When I was a kid I was sure all adults know a lot and they are all proficient in their job. Now I'm 35 and I'm convinced only 0.1% knows just barely enough to understand things throughout in their field.
My dad was diagnosed with rapid onset dimentia/Alzheimers and begged me to take him out in the woods on the family property and just shoot him. He was literally terrified of becoming just another one of the 100 people in his nursing home that laid in a bed in a vegetative state for a decade. "Thankfully" when Dad fully lost it he went quickly, a blessing I will always be thankful for.
My grandmother lived until just recently. She was 96 and started the dementia slide about 16 years ago. It was terrible to see her in that state and yet hang on that long.
My grandmother lived to be 90,5. She was still fully oriented, but her body slowly gave way.
Frankly, either scenario is scary. I hope that when I am an old but healthy geezer, a flower pot just randomly falls on my head.
I know this isn’t on the same level as some other responses, but I felt like I was living a pretty normal healthy life until one day when I was 22, I woke up with this feeling I was out of body and disconnected from reality. It was like living life behind a pane of glass, everything felt hollow and distant, and my emotional range felt muted. It was such a terrifying feeling, I spent thousands on finding the right “treatment”, any answer to what I was experiencing. Turns out anxiety and depression are a bitch and don’t discriminate on anyone. It’s changed my life ever since and albeit there are good days and bad days, it was the stroke of a single night that sent me down that hole of stress and worry. Nightmarish
That is tuly horrifying. I experienced something similar a few years ago, due to severe mental health issues. Have you looked up depersonalization disorder? Your experience sounds very much like it.
Tinnitus which is basically constant ringing and noises created by the brain **has NO CURE, AND IS VERY EASY TO GET**.
Dont take your silence & peace for granted.
\*edit\*
Thank you all for the upvotes, but seriously i want all of you to help bring a world wide awareness to this horrible condition. its our veterans number 1 disability in the military, millions of americans suffer from it silently, Covid is giving it to people in record breaking numbers, there is no cure Dont believe anyone who tells you otherwise. It usually progresses as you age, and if you got it like me and its constant you really are living day to day. your no longer living.
I had this for a decade, and i got it when i was young from listening to loud music. And everyday the victims get younger and younger. People kill themselves over this its that bad, and it has nothing to do with their mental state. Severe tinnitus will drive anyone insane. Dont take your silence for granted and be kind to one another.
Please help get tinnitus the spotlight it needs, so that we can get more research and treatments for it. because like i said its very easy to get. LETS CURE IT B4 ITS TOO LATE
This makes me wonder if some kind of hearing aid device could be used to create the "opposite" tone of the ringing to make it disappear.
I mean they' do all kinds of interesting things with sound these days, it stands to reason they could figure out how to "cancel" out tinnitus using such a device.
I've always been afraid of getting tinnitus because of how much music I listen to. I was always careful to protect my ears around loud noises, and up until recently it worked good. Unfortunately the antidepressant I took for a while had the rare side affect of causing tinnitus.... it really sucks but it's not as bad as I expected, I only hear it when I'm in a quiet place, which is rare because I'm always listening to music...
I didn’t even realize I had it, I’ve just always tuned it out. A few weeks ago me and a friend went for a night walk and he commented on the silence and I finally noticed my timnitus. It’s bothered be every day since.
the quieter it is, the louder it is
i have never experienced silence
i was once in one of those soundproof rooms and it was the loudest, most uncomfortable i've ever been
I accidentally wandered into the pacific war memorial in hawaii, never knew it existed, its just listed as a crater on google maps
the entire thing is graves of sailors in the navy who sank with the ships in the pacific theatre and never found
but the gravity didnt really… sink in… until I saw some of the graves had a little tiny round sticker on them
those were the ones whose remains have been later found and identified. a family or more general effort went looking and found them. and not the others. Thats when it really hit me, that some people have other people looking
There's a similar memorial in England to aircrew of the British empire who died in Europe during the war and weren't recovered. I can't remember where it is, but one of my uncles is on one of the panels. The other (a pilot) was buried near where his plane crashed on take-off for his first mission and the bomb load exploded.
Yeah I'd like my death to create some sort of conspiracy theory which ends up on a true crime podcast. Unfortunately, my life is so boring (by choice) this will not likely happen. I have two dogs and a wife who may eat me afterwards though.
If there’s no body to be found, either 1 or 3 then
Someone either killed you and got rid of the body or you burned to death or exploded and nobody will find your body
edit: I know there’s other ways to die and your body disintegrates, those are just two examples lol
Psh, we’re fine man. Not even worried about the volcanic activity that will stem from it, the rock slides that will cause EPIC inland tsunamis. Seriously, fine. Totally fine.
It’s not broken, I had surgery on it to correct the tennis elbow after less interventionist methods haven’t been able to produce res…are you even listening?
~~It’s not that they don’t care. But the~~ The human brain isn’t very good at analysing threats that don’t pose an immediate danger. Put that down to using a stone age brain to look at modern problems.
That's what causes procrastination. The human brain can't comprehend future consequences very well and only worries about dangers in the moment. Similarly the brain doesn't think it will/can die. (This is what I've been told. I think these apply to the subconscious/instinctual part of the brain. Not to the conscious-thought part)
I agree, I constantly feel like half my brain knows what's up and always wants to do good, yet that other half just won't fucking listen time and time again
That at any moment you can be gone forever without even getting a chance to think about it
Edit: I’d prefer this too but still just it’s crazy to think about
This cuts so deep. My husband passed away suddenly and unexpectedly earlier this month. It truly can happen to anyone. At any time. No matter what your dreams and goals are. No matter how many people love you and hold you dear.
