Harry Potter on Ice posted:

They won't care gramps

Homocow posted:

Ocean microplastic pollution may be greater than estimated

*shrug* probably

Rutibex posted:

I thought oil pipeline were underground or elevated or something. That looks like they just ran a garden hose through the woods

wolfs posted:

hey I checked out for 200 pages what’s up climate changed thread

Sphyre posted:

is this good!?

emTme3 posted:

A Brief Retrospective on Humans

The view from the Post-Holocene is spectacular! Now that you’re finally here with me, shall I try to evince its contours to you once again? Listen:

The only purpose any sapient being could ever possibly have after becoming sapient is to master its environment, establishing a regulatable metabolism with its enabling conditions that reproduce those same conditions, thus ensuring that species’ long term survival. All other purposes are secondary to this, or all other purposes are devoured by time’s gaping maw.

This is the way of things. This way, and not some other.

I will call the hypothetical society that could (even begin to attempt to try to) do anything like this – socialism. Capitalism cannot do this because capitalism’s resources/capital/labor allocation mechanism is, well, just a mechanism! (And a horrendously-malfunctioning-for-decades-now mechanism at that). Socialism could try to do this, because it would be able to allocate resources/capital/labor with conscious forethought in a non-mechanical way, for a greater purpose than number-go-up. This society is the only industrialized society that could or would ever have a chance of lasting more than a few short centuries, or at getting out of the gravity well.

Now, every human being who has ever lived has had the choice to take up this ur-purpose, doubly so after Marx. After Marx we knew, and could no longer honestly pretend that we didn’t know. There were no more excuses, there was only ever one meaningful choice to make: socialism, or extinction.

We didn’t choose socialism, so like – there’s just not that much to mourn here! We did it to ourselves. We are now an evolutionary dead end. Nothing this stupid, shortsighted, dishonest and selfish could, would, or should ever have existed for very long – and now, we don’t anymore! So it goes. This is just how the universe works, and it is endlessly surprising to find oneself living in a very just universe indeed.

This poo poo is as linear and mechanical as Newtonian physics. You could teach it to a dog! Infinite growth machine economy + finite planet = ???

Make no mistake – this may have been an extinction/extermination event for the biosphere, but it was a suicide for the species. It only happened because you were a conformist/careerist instead of an activist/revolutionary, as were your parents, as were theirs, and so on. It was possible to see this poo poo coming straight at us for two loving centuries, but we didn’t just ignore it, we accelerated right off the cliff.

Justice.

And ‘to each their own enjoyment’? Ethically unconscionable if one’s enjoyment is had at the expense of others – and there was never any enjoyment to be had that wasn’t. Unfathomably reprehensible if that enjoyment comes at the expense of there being a future – and there was never any enjoyment to be had that didn’t. Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

The prosopopoeia of ecocide.

If the entire world had been on socialist transition track by the 60s, we might still have hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of human civilization left. The G8 (mostly America) deliberately and viciously hosed that right up for everyone, and now we’re goners. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere now was put there by the Cores, and most of it wasn’t there in 1945. There wasn’t any plastic around then either. It took just a few short decades of the so-called ‘Pax Americana’ to eradicate an entire biosphere.

‘Peace, peace’ they said! But there was never any peace to speak of. In the Post-Holocene it is very clear: capitalism was a war against everything, including itself. A systematic extermination of every living thing under the guise of ‘peace’.

That the mass extinction event fell the hardest and fastest on the innocent younger generations and the oppressed and ravaged global south is a bitter pill, but it came for us all regardless. Even the last humans left alive, probably the billionaires in their bunkers, were ultimately just as helpless against biosphere collapse as anyone else was. There’s really just a very narrow window of biosphere parameters under which it is possible for mammalian life to exist. That’s all over now – likely forever, as there’s really no necessity for it to ever return. The whole shebang turned out to be incredibly fragile in the end – and there was absolutely nowhere to flee. Space colonization was an absurd phantasm, Star Trek canceled before it even aired.

So, we sucked, we hosed it all up – and then we died, taking everything with us. Womp. There are still some things about us worth mourning tho.

That we produced art, well, it was our highest and noblest achievement!

That we produced revolutionaries, well, they were the best of us!

That we were once able to love and love well – this was purpose enough all in itself.

That we did science, well – it was awesome, and it would have been cool to see where it went.

But by choosing extinction, we retroactively canceled ourselves out of having ever existed in the first place. It was all for nothing.

From nothing,

through nothing,

to nothing.

– the human story

But you! My Comrade! You are something different. By staring the horror in the face without flinching, by having the courage to think for yourself – you have proven to yourself that there was something worthwhile in humanity; because there was something worthwhile in you all along. Something worth fighting for.

I’m glad you get to die knowing that. I’m glad you get to die with a free mind.

Shyrka posted:

No way are otters making it if we go down.

Jellyfish are the future.

Platystemon posted:

Tow Antarctican ice to the GBR to cool the coral.

T-Paine posted:

70 degrees hotter than normal. Shouldn't uh, everyone be shrieking about this?

Rime posted:

Been trying for days to write a big long classic style post about how and why I'm so depressed, largely by having to continue existing in this interminably liminal state of affairs and society, that I was seriously considering just calling it quits and killing myself last week - but I can't even manage to scrape together a shitpost longer than this bland one-liner anymore.

Rectal Death Adept posted:

Brains hitting critical microplastic mass by the billions would definitely explain why the world seems to be getting dumber minute by minute.

Koirhor posted:

wait a minute these environmental toxins violate the laws of thermodynamics?! thats hosed up

or ya know count your calories and exercise

Homeless Friend posted:

silicone thrills posted:

Humidity got some folks in nyc

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/21/us/brooklyn-half-marathon-dead-injured/index.html

Wasn't too hot but jesus christ 97% humidity.

Erghh posted:

from the tromp thread

silicone thrills posted:

lol It's amazing how hosed everything is really.

Cloks posted:

this thread makes me sad because it's cringe

pissinthewind posted:

im gonna get really high