What are /r/collapse's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

This is going to sound weird.

I pick up litter.

A few months ago, I got a litter stick from Amazon. I put a few trash bags in my pocket, put on gloves, and went out into my neighborhood and got started.

The neighborhood was frankly trashed; most places in my city are these days. Decline of services and all. I can't do this most days, because my health is pretty poor, so it took me a while to finish my first pass. Now, every few weeks I can clean up my neighborhood in a couple of trips.

I fully realize that this makes me the crazy old guy in a hat and gloves on the side of the road, looking vaguely homeless. I don't care.

There are kids in this neighborhood. There are churches. People walk along these sidewalks every day. And now they don't have to think about what a dump the neighborhood is. They don't have to worry about walking around broken glass. They get to think about other things, hopefully better things.

It's changed my relationship with my neighborhood. I know it better. I know people here now; I've got regular stops on my route where they've invited me to use their trash cans. I've had some fun conversations.

And this might be my ego talking, but I think I see more people in the park lately.

Whether this is all coming to an end or not, there are people all around you. They're no less important than they've ever been. I'd argue they're more important than ever. Some of them need your help.

The only happiness I've found is in service to others.

It is not uncommon for a fascist dictator to obtain power this way. The book How Facism Works: the Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley describes how this process works and gives examples from history.

Something seems to be ... changing, something, something, something changing? What could it be?

We all know these are TikTok Competitions, who can get the most flooding for their 30 seconds of getting imaginary points on ARPANET.

China is probably going to have this beat tomorrow. Typhoon In-Fa smacking Shanghai all day tomorrow.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/typhoon-in-fa-heading-toward-china-shanghai/987212

> And while some workers have seen gains, most of the increases have gone to those who were already the highest-paid. 

This is the real key part - it is probably a lot of worse for most people.

Probably the loss of electricity and water is what really slams in we are one step away from being back in the stone age.

The Pacific plate slipped a few months ago. Over a long period of observation, when it does this, there are a series of earthquakes all around the Ring of Fire. If this pattern continues, there should be a large earthquake down the coast, North America (Oregon - California) or South America (Chile), in a few months. There have been very large volcanoes becoming very active this past year around the Asian ring, Phillipines, Indonesia, Bali, Krakatoa.

NASA has found the Earth is starting to wobble on its rotation axis. This is due to the weight distribution of solid ice melting into sloshing water causing an imbalance to develop. It seems this would start causing the plates to shift, mainly the Pacific plate. Oh, well.
https://weather.com/science/space/news/2018-09-25-climate-change-earth-wobble-more-nasa/

tl.dr., no need to wait for deadly heat for adult organisms when you can have high-enough heat to kill animal sperm.

This is actually an ancient contraceptive method (warm water/something to the balls) and we shouldn't be surprised it's effective in other species.

edit:

Now let's see if entrepreneurs come up with some type of cooling underwear.

• ice pack pockets https://www.amazon.com/Snowballs-Cooling-Underwear-For-Men/dp/B00HLHJ5QU
• tiny cooling fan? https://www.amazon.com/CYBOWING-Cooling-Underwear-Moisture-Wicking/dp/B082W1S5GV

Thom Hartman wrote a book in 2013. The crash of 2016.

He outlined events even more completely than you have here.

For some reason that crash still hasn't happened. /s

I'm not saying that you are wrong and that people shouldn't listen to you. There are huge economic imbalances in the system.

There's a post here about a grandfather not noticing the stock market crash. I guess the market has "crashed" 3, 4, or maybe even 5 times in my life. I've never noticed. Yeah, the value of my stocks have dropped considerably, but it wasn't like I lost my house and ended up homeless. And a few years later things were back to where they were before.

Let's take the 2008 crisis. Lots of people got hurt badly. The banksters tricked them into taking out home mortgages that they couldn't afford. When the crash hit, they stole those houses back and left them empty for years until people once again could afford to try to buy them again. Even at a greatly reduced value, the banksters were still making huge profits, because when you foreclose on a house, you get the entire house and whatever equity the owner had in it is lost.

I'm sure everyone knows this, but let's say it was a $250,000 house, the homeowner has $100,000 equity in it. The house is foreclosed on, the bank now has only $150,000 invested. They can sell that house at $100,000 below market and still break even.

Have you noticed how often the "experts" are now telling you we are not in a housing bubble? Guess what? They're lying.

This creates a rather interesting trap doesn't it. If I want to move, I probably have to sell my house. But by the time I get to my new location, and put an offer on a home, between the time I sell and the time I buy, the "exchange price" meaning trading between homes of equal value on day 1, 90 days later the new home may be $100,000 more. The radio is full of stories of people being caught in this trap.

Because I'm an asshole.

Because every storm cloud ought to have a silver lining....

Brexit + XR

We all know that economic downturns are the fastest, surest way to reduce carbon emissions.

Everything seems to be claiming that a hard Brexit will cause an economic crisis in Britain. That may well spread.

So maybe Boris is giving XR exactly what they actually wanted. The economic downturn (or crash) that will reduce, perhaps drastically Britain's carbon emissions.

Stay fed.

However you can.

Will it though ? I can't help but think that the disappearance of that much localized biomass could have a direct effect on local rainfall/weather patterns. A quick google search points to this article which suggests the same - and in fact says that the amazon forest is so big it affects weather patterns globally.

You should check out the Better not to have been book. The general idea is that it is more beneficial to have never been born. But, suicide is so hard to accomplish - mentally and physically - that it might not be beneficial to kill yourself.