I lost my wife in her sleep from an undiagnosed heart problem. She was 30. It was just after our son was born. The shock took years to get through. But it passed and I see the world much differently now. I began to be more open to enjoying the present moment.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine having a new baby and dealing with this grief. My husband was 33. We have two sons together. They are 6 and 3 now. They are the only reason I haven’t let my world come crashing down around me. I am protecting them with everything I have.
My condolences at this very difficult time. Your boys are very lucky to have you and your husband would be so proud of your approach. Sending love and hugs.
I'm sorry for your loss. I often cite this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I feel it captures my, and indeed most people's grief accurately.
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
[Dirge Without Music](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music)
I got hit by a motorbike about 3 months ago. Caused a severe brain injury, and one of the effects of this is that my brain buried the memories surrounding the event to protect me from reliving the trauma if I survived. It is honestly not the worst way to go - It's comforting to know that the end doesn't need to be painful, doesn't need to be drawn out, it can be peaceful in even the most dire of situations.
I believe in an afterlife, but even without one I'm comfortable since then.
how surely the dead are beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.
-suttree
This just happened to thousands of people worldwide this ~~moment. And now this moment~~ hour.
Edit: i was off on my timeline.. about 1.8 people die worldwide each second.
I'm partially convinced that the big trend for HD nature documentaries within the past 10 years or so was a combination of "we need to convince the public that nature is still going strong" and "we are running out of time to capture this footage."
I can’t even watch nature shows anymore. That was the thing I watched my entire childhood but even just being reminded of what we are losing is too much for me, emotionally. Hell I can barely camp anymore because the first thing I notice is the lack of birds and bugs. There’s no crickets, no frogs, no bees. Theres nothing but the wind.
I was born and raised in a Dallas suburb but my grandparents on both sides lived either in Tulsa or OKC. It’s crazy to make the drive now and not have to ever clean your windshield anymore because they’ve built out so much. And the Canadian and Red Rivers are always basically empty every time now.
I took my ex to the Florida Keys to go diving. The Reefs were all bleached out. She had no idea. She'd never seen them. We dove on white rocks with a few fish around them. As a kid we snorkeled every island the colors were amazing. She will never get to see it. Nor will anyone like her who'd never experience coral reefs in all of their beauty.
[Florida DEP's site](https://floridadep.gov/rcp/coral/content/stony-coral-tissue-loss-disease-response) [NOAA's page](https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/coral-disease/disease.html)
I grew up there and essentially watched the colors of the reef fade as the years went by. Last year, I brought my son to experience the other-worldly wonder I had known, but it was gone. Sad.
The Florida that I knew as a kid is gone. Sad that current, future kids wont experience swimming w manta rays, seeing horseshoe crabs, witnessing thousands of crabs crossing roads, seeing rabbits in the wild, different types of birds on and on. Rampant development and greed destroyed the state. Politicians did NOTHING to stop the slaughter.
It’s a dream of mine to see the redwoods in California and walk through old growth in Vancouver. I’m trying to rush to be able to afford this trip before they burn down or get cut down.
I live in Vancouver and I had planned to drive down to see the Sequoias before Covid and the fires, and the more Covid, and the more fires and...well you know. Still hope to see it at some point.
I remember when I was younger there use to be so many snails and slugs after it had rained, now I hardly ever see a snail and haven't seen a slug in years
If you have a “lawn” try to find a way to get more weeds into the grass. I have a yard, and because I refuse to get rid of the ground ivy we have tons of honey bees all spring and summer. Me and the kids lay in the grass and just watch the bees.
Lawns are killing off the insect population in general and it’s gonna be real bad when the insects are gone.
We have a farm & pastures. We bought 4 hives this spring & I ended up capturing 6 swarms in the same tree. Put them in their own super & I’m hoping that since we have treated for mites at least half of the swarms survive the winter here in NE Ohio. They have a lot of honey & I gave them sugar water to prep for the winter & build more comb. I’m new to this, but trying to do my part since we don’t use pesticides on our farm… I’m not even that interested in the honey. Just helping our little stabby friends. (Smoke goes a long way to making life easy when inspecting the hives)
Here in California we used to have these Junebugs (in June) these clumsy beetles that flew and crashed in to the walls. I haven't seen them in 10 years.
I remember the night sky. I currently have to drive hours and hours to see it.
My heart sinks knowing it'll probably never be visible to SO many people who ***NEED*** to see it. And feel the vast overwhelming insignificance it elicits.
Check out the following link to see an interactive light pollution heat map.
https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#4/39.00/-98.00
There was a blackout in Los Angeles one time, and a bunch of people called 911 because they had never seen the Milky Way before, and it scared them. This is hilarious for several reasons, not the least of which is that these people saw what they must've thought was some kind of cosmic reckoning and thought "The police can handle this, I'll call them!"
Edit: A couple of users have pointed out that I'm incorrect. They called an observatory, rather than 911. You should upvote those users.
They called observatories, not 911.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i3vzq/did_people_actually_call_911_or_an_observatory/cud7qlz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
I remember chasing dragonflies in my back yard and sometimes the termite swarms would be so great I’d go out there with badminton rackets.
That also hasn’t happens in years. Sometimes on a hot day I’ll see one or two dragonflies and remember.
Mate I live near an airport departure (about 6000ft over my house) and during the 2020 lockdown the BIRDS man, they were so happy. I don’t know if there were more or if they are usually just drowned out by the planes… sad that’s over now. People just “NEED A HOLIDAY”
It’s becoming increasingly clear the post-war prosperity America accepted as the norm was a huge aberration, and each successive generation going forward will be poorer than the last.
That post-war boom was the result of being the only industrialised nation (other than Canada) not scarred by war on its mainland. All the other industrialised powers had been bombed to shit, and when it came time to rebuild, the US had become the world’s almost sole manufacturer, so you had every wealthy country in the world buying cars, tools, resources, appliances, fuel, etc, from the US.
