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Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

bcglorf says...

@newtboy,
as the ice on land disappears, it exposes permafrost that, as it melts, also emits methane.

More from charliem's article's abstract:
Arctic tundra soils serve as potentially important but poorly understood sinks of atmospheric methane (CH4), a powerful greenhouse gas1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Numerical simulations project a net increase in methane consumption in soils in high northern latitudes as a consequence of warming in the past few decades3, 6. Advances have been made in quantifying hotspots of methane emissions in Arctic wetlands7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear.

The article he linked IS saying that they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets. They note this is a relatively unknown area as opposed to northern regions that emit methane. Charliem just didn't read the reference he pulled out at is it is counter evidence to his and your own statements.

As for your point:
As for your misunderstanding of CO2, removing all CO2 production tomorrow
I never said anything about that, I said:
if we could magically remove all the CO2 we've added to the atmosphere
As in I was talking about not merely ending our emissions, but also sequestering and pulling out of the atmosphere all the CO2 lingering there from us over the last century as well. That's pushing CO2 concentrations back down from nearly 400 to under 300. Re-read my statements in the correct context and they'll make more sense.
As for people "thriving", that's just ridiculous. There's been a food shortage world wide for quite some time now.
Again, context matters doesn't it? I'm describing how a person from 1915 would not look at our world today and wish they could go back to their time, end all CO2 emissions and avoid the catastrophic consequences we're suffering in 2015. If you want to talk about food distribution, your right and we've had problems with it forever. If you want to talk food production though, it's never been higher, if you go look at global agriculture output it's a steady increasing line as surely as the instrumental temperature record.

For the record, I absolutely state that the evidence throughout the entire instrumental record is a warming planet since records began in 1900. I absolutely state that the evidence is irrefutable that CO2 contributes to warming. I absolutely state the the evidence is irrefutable that we are raising global CO2 concentrations with our actions. Where I diverge from those like you is I do NOT see the scientific evidence declaring the results are catastrophic. It's simply not there to be found, in many cases it is in fact contrary to the limited evidence we DO have on it as well.

eric3579 (Member Profile)

Everything Wrong With Netflix

MilkmanDan says...

As someone living in the land 'o piracy, I can recommend these ... uh ... "competitors":
www.yts.re
www.eztv.ch

But to be fair, well over half of the first set of "sins" (before adding in sins for movies not available on Netflix) were really nitpicky or even just plain arbitrary. Like the very first one:

"Netflix was established in 1997 as a subscription based DVD-by-mail service, who, within it's lifetime, helped transform and revolutionize the consumption of online video streaming." = SIN ???

Coca Cola vs Coca Cola Zero - Sugar Test

korsair_13 says...

Stevia is too new to make any real determinations on. Currently, there is a lot of uncertainty. Just because something comes from a plant doesn't make it safer. Almonds used to be loaded with cyanide before we eliminated the trees that had those kinds of almonds. There have been recent studies questioning the safety of stevia, and this will likely be dealt with over the next decade. Unfortunately, certain countries have gotten around the necessary procedures for sufficient scientific inquiry because they are marketing it not as a food additive or sweetener but as a dietary supplement, which makes it easier to avoid such scrutiny. Unlike xylitol, which is perfectly fine for human consumption and has been shown to inhibit growth of oral bacteria that leads to caries and plaque, stevia is simply an unknown at this point.

However, stevia has also been around for a while. It has been a product since the 90s and has been banned and un-banned in numerous countries. European reports have shown that it is safe, but it is also still banned in many countries there.

For those of you think that it is "natural" and thus safer, I urge you to look up the naturalistic fallacy on wikipedia before going any further here. It has also been used as a sweetener by certain tribal peoples for centuries, so that means absolutely nothing as far as science goes, but it will still sway many people over, just like traditional herbal Chinese medicines like tiger penis powder and rhinoceros horn powder.