Besides there are costs involved - say I'm 24, I have finally moved out from parents, live on my own. I have never been as free in my life before. All the childhood that sucked, the school are left behind. Im finally my own person. Health wise this is one of the highest point in one's life. From 30 it's going to go on downhill. Basically this and the next decade are going to be the best time of my life. Might as well make use of it if only to compensate for the shitty early part of my life. If/when it gets bad in my 40s+ I might just opt out of this game, and no family would be great in that regard - I would always be able to leave whenever I would want.

Life is essentially about costs and benefits. Most people trudge on because the pleasure shots they get out weight the suffering and the pain of suicide. It is true for me too (for now). But I would still prefer not to have existed.

/r/antinatalism rules

Our overlords (the Oligarchy) is very pleased to see us divided because it keeps them in power.

They can criminalize vast swaths of Americans and use us as slaves in the prison system.

JC Penny would go out of business without a prison population.

Because without slaves in American prisons our economy might collapse.

And with Trump driving out "illegal humans" our food won't be harvested.

Criminalization.

It is a slave gathering tool.

13th.

The title of Ava DuVernay's extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis.

Watch 13th on Netflix to see where this all has led.

How Facism Works: the Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley. Currently reading this book and find it describes current Republican behavior to a T.

Also, good book on subject:

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

>In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.

>Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.

I traveled to Puerto Rico recently and on the flight out from Miami and into PR, there was seaweed stretching in long lines for miles upon miles. Here's a pic from the plane.

It's frightening to see so much of it, it kind of makes you realize the whole ocean could just get overtaken by a simple organism in the right conditions.

News article on it.

• Known as sargassum seaweed, the blooms have only been appearing in these areas since 2011.
• Scientists haven't yet figured out why this is happening, but some suspect climate chang

Yeah, you can all pretend that all this shit started in 2016 after the election of Trump but this movement toward oligarchy has been going on since the 80s and it would have been absolutely no different with Hillary considering her VP pick voted for the same fucking bill. Read Listen Liberal and you'll understand that Trump is just a symptom of a larger systemic problem. As long as you think the corrupt, fake left-wing party known as the Democrats are the answer and that Trump is responsible for the very broken system that enabled him to get elected in the first place, this stuff is completely over your head.

Nuclear war a problem with Trump? That's funny considering Democrats voted to increase the Pentagon budget under Trump's watch to the highest levels in U.S. history.

Dr. Jeff Masters updated his commentary at weatherunderground an hour ago. Here is the link https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Cone-Florence-Takes-Aim-Southeast-US What is interesting is what he describes in the middle of the post (scroll down to the subhead Invest94L). He says he attended a presentation a few years ago where it was shown that a small area of low pressure was growing in front of Katrina, and that Katrina "ate" it and took in the energy and precipitation. The suggestion being, that this small, extra area of disturbed weather helped to ignite Katrina into the monster it became (in addition, of course to the warm Gulf water). There is now an area to the west of Florence which may do the same thing, unless the forecast tracks for both divurge. He says none of the models currently suggest that this will happen, but that it bears watching.

"Whether or not humans go extinct remains to be seen, but there is no denying that sustaining 7.6 billion humans while we are forcing the extinction of between 150-200 other species each day and have pushed Earth’s climate out of its natural state is very much in question. I’ve spoken to prestigious scientists both on and off the record who believe that sooner rather than later, global population will be reduced to around 1 billion humans."

>Due to living with a just in time economy, we have verrrry little food stored up anywhere.

This is exactly why the west is so vulnerable right now. A good book on the subject (if you're interested) is The End of More .

Will take a little longer for it to turn green:

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=under+a+green+sky&qid=1556728391&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Critical Decline of Earthworms from Organic Origins under Intensive, Humic SOM-Depleting Agriculture

> Abstract > In view of recent reports of critical declines of microbes, plants, insects and other invertebrates, birds and other vertebrates, the situation pertaining to neglected earthworms was investigated. Entomological reports found the probable cause of general loss was lack of recruitment from surrounding fields (except for pest species). Earthworm decline under agricultural intensification compared to organic fertilizing is herein charted from several long-term agronomic trials, some operational >170 years. Relative biomass losses of –50–100% (with a mean of –83.3 %) match or exceed those reported for other faunal groups, thus earthworms are conclusively shown to be similarly depleted from their optima in agrichemical fields. Concomitant mean loss of SOC/SOM humus is –56.8% and soil moisture is reduced by –22.3%. Organic farming lessens humic degradation and topsoil erosion, conserves essential soil moisture and biota, and produces equivalent or higher crop and pasture yields (on average +17.8% in this study) at lower cost. Loss of earthworms adds weight for rational re-evaluation of viable means for food production compatible with environmental conservation (agroecology), hence various interlinked benefits of organic husbandry in terms of yields, soil restoration, biodiversity and economics are briefly discussed. Persistence with failing chemical agriculture makes neither ecological nor economic sense.

http://www.mdpi.com/2571-8789/2/2/33

..............................

An open database of 19,384,607 free scholarly articles. We harvest Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make it easy to find, track, and use. Get the extension

https://unpaywall.org/

This is in fact not a problem for me at all, as I simply wash off the handles as I wash my hands, simply soap and rinse the handles as part of the whole process.

All Commercial hand soap is antibacterial, so simply washing the faucet handles as you wash your hands eliminates any risk, and, as I see it, it is just a being a good citizen, as, not only does it help me, it helps the next person behind me.

For the few bathrooms that try to be stingy and not's provide paper towels to grip the handles on the way out, they either push out, and I can use my hip or foot, failing that, I have a Door Puller, that I have had since the start of the pandemic, this allows me to pull open most doors without needing to touch them.