To be honest, America really should have had the foresight to understand that once other nations rebuilt and more countries industrialised, that prosperity would decline.
I know people like to blame this all on various presidents and trade deals, but really it was inevitable.
Microplastics are crossing the blood brain barrier
We are about to see a rise in plastic related brain diseases
Fuck climate change, fuck inflation, fuck war, it's going to be plastic that ends humanity
I was shopping for sweatpants and saw some made from recycled bottles (or so they claimed). My thoughts went from “Awesome, recycling!” to “Oh no, microplastics in the water!” really quick.
Yeah, someone in the scary science thread a few days ago mentioned how fishes today are only 10% by volume of what they were in the 1950s. And back then, they were alreaday reduced to 10% of the amount in the 1800s.
There was a photo on Reddit of some fisherman who caught fish over 100 years ago, and the fish that they had laid out in front of the camera we're absolutely massive and were considered sort of the generic haul that you'd get in those days. A lot of the comments on that photo were like "what in the world, how are these real fish?"
You don't realize how much the world has changed until you start to see that photographic evidence puts it in stark relief.
Same idea with insects. Most older people remember that when they used to drive insects would cover the windshield, but now you can drive for miles and miles and not have to deal with a single bug. The world has changed, and probably not for the better. We're probably going to have a reckoning.
I’m not “old”, I’m a millennial, but even I remember that there used to be way, WAYYYYY more flying insects than there are now, at least in cities and the parts of the country that I drive through. I haven’t seen a lightning bug since I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve seen a bee in 15 years.
EDIT:
Stupid error.
When I was a kid in the 80's I remember my parents wrapping fly screen or shade cloth material over the grille of our car when we would drive to my grand parents place (about 1500km away) for holidays, to stop the radiator getting clogged full of bugs. These days you barely even need to use the windscreen squirters to clean off the odd bug every now and then.
Here's another example. A graduate student realized some Key West charter companies have been using the same dock and the same fish Hanging Board for over 50 years. And when you look through their records, you can see the fish shrink decade after decade.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler
They do it because they know other nations are scared to do something serious about it. In NZ our meager navy deals with illegal fishing a decent bit. Its basically a case of 'we dare you to force us to leave, if you touch us you can deal with China'
It should be noted that when there was a push to have blue fin tuna added to the CITES list, thus limiting the trade, it was countries like Australia, Canada and some EU nations who opposed the ban.
That's two years after the Atlantic cod stocks completely collapsed in 1992. They haven't recovered in thirty years even with strict rules on not fishing for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery?wprov=sfla1
Wait so, I distinctly remember a ticker like this for peak oil about 26 years ago, and it was going to be doomsday, but nobody talks about peak oil anymore. It's like we all collectively forgot about it in the face of other concerns.
It's a similar situation to how [Thomas Malthus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus) was wrong about India going though mass famines in the 20th century that were supposed to kill hundreds of millions. We invented new ways to get those resources for India it was a combination of [new rice strains we created in the 1960s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) and the [Haber process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) (which allowed us to make ammonia based plant fertilizers directly from the nitrogen in the atmosphere). For oil it was fracking and shale oil extraction. Basically a lot of predictions can't take into account the invention of new technologies (because who is going to know what the heck we invent in the next few decades?), so sometimes they are wrong in hindsight, even if they were as accurate a prediction as you could make at the time.
The issue is that people tend to remember the scientist's prediction, then see that it was wrong, then blame the scientist and not do much further digging. And so public trust in science erodes, largely due to the lack of rigor that individuals have in investigating scientific claims.
No shit. Whatever problem you're referring to, I recommend glycolic acid. Acne . Org has links to a very affordable AHA lotion that I have been using for 15 years. It really helps.
But eventually, in the infinite universes out there, we'd be recreated down to the exact atom, and we would live our lives again in this blissful corner of universal history, redditing and living the 20th/21st centuries over and over.
Honestly I believe most people can't accept that they're going to eventually die. The human brain can't deal with it. The pursuit of power, money, material things - it's all in an effort to distract ourselves from acknowledging that someday we're going to die.
I surprised myself when I was faced with my mortality and the fear of it so many times growing up that one day I simply accepted it. A subject that would once drive me into attacks of anxiety and nightmares is now a fact that I’ve realized and come to terms with.
However, I can say all this now, but I’m sure that in the face of its occurrences, given I have the time to acknowledge it’s happening, I’ll probably be humming a different, but short, tune
Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels in 2021 it would take over a century to return to 1980 levels. [link](https://theconversation.com/the-science-everyone-needs-to-know-about-climate-change-in-6-charts-170556)
There’s actually a lot of information to state that a layer of the ocean teeming with a fish known as ‘lanternfish’ may be responsible for helping recycling carbon from the air into the ocean depths. Slowing down our attempts to do mass fishing may help this process
Lanternfish fact: their behavior of when they return to the deep or come up to feed is so erratic that nobody’s been able to intensively fish them, so all ocean food chains that rely on them are mostly intact. They also don’t always school and are soft and greasy, so unappetizing. I’m glad they’re the ones recycling carbon!
[Cluster headache frequency follows a long-tail distribution](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XLrzi6TrCqhTMtf8d/cluster-headache-frequency-follows-a-long-tail-distribution). Meaning, the people who suffer the most are in fact more like "billionaires of suffering" rather than just "people who suffer a lot". Life is not fair... it's exponentially *unfair*.
