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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • Most of those do make sense from a 19th century or older viewpoint, so I suspect that it’s not just a coincidence that those words were linked to those countries. If it was only one or a few with an ulterior meaning, then I could believe it to be a coincidence, but it’s most of them. I more believe that there were chinese word artists at work who looked for words with both a fitting meaning and the right sound.

    When it comes to nature, the USA is a really beautiful country. France gave the world the Code Napoléon, which is one of the most influential evolutions in law systems. Britain’s success in it’s colonies and in the industrial revolution was very often based on the endeavours of individuals, ie heroes. Northern Germans are sticklers for following rules, politeness etc (which was back then viewed very positively by others, but has since become a bit tainted because an attitude of the law is the law will often lead to inhumanity). Mexico: not a clue. Korea: I just have vague guesses. Japan, when seen from northern China, is where the sun rises.






  • It’s not going away any time soon. There’s currently 2 to 3 times as many humans as what would be long term sustainable with the way that we live. That means that it’s going to be a problem for at least many decades, but more likely a few centuries. It’s definitely not yesteryears problem. And sustainability should always remain a concern, in everything that we do. Many countries (not the USA obviously) are already taking steps to be more sustainable, but it’s baby steps compared to what is needed.


  • To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.

    Some estimates from Wikipedia: “Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population


  • Would the outcome have been the same without people in the media repeatedly bringing this to everyone’s attention? Probably not, because there would have been no public pressure against it, while the shadow groups that want this would have still been lobbying the politicians.

    Something bad is going to happen.
    Some people advocate to stop that bad thing.
    Even more people are holding their clutches that the bad thing might happen.
    Because of public pressure, action is undertaken to prevent the bad thing from happening.
    Thanks to those efforts, the bad thing is successfully averted.

    Some random person: that bad thing was never going to happen, look at all those gullible people who were panicking over nothing, we could have just done nothing and the outcome would have been the same.

    Also known as the “preparedness paradox”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox


  • A direct link to the article from op: https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/

    Reading that list of tactics was kinda depressing, because I could name a bunch of them with their debating name, even when they’re not being named as such by the author. Gish gallop, misrepresentation, throwing shade, ad hominem arguments. I never learned any of these terms in school, yet I know them now, bravo internet. But here they were used not for the low stakes of winning an online argument, but with real life negative consequences for a bunch of seemingly well meaning people. I hope kids now are being prepared in schools for this new online reality, but I fear that’s just not the case in most countries.