Plants pull CO2 out of the air and use around half of it to build their bodies. They exude the rest of the carbon into the soil as simple sugars to feed the microbes that live in the soil. The microbes eat the sugar and excrete acids into the soil, breaking down the rock to get the minerals they need in addition to carbon to build their bodies. When the microbes die, the plants can absorb the minerals the microbes collected.

People have degraded topsoil so much that we have a huge opportunity to remove CO2 from the air and store it in soil by restoring soil health, which would happen if we could/would restore the native ecosystems. David Mongomery has some great books and videos explaining where we are and how we got here.

Trees have an enormous amount of solar collecting leaves powering the photosynthetic machinery that converts atmospheric CO2 to wood and carbon in the soil. Compare that to the photosynthesis a lawn cut a few inches high can do. People need to plant as many trees as possible, and even more importantly save every bit of old growth ecosystems we can.

These days, working hard is so you don't scrape mud cakes off the sidewalk in the future.

Collapse won't happen instantaneously and for a long time basic things that you took for granted today will make your life substantially more livable.

It's a tricky thing.

Also, that line is actually "work hard, play hard". If there's a "later" one, I wasn't aware of it.

Weather Channel rainfall prediction map shows the potential of an ADDITIONAL 50 inches of rain in some areas--meaning largest storm totals could exceed 6 feet

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-harvey-rain-flood-forecast-texas-louisiana

Very much the new norm.

 

>World may have only 4 climate-reliable locations for Winter Olympics by 2050

>According to a new study, most places that host the Winter Games won’t be able to support snow if changes aren’t made. Similarly, the world could have just one city left that will be capable of hosting by the year 2080.

>The four cities projected to remain climate-reliable in 2050 are Lake Placid, New York, Lillehammer and Oslo, Norway, and Sapporo, Japan.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/climate/world-may-have-only-4-reliable-locations-for-winter-olympics-by-2050/1139837

Drunks are on the rise, but it's more than just the drink. The food too. There are now young skinny people with fatty liver disease - not from drinking.

> Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is increasingly common around the world, especially in Western nations. In the United States, it is the most common form of chronic liver disease, affecting an estimated 80 to 100 million people.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20354567

next to drinking everyday the worst thing you can do to your liver is ingest copious amounts of sugar (table sugar is 1/2 fructose) and other highly refined and processed carbohydrates - corn, wheat, rice, pop, fruit juice.

Actually, population growth is currently linear and has been for about 4-5 decades. +80m/yr, 12-14 years per +1b.

It was exponential up to about 1970 when the growth rate peaked. It may or may not slow down further so the yearly increment starts reducing but it hasn't yet.

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical

The UN is still predicting 10b in 2056 and no peak this century. But that assumes business as usual, no black swans and no overshoot, crash and burn.

well shit, didn't even know it was paywalled. no idea about other sources, but this should take care of the problem.

you could also go to town after pressing F12 and remove elements to read the article, but I don't know the exact method.

cause trees aren't like humans, they ain't no bitch.

Also in a recent study they found out that trees actually cool a lot more than was initially let on. With increasing temperatures, the fear is that trees will go through respiration rather than photosynthesize adding to the CO2 emissions. However it is trees that are needed to help cool localized temperatures to begin with.

Also, if you are not already signed up, please make Ecosia your go to web browser. They plant trees

One of these days the mods are going to get tired of me plugging this book and sticky it to the side bar along with other resources.

Ten Lost Years by Barry Broadfoot Should be available to any Canadian at their local library.

https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Lost-Years-1929-1939-Depression/dp/0771016522

She wrote a book called "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".

"Central to the book's thesis is the contention that those who wish to implement unpopular free market policies now routinely do so by taking advantage of certain features of the aftermath of major disasters"

It was OK.

I feel for this man, but the bottom line is the emergency will not be declared until the worst results are apparent. That Klumstatus guy may be nutty, but I agree with him about one thing-the west is likely the area that will make it through with the least damage. Not because of le rich people, but because governments are going to go jackbooted and lock their societies down. Western governments are way ahead in resources, so they are better positioned to weather the storm. They will start locking refugees out as well. We are looking at a new era of reintensified nationalism. The world will suddenly become smaller for most western people because it's likely aviation will be severely curtailed.

Here's a paper examining the likelihood of authoritarian government in east asia. A local examination, but applicable to the west as well.

The saddest part is the people who did the least damage are the ones who will suffer the most.

Ok, so the total working population of China is around 68%. Source. The current population of China is around 1.4 billion and climbing. Source. So 68% of the population is around 952 Million people. So basically, this is such a big layoff that just shy of one in every 10,000 working people in the country was laid off. That's pretty huge.

I agree this will not "save the world", there is not such thing. But a journey of a thousand steps can only start in the place you are. You can't expect Bob the accountant to become blacksmith and join your resilient community if you don't even know his name. And when things suck big time, they suck less if there is a sliver of kindness in your community. When my son was in the hospital, life sucked a little less every time I walked past the donation bin and remembered somebody cared.

In my experience, a great starting point are neighborhood associations. Check if your area has one. Ours has projects to help seniors, clean parks, donate children books for summer readings.. They are not huge things, but it gives a small sense of resilience. The monthly briefings with our police department on crime prevention/crime development in our area are also quite useful.

I'm not into social media, but some of our neighbors like to use nextdoor.

> Toomie shifted. “The den’s over there.” He pointed farther down the street. “Are there a lot of them?” Maria asked. “At least four or five.” He was quiet for a while. “I was going to sell that place for 359,000 dollars. Now I’m trying to figure out if I can charge a bunch of wild animals some rent.”

https://www.amazon.com/Water-Knife-Paolo-Bacigalupi-ebook/dp/B00NRQOR26

Update somewhere in the Mojave Deseret

It's been in the 80s now, may reach 90 Degrees tomorrow. We are breaking every record. We are usually in the 50s and Low 60s with nights in the high 30s!! It's Spring over here basically!