However, it is not a "natural" substance whatsoever, even though that word means nothing in nutrition anyways. Basically they take a small amount of Rebaudioside A from the stevia plant and use a bunch of alcohols and other chemicals to extract out the active sweetening ingredient and then crystallize it. This is then renamed steviol. It is significantly less sweet than most of the other sweeteners, except maybe saccarin, at only about 150x the sweetness of sugar.

Basically, Stevia is probably not bad for you, although the verdict is definitely not in on this one. It is no more "natural" than any of the other sweeteners. You need more of it to reach the same level of sweetness as your other sweeteners so dosage could be an issue. But you have to understand that each of the companies that makes these sweeteners has to find a way to sell their product. So, what do they do? They claim that their sweetener is "natural" and "safe" which implies that all of the other sweeteners that came before it aren't, and as evidence by my previous tirades, this is simply not the case. But they profit from our unwillingness to look at the data for ourselves and play on our natural tendencies to trust them.

In short, we are not certain about stevia yet, but we are certain that sugar is bad and aspartame is fine. However, you probably shouldn't eat any processed food, but we already know that in our bones. We all know that cooking up a delicious meal from simple ingredients is the best way to eat healthy but we don't do it because we are lazy. I am just as guilty of this as the next person. We can only dream of a future similar to "The Invention of Lying" where marketers aren't allowed to lie to us and can simply say that their food is bad for you but you drink it because it tastes good and because you have been for years. A world where they can't market to our children so we don't all grow up addicted to halloween candy or cereals that are more sugar than grains. The best way to do this is to cut your cable from the television and live on the internet with AdBlock installed. Then those fuckers can't get at you as easily.

Coca Cola vs Coca Cola Zero - Sugar Test

korsair_13 says...

Sure lucky760, I'll do Splenda, since some varieties of Coke Zero have Splenda in them.

First off it is important to note that the majority of the anti-sweetener "science" has been done by one man: Dr. Joseph Mercola. Now, watch out here, because his name is deceptive. You see, Mercola is an osteopathic physician. Osteopathy is a form of pseudoscience that believes that all pathology can be solved by manipulation of the bones and muscles. There is little science to back up these claims because they are clearly insane and worthy of ridicule. So, much like his doctorate, the claims he makes against sweeteners are pseudoscientific. A number of his beliefs are: that AIDS is not cause by HIV but by psychological stress; that immunizations and prescription drugs shouldn't be prescribed but people should instead buy his dietary supplements; that vaccinations are bad for you and your children (a belief which is the cause of recent outbreaks of whooping cough, measles and mumps); and that microwaves are dangerous machines that irradiate their products (they do, but not with the kind of radiation he is thinking of). Since he made a movie called Sweet Mistery: A Poisoned World, he has been at the forefront of anti-sweetener rhetoric. If you watch the movie, note how hilariously bad it is at actual science; the majority of the "evidence" is people claiming side effects after having ingested something with a sweetener in it (anecdotes are worth nothing in science except perhaps as a reason for researching further). So, you have a movement against something seen as "artificial" by a man who is not a doctor, not a scientist and is clearly lacking in the basics of logic.

Now, Splenda. Created by Johnson and Johnson and a British company in the seventies, it's primary sweetener ingredient is sucralose. The rest of it is dextrose, which as I have said above, is really just d-glucose and is safe for consumption in even very large quantities. So really, we are asking about sucralose. Sucralose is vastly sweeter than sucrose (usually around ~650 times) and thus only a very small amount is needed in whatever it is you are trying to sweeten. The current amount that is considered unsafe for intake (the starting point where adverse effects are felt) is around 1.5g/kg of body weight. So for the average male of 180lbs, they would need to ingest 130g of sucralose to feel any adverse effects. This is compared to the mg of sucralose that you will actually be getting every day. The estimated daily intake of someone who actually consumes sucralose is around 1.1mg/kg, which leaves a massive gap. Similarly to aspartame, if you tried to ingest that much sucralose, you would be incapable due to the overwhelming sweetness of the stuff.