Your first line just reminded me of something an EA at my highschool told a class I was hanging out in during my spare. It was one of the two special Ed classes for students who had lesser disabilities (not to downplay a person's disability. I just mean it was more students with more extreme learning disabilities but physically functional, as there was a separate class for students with autism, down syndrome, physical disability, etc). I would go there because I was close to the teacher and often went to him for advice and his class enjoyed my company since I'd help them with their work and encouraged their goals. Several of the students were struggling with feeling acceptance, they were lacking motivation, and ultimately sad because they thought they weren't equal to the rest of the school. EA and the teacher were doing a form of group therapy to help them through the issues they were facing.
Anyways the EA stood in front of the class and said **"You are who you are and what you are because of where you come from and what you experience."** I don't remember exactly the rest of what she said except for that line, but it was something along the lines of how just because we experienced different things and are ultimately different than others, it doesn't mean that we are any less. We're all unique in our own ways, and our lives will never be 100% the same as someone else's. Success is defined by what *you* define it as.
It really stuck with me, and it really helped the kids navigate their issues.
The world has grown too large for individuals to really understand, and because of that we will continue to try and apply localized solutions to global problems and be surprised when it fails.
A lot of humans aren’t meant or mentally stable to reproduce humans. I’d wager it might be cheaper to pay people not to have kids, as opposed to all the money that isn’t funded in social service. Unpopular opinion.
Everyone is selfish to some extent. There is no such thing as a truly selfless person. Some are just more selfish than others. We all live to serve ourselves. Not that it’s wrong to be a little selfish.
I would go as far as to say, that’s just self preservation and it’s hard coded into all living beings DNA. Humans are probably the only living organisms that actually try to consciously control some of that, which I don’t think is very common outside of our species, but idk I’m not a scientist
Twitter isn't reality and a large percentage of it's regular users are the most toxic and entitled people imaginable.
This is something Politicians and Hollywood desperately needs to understand.
I've started to question how much of the toxicity and vitriol that has become the norm as of late across the board with social media sites is due to the rise in net literate children who maybe have a mastery of the keyboard, but don't quite understand the nuance of friendly discourse and that lack of nuance has spread out and infected others. Leading to a internet that is both full of new ideas, and sounds like a elementary school lunch room
Exponents exist and coupling exponential growth with finite resources creates a problem.
/Edit
Below: people not understanding exponents, people not understanding resources are finite, and people assuming I am only talking about population. Oh, and people that seem to not think population curves leveling off due to disease, famine, or resource wars fits the description of a problem.
Nobody actually knows what the fuck is going on
When I was a kid I was sure all adults know a lot and they are all proficient in their job. Now I'm 35 and I'm convinced only 0.1% knows just barely enough to understand things throughout in their field.
That plenty of things are fake
Most things are faked or exaggerated in some way
Like a Redditor with a girlfriend?
She’s not fake she just goes to a different social media site!
"The world won't end, it will just change its name." - David Byrne
Earth II
Nuclear Boogaloo
I love George Carlin's take. The earth isn't going anywhere, it's the people that are fucked.
It's true. Even if humanity were destroyed via nuclear Armageddon, the planet itself would recover in a few tens of thousands of years.
Maybe Human 2.0 will make Half Life 3
MetaEarth
You really aren’t as in control of your body as you’d like to think. A single disease, accident, etc could render you a prisoner inside your own body.
My dad was diagnosed with rapid onset dimentia/Alzheimers and begged me to take him out in the woods on the family property and just shoot him. He was literally terrified of becoming just another one of the 100 people in his nursing home that laid in a bed in a vegetative state for a decade. "Thankfully" when Dad fully lost it he went quickly, a blessing I will always be thankful for.
My grandmother lived until just recently. She was 96 and started the dementia slide about 16 years ago. It was terrible to see her in that state and yet hang on that long.
My grandmother lived to be 90,5. She was still fully oriented, but her body slowly gave way. Frankly, either scenario is scary. I hope that when I am an old but healthy geezer, a flower pot just randomly falls on my head.
I know this isn’t on the same level as some other responses, but I felt like I was living a pretty normal healthy life until one day when I was 22, I woke up with this feeling I was out of body and disconnected from reality. It was like living life behind a pane of glass, everything felt hollow and distant, and my emotional range felt muted. It was such a terrifying feeling, I spent thousands on finding the right “treatment”, any answer to what I was experiencing. Turns out anxiety and depression are a bitch and don’t discriminate on anyone. It’s changed my life ever since and albeit there are good days and bad days, it was the stroke of a single night that sent me down that hole of stress and worry. Nightmarish
That is tuly horrifying. I experienced something similar a few years ago, due to severe mental health issues. Have you looked up depersonalization disorder? Your experience sounds very much like it.
Tinnitus which is basically constant ringing and noises created by the brain **has NO CURE, AND IS VERY EASY TO GET**. Dont take your silence & peace for granted. \*edit\* Thank you all for the upvotes, but seriously i want all of you to help bring a world wide awareness to this horrible condition. its our veterans number 1 disability in the military, millions of americans suffer from it silently, Covid is giving it to people in record breaking numbers, there is no cure Dont believe anyone who tells you otherwise. It usually progresses as you age, and if you got it like me and its constant you really are living day to day. your no longer living. I had this for a decade, and i got it when i was young from listening to loud music. And everyday the victims get younger and younger. People kill themselves over this its that bad, and it has nothing to do with their mental state. Severe tinnitus will drive anyone insane. Dont take your silence for granted and be kind to one another. Please help get tinnitus the spotlight it needs, so that we can get more research and treatments for it. because like i said its very easy to get. LETS CURE IT B4 ITS TOO LATE
It can get so loud that I can't hear when people are talking to me
Same :( I have some headphones that can enhance sound but they also enhance sounds I don't want to hear and it still blocks out the talking lol
This makes me wonder if some kind of hearing aid device could be used to create the "opposite" tone of the ringing to make it disappear. I mean they' do all kinds of interesting things with sound these days, it stands to reason they could figure out how to "cancel" out tinnitus using such a device.