Also Net Neutrality. Rip. Pack your bags folks, heading over to https://www.privacytools.io/

I encounter this obstruction every day. Starting to despise it. Starting to get angrier. Starting to really need to force out the grace in my delivery. I think everyday woke-people just need to be louder, more intense, and rigidly objective. Always have a reason. Compromise your social status. Make people aware of the gold buried in the blue.

[http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hunter-Gatherers_and_Play]

Just looking up the definition of things like relative poverty, egalitarian, private property, etc, can really help separate narrative and principal.

Potato quality video cant even see the slides, I went ahead and converted everything here is the link to the slideshow in pdf format and here is the video in mp3

Speaking of automation and technology, I just saw this on the news today. https://www.dnanudge.com/en/about-us

So far it's only available in the UK, but with this US story it's a soft disclosure for here in the states. I mean, people just keep giving away more and more of themselves for no other reason than laziness and convenience. They say they destroy the DNA after they make the product, but I don't believe it for a second when they could make a fortune selling it. In fact, there's a very good chance 23&Me is selling information to GSK. Amazon and Google are diving right into the medical industry. "They" won't be happy until they have full control over every aspect of our lives and are beaming ads into our dreams like in Futurama.

As for collapse, we're due for one form of it or another at this point in history. Read this book, https://smile.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+fourth+turning&qid=1577573087&sr=8-1

It was written in 1997, but one thing the authors didn't factor in was climate change. In some paragraphs, they describe the 2025 collapse as "potentially beneficial, as we can arise stronger than ever from the ashes," (paraphrasing here), but it looks more like we're heading down a nice, long road of fascism with a healthy dose of a dying world on top. Yay.

Edit: A word

While that is true about BMI, there are a lot of legitimately fat and obese people in the Pacific Islands because of an overabundance of shit food and poverty. And yes, Oceania is kind of different from other places on the planet. One reference for you: Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands

The issues you're describing with BMI only make a difference with dedicated weight trainers and athletes who deliberately build a lot of muscle mass. Random everyday people won't have record-high BMI on average, as a population, because they all just happen to be super muscular and lean.

I'm betting on this guy's "three-thousand-mile-wide Yugoslavia".

The hype of 'identity politics' has done its work too well for anything approaching a "Confederacy" to form. Seriously, can you imagine:
1. Antifa
2. BLM
3. Occupy [whatever-this-week]
4. ADL, SPLC
5. Neo-cons
6. Neo-liberals
7. SJWs
8. Alt-right
9. LGBT∞

...actually picking up weapons and pointing them in the same direction?

tbf, people link the 'malaise speech' ie crisis of confidence speech to him losing, but at the time the speech polled well. The general downturn of the economy and the gas crash, and arguably Ted's run, had way more to do with Carter's 2nd election failure.

Glenn Greenwald on this guy, from April 22

And a Salon article

That list is really not very good. There is a lot of cherry picking of individual stocks and retail BAU going on there. For instance, the stores Walmart is closing were experimental Express stores that deviated significantly from their normal business model in that they tried to compete against convenience stores. Overall, like it or not, Walmart is expanding globally. And, it's unfortunately just BAU that layoffs are now a part of life.

Even if you agree that the US Dept of Labor cooks the books when it comes to unemployment figures, and under counts the underemployed, the reality is that employment in the US is more robust than it has been since 2008. And, if you want proof of that, go to http://www.indeed.com/ and search several of the rapidly growing metro regions and see how many decent job openings there are.

2016 may well see a global economic slowdown, but the point is you can't really see it yet except in terms of oil prices and declining goods orders. Is this the calm before the storm? . . . Maybe.

Those images are from years ago so not really relevant to right now anyway. I'm not sure if news outlets have tried to run such stories recently though I have seen the older ones come up a couple times in comments on reddit of late.

The concern over failure at the moment is simply the insane level of rainfall the region is seeing and the fact that they've opened all the floodgates, which they've never had to do before. The area is already seeing significant flooding so I think it is reasonable to say this is a situation the dam has not faced before. It's worth looking at the area on Windy to get a sense of how much rain is falling there. It's looked like that or worse for weeks now.

Stirring shitty images into the mix doesn't help things though and nor does the inherent bias of the news outlets reporting on the situation. Taiwan news obviously has significant bias against China and whilst their recent stories have made accurate predictions about floodgates having to be opened (which Chinese news sources vehemently denied and called propaganda until they did indeed have to do so)... they have also used shitty images like that in the past:

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3740835

Given that these 'bending' stories mostly seem to have been on atrocious sources like the Daily Mail and Fox that do nothing but scaremonger and write bullshit at the best of times... they're not exactly in good company when it comes to trustworthiness. Nor of course though are all the Chinese propaganda news sites. So it's difficult to get an accurate picture of what is actually going on but I think it is something to watch closely. Even without a collapse the flooding is severe.

Off the top of my head, two reasons. Firstly, it's an average - most of the world is ocean, so over land it'll be much higher, and probably twice that or more over the poles. Second, imagine a bell curve moved to the right - extreme temperatures will be even more extreme. Big extremes are happening already, even at one degree quick list of recent heat records

>The fact that we are running out of potable water has nothing to do with living an American lifestyle.

I see where you are going, but it kind of does. Industry is the biggest user of water, by far. The 5 biggest beverage companies use more water than all the world's individuals.

Radical environmental activist Derrick Jensen explains:

>Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

If you run the Google Street View app on a $200 tablet and load it into a $15 Google Cardboard VR viewer then it is possible to find some spectacular 360deg VR panoramas shot underwater on healthy and diverse coral reefs:

https://www.google.com/streetview/#oceans

Small comfort, I know, but as long as we've still got the juice to keep that level of tech up and running then might as well enjoy it while we can.

