potentially half to 3/4 of bangladesh's population becoming international refugees. imagine what happened with syrians around 2012-2015 and people trying to get into europe multiplied by a factor of 50.

and in a theoretical scenario like that happening with bangladesh, simultaneously other groups of aggregate hundreds of millions of low-income coastal residents from around the world also trying to move to safety at the same time.

Re: Oh, 2022

#66

Post by eproxus »

tome wrote: post #48
maxerickson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mute though. And I learned something about his concern over accuracy. For instance, reddit hasn't quite lived in the shadow of Conde Nast in the meantime.

Yes, muting seems far less aggressive than blocking to me. For one thing the mutee doesn't even know it has happened. I don't quite understand why some Twitter users seems to take delight in announcing they have blocked someone.

Blocking on Twitter is such a meaningless feature. You can just log out to access the content someone who blocked you. It’s like the feature only exists to make people feel good about signaling their actions to the blocked party.

Muting fulfills all the goals those features are supposed to solve. Does blocking actually add anything sensible on top that I missed?

Re: Oh, 2022

#67

Post by chongli »

maxerickson wrote: post #13
jodrellblank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also a HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross

He'll block you on twitter for politely quibbling with his presentation of facts.

I say: don’t bother trying to talk to minor celebrities on Twitter. If you want discussions, HN (and other well-moderated forums) are the place to go. Twitter is just the Internet version of that scrolling celebrity soundbite bar on cable TV.

Re: Oh, 2022

#68

Post by maxerickson »

tptacek wrote: post #56
maxerickson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mute though. And I learned something about his concern over accuracy. For instance, reddit hasn't quite lived in the shadow of Conde Nast in the meantime.

It's clear you should have blocked each other just from this conversation on HN. You weren't messaging him to have a conversation; you were looking for some kind of gratifying acknowledgement of your disagreement. I'm not saying you were wrong (I can't imagine spending the energy to even figure out what it is you disagree with him about); I'm saying it doesn't matter , shouldn't matter , and the block was a favor to…

You are imputing a lot of state of mind to my initial remark.

I enjoyed reading his books as was certainly disappointed when like 2 years after my tweet I realized he had blocked me for it. I of course don't recall my state of mind when I sent the tweet, but I don't think I paid it much attention until years later when I couldn't see a tweet someone else was quoting and wondered why.

Re: Oh, 2022

#69

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #9

These predictions are like puzzle pieces that don't fit together. If 50% of the population are COVID invalids, who's going to be doing the (building) work for a new economic boom? You can't seriously say "I'm going to make predictions - but let's just ignore the most important health event for over a century." So - mRNA vaccinations. If you can vaccinate against AIDS, flu, cancer (being investigated...), and the rest…

> If 50% of the population are COVID invalids, who's going to be doing the (building) work for a new economic boom?

This is a good question to raise, and IMHO does not invalidate the original piece: Two plausible predictions, but how do they interact? Which one gets the short end of the stick? Are the able-bodied hard at work throwing up temporary homes for invalids?

Re: Oh, 2022

#70

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #9

These predictions are like puzzle pieces that don't fit together. If 50% of the population are COVID invalids, who's going to be doing the (building) work for a new economic boom? You can't seriously say "I'm going to make predictions - but let's just ignore the most important health event for over a century." So - mRNA vaccinations. If you can vaccinate against AIDS, flu, cancer (being investigated...), and the rest…

> The planet without toxic media and mad billionaires is a much nicer place than the planet with them. Many of the biggest trad-media offenders will be dead by 2030. Will they be replaced

I'd like to hope that they won't, but why? The same forces that produced the current crop are no weaker, indeed stronger. Past performance indicates that there will be more.

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