51–60 of 117 posts
This is wrong and have nothing to do with "successful white people" and quite frankly your remark is racist. Their ancestors were hunters and this gave them purpose in life as well as good diet which led to much happier life. Now they have nothing to do except watch TV and sit on their couch and eat bad food. Of course they are unhappy, you would be too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
tl;dr: Astronaut battles AI with hidden agenda, defeats AI, gets abducted by aliens. "The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended..." Not every story should be structured as a scientific document.
No, fiction shouldn't, because the whole point of fiction is to entertain. The point of news it not to entertain but to inform.
I love, love, love Greenland. Best place I have ever been to. When I was spending time in Tasiilaq, I was told that the breakdown happened because of the fallout from the Greenpeace activities against seal clubbing in Canada. This destroyed the market for fur products and led to social welfare from Denmark and alcoholism. Anyway, when in Greenland it is politically correct to eat seal and whale, once you find out how…
Seeking whale meat to tourists is completely against the spirit of subsistence whaling, and the reason Greenland lost its official whaling quota in 2013. I'm thinking of visiting, but there's no way I'll be eating whale.
I do know that there were restaurants in Nuuk and Ilulissat selling whale meat on the menu. I guess mostly to Japanese customers, if you know the popularity of restaurants in Osaka or Tokyo selling whale meat. That is of course against the conditions of Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling.
I love, love, love Greenland. Best place I have ever been to. When I was spending time in Tasiilaq, I was told that the breakdown happened because of the fallout from the Greenpeace activities against seal clubbing in Canada. This destroyed the market for fur products and led to social welfare from Denmark and alcoholism. Anyway, when in Greenland it is politically correct to eat seal and whale, once you find out how…
I can't help thinking that if all world conflicts were resolved by rap battle, the US would be even more belligerent. What? You thought the East Coast versus West Coast divide was bad? Marijuana as export-controlled munitions? Colonel D-o-double-g and General Dre?
I believe many mental illnesses, depression, suicidal behavior and anorexia among them, can be characterized as contagious. And perhaps some other things that aren't usually described as mental illnesses. The border between belief, religion and mental illness seems a bit fuzzy (echoes of Snow Crash). Small isolated communities must be much more susceptible to contagion taking hold, as single events have a great sway over perceptions, and there are few connections with a larger world to normalize things.
Charles Stross said something about the internet that stuck with me: "the accidental invention of telepathy". Just like public water supplies opened up new vectors for diseases such as cholera, I wonder if the internet's ability to more or less put minds directly in touch can facilitate the spread of certain mental illnesses. Consuming unfiltered internet might be looked on in a few years like drinking unsterilized water. In particular, I wonder if certain "echo chamber" social websites that allow easy isolation from mainstream opinion (Tumblr and 4chan, I'm looking at you) might be analogous to these dangerous isolated communities.
See also this trailer, which I like a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwNoqgg474s (not the original movie, not the remake - but a StarCraft 2 mod allowing to play a mafia/werewolf-style game).
I live 60 degrees northern latitude in a country with bad suicide statistics and the winters do get pretty harsh on you mentally. And there's still millions of people living norther than I do. Highest suicide rates occur during the spring, around the vernal equinox not around the darkest time of the year. If you've never experienced the northern spring where each day is 10+ minutes longer than the previous, you'll ne…
I actually have the opposite reaction to the spring. When I get 5+ minutes extra per day of light, I'm ecstatic, happy all the time. October and November are always brutal on me. I'm only at 43-ish these days, but I've lived as far north as Edinburgh, Scotland (56ish). I had to explicitly get outside every day at lunch to get as much sun as I could. Seasonal Affective Disorder is apparently a real thing.
Growing up in TX, though, I never really gave this kind of stuff much of a thought. The sun and humidity are so oppressive, that you spend half the year wishing it would go away, and winters are finally relaxing and time to be outdoors.
This year, however, with the results of El Niño, it has been incredibly mild fall and winter and quite sunny. I did not as a result suffer any seasonal depression. Many others who do get SAD every year have reported the same.
I live 60 degrees northern latitude in a country with bad suicide statistics and the winters do get pretty harsh on you mentally. And there's still millions of people living norther than I do. Highest suicide rates occur during the spring, around the vernal equinox not around the darkest time of the year. If you've never experienced the northern spring where each day is 10+ minutes longer than the previous, you'll ne…
When people are really depressed, they don't kill themselves. Because they have no energy to. Once they go on antidepressants, they go on suicide watch. It's the most dangerous time. Because they'll still be depressed, but they'll finally have the energy to get up. And they just might have the energy to do themselves in.
Not sure if you can really generalize this much. There are several studies studying the effect of antidepressants on suicide rates, and it's true that some of them seem to lead to more suicides but it's far from being something that you can categorize like that.
I'd also wager there are lots of suicides that could be avoided if people got the medical attention they needed on time.
It's not all black and white.
Fascinating long read, which gives a lot of insight in the struggles of daily life in these remote parts of our world. And no, it's not just the dark that makes people commit suicide. Of the top 10 countries with the highest suicide rates, only Lithuania can be considered as having a somewhat gloomy winter. The rest of the countries all get more sunlight (Guyana, Suriname and Sri Lanka for instance) than the countrie…
That was obvious from the get go. Whoever even claimed this in the first place just did not bother to check facts for more than 5 minutes.