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Is everything falling apart?

nonzero.substack.com

621–630 of 970 posts

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you look at life expectancy in the America, it has been flat to reversing. >> Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root causes are simply being ignored as stability and promises of improved prosperity provided by civilization is going backwards. How much of this can be explained by the fact that one third of adults in the US are obese as opposed to major scientific and economic issues?

Folks in the US are on average very fat and very ignorant, not a great combination if you would prefer to have people that are healthy and/or capable of improving their own life.

Well politicians in US grew very fat and very ignorant ppl, so ppl are ignorant and fat.

In other countries where politicians care about citizens -> situation is completely different.

It all depends on agenda and food you sell to ppl.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#622
post #179

[flagged]

A lot of people on the left (socialists, not Democrats) are also very distrustful of the media and Silicon Valley.

There are lots of reasons to be distrustful of “Silicon Valley”. No need for conspiracy theories, and being afraid of e.g. Facebook or Twitter is not necessarily irrational.

Media are a bit complicated. I feel a couple of militant outlet have managed to poison the pool by putting in our collective consciousness something like “yeah, we are biased, but all media are biased and we admit it, therefore we are more honest than the others”. That is very worrying as well.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#623

We need to return to federalism and bring an end to activist politicians. ( Good luck with that , I know...) The reason the American Experiment has worked so well for a few centuries is because we knew how to leave each other alone. If I'm in New York City, it's really none of my business what's happening in Albany, let alone Albuquerque New Mexico, so long as some basic standards of universal liberty are upheld. Tod…

If you are a resident of NYC, what is happening in Albany (the capital of the state) certainly affects you.

If you are a resident of New York, some of your Federal tax dollars[1] are going to New Mexico. Why would what they are doing with your money not be your business?

[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.

"Strong men" make fascism, not good times. It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism" and "respect."

No, "a strong man" makes fascism. This happens when the rest of the men are weak, so they seek a strong leader to make up for their own weakness. Strong men don't follow a fascist leader; strong men can't be led like that. It's weak men who are the fertile ground for fascism, not strong men.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#625

America is having a Pluto return. Traditionally this is a period of time when nations are dissolved or at minimum completely transformed in their nature. It's currently turning retrograde and will scrape back across the US natal Pluto on July 12th, and will be conjunct again December 28th for the beginning of its next 246 year cycle. If it matters by that point.

Are those english idioms? Or do you mean the actual planet, it's position in orbit, in a astrological way?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#626
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't that much of an argument. "Mainstream media" makes mistakes. It has perspectives that leak through into interpretation. It has blindspots in coverage. But mainstream journalists almost to a fault genuinely view their job as bringing important facts to their audience, and they care about getting things right. That's just not true of the partisan press on the r…

>But mainstream journalists almost to a fault genuinely view their job as bringing important facts to their audience, and they care about getting things right. What you call "mainstream media" I call "corporate media". And some journalists may feel that way however clicks, eyeballs, and stickiness take priority over their views. There’s too much competition for traditional media outlets to survive without adopting te…

I don't understand the bit about Taibbi. While he has some background as a general journalist, the overwhelming majority of what he writes these days is opinion work. More or less by definition, he has a perspective that colors his interpretation, and he wants to convince you that he's right.

When you say you "trust" a broad news organization I generally expect you mean that you take what they report to be a reasonable representation of the truth and that they aren't hiding things from you or otherwise spinning the interpreation.

When you say you "trust" an opinion journalist, really all you mean is that you agree with them[1]. Taibbi doesn't give you the whole story on anything! He gives you his perspective. This is what he wrote yesterday, for example: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/savor-the-great-musk-panic?s=r Now, sure, you might agree with that take. But you wouldn't hand this to your grandpa if he asked what all this stuff he was hearing about The Twitter was about.

[1] Personally I find that brand of anti-anti-right leftist journalism really tiring. Taibbi takes shots against the center left that draw eyeballs from people who want to see those libs suffer and in broad service to entities (yes, including the Russian government) that oppose them. I can't think of the last time I saw him write about a problem that I, personally, would like to see solved. Instead he writes about the other problems (some of them legitimate) with people who are trying to solve the problems I do care about. Where is Taibbi on climate regulation? Where is Taibbi on income inequality? Where is Taibbi on police violence? Where is Taibbi on increasingly criminalized women's health care? Damned if I know either. But I know where he stands when the libs are upset about Twitter!

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#627
post #8

The constant theme since the dawn of civilization threaded through all of history is that everything is falling apart. Change is continual. History is more like the seasons. Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt. Sometimes there's peace. There's a continual game of King of the Mountain being played at all levels. So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up! Enjoy this phenomenon called life. Yo…

> Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace. In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart. For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.

Issue right now is that our fall might mean complete fall of human civilisation in next 100 years or so.

When Rome fell apart -> nothing much happened.

When Bizzantium fell -> nothing much happened.

When Nazi Germany fell -> millions of ppl died.

When Earth stops sustaining human life in quite a few areas -> billions of ppl will die.

Previously we had no big impact on Earth, now we do.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#628
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace potato with any old piece of handy info, like home or car maintenance. A lot of younger Americans (myself included) have little practical knowledge, so everything needing knowhow in this generation must be outsourced. Compare this to my grandfather's generation, he knew how to frame houses, plumb, electric work, auto work, gardening, etc, and he was not alone. If he needed something done you'd get four of you…

This sounds a little rose tinted to me. I personally think for simpler tasks, much more information is available these days compared to older times. There's many resources on how to grow a potato (and other things) on the Internet. For other tasks, some things have simply become a lot more complicated to work on. Electronics were a lot simpler in older times, for instance; swapping out a surface mount quad flat packa…

I'm convinced there's more noise but I'm not sure how much of it is really more signal. Consider growing a potato and searching for that term on Google. I'm betting a lot of articles are going to be somewhat junky SEO spam that's repeating the same few pieces of info. Whereas if you were to go to a garden center or library, and find a book or pamphlet on growing a potato, that's probably going to be great information and very comprehensive, and covers a lot more than those short articles ever do. This generation wasn't without good information. They were consulting things like the Haynes manual for their cars the same as your mechanic does today, or reading on the pros and cons of different truss designs from books available in the hardware store.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything that happened to a Baby Boomer was the most extreme ever. All other generations before Baby Boomers and since the Baby Boomers have had an easier time than the Baby Boomers. Their experiences are the Alpha and the Omega of human experience. When they die, the universe probably will cease to exist.

Well, they did have domestic terrorist groups going around setting off bombs on the regular in the 60s and 70s. I was quite surprised to read about it. https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revol...

The only interpretation of this vs the parent comment is that you are insinuating this is somehow extreme and unprecedented. Surely it is not.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the last 50 years of industrial civilization. Anyone who spends enough time with systems thinking and looking at the big picture of industrial society inevitably comes to the same conclusion. I was a "doomer" back when everything seemed fine. Nothing since 2019 has surprised me at all. Things will continue to break down at a faster rate and more severely. However, one of my earliest realizations upon waking…

If you think pandemics, crop failures, "land wars with Russia" are new, you are very much not paying attention. People lump normal history in with ecological problems all the time for a better sense of doom and gloom.

The current level of environmental degradation is unprecedented in history.
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