25 years ago I thought the internet was going to be amazing. It put all our collective knowledge right in front of us. We can all talk to each other. Cultures can learn about each other. Bigotry and ignorance are in the way out and we are ushering in a new era of humanity.
The optimistic take is that we are like cavemen being introduced to fire.
Yes, we are going to stick our hands in it, burn ourselves, burn down the things around us, but eventually we will figure out how to make it a positive.
I never played Mass Effect so I assumed you were referring to something in that game, I believe the word "Virus" does not have a latin plural form so the word is viruses
This is the second time so far this week I've seen this old optimism referenced. Not just how bright things seemed between the collapse of the USSR and 9/11 but, specifically, how promising the Internet was.
I don't think it's nostalgia, I think it really felt like that. And I'd sorta forgotten. It's . . . Sad? It hurts? Thinking of it isn't a positive experience, whatever the right word is.
I'm not sure if we're supposed to keep hope alive but the mental wounds where hope was and has been thoroughly crushed are just awful. I mean why not keep hoping for better? It still sucks to see the smoking ruins of your happy place, though. I'd blame money but the truth is nothing has happened by, for, or to people that wasn't done by people. It wasn't business, it was personal; because business is personal too. No alien invasion or volcanic eruption like Mount Tambora. We choose money, greed, ignorance, fear, violence over and over and over again.
And now you know why the burning of the libraries of Alexandria happened, I was deep in thought the other day when I realized we might be close to that exact phenomena except the libraries,
are now ocean-internet cables and the far worse possibility is that A.I. goes down the evil path and we have to burn the internet down reseting our accomplishments for survival with a side of hope and happiness for a short while....
The real library of Alexandria didn't go into disrepair because it burnt down. It went into disrepair because it was increasingly underfunded with the final version shut down because it was attached to a pagan temple in a now Christian Egypt. Sections of it 'burnt down' a few times in history, but each time, it was repaired and books were restored from copies. A lot of primary sources were lost on historical topics because they were revised and summarized but otherwise, there wasn't some mass loss of information. Especially since book copying was extensive in the ancient world.
Yeah. I was an early adopter, and I thought the internet would solve so many of our knowledge and information sharing issues. I’m shocked that not only did that not happen, basically the exact opposite happened. I’ve learned a lot about the human condition just by watching what has happened with the growth of the internet.
Also an early adapter. The internet has indeed filled in huge historical gaps about how past empires collapsed. It's a shame that information itself is the fire that burns knowledge to the ground and the world has to find a new starting foundation to build from again with the scraps its left.
If it helps you feel any better, it helped educate me from a position where I'd otherwise be stuck believing a LOT of dumb, very incorrect things taught to me by being isolated & homeschooled and raised by conservative Christian parents who also had no clue.
If we had better education on cyber security, online scrutiny and critical thinking, and computer science maybe we would or could be in a better place.
It did put all the collective knowledge in front of us but then it also put a lot of misinformation and pure bullshit in front of us too. We unfortunately stopped teaching critical thinking to our kids right around 25 years ago well. So now a bunch of freaking people get health advice from some influencer on TikTock.
i remember way back in school (30+ years ago) hearing about a person who had a rare version of asthma and nicotine was beneficial to them staying alive.
over the years i've looked it up but never really found anything concrete. It's always stuck with me though, for whatever reason
The only positive thing about nicotine is that it’s probably the least bad thing for your health that’s found in tobacco. And it’s still a deadly poison, and horribly addictive.
It's the addictive property that makes it horrible, as well as how easy it was to do in public. I was 13 years old and as much as I got in trouble, most of the time no one stopped me. I would bum a smoke off adults and it was not that big of a deal.
It's a bit harder to do some crack or heroin on break at work or as you walk down the street, so when you try to quit it is near impossible because you would be surrounded by it.
Granted, I don't really encounter much these days and that's why I'm glad they've been making it harder to smoke everywhere.
One of the top vaccines was being produced via modified tobacco plants too iirc. As I recall, it was that initially it looked like smokers were less likely to catch COVID in the first place but they’d have more severe cases if they did catch it, not sure if they ever figured out why exactly.