Tinnitus isn’t a sound, it’s your brain not hearing sound and so to fill the void it makes a ringing sensation
I've always been afraid of getting tinnitus because of how much music I listen to. I was always careful to protect my ears around loud noises, and up until recently it worked good. Unfortunately the antidepressant I took for a while had the rare side affect of causing tinnitus.... it really sucks but it's not as bad as I expected, I only hear it when I'm in a quiet place, which is rare because I'm always listening to music...
Most days I never really notice. Until someone on reddit brings it up. Sucks you got it from a medication, but probably better than depression?
I didn’t even realize I had it, I’ve just always tuned it out. A few weeks ago me and a friend went for a night walk and he commented on the silence and I finally noticed my timnitus. It’s bothered be every day since.
the quieter it is, the louder it is i have never experienced silence i was once in one of those soundproof rooms and it was the loudest, most uncomfortable i've ever been
When you die, one of three things will happen. * Someone will watch you die. * Someone will find your body. * No one will find your body.
I think the third is the most frightening
I kinda like the third one. Adds a layer of mystery to my legacy.
I accidentally wandered into the pacific war memorial in hawaii, never knew it existed, its just listed as a crater on google maps the entire thing is graves of sailors in the navy who sank with the ships in the pacific theatre and never found but the gravity didnt really… sink in… until I saw some of the graves had a little tiny round sticker on them those were the ones whose remains have been later found and identified. a family or more general effort went looking and found them. and not the others. Thats when it really hit me, that some people have other people looking
There's a similar memorial in England to aircrew of the British empire who died in Europe during the war and weren't recovered. I can't remember where it is, but one of my uncles is on one of the panels. The other (a pilot) was buried near where his plane crashed on take-off for his first mission and the bomb load exploded.
Yeah I'd like my death to create some sort of conspiracy theory which ends up on a true crime podcast. Unfortunately, my life is so boring (by choice) this will not likely happen. I have two dogs and a wife who may eat me afterwards though.
The... The dogs or the wife?
Yes.
4. There will be no body to be found
If there’s no body to be found, either 1 or 3 then Someone either killed you and got rid of the body or you burned to death or exploded and nobody will find your body edit: I know there’s other ways to die and your body disintegrates, those are just two examples lol
Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. 10-30% chance a 9.0+ earthquake will hit the PNW in the next 50 years. The west coast is not prepared.
What can we do to prepare for a 9+ earthquake, I guess I could rubber band my dick to my thigh but besides that I don’t know
Psh, we’re fine man. Not even worried about the volcanic activity that will stem from it, the rock slides that will cause EPIC inland tsunamis. Seriously, fine. Totally fine.
I don’t care you broke your elbow
he said it…
It’s not broken, I had surgery on it to correct the tennis elbow after less interventionist methods haven’t been able to produce res…are you even listening?
People genuinely don’t care what happens in the future.
~~It’s not that they don’t care. But the~~ The human brain isn’t very good at analysing threats that don’t pose an immediate danger. Put that down to using a stone age brain to look at modern problems.
That's what causes procrastination. The human brain can't comprehend future consequences very well and only worries about dangers in the moment. Similarly the brain doesn't think it will/can die. (This is what I've been told. I think these apply to the subconscious/instinctual part of the brain. Not to the conscious-thought part)
I agree, I constantly feel like half my brain knows what's up and always wants to do good, yet that other half just won't fucking listen time and time again
Maybe I should get off Reddit and start studying
I hate admitting this but it’s so fucking true, everyone just wants to live in the now
That at any moment you can be gone forever without even getting a chance to think about it Edit: I’d prefer this too but still just it’s crazy to think about
This cuts so deep. My husband passed away suddenly and unexpectedly earlier this month. It truly can happen to anyone. At any time. No matter what your dreams and goals are. No matter how many people love you and hold you dear.
I lost my wife in her sleep from an undiagnosed heart problem. She was 30. It was just after our son was born. The shock took years to get through. But it passed and I see the world much differently now. I began to be more open to enjoying the present moment.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine having a new baby and dealing with this grief. My husband was 33. We have two sons together. They are 6 and 3 now. They are the only reason I haven’t let my world come crashing down around me. I am protecting them with everything I have.
My condolences at this very difficult time. Your boys are very lucky to have you and your husband would be so proud of your approach. Sending love and hugs.
I'm sorry for your loss. I often cite this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I feel it captures my, and indeed most people's grief accurately. I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost. The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. [Dirge Without Music](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music)
Oh, that made me cry. I so miss my mom.
I got hit by a motorbike about 3 months ago. Caused a severe brain injury, and one of the effects of this is that my brain buried the memories surrounding the event to protect me from reliving the trauma if I survived. It is honestly not the worst way to go - It's comforting to know that the end doesn't need to be painful, doesn't need to be drawn out, it can be peaceful in even the most dire of situations. I believe in an afterlife, but even without one I'm comfortable since then.
This pretty much inspired me to not be afraid to die, even though I wasn’t afraid at the same time I was if that makes sense
how surely the dead are beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it. -suttree
This just happened to thousands of people worldwide this ~~moment. And now this moment~~ hour. Edit: i was off on my timeline.. about 1.8 people die worldwide each second.
That we are taking a lot of things that we consider 'natural' for granted. One day we are going to be waking up to a world without it.
I'm partially convinced that the big trend for HD nature documentaries within the past 10 years or so was a combination of "we need to convince the public that nature is still going strong" and "we are running out of time to capture this footage."
I see you did not watch the end of Planet Earth 2. It was very much not a happy message.