​

A quick amazon search reveals a dual screen car dvd player for 66 dollars and maybe she can stop eating avocado toast everyday but that's still only going to put a dent in american hospital bills. This one was only 1200 dollars but she didn't know that going in, my assumption if I ever had to go to the hospital without insurance is it's going to be at least 20,000 dollars and take me years to pay off.

This is a good read by Chalmers Johnson who was a retired US Naval Commander

https://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Consequences-American-Empire-Project/dp/0805075593/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1516921977&sr=8-3&keywords=blowback

>Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our conduct in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.

‘Superbugs’ Kill India’s Babies and Pose an Overseas Threat (NYT, 2014)

> “Five years ago, we almost never saw these kinds of infections,” said Dr. Neelam Kler, chairwoman of the department of neonatology at New Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of India’s most prestigious private hospitals. “Now, close to 100 percent of the babies referred to us have multidrug resistant infections. It’s scary.”

This is a detailed article why Barry probably won't be another Katrina, for New Orleans anyway.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-the-big-big-lessons-learned-from-hurricane-katrina-mean-now-for-new-orleans-as-barry-closes-in/70008792

Even if goes over 20 feet it is not a levy failure, it's a spill over which they have designed for and can mitigate. It only gets real bad if the levy breaks and the entire river floods in. They are more worried about low laying areas elsewhere like a back door somewhere that pushes water in.

I think the merchants used a terminal that accepted bitcoins but, in the end, used a payment gateway that converted that to USD.

Services like https://stripe.com/bitcoin do exactly that. As a merchant, you accept bitcoin but use an exchange to get a USD credit. As soon as those exchanges fail, say during an economic crisis, they'll stop accepting BTC.

Call them up and demand reusable shipping totes. Pay the deposit. I scored a set from a company that was closing years ago. They have been thru everything and look the same as the day i got them.

Similar

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YCQZYW5?pf_rd_r=44SWRFPP2RF1C74W8AKP&pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&pd_rd_r=529cbb7d-290f-4fff-85c4-f4f3657c4dad&pd_rd_w=8mNTg&pd_rd_wg=BbaOi&ref_=pd_gw_unk

My understanding, based on my (limited) knowledge of climate systems suggests that the most immediate concerns are that of food and water availability. Here’s an excerpt from the book Dire Predictions by Lee Kump and Michael E Mann (names I know some regulars of this sub will recognise) that gives one example:

Increasingly severe drought in West Africa will generate a mass migration from the highly populous interior of Nigeria to the coastal mega-city of Lagos. Already threatened by rising sea levels, Lagos will be unable to cope with the influx, and along with the issues of dwindling oil reserves in the Niger River Delta and state corruption, these factors combined will result in massive social unrest..

“Massive social unrest” being a rather bloodless phrase that masks the utter chaos and lawlessness that seems almost certain to arise ina city already on its knees due to religious differences and rampant corruption. And of course this is simply one example among thousands.

To answer your question, with scenes like this going on around the world, borders will inevitably tighten as the number of climate refugees spikes and the race for resources creates geopolitical friction. From there, with parts of the planet simply having to be abandoned due to heat, the societal problems will grow more and more intense and displace more and more people.

This all seems more than likely to happen, probably faster than expected. In such a situation, growing vegetables in one’s backyard and keeping a few pigs or whatever seems an embarrassingly whimsical response.

A fantastic book on it is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. He read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. One chapter per degree.

Two degrees starts to be pretty grim. Three degrees is catastrophic, with things like mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people, major food-growing regions crapping out, and the Amazon burning to the ground. At four you start wondering if civilization will survive. At five you start wondering if the species will survive, and at six it's pretty clear it won't except maybe in some kind of Mars colony setup in the arctic regions, assuming nobody nukes it out of spite.

(However, RCP8.5 doesn't mean 8.5 degrees.)

Yet despite all of that 40% of adults are obese. You could yell at the clouds "don't rain today" and it would be just as effective as telling people to just "fix the problem".

Consumers simply aren't rational actors. They are mostly creatures of habit. For over a century corporations have worked to create and tweak habits to create the consumption zeitgeist we have today, and the simple fact is that at a societal level we will never "simply stop". A hundred years of hard work went into making this society consume like it does, and I bet it cannot be changed without global societal collapse or something of similar magnitude.

Habit is why the obese person grabs the Oreo over the broccoli time and time again, and why they almost always relapse after trying to diet.

A book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business explores this in detail and I recommend reading it if you want to understand the behavior that is causing this obesity epidemic, why people who hate being fat will continue eating junk until they die of a heart attack, why diets fail so often, and how corporations have hacked human habits to drive us to higher and higher levels of consumption at the expense of all else.

I am really curious if the Old River Control Structure is going to survive this storm. If it doesn't the damage will be in the tens to hundreds of billions. The impact on global trade is very hard to forecast. If it fails, the Mississippi will flow down the Atchafayala river basin instead of towards New Orleans. The Mississippi wants the Atchafayla - silt build up has made its current path significantly higher elevation than the Atchafayla.

Here is an article with some details for the uninitiated: https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-catastrophic-flooding-could-change-the-course-of-the-mississippi-river/329278

There are others out there.

> He cautioned, however, that because this is an observational study, it cannot prove cause and effect. > > Cirrhosis scars the liver and causes damage that can lead to deadly conditions such as liver cancer and liver failure. > > The most common causes of cirrhosis are drinking too much over many years, hepatitis C or a build-up of excess fat in the liver, known as fatty liver disease, the study authors noted.

