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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#381

Post by oblio »

pfdietz wrote: post #377
oblio wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that the solution to that is not 1 ton of likely self prescribed Advil, it's proper treatment.

Doctor recommended ibuprofen can be at considerably higher dose rates than what's listed on the bottle at your pharmacy. This whole "too many painkillers are prescribed" thing really annoys me. It leads to cancer patients suffering because of the risk they could become addicted. So f-ing what?

I can't find the study anymore but the US already consumes more medicine per capita than other developed countries.

Anyway, it's a cultural thing, other countries seem to be able to manage this at comparable levels with a fraction of the spending and without chucking these into every store:

https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-ibuprofen-200-mg... (1000 pieces)

Instead having something like this:

https://moncoinsante.com/mcs/en/ibuprofen/3173-nurofen-200mg... (30 pieces)

I'm trying to figure out consumption rates for the first one. I think Ibuprofen should expire in max 2-3 years after it's opened, so that would be... 700-1000 days. That's at least 1 pill per day for the entire period.

I'm not against them being available per se, but last time I was in a CSV they were all over the place (and other similar ones with huge quantities numbering in the hundreds, at least), which means that there is demand and widespread usage like that.

I highly doubt most people buying them are using them correctly (either overdosing, taking them when they're not actually needed, or taking them past their expiry date).

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#382

Post by throwaway11460 »

pfdietz wrote: post #378
throwaway11460 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true - an orbital ring doesn't require any scifi materials, though the engineering is not yet there. And you can build magnetic accelerators, that's fully possible with current knowledge of science and engineering.

I don't see that kind of macroengineering as plausible.

I don't see it plausible in our today's social and political situation, but that's not set in stone. Technically and economically it's possible.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#383

Post by southernplaces7 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #63
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off guard, only to be blown away that Americans really did have supermarkets everywhere practically overflowing with food. The story goes that the experience played a big role in shaping his vision for Russia when he went on to become its first freely elected lea…

For a wonderful scene that mirrors exactly something like Yeltsin's real trip to the supermarket, i strongly recommend the (generally wonderful) movie "Moscow on the Hudson" with Robin Williams.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#384

Post by southernplaces7 »

Aexian wrote: post #346
emmelaich wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a patina of reasonableness to your comment but your comparison of the Irish famine to the Holomodor is way overwrought. Holomodor was deliberate and largely not caused by bad harvests. Irish had the potato blight; and in the beginning they were given a large amount of charity. WRT authoritarianism, govt have a monopoly on violence that individual companies will never have.

In defence of the comparison - it is not at all a consensus that the Holodomor was deliberate from the beginning, that’s an active debate with prominent experts on both sides. In both famines, there was a refusal to intervene to alleviate the famine once it had begun, and in both cases that was unequivocally a deliberate choice of the British/Soviet leadership. Further - there are many cases through history of compan…

>it is not at all a consensus that the Holodomor was deliberate from the beginning, that’s an active debate with prominent experts on both sides.

Either you're being deliberately dishonest or haven't read enough of the details. Yes, there is debate on what percentage of that gargantuan human tragedy was started by tyrannical incompetence and how much of it was done through deliberate vengefulness by the Stalin government, further moved forward by local initiative, but virtually all experts agree that at least deliberate indifference allowed things to grow monstrously and prolonged them too.

The leaders in Moscow (especially Stalin) and local commissars could soon clearly see that the collectivization policy was practically extinguishing all human life in the Ukrainian countryside, yet they continued to pursue it and even block all avenues of escape, while at the same time exporting grain they'd confiscated from people who were by then dying in their millions.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#385

Post by brigadier132 »

Kbelicius wrote: post #379
brigadier132 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was intentionally vague and not picking sides. Extremist violent rhetoric encompasses communists and fascists and anyone else willing to kill people to tear the system down. If you think I'm talking about the Israel / Palestine thing. It was not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the US specifically but it also applies to other nations with strong personal freedoms, rule of law, and general economic pr…

Are you aware that the system we have today needed people willing to kill to tear the then existing systems down?

Yes, for freedom. What would a modern day American revolution be for?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#386

Post by southernplaces7 »

btbuildem wrote: post #349
brigadier132 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is amazing, that's why we really need to appreciate and protect what we have. The incredible abundance we currently have is not the norm. It was not even 100 years ago that people were starving in the US during the great depression. Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric.

> Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric. Think about how this standard of living is enabled by centuries of colonial exploitation, mortally dependent on continued extraction of non-renewable resources, and propped up by an insanely profitable military-industrial complex. If you're on the outside, watching fools burn it all so they can drown in excess they don't appreciate.. yes, the…

>Think about how this standard of living is enabled by centuries of colonial exploitation, mortally dependent on continued extraction of non-renewable resources, and propped up by an insanely profitable military-industrial complex.

It's a classic leftist narrative that gets very foggy on the facts when you dig closer to details. Modern prosperity and modern market economies are definitely not based on centuries-gone colonial extractive empires and while extraction of non-renewable resources is still big in the modern global economy, it applies to the needs of all states and societies, not just the apparently evil capitalist west. Or do you think the USSR and its socialist cousins along with the majority of countries that used to be European colonies all live in harmony with nature, eschewing all possible attempts to modernize through resource use?

As for the military industrial complex, pray tell, of which country? Tangibly benefiting which countries and by what mechanisms to make it so "insanely profitable"?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#387

Post by brabel »

chihuahua wrote: post #212
brabel wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though the choice is impressive in any supermarket you go, unfortunately, it's very far from having every kind of drink/cheese or almost anything else you mention. Perhaps that's being pedantic, but I believe a lot of people seem to actually believe that what's in their supermarket is all there is (not talking about you specifically)... all you need to do is travel around Europe for a little while to quickly rea…

That's probably because supermarkets tend to stock those things that sell in reasonable volume. So if you're in an area where sheep's brains (to pick a contrived example) would sit on the shelf for months, they're unlikely to stock it.

It's not only that. Some products are expensive and just unknown to the locals, so it wouldn't sell... others are just a nightmare to store or transport long distances. So you're very unlikely to find them in the supermarket in the USA, though it may be extremely common in Italy, or China etc. You can still probably find those rare items if you go to specialty shops... for example, I was able to find "Stracciatella di bufala" cheese in an Italian shop in Stockholm (even in Itally, I think it's hard to get that outside its native region of Puglia). Maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear you won't find that in your local grocer?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#388

Post by paulryanrogers »

philistine wrote: post #364
paulryanrogers wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible that materials science (and others) were too immature and could not be rushed without innovations in a million other areas. The tradeoffs needed across all fields may be worse for society, or just impossible until the global population could produce enough skilled workers.

Nope. The Shuttle was a catastrophic strategic blunder. Why do you think NASA is so adamant on chasing a second vehicle to go to the ISS when A) The ISS is nearly over; and B) Space X's vehicle is awesome? Because of the Shuttle. Initially, and they actually did it for a couple of years, EVERY satellite launched into orbit by the US was supposed to use the Shuttle. Inevitably, when the Shuttle proved inadequate at al…

I wasn't defending the shuttle. I was taking issue with this point:

> If we had continued going to the moon, even infrequently, or aimed further, we would have had no choice but to actually achieve reusability, safety and reliability much sooner.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#389

Post by adolph »

emmelaich wrote: post #369
adolph wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to disagree with you but to add context, the monopoly on violence has not always been as straightforward as one might imagine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain The British East India company’s operations are another example.

I completely agree with you but my point stands as is. I'd only change 'never have' to 'almost never have' and most probably won't again.

Not to pat ourselves on the back to hard, but the reasonable state of today comes in part as a reaction to previous tragedy.

The expansion of government sponsored enterprises with organic police forces is concerning however. Examples in my mind are school districts, transit and other agencies without law enforcement as a core component or competency. To the extent that those forces are bound to the proprietary interests of the enterprise, the bounds of the monopoly are blurred.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#390

Post by Kbelicius »

brigadier132 wrote: post #385
Kbelicius wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that the system we have today needed people willing to kill to tear the then existing systems down?

Yes, for freedom. What would a modern day American revolution be for?

For freedom, what else? The communist revolutions were also fought for freedom.

> Extremist violent rhetoric encompasses communists and fascists and anyone else willing to kill people to tear the system down.

It seems that at the end of the day you are not against anyone willing to kill people to tear the system down.

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