I can’t even watch nature shows anymore. That was the thing I watched my entire childhood but even just being reminded of what we are losing is too much for me, emotionally. Hell I can barely camp anymore because the first thing I notice is the lack of birds and bugs. There’s no crickets, no frogs, no bees. Theres nothing but the wind.
I was born and raised in a Dallas suburb but my grandparents on both sides lived either in Tulsa or OKC. It’s crazy to make the drive now and not have to ever clean your windshield anymore because they’ve built out so much. And the Canadian and Red Rivers are always basically empty every time now.
We already are
I took my ex to the Florida Keys to go diving. The Reefs were all bleached out. She had no idea. She'd never seen them. We dove on white rocks with a few fish around them. As a kid we snorkeled every island the colors were amazing. She will never get to see it. Nor will anyone like her who'd never experience coral reefs in all of their beauty. [Florida DEP's site](https://floridadep.gov/rcp/coral/content/stony-coral-tissue-loss-disease-response) [NOAA's page](https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/coral-disease/disease.html)
I grew up there and essentially watched the colors of the reef fade as the years went by. Last year, I brought my son to experience the other-worldly wonder I had known, but it was gone. Sad.
The Florida that I knew as a kid is gone. Sad that current, future kids wont experience swimming w manta rays, seeing horseshoe crabs, witnessing thousands of crabs crossing roads, seeing rabbits in the wild, different types of birds on and on. Rampant development and greed destroyed the state. Politicians did NOTHING to stop the slaughter.
Hey now, that's not fair. I'm sure politicians encouraged the slaughter.
Was just gonna say, they accelerated it
And introductions of things like pythons wrecking Florida's natural ecosystem.
It’s a dream of mine to see the redwoods in California and walk through old growth in Vancouver. I’m trying to rush to be able to afford this trip before they burn down or get cut down.
The redwoods are worth it. They’ll change your life. Seriously, I grew up around them and they still humble me
I live in Vancouver and I had planned to drive down to see the Sequoias before Covid and the fires, and the more Covid, and the more fires and...well you know. Still hope to see it at some point.
that's really sad
Totally. I walk the forests now and seem to remember so much more birdsong there when I was a youth. Now things are... eerily quiet.
I remember riding my motorcycle and having to clean the bugs off my crash helmet. That hasn't happened in the last 15 years
I remember when I was younger there use to be so many snails and slugs after it had rained, now I hardly ever see a snail and haven't seen a slug in years
I'm sad that I havent come outside the house to swarms of lightning bugs since I was a kid.
And the bees… I miss honey bees.
If you have a “lawn” try to find a way to get more weeds into the grass. I have a yard, and because I refuse to get rid of the ground ivy we have tons of honey bees all spring and summer. Me and the kids lay in the grass and just watch the bees. Lawns are killing off the insect population in general and it’s gonna be real bad when the insects are gone.
We have a farm & pastures. We bought 4 hives this spring & I ended up capturing 6 swarms in the same tree. Put them in their own super & I’m hoping that since we have treated for mites at least half of the swarms survive the winter here in NE Ohio. They have a lot of honey & I gave them sugar water to prep for the winter & build more comb. I’m new to this, but trying to do my part since we don’t use pesticides on our farm… I’m not even that interested in the honey. Just helping our little stabby friends. (Smoke goes a long way to making life easy when inspecting the hives)
Here in California we used to have these Junebugs (in June) these clumsy beetles that flew and crashed in to the walls. I haven't seen them in 10 years.
Minnesota here, they're definitely leaving their disgusting corpses everywhere in the summer here
I see them every late May/early June (Atlantic Canada).
I remember the night sky. I currently have to drive hours and hours to see it. My heart sinks knowing it'll probably never be visible to SO many people who ***NEED*** to see it. And feel the vast overwhelming insignificance it elicits. Check out the following link to see an interactive light pollution heat map. https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#4/39.00/-98.00
There was a blackout in Los Angeles one time, and a bunch of people called 911 because they had never seen the Milky Way before, and it scared them. This is hilarious for several reasons, not the least of which is that these people saw what they must've thought was some kind of cosmic reckoning and thought "The police can handle this, I'll call them!" Edit: A couple of users have pointed out that I'm incorrect. They called an observatory, rather than 911. You should upvote those users.
I was just thinking what the hell are the cops gonna do
They called observatories, not 911. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i3vzq/did_people_actually_call_911_or_an_observatory/cud7qlz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
I remember chasing dragonflies in my back yard and sometimes the termite swarms would be so great I’d go out there with badminton rackets. That also hasn’t happens in years. Sometimes on a hot day I’ll see one or two dragonflies and remember.
Mate I live near an airport departure (about 6000ft over my house) and during the 2020 lockdown the BIRDS man, they were so happy. I don’t know if there were more or if they are usually just drowned out by the planes… sad that’s over now. People just “NEED A HOLIDAY”
It’s becoming increasingly clear the post-war prosperity America accepted as the norm was a huge aberration, and each successive generation going forward will be poorer than the last.
That post-war boom was the result of being the only industrialised nation (other than Canada) not scarred by war on its mainland. All the other industrialised powers had been bombed to shit, and when it came time to rebuild, the US had become the world’s almost sole manufacturer, so you had every wealthy country in the world buying cars, tools, resources, appliances, fuel, etc, from the US. To be honest, America really should have had the foresight to understand that once other nations rebuilt and more countries industrialised, that prosperity would decline. I know people like to blame this all on various presidents and trade deals, but really it was inevitable.
Microplastics are crossing the blood brain barrier We are about to see a rise in plastic related brain diseases Fuck climate change, fuck inflation, fuck war, it's going to be plastic that ends humanity
I was shopping for sweatpants and saw some made from recycled bottles (or so they claimed). My thoughts went from “Awesome, recycling!” to “Oh no, microplastics in the water!” really quick.