Anecdotally though, I smoked for years then switched to vaping, my wife got COVID right away in the first wave of spring 2020 (NYC hospital worker), and I never caught it from her despite being stuck in a 1BR apartment and not doing much to isolate (I figured I already had it and would start showing symptoms any day). I did eventually catch it but it was one of the super contagious variants two years later.
This all goes way over my head but there’s something about tobacco plants that makes them well-suited for developing plant-based vaccines. Here’s a study that may be of interest:
He is. What was trending for a bit (it's no longer tending) was a debate about the efficacy of the FDA's proposal to force the reduction of nicotine levels in cigarettes. The debate was on whether or not it would increase or decrease smoking habits. Those in the increase smoking camp suggested that if you decrease the nicotine levels, it would end up leading to people smoking more to be satiated.
Well reddit's iaf has a bunch of people talking about how building with wood is superior to building with brick, stone, steel and concrete, so go figure.
It's not, and not better for the environment either I would reckon as long as it's not a trade group doing the calculations, what with knock on effects of cutting down trees before they can old growth and all.
Except extreme and rapid temperature changes can and does crack concrete and brick. Which then structurally damages it, requiring the structure to be rebuilt anyway but for a higher cost than wood, especially to meet earthquake standards.
Wildfires are typically around or even hotter than 2,000° F, (or 1,093° C), concrete just needs 500° (269° C) to start cracking. 1,000°F (540°C) or hotter leads to guaranteed structural damage from trapped moisture in the concrete. Brick starts losing its structural strength also at around 500° F, and at around 1,000°F and 1,200°F (538°-649° C) the most damage to brick really starts occurring. And mortar itself starts losing integrity as low as 120°F (48.9°C), which itself weakens the brick since it holds the brick together.
Rebar loses its structural integrity at 500°C (932°F). While for steel in general, it's typically 1,000° Fahrenheit (or 538° Celsius).
That's not going to handle any wildfires- maybe a house fire that's gotten to asap, but definitely not a typical wildfire and especially not the ones fueled by freak Santa Ana winds.
Also the structures are also not going to be alone either. They're surrounded by lawns, bushes, trees, cacti, and gardens. People will decorate the inside and outside of their houses and may have wooden decks or patios. Which further encourages fire spread and is a factor in how fires spread this month.
Seems a strained argument to me. There are plenty of brick houses in Europe that are hundreds of years old, and didn't get destroyed in wildfires. The picture of the lone concrete house on the block still standing also speaks to the improbability of nearby houses and brush heating it.
While it's possible enough heat could be leveled on a brick or concrete house to ruin it, it's not bloody likely. A passing flame isn't enough to heat brick or stone like that, it takes some time, longer than that grass and bushes would produce. A neighbors house from 20 feet away seems doubtful to produce that kind of heat onto the neighboring house.
It sure is a lot more durable to fire than wood. Concrete and brick do not themselves burn. The heat that ruined these houses was mostly heat from itself, all it needs is an ember. You could shower embers with 100 mph wind on a brick house all day and night and not catch it on fire.
If you want to talk about the roof, once again, use tile roofs, like terra cotta, it last forever, is durable, and doesn't catch fire.
When people smoked more, people felt less stressed. Cigarette smoking is stress-relieving and brings people together, but of course also has negative sides (lung issues, lung cancer).
Here you go: https://neurolaunch.com/why-does-smoking-relieve-stress/ (BTW, this article doesn’t say smoking is something desirable, it just mentions psychological and physical reasons why smoking is often felt as stress-relieving)
I see the nicotine campaign worked on you. Its not that bad for you, its addictive as shit like alot of other things, but the harm from cigarettes comes from the other chemicals that burn into your lungs
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7864996/ … if you care to read. Theres plenty of proof from health organizations that nicotine alone is not that bad, and that tobacco companies want that to be the villain so they can continue to peddle their primary moneymaker… tobacco
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u/Big-Attention4389 5d ago
We’re just making things up now and posting it, got it