..............................................

"Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is increasingly common around the world, especially in Western nations. In the United States, it is the most common form of chronic liver disease, affecting an estimated 80 to 100 million people."

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20354567

Plenty of rise in harmful drinking, but not enough to explain all the liver related deaths. It's the food/franken food that plays the biggest part in the increase in liver disease, but don't expect your government to admit that. Big Ag is mighty powerful and entrenched for decades. They have corrupted and bribed as many scientists and politicians as anyone.

What you put into your body is one of the few things in this world you have any say in. Eating the all industrial diet also has major negative consequences on your mental health.

Pics from the 2015 flood for comparison. This was 12 inches in 10 hours.

Edit:

>In the 24 hours through Sunday 6 a.m. CDT, parts of the southeast Houston metro area had received more than 20 inches of rain. One location in far southeast Harris County near Webster logged 24.28 inches of rain in 24 hours -- link

Brothels were hugely successful businesses back in the days of the wild west. You can easily expand with a bar and card rooms too. Depending on how things collapse there are probably going to be huge numbers of women who need jobs and with out modern industry, unless they are willing and able to do manual labor jobs, there isn't going to be a lot of options. By stockpiling guns and ammo for protection of people and premises, I will be well positioned to provide a large number of jobs in my area which will allow prosperity to return to my community faster.

In addition to your regular stockpiles make sure to add condoms and antibiotics (to deal with syphilis)

Well fertility rates for Europe UK are under 2 already.

So this means we're safe now ? If I recycle my newspaper, are we safe yet ? If I walk to the store instead of taking my car, we it reverse climate change ? Are we safe yet ?

Humidity is the important factor here. It tends to be very humid in the UK so it gets unpleasant when hot. I've been in 40+ C heat in Arizona and it was pleasant because the humidity was so low but 30C in Florida is unbearable because the humidity is so high. Sweat doesn't evaporate easily when the air is so saturated so you don't cool down and just get sticky. It only takes a wet bulb temperature of 35C (at 100% relative humidity) to be fatal for that reason.

Windy.com is showing a temperature of 35C and 21% humidity around Western Poland on the 27th at midday and 30C/60% around London at the same time. Both of these will feel like around 33C to the human body. I'm entirely expecting this forecast to be wrong though as it has been for months. Still just raining here... as it has been for months despite what the forecast keeps saying.

What if climate change happens but humans don't go extinct?

What if we keep burning 13GtC/Yr and turn it into 40GtCO2/yr until the 1TtC of accessible fossil carbon is all gone. In one last #terafart. We get a temperature rise of >5C. 200k years before CO2 and temperatures drop back again. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017S5NDK8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

The future doesn't end in 2100.

Indeed, they’re so demoralized. Because the limousine liberal elites throw them under the bus and are in a double-bind when it comes to talking about socioeconomic/race in the Obama/post-Obama era. Trump’s GOP is electorate self-sabotage just as those Rust Belt states are mired in opioid crisis abound.

Working-Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations https://www.amazon.com/dp/0520248090/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_zWHvCb95DWTB3

The problem is democracy which bifurcates political factions with unending ideologies and group division. We lack the harmonious unity unlike China’s MIC2025 and BRI plan. It then all becomes a De Blasio/Christie/Warren/Sanders power grab and fight. Fighting against ourselves and inadvertently perpetuating the unbecoming of the U.S.A.

Relearning skills lost to the market economy is to be wholly encouraged, but prepping for absolute self-sufficiency is futile. Hoarding food and water only puts off your day of reckoning, but having some supplies is wise.

Humans have depended on each other since our inception, we evolved to live in small bands/tribes which is why we are unable to avert our course of catastrophe, we are not well adapted to deal with the scale of civilization and it's problems. Myopia is our curse, its why we work best in small groups. Trying to go it alone will also end in failure. Lesson: Get involved with your local community.

I recommend you read Lean Logic; A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Logic-Dictionary-Future-Survive/dp/1603586482

Or the linear styled sister book if you prefer a front to back reading. https://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Future-Culture-Carnival-Aftermath/dp/1603586466

I don't understand how we fail to learn from history so much. Two authorities on warfare from two different time periods and cultures both arrived at the same conclusion, that a prolonged war without a specific objective is a terrible idea. They were Carl von Clausewitz who wrote On War, and Sun Tzu who wrote The Art of War. Thousands or hundreds of years later, we don't follow their advice. I have to conclude its because we choose not to, because remaining in Afghanistan must serve some ulterior motive. I blame the military-industrial complex. I think someone somewhere decided to make Afganistan a giant boot camp and testing ground for new weapons and armament. Much in the same way we used Vietnam.

This is a good article about the Old River Station from 1991 for anyone interested. It's almost let loose before.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/15/science/corps-of-engineers-struggles-to-alter-mississippi-s-fate.html

And a more recent one from wunderground

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Americas-Achilles-Heel-Mississippi-Rivers-Old-River-Control-Structure

https://www.buzzsprout.com/919177/8612522-we-ve-been-running-scared-for-30-years-interview-with-kevin-anderson

I think he talks about electric cars in this. Even if he doesn't, it's worth the listen, he gives a timeline of when to expect to pass 1.5 C and 2 C, the reactions by the hosts is memorable.

For all those people that want Ad-blocking across multiple devices (Smart phones/Smart TV's and whatever else).

​

take a look at setting a up a Pi-hole.

https://pi-hole.net/

​

a raspberry pi running this will block ads directly (DNS level ad-blocking). Works fantastic, and will work transparently on smart phones, so no need make changes or install add-ons.