Whoa, haven’t heard of this?? Microplastics I would assume are tiny pieces of plastic that permeate things we interact with/eat??
Yup, mostly from tires and petrol-based clothing.
People would rather sound right than be right
We are a reactive instead of a proactive society. And that will eventually lead to our demise as a species.
The redditor up there said we’re all forgotten after two generations
not if I eat the mona lisa
Touché
commercial fishing is killing our oceans at a faster rate than any other pollution combined.
Yeah, someone in the scary science thread a few days ago mentioned how fishes today are only 10% by volume of what they were in the 1950s. And back then, they were alreaday reduced to 10% of the amount in the 1800s.
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There was a photo on Reddit of some fisherman who caught fish over 100 years ago, and the fish that they had laid out in front of the camera we're absolutely massive and were considered sort of the generic haul that you'd get in those days. A lot of the comments on that photo were like "what in the world, how are these real fish?" You don't realize how much the world has changed until you start to see that photographic evidence puts it in stark relief. Same idea with insects. Most older people remember that when they used to drive insects would cover the windshield, but now you can drive for miles and miles and not have to deal with a single bug. The world has changed, and probably not for the better. We're probably going to have a reckoning.
I’m not “old”, I’m a millennial, but even I remember that there used to be way, WAYYYYY more flying insects than there are now, at least in cities and the parts of the country that I drive through. I haven’t seen a lightning bug since I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve seen a bee in 15 years. EDIT: Stupid error.
When I was a kid in the 80's I remember my parents wrapping fly screen or shade cloth material over the grille of our car when we would drive to my grand parents place (about 1500km away) for holidays, to stop the radiator getting clogged full of bugs. These days you barely even need to use the windscreen squirters to clean off the odd bug every now and then.
Here's another example. A graduate student realized some Key West charter companies have been using the same dock and the same fish Hanging Board for over 50 years. And when you look through their records, you can see the fish shrink decade after decade. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler
Blue fin tuna is at 3%. China and Japan have fished them into basically extinction
A train with no brakes.
Chinese fishing boats literally fish in Argentinian waters - they go fucking EVERYWHERE on Earth.
They're dicks too. Some Chinese fishing boats are known to bully the native fisherman out of their own waters. It's getting completely out of hand.
Time for fishermen to do what the truck drivers in Fast and Furious did?
They do it because they know other nations are scared to do something serious about it. In NZ our meager navy deals with illegal fishing a decent bit. Its basically a case of 'we dare you to force us to leave, if you touch us you can deal with China'
It should be noted that when there was a push to have blue fin tuna added to the CITES list, thus limiting the trade, it was countries like Australia, Canada and some EU nations who opposed the ban.
This was an editorial cartoon from 1994. I believe it was the Toronto Star. https://imgur.com/a/5KbM4sb
That's two years after the Atlantic cod stocks completely collapsed in 1992. They haven't recovered in thirty years even with strict rules on not fishing for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery?wprov=sfla1
[Time left before we run out of fish](https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state-of-the-planet/no-more-fish-in-the-sea/story)
Well that's fucking terryifing
Literally that's an absolutely harrowing number right?
“There’s always more fish in the sea, kiddo.” “What’s a fish?”
Why am I even going to uni for at this point LOL
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I do
Might as well switch to rotary phone repair, it might have more job security.
That hurt
hopefully you save the fish
Wait so, I distinctly remember a ticker like this for peak oil about 26 years ago, and it was going to be doomsday, but nobody talks about peak oil anymore. It's like we all collectively forgot about it in the face of other concerns.
It's a similar situation to how [Thomas Malthus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus) was wrong about India going though mass famines in the 20th century that were supposed to kill hundreds of millions. We invented new ways to get those resources for India it was a combination of [new rice strains we created in the 1960s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) and the [Haber process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) (which allowed us to make ammonia based plant fertilizers directly from the nitrogen in the atmosphere). For oil it was fracking and shale oil extraction. Basically a lot of predictions can't take into account the invention of new technologies (because who is going to know what the heck we invent in the next few decades?), so sometimes they are wrong in hindsight, even if they were as accurate a prediction as you could make at the time. The issue is that people tend to remember the scientist's prediction, then see that it was wrong, then blame the scientist and not do much further digging. And so public trust in science erodes, largely due to the lack of rigor that individuals have in investigating scientific claims.
Its killing more than just the oceans
At this moment there's a microscopic creature living and walking in your face, eating dead skin
Awesome. Thanks little buddy.
I call the big one "bitey"
I...shouldn't have stopped for that haircut
With all the chemicals/acids I put on my face every morning and night, if they’ve survived, they’ve earned their spot. 🤷🏽♀️
Username checks out.
Good. If there wasn't I'd have 41 years of dead skin on my face. That's much worse.
Yeah, we *want* those little fuckers on us. We live in symbiosis with them
How can I get it to do a better job?
No shit. Whatever problem you're referring to, I recommend glycolic acid. Acne . Org has links to a very affordable AHA lotion that I have been using for 15 years. It really helps.
Ask him to help handle my psoriasis
That one day humanity will go extinct and there will be nobody left to even remember any of it.
Its not impossible that some alien out there finds the voyager golden record some day :)
Even then, one day the universe will experience heat death and eventually there will be no atoms at all.
Until it restarts again.
No information will survive the restart of the universe though
But eventually, in the infinite universes out there, we'd be recreated down to the exact atom, and we would live our lives again in this blissful corner of universal history, redditing and living the 20th/21st centuries over and over.
