2020 Thoughts

George Gould’s classic Anomalies and Curiosities in Medicine has a list of mass-death events by natural causes. The human race has lost between 1/4 and 3/4s of its population (estimated) several times due to disease.

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I first heard of the danger from the Yellowstone hotspot about five years before the media got ahold of the story. A professional geologist in our local rock club gave a splendid talk about it at one of our monthly meetings. It wouldn’t take a maximum event to destroy civilization in the U.S. or even the world due to the side effects, as I expect you know, because civilization is really rather precarious with its world-spanning nexus of interdependencies. A great fictional treatment of this point is George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides, my favorite SF novel. However, a greater threat would be another “Carrington event.” But there is little we can do about these things, so I try to follow the old adage to appreciate each day as if it were our last.

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nuclear/supervolcano/asteroid winter will lead to mass death because hunger - there will be problems with growing plants on open air
Building of a lot of greenhouses with ultraviolet lamps will solve it, but there will be
enough time for that only if it will be done before the event.

Carrington event or EMP will destroy all long wires. But if there will be a lot of resistors, line cut off systems and fuses everywhere, most electronic devices will be saved.

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Let me share something from my other passion: Argentine tango.
In these dark days of corona, trolls armies, conspiracy theories and a madman in the White House and much more, do realise that this nothing new. We have always gone from one crisis to another.
But there is always hope, as long if you keep on thinking positive.

This tango is called Cambalache (Junk store) and is one of the few critical tangos.

That the world was and always be filth,
I already know…
In the year five hundred and six
and in the year two thousand too!
There always have been thieves,
traitors and victims of fraud,
happy and bitter people,
valuables and imitations
But, that the twentieth century
is a display
of insolent malice,
nobody can deny it anymore.
We lived sunk in a fuzz
and in the same mud
all well-worn…

Today it happens it is the same
to be decent or a traitor!
To be an ignorant, a genius, a pickpocket,
a generous person or a swindler!
All is the same! Nothing is better!
They are the same, an idiot ass
and a great professor!
There are no failing grades or merit valuations,
the immoral have caught up with us.
If one lives in a pose
and another, in his ambition, steals,
it’s the same if it’s a priest,
a mattress maker, a king of clubs,
a cad or a tramp.

What a lack of respect,
what a way to run over reason!
Anybody is a gentleman!
Anybody is a thief!
Mixed with Stavisky, you have Don Bosco
and La Mignon
don Chicho and Napoleon,
Carnera and San Martin.
Like in the disrespectful window
of the bazaars,
life is mixed up,
and wounded by a sword without rivets
you can see a Bible crying
next to a water heater.

Twentieth century, bazaar
problematic and feverish!
If you don’t cry, you don’t get fed
and if you don’t steal, you’re a stupid.
Go ahead! Keep it up!
That there, in hell
we’re gonna reunite.
Don’t think anymore,
move out of the way.
Nobody seems to care
if you were born honest.
That is the same the one who works,
day and night like an ox,
than the one who lives from the others,
than the one that kills or heals
or the one who lives outside the law.

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image

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I am taking a course at my local college where I am learning all about geology and it has been extremely interesting. That is honestly where I learned about the unpredictability in the field; before I thought things were well understood and that volcanologists could be almost positive about an eruption. I know understand otherwise and, while it makes me more anxious, I also believe that I can’t live my life in that sort of fear.

I absolutely agree with you though that we must live every day as if it were our last, because it is impossible to know when our time is through.

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I had said the same to my wife, as we sipped wine on our porch at sunset, a couple of years ago. “We are living in the golden age, it can only be downhill from here”. It seems self-evident - only a wild optimist could think that short-term happy solutions will emerge to the range of fundamental problems humans face on the planet at the moment.

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Some of the posts about nuclear bombs sound a bit like

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Chika

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaguya-sama:_Love_Is_War

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Tsunami after earthquake in Turkey / Greece

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It was felt in Athens, it must have been pretty strong.
Our news say only injured in Samos, I haven’t found anything yet about how Turkey is doing.

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They said 7.
They said a few building went down in Turkey

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I’ve actually lived in Vathi in Samos and I can tell you that if the sea level does rise, that town will be among the first to lose its waterfront real estate. Sometimes, even on a calm sunny day, the water in the harbor was almost level with the cement of the docks. This means that the waterfront road usually floods with every storm, let alone in this, more extreme, instance.

Here is the harbor of Vathy in 2008 with the tide low : :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

vathy2

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Oh my f.

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Tiktok algorithm is really amazing.

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…0&cs=0&cv=1&dr=0&ds=3&er=&expire=1604468749&l=20201103234453010189…

you copied wrong url

https:// vm.tiktok.com/ZSXC7fGv/

Let me try again. I used the “copy link” thingie. I put a space after the // so the url stays visible.

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sounds like a bad idea to me, because even by deleting a comment you give it “credibility” because they will go around saying that they are “persecuted by the system” :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Since when reason and logic and morals and ethics became so weak and unfounded, that they have to hide and avoid contact with unreasonable, illogical, immoral and unethical opinions? Because that is what that dude is practically saying :confused:

If you want a simile, it is like proposing that “if you see people with covid without wearing masks, let them be. Let them spread covid unhindered. Do not engage them and tell them to go home and rest and heal or, at the very least, wear a mask”.

Does that sound like a good idea in the long run?

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I know it sounds like a bad idea to you, we’ve covered that :-).

Our difference in opinion is, to me, the fact that you believe there is a “magical” phrase/ argument/ idea that you will express to them and that you will make those people finally see the light. Basically, that everyone else has failed them and you will be the one to “save” them.

I, on the other hand, believe that there are people who have made their choice, very logically, and choose to be something bad. Not everyone can be saved and I choose to not feed the trolls (I don’t mean you are a troll, I mean the trolls).

So, let’s agree to disagree and leave it at that.

EDIT/ P.S.

I’m not saying that. Thankfully, there’s legislation, and the need for legislation comes from the fact that some people are irrevocable.

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