​

Just FYI

In Italy (paywalled)

https://www.ft.com/content/55cb175d-9a0a-4c05-b358-ca39fa365ceb

>Almost half of the people who turned to Caritas — the charitable arm of the Italian Bishops’ Conference — between May and September did so for the first time.

Need this plug in to read, I use FF ... but it supports Chrome as well

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

Pretty much spot on, except for this:

> Music is the same

Not it isn't. At least outside the mainstream, there's an explosion of new styles, new genres and subgenres, and various fusions of genres. New artists, new artist collaborations etc. There's a strong revival of various world-music being re-released and rescued from obscurity by various labels, everything from Afro-Cuban to traditional Sri Lankan. There's a plethora of new electronic genres, that again mutate and mix.

"But I hate electronic music!!". Well, there's all sorts of interesting things happening in the neo-classical genres, especially when crossing over with post-rock and instrumental genres, which in itself is growing in leaps and bounds.

If you're into folk or singer/songwriter styles, it's the same; it's a regular bonanza! It's never been easier to produce or publish your own music.

We might be nearing the environmental apocalypse, but at least every day there is more, fantastic, beautiful and interesting music.

It's a small comfort, but I try to squeeze it for everything it's worth!

edit: sp.

d3, one of the main data visualization tools available, was developed in large part by Mike Bostock, initially while at NYTimes. They got very good at it.

Anyone interested in veganic regenerative ah should look up Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical Self Reliant Gardening. Great book, very entertaining and well written. He makes a good case for veganic gardening, and even non-vegans like me can get a lot out of it in terms of land use techniques

The Innovator's Dilemma is a great book and talks about this in the context of business. Businesses, once they reach a certain size, stop being about their primary business and become being about being in business.

Dudley went through yesterday. Eunice hits Friday. Then a sudden cold snap after that. Could turn into a polar vortex.
https://www.wunderground.com/article/photos/news/2022-02-17-storm-dudley-ylenia-eunice-images

Because record highs outnumber record colds, as expected under global warming? A stable climate would produce equally many record highs and lows, but that's not what's happening. Furthermore, you should educate yourself on global warming's effect on the jet stream, and how that in turn leads to Arctic outbreaks of cold air, producing local record lows, while the global mean temperature rises.

the tropical sacrifice death zone will begin in Asia, soon and first, thereby distorting those numbers, meaning that number will reduce, as mass climate refugees storm the north, there is no solution to the mass climate refugee struggle, especially as north developed countries have already lost 50% of their sperm counts as persistent organic compounds always drift north. Sterility won't happen fast enough to stave off the north/south conflict as the new and final world war.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=persistent%20organic%20compounds%20sperm%20counts&pc=cosp&ptag=C1AE89FD93123&form=CONBDF&conlogo=CT3210127

Part 2

Part 3

Hyperbolic title, downvoted.

Reasonable article: CSU 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast: Slightly Above-Average

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical

6b in the 80s? Nope.

• 1960 3b
• 1970 3.7b
• 1980 4.4b
• 1990 5.3b
• 2000 6.1b
• 2010 6.9b
• 2020 ~7.8b

In the late 60s and early 70s it looked like we were still accelerating exponentially with %growth/yr >2% At that rate, overpopulation would be a HUGE problem in the near term. but actually 1970 was pretty much the moment when the S curve switched from %compound growth to linear absolute growth. We've been on ~ +80m/yr ever since. Linear growth still gets you in the end but it takes a lot longer.

Current forecast (assuming business as usual) is 10b in 2056, no peak this century. If exponential growth had kept going we'd be on 10b now.

I've found it quite interesting to compare this wildfire map with a wind map over the last few days to get an idea of what the chance of them continuing to spread is. Especially interesting are the CO and SO2 overlays on that one. I don't know how accurate they are, what the data is based on or if they are just forecasts as I haven't found similar data elsewhere but it's interesting nonetheless to see how high the concentration is over the fire areas compared to everywhere else. The air quality must be really bad around there right now.

It is amazing to see just how many large fires are going on at the moment. I was out there a few years back and we had to take several detours to avoid roads closed due to fires. We drove up the coast for a month or so and came back to find the same roads still closed and fires still burning, though whether they were the same ones or new I don't know. I would guess that if fires get extreme enough they will hit a peak and then die down in the years following when there isn't as much left to burn and greater gaps between forests from previous burns.

Apparently, but it's also important to consider how this data is collected and who funds the research. Makes sense to reason the ruling class would benefit morso from nonviolence then the other way around.

Then you got researchers and people like the guy who wrote This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible who say otherwise.

I saw you mention in another comment one of the ER's heros is MLK, lil fun fact but a lot of people don't know he owed guns, believed people should be aloud to arm themselves, and was denied a concealed carry permit.

TL;DR: global warming denial article. The guy was lazy and didn't click the "Open graph" button, he would have found all the numbers, the graphs that he says someone is hiding.

Software engineer here, for the most part this is true, the hardest part though is that you don't know which paths exists and that you don't know what you don't know.

The best option is reach to a friend that's a programmer or has worked on IT for a while, let them know that you're looking for a career change and if you can both get together so that person can answer some of your questions and guide you a bit, in exchange you'll invite them to lunch or drinks (or both?), If you can't find anyone then try to reach to online groups (like here in reddit).

Also there's plenty of free online resources, it's just a matter or knowing what you want to pursue.

For example if you want to do web development https://www.freecodecamp.org/ is a great place to start with, there's also great YouTube channels like "Academind" and "Traversy Media".