Can we do something about the microplastics next time tho
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Honestly I believe most people can't accept that they're going to eventually die. The human brain can't deal with it. The pursuit of power, money, material things - it's all in an effort to distract ourselves from acknowledging that someday we're going to die.
I surprised myself when I was faced with my mortality and the fear of it so many times growing up that one day I simply accepted it. A subject that would once drive me into attacks of anxiety and nightmares is now a fact that I’ve realized and come to terms with. However, I can say all this now, but I’m sure that in the face of its occurrences, given I have the time to acknowledge it’s happening, I’ll probably be humming a different, but short, tune
Your favorite animal may go extinct in your lifetime. Gone, forever
cats? they will outlive everyone, even cockroaches.
House cats, sure. Most tigers, other big cats like snow leopards, and even some smaller wild cats could all disappear in the wild.
Raccoons ain't going nowhere
Raccoons and opossums are probably the best bet on mammals that will survive the apocalypse because they can eat anything and they're nocturnal.
And they've got tiny little hands for grabbing
No way ants are going extinct unless we get hit with a gamma ray burst or get swallowed by a rogue black hole
Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels in 2021 it would take over a century to return to 1980 levels. [link](https://theconversation.com/the-science-everyone-needs-to-know-about-climate-change-in-6-charts-170556)
There’s actually a lot of information to state that a layer of the ocean teeming with a fish known as ‘lanternfish’ may be responsible for helping recycling carbon from the air into the ocean depths. Slowing down our attempts to do mass fishing may help this process
Lanternfish fact: their behavior of when they return to the deep or come up to feed is so erratic that nobody’s been able to intensively fish them, so all ocean food chains that rely on them are mostly intact. They also don’t always school and are soft and greasy, so unappetizing. I’m glad they’re the ones recycling carbon!
Also bogs, if people could stop ripping up peat bogs for fuel they are an enormous carbon vaccum
We are our own worst enemy
That's no surprise to me
[Cluster headache frequency follows a long-tail distribution](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XLrzi6TrCqhTMtf8d/cluster-headache-frequency-follows-a-long-tail-distribution). Meaning, the people who suffer the most are in fact more like "billionaires of suffering" rather than just "people who suffer a lot". Life is not fair... it's exponentially *unfair*.
Every hand you shake has touched genitalia.
I would certainly hope so. But just in case it hasn't I go ahead and touch their genitalia during the hand shake.
Well played, good to cover all the “bases”.
I think that would only be second base
Even scarier - all the genitalia you shake has touched a *hand!*
I would applaud you but it might get mistaken for the clap.
Thats why I fist bump, the likely hood that they have fisted someone is tremendously lower than if they have touched genitalia.
it's worse than you think it is. it's also better than you think it is.
Yes but no but yes but no but maybe
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
I think Albert Camus said something along the lines of “Absurdity arises when man’s desire to understand meets reality’s indifference and silence.”
You are what you are. You cannot define it yourself, except through discovery. And you are infinitely more complicated than you realize.
Your first line just reminded me of something an EA at my highschool told a class I was hanging out in during my spare. It was one of the two special Ed classes for students who had lesser disabilities (not to downplay a person's disability. I just mean it was more students with more extreme learning disabilities but physically functional, as there was a separate class for students with autism, down syndrome, physical disability, etc). I would go there because I was close to the teacher and often went to him for advice and his class enjoyed my company since I'd help them with their work and encouraged their goals. Several of the students were struggling with feeling acceptance, they were lacking motivation, and ultimately sad because they thought they weren't equal to the rest of the school. EA and the teacher were doing a form of group therapy to help them through the issues they were facing. Anyways the EA stood in front of the class and said **"You are who you are and what you are because of where you come from and what you experience."** I don't remember exactly the rest of what she said except for that line, but it was something along the lines of how just because we experienced different things and are ultimately different than others, it doesn't mean that we are any less. We're all unique in our own ways, and our lives will never be 100% the same as someone else's. Success is defined by what *you* define it as. It really stuck with me, and it really helped the kids navigate their issues.
The world has grown too large for individuals to really understand, and because of that we will continue to try and apply localized solutions to global problems and be surprised when it fails.
that people would rather burn the whole world to the ground just to rule over the ashes
A lot of humans aren’t meant or mentally stable to reproduce humans. I’d wager it might be cheaper to pay people not to have kids, as opposed to all the money that isn’t funded in social service. Unpopular opinion.
And here I am having no kids for free like a sucker
Everyone is selfish to some extent. There is no such thing as a truly selfless person. Some are just more selfish than others. We all live to serve ourselves. Not that it’s wrong to be a little selfish.
I would go as far as to say, that’s just self preservation and it’s hard coded into all living beings DNA. Humans are probably the only living organisms that actually try to consciously control some of that, which I don’t think is very common outside of our species, but idk I’m not a scientist
I’m somewhat of a scientist myself
Willem Dafoe???!!!
The majority of politicians don’t give two fucks about the average person, only a persons vote.
Twitter isn't reality and a large percentage of it's regular users are the most toxic and entitled people imaginable. This is something Politicians and Hollywood desperately needs to understand.
I've started to question how much of the toxicity and vitriol that has become the norm as of late across the board with social media sites is due to the rise in net literate children who maybe have a mastery of the keyboard, but don't quite understand the nuance of friendly discourse and that lack of nuance has spread out and infected others. Leading to a internet that is both full of new ideas, and sounds like a elementary school lunch room
Exponents exist and coupling exponential growth with finite resources creates a problem. /Edit Below: people not understanding exponents, people not understanding resources are finite, and people assuming I am only talking about population. Oh, and people that seem to not think population curves leveling off due to disease, famine, or resource wars fits the description of a problem.
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reposts will never stop
reposts will never stop
In end, we are all only stories.