In other news...

[Michael Hopcroft]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

Taal is/was a very scenic landmark, as a volcanic cone in the center of a lake. One wonders exactly how the crater that contains the lake was formed...

 

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

Caldera collapse would be my guess.

Caldera collapse explains the Oregon landmark Crater Lake, with the exception the volcano in question is described as extinct (meaning it will never erupt again). This is as opposed to Mount Hood, the iconic mountain just a few dozen miles from Portland that could begin an eruption cycle at any moment, with potentially dire consequences for the metropolitan area.

[Starlord]

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

Taal is/was a very scenic landmark, as a volcanic cone in the center of a lake. One wonders exactly how the crater that contains the lake was formed...

 

Kamehameha Wave

[assault]

This Scottish reporter was tricked into wearing full protective gear to hold a fearsome Aussie drop bear

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Dr. Hook’s Ray Sawyer, ‘Cover of Rolling Stone’ Singer, Dead at 81

 

I was a big fan of Dr. Hook for a long time. Ray had that distinctive presence with the cowboy hat and the eye-patch and the huge smile that told you he was probably drunk. ROP.

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/dr-hook-ray-sawyer-dead-773938/

[Pariah]

Opinion piece Re: The Oscars©

 

The Oscars love mediocrity. That’s why ‘Joker’ got 11 nominations

 

A very interesting read.

 

tl;dr version: The Academy likes movies that portray Hollywood as 'woke' without ruffling too many feathers, especially among people who might finance future films.

[Bazza]

6 hours ago, Pariah said:

Opinion piece Re: The Oscars©

 

The Oscars love mediocrity. That’s why ‘Joker’ got 11 nominations

 

A very interesting read.

 

tl;dr version: The Academy likes movies that portray Hollywood as 'woke' without ruffling too many feathers, especially among people who might finance future films.

 

So basically The Academy is a virtue signalling org lacking meaning. 

[Starlord]

Christian school expels student due to rainbow sweater and cake posted on social media

[Pattern Ghost]

So, a Christian school objects to a depiction of God's promise not to wipe us out with another giant flood?*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*And now that I think about it, that was one ominously specific promise.

[Lord Liaden]

I've found that rigid morality and insecurity often go hand-in-hand.

[Badger]

1 hour ago, Pattern Ghost said:

So, a Christian school objects to a depiction of God's promise not to wipe us out with another giant flood?*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*And now that I think about it, that was one ominously specific promise.

 

Next time it wont be a flood.

[tkdguy]

Isn't it supposed to be fire next time?

[dmjalund]

1 minute ago, tkdguy said:

Isn't it supposed to be fire next time?

I'd be interested to see what a firebow looks like

[Starlord]

Steam.

 

The next apocalypse will definitely be steam.

[Old Man]

8 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

So, a Christian school objects to a depiction of God's promise not to wipe us out with another giant flood?*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*And now that I think about it, that was one ominously specific promise.

All He has to do is sit back and watch us do the job for Him. 

[Duke Bushido]

It comes from within, and begins with grossly divisive politics.  Then it moves to war, fire, and mass reaping, followed by a very lengthy period of individual judgment. 

 

The Rapture is a later invention,  it specifically discussed in the source material, and therefore discounted here. 

 

After that, the kingdom descends to earth and survivors are all in good and just servitude for the next thousand years. 

 

Your mileage may vary. 

[Starlord]

The Terminator gets it.

 

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Living concrete! 

 

 

[Hermit]

8 hours ago, tkdguy said:

Isn't it supposed to be fire next time?

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.- Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

[Cancer]

Humans deal very poorly with effects operating on timescales of 20 years or so or longer.  It can be part of "Tragedy of the commons".

 

As an example (of the long-timescale problem, not the TotC) ... This is Naples.  There's the spectacular two-peaked mountain behind the city, and development is climbing its flanks.  That mountain is Vesuvius.  It is famous really for only thing: it exploded in 79 AD and destroyed a couple of towns.  The volcano is still active, and it will do this again.

 

This makes it a real estate developer's dream: build lots of cheap crap that isn't up to code and will fall apart in a decade or less, and sell it for big prices based on the name and the view.  Ideally, the place blows up (literally) before the construction defects become manifest and the lawsuits get filed.

[Lord Liaden]

I would dispute the premise that "humans" are inherently so limited in our time frame. Our Western civilization has become used to taking a short-term view, expecting rapid results, quick gratification, and frequent turnover; but many other cultures throughout history planned for sustainability for centuries, even millennia.

 

OTOH our risk-assessment mechanism isn't very sound. We tend to assume risky things we've done in the past without immediate bad consequences are inherently safe. That's why we keep settling near volcanoes, on earthquake zones and flood planes. "Hey, it didn't erupt since my great-grandfather's day, it's not going to during mine. And even if it does, how bad could it be?"

[Starlord]

24 minutes ago, Hermit said:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.- Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

 

 

[Cancer]

7 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I would dispute the premise that "humans" are inherently so limited in our time frame. Our Western civilization has become used to taking a short-term view, expecting rapid results, quick gratification, and frequent turnover; but many other cultures throughout history planned for sustainability for centuries, even millennia.

 

I'm unconvinced there; those other (and earlier) cultures lacked a lot of the capacity to do short-term unsustainable things that permanently damaged their circumstances, or do such things such that the traces of it are unambiguous in the archaeological evidence.  Cases of such overexploitation clean of contamination by the West are hard to find, but they exist.  The one with the clearest evidence is the extirpation of the moa by the New Zealand Maori, whose laments of that event are well recorded.  We also don't know why the Maya civilization collapsed, though overexploitation of their environment leading to failure of concentrated agriculture is among the viable guesses.  I do concede that your point is worthy of discussion.

[Cygnia]

Cats Caught Breaking Into Human Body Farm To Feast On The Dead

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

 

I'm unconvinced there; those other (and earlier) cultures lacked a lot of the capacity to do short-term unsustainable things that permanently damaged their circumstances, or do such things such that the traces of it are unambiguous in the archaeological evidence.  Cases of such overexploitation clean of contamination by the West are hard to find, but they exist.  The one with the clearest evidence is the extirpation of the moa by the New Zealand Maori, whose laments of that event are well recorded.  We also don't know why the Maya civilization collapsed, though overexploitation of their environment leading to failure of concentrated agriculture is among the viable guesses.  I do concede that your point is worthy of discussion.

 

You are unquestionably correct. I certainly didn't mean to imply that early civilizations were invariably smarter in this regard than us. Stupid in the human race is another constant.   But there are lots of other examples, one of my favorites being the Inca irrigation system (partly because my mother was from Peru): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/farming-like-the-incas-70263217/

 

One of my takeaways from such examples is that while most of our predecessors had nothing like our empirical methodology, they often had it all over us in trial-and-error practical experience of what worked, building on lessons from centuries of experimentation.

[Cancer]

I concur.  Though I think that was a matter of luck, kind of.  When you have to work by hand, your progress is much slower, and so the adverse consequences of what you try shows up on times comparable to what you needed when making that trial, and it is easier to compare longer-term consequences with longer-term effort that you remember directly.  More powerful techniques decouples that feedback loop, because you can bulldoze the whole province in a week, and promptly forget about that when the consequences of doing that don't show up for years.