One basic thing is that you also try to build stuff as you learn, not just follow tutorials, trying to build something yourself really solidifies your learning

Feminism is the leading cause of single motherhood. Children of one parent households have 2 times higher suicide rates than children of two-parent households. 1 in 4 children in the United States are now being raised without a father. Slap on social media where you're supposed to show off how great your life is, and I'm pretty sure that's not exactly improving the mental state of a lot of kids, especially those who are more at risk of depression, such as the ones raised by a single parent.

> Now back to reading about the thousands of people drowned in a flash flood in a car tunnel a few days ago when the toll booth operators refused to let cars exit without paying...

No, most or all got out. The aftermath is dramatic but they rescued themselves just in time according to the news. Someone translated it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/oq0vtv/a_4km_6lane_tunnel_in_china_packed_with_vehicles/h68w98l/

In fact they reported only 53 dead and 5 missing in total so far, millions of people in Henan, including hospitals, are affected by the floods though.

This isn't super up-to-date but gives a good overview:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/death-toll-deadly-china-flooding-zhengzhou-henan-province/985921

it's current year and you still can't manage to work out how to bypass paywalls? do you complain about how obtrusive advertisements are as well, as if adblock doesn't exist? https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

https://weather.com/health/news/sunshine-affects-suicide-rates-not-how-you-think-20140911

Two main theories help explain why. One is that sunshine triggers hormonal changes, affecting the circadian rhythm and increasing the agitation that might lead to a suicidal act.

The second, perhaps more prominent theory, is that when an individual is in the throes of a deep depression, they are too lethargic to take action when it is dark and grey outside. Once the sun comes out, and they feel livelier, that's when they are able to put together a plan for suicide. "When people are suicidal, and it's not that sunny, and it's kind of dark, it's kind of easy to feel that this is consistent with your mood," Dr. Sussman said. When the sun comes out, and others start become more active and excited, that's when the severity of a person's depression becomes more apparent to that individual.

Check out the NO2 trails of the shipping lanes. You can see it everyday :

https://www.windy.com/-NO2-no2?cams,no2,11.953,31.465,3,m:d5LagJr
zoom over Africa and the horn route for starters.

It's an image that has been bouncing around the net since at least 2013, usually without context. The original context may not even be retrievable.

WeatherSpark is the best site for seeing the year round climate averages and ranges for places all around the world. I'm hoping the site starts showing what to expect in the near future. I really enjoy this site. I can't believe people can survive now in some tropical places . it looks like 3C is typical high for icelenad and -1C is typical low for december.

I'm a subsistence farmer. We have about 3 acres of organic open pollinated gardens. We raise a beef cow every other year. We also keep sheep, pigs, goats and 1000's of birds. We occupy a niche market selling exotic farm fowl hatching eggs to support the farm. We do have outside incomes to supplement the larder. We are in northern Minnesota so we know how to survive in the cold and what crops can grow in this less than sultry environment. We can, we save seeds and work to perfect our seed stock through selective harvesting of seeds. Only the strongest, earliest and largest get planted next year. 90% of our farm is built from materials salvaged from the local dumps. We have orchards, a dozen types of berries and we grow our own hops for beer. We run a sugar bush in the spring. We even keep bees. We have an earth home that is passive solar and wood heated. We cut our own firewood. It is a lot of work and not for the lazy. It can be done and we are proof of that.

A good resource for books, current and out of print, in hard copy is American Book Exchange. New and used books sometimes for pennies on the dollar.

Submission Statement: This is an excerpt from Six Degrees imagining implications of Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model (2000). Posted here because I'm curious if this is still an accurate understanding according to more recent science.

life-straw, just stick it in a corpse and drink. lifestraw

It's correct but the only bit you got wrong is who manages this. It's not the CIA, they handle overseas human intelligence.

NSA spies on non-American targets overseas, including Canada, New Zealand, UK, Australia (together these form the Five Eyes). In exchange, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Australia, all spy on American citizens. All these countries individually are not supposed to spy on their own citizens, but all are allowed to share credible threats with each other.

They all use the same AI though to determine baseline threat, it's just the human analyst that needs to be overseas (ex. Australia), then they are allowed to forward it to their American counterpart (or vice versa). This gets further muddied when you could potentially have a 'Canadian' analyst living in the US as a liaison, who might be sitting next to their American counterpart.

To make matters even crazier, the above is ~15 years out of date now. How the system works nowadays I have no idea, but if you would like to know more, I'd still recommend The Shadow Factory, by James Bamford.

https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-Ultra-Secret-Eavesdropping-America-ebook/dp/B001FA0JLY

We have NO idea if/when an economic collapse will happen. It could be next month, it could be 50-100 years from now, and hell, the stars could align and maybe it will never happen.

Even if it does happen, it's not guaranteed to be inflationary. From looking at trends, it seems like that's the most likely outcome, but it's still entirely possible it could be a deflationary collapse -- in which case, your debt load will suck infinitely more.

Good rule of thumb is to get your ass out of debt as soon as possible. I don't think anyone can plan or count on hyperinflation happening -- so trying to defer your student loans until it does happen is not the best plan.

If you need a financial plan, I'd strongly suggest Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. He's a bit overzealous in some fronts, but his general financial plan is solid.

Let's rephrase his statement to be a little more factually correct

"The Earth Is Full If Everyone Continues To Work Towards Living Like Americans"

Seriously, our energy consumption is off the chart, and if we start increasing the % of the world population that lives like Americans do, we'll run out of energy real quick.

If you're skeptical, just listen to Hans Rosling http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html

Bullshit!

It’s never hit 70 degrees in Hartford in recorded history in December.

Hard to imagine it hitting 90 somewhere in CT without it hitting 70 in Hartford.

EDIT: In fact: weather underground has complete records of Windham, CT’s weather data from December, 2000 and the highest temperature recorded that month was 63.

No need to spread misinformation. It is extremely unhelpful.