Serious questions here. The world, by design, has arid zones around the tropics. If we heat up the planet, does that mean deserts pop up in other places? Like, will the Sahara and Cape Town turn green, but Spain and Italy and Argentina turn to desert? And if that’s the case, will hurricanes more often frequent New England, but less frequent Florida? Also, isn’t one of the major reasons we have hurricanes in the first place due to Sahara seeding them? If less desert then…?
I don’t know about y’all, but I’d prefer not to win a Darwin Award.
I’m more a visual person, so let me show you some graphs: Famine rates are down: https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_850.png
We can do so much more with our computing resources - Note, logarithmic scale: https://www.singularity.com/images/charts/MicroprocessorClockSpeed.jpg
Billions of people live in a democracy, before 1850 almost none did: https://bigthink.com/the-present/democratic-rights/
Have y’all seen the pictures of chimney rock?
Big kid punches little kid “Stop” says little kid
Big kid punches other little kid “Stop” says other little kid
Big kid punches first little kid again and takes his lunch money “Stop” says little kids
Bunch of little kids band together “If you punch again we’re going to punch you back” (raises fists in intimidating stance)
Big kid grumbles and talks about running over all the little kids with his car…
——
NATO isn’t stupid. As a whole, they don’t want to invade Russia. They are there to deter future territorial land grabs and they want to maintain the status quo as it’s good for trade. Quality of life is pretty good or getting better on this side of the fence.
I get it, a whole bunch of kids around your house can be intimidating. They have access to the neighborhood road (Polish corridor). Your little brother started thinking they were cool.
The way this could have and should have gone about is more trade, more connectivity, more upward mobility. But your ruling class got all weird about that, can’t be having western ideals infect the population, they were losing power. And so Russia went the xenophobic path and now we are here.
All the rhetoric. All the hype. All the saber rattling. It’s a form of control, to keep the Russian population in support of this war. To keep them scared so that Putin and his ilk stay in power. It’s a very myopic way of seeing the world.
They’ve rattled so hard that walking away isn’t an option anymore. Too much treasure and blood lost. It would shake Russia to its core. The Russian Vietnam as it were, right on your doorstep.
I don’t know what the end game is here. NATO is not going to capitulate. Russian leadership are backing themselves into a corner.
Is this a yearly average? I don’t think we’re closer to nuclear war than we were during the Cuban missile crisis.
I mean if the Russian leadership wants to die over a piece of land (because they don’t already have enough?), then sure by all means.
Get a Dietician and physical trainer. Use this opportunity to get yourself into healthy shape and never look back. I did something years ago and had no clue just how bad I was actually feeling before the improvement. Both physically and mentally. We are not designed to sit at desks all day.
Do your feet crack sometimes? Consider testing for athletes foot.
Blood, STD and Cancer screenings, as many as they’ll give you. Hell, depending how old you are, maybe a colonoscopy.
Sleep study. MRI, ECG, EKG. Allergy test. Dermatology/mole screening.
IQ test, find out your best skills and then learn how to use them to your advantage.
DNA testing, if you really want to know some things you may be perceptive to…though personally i don’t know if I would want to know if Huntingtons is in my future.
And I replied to you, specifically, regarding sports not being a hack on our emotions.
I suppose this begs the question, do you burn couches when a movie takes an emotional turn?
I have no contribution to why certain people do so around sports, other than to say 20% of the population also believes that the earth is flat, that is to say, they’re morons.
The difference is that movies and TV shows are often specifically made to elicit those reactions. Storytelling is essentially a hack that uses our emotions to implant lessons.
The same can’t be said for sports events.
What part of this did I miss?
Way to completely miss my point.
Hmm, gonna try and narrow this down further. Did you climb any light poles as part of your celebration festivities?
Seriously!? A Cinderella team spends a full year working their way to the sweet 16 and perhaps eventually the final four? Then loses by one point. Do you not see the struggle, the passion, the determination and the heartbreak in that?
Or a champion tennis player, significantly past her prime, coming back to championship after multiple years out and winning the title.
Or two soccer superstars at the absolute peak of their field going head to head. Can you not sense the tension, and suspense as these two juggernauts battle it out to see who comes out on top?
Or a man, born without arms, overcoming adversity at all points in his life to become the fastest swimmer and winning the gold.
Do you not see how sport can be an allegory for the human condition? The struggle, the heartbreak that comes with failure, the celebration of success, the toll of aging.
If not, I challenge you to take up a sport for a year, just a year. Try to get as good as you can with it. Celebrate your successes. Reflect on your failures. Document your milestones as you progress . Try not to give up. Make friends along the way. Become the true definition of an amateur. Living through your own experiences, you may discover that sport is full of emotion.
Not going to go into details due to confidentiality, but I recently was involved in an initiative to utilize AI to scan education databases and identify students who may be at risk of dropping out, with the goal of having an early safety net for these folks. And also raising the schools retention rates, thus better outcomes overall.
So yes, AI can absolutely be used for good.
I visited Panama for an agricultural trip about a decade ago where we focused on coffee agriculture and production. Coincidentally, there are some coffees that blend in beans or peanuts to mellow the flavor. This is usually done for cheaper coffees that use robusto beans instead of arabica. It’s also to relieve some of the acrid taste that can develop during the drying out process if the beans are dried around animal droppings.
If you’re interested in what a mellowed coffee would taste like, I think chock full of nuts is a brand you can try in the states.
Edit: ok so I did some more research and it appears that chock full o nuts likely no longer does this, they just have typical coffee nowadays. I’ll leave it to you other internet sleuths to find a brand that does.
Right? Why do civilizations fight wars anyway? If not flat out colonialism and dick measuring, then It’s usually for resources, maybe protection for cultural exclaves if it serves the nation’s geopolitical interest.
All that is to say, Russians are not Chinese. And I don’t think many Eastern Russians would welcome the switch. So, China would be instigating a lot of strife for minimal gains.
Taiwan on the other hand, I can at least understand. I don’t agree with the stance, not in the least, primarily because I believe democracy is superior to communism. Nevertheless, if I had my adversaries 100 miles off my border and their existence hampered me economically and militarily, then I absolutely would subjugate them in any way possible.
Starting a daily productivity log. It started as a google form but has morphed into a larger spreadsheet. It contains:
Each row is a day. It also includes a section for bucket list and yearly goals and whether I achieved them.
I don’t fill it out every day and I don’t fill out every field each day either, but I do try to not get more than 10 days behind.
It gives me a sense of purpose. It helps me remember what I’ve done, so days don’t just slip through my fingers. It also, I think, shows how I’ve grown a bit as a person.
It became really special when I was able to bring it out during my wedding vows. I wrote down on paper many of the things my SO and I did on our adventures and got to share them with our friends and family.
I have a tab for each of the last 15 years.
Endive it will. It’s as if her ice bergled the rest of her face.
And that scientists name? Albert Einstein.
Coincidentally, this very week, I accidentally texted my neighbor a vulgar comment about TSA patting down my balls that was meant for the Mrs.
Unsend did not work 🙄😙🤮
I got a little taste of what Truman must’ve felt like when he realized everyone got to watch his awkward years.