There is some evidence that sucralose may affect people in high doses, but once again, this is similar to the issues with aspartame, where the likelihood of you getting those doses is extremely unlikely.

The chemistry of sucralose is actually way too complicated to go into, but suffice it to say that unlike aspartame, sucralose is not broken down in the body at all and is simply excreted through the kidney just like any other non-reactive agent. The reason that it tastes sweet is because it has the same shape as sucrose except that some of the hydroxy groups are replaced with chlorine atoms. This allows it to fit in the neurotransmitters in the tongue and mouth that send you the sensation of sweetness without also giving you all of those calories. Once it passes into the bloodstream it is dumped out by the kidneys without passing through the liver at all.

In sum, if sweeteners were bad for you, they wouldn't be allowed in your food. Science is not against you, it is the only thing working for everyone at the same time. The reason sugar has gotten around this is because we have always had it. If you want to be healthier, don't drink pop, drink water or milk (unless you are lactose intolerant, then just drink water). Don't drink coconut milk, or gatorade, or vitamin water. Assume that when a company comes out with something like "fat free" it really reads "now loaded with sugar so it doesn't taste like fucking cardboard." Assume that when a company says something is "natural" it is no more natural than the oils you put in your car. IF you want to live and eat healthy, stay on the outside of the supermarket, avoiding the aisles. All of the processed food is in the aisles, not on the outsides and the companies know that you don't want to miss anything. Make your food, don't let someone else do it. And never, ever buy popped popcorn, anywhere, the mark-up on that shit is insane.

science explains why rich people don't care about you

MaxWilder says...

People always talk about the traditions of the rich to hold big charity fundraisers. I've always maintained that those are nothing more than a variation of conspicuous consumption. Certainly there are people like Gates and Buffett who seem sincere, but the average 1%er is simply showing up to be seen throwing cash away with their heart displayed proudly on their sleeve. And carefully preserving the receipt for tax time.

Doubt - How Deniers Win

newtboy says...

Actually you said it's no where near time to panic. You also said the people of Kiribati are going to be washed away by a tsunami (but it never happened before in all the times they've been hit by tsunami) and not overwhelmed by sea rise (which IS what's happened to them).


You are just wrong about Texas producing more than California, we're number two in cattle production and ....
Food Facts
California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.
More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.
California is the nation's number one dairy state.
California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.
California's leading export crop is almonds.
Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.
California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.
California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions.
and if that's not enough to convince you ...
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

It is never 1 to 1 guns VS farmers in the situations you are talking about. The food gets stolen, sold, and eaten. It is not stolen and allowed to rot. If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.

I call BS, the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today. You mentioned one. They are universally agreed on (by energy companies) who have made solar farms, nuclear, wind, etc.

Ahhhh. So now you see why it's time to panic...adaptation of the tech takes time, time that we don't have to waste. If it takes 50 years to stop adding greenhouse gasses, we need to see where that leaves your children's children. Adaptation of new tech is going to happen while we are restricting consumption...it's been that way for decades (see 'car mileage requirements') so it HAS happened in the past, and is happening today...without wars.

If no one panics and no one acts, that's where we'll be if we're lucky. Those figures you linked assume we will stop rising the level of CO2 we add daily and/or keep it below a certain level...an assumption I think is wrong and ignores reality.

Um, well, yeah, 78% less glacier doesn't mean 78% less runoff, it means far more than 78% less, because of glacial dams, evaporation, and upstream use it means probably NO runoff downstream. 22% of the already scarce water won't feed India. Period.
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years, but even those numbers leave billions without water or food. That's far worse than any group ever starved by 'men with guns'.

bcglorf said:

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.

Doubt - How Deniers Win

bcglorf says...

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.

Doubt - How Deniers Win

bcglorf says...

I'm guess from you're tone your American, or at least only figure Americans are going to be reading? You note that 'we' can't get to the moon, while Chinese rovers navigate it's surface. You note with alarm what coastal Florida will face from sea level rise, and not an entire nation like Kiribati. When we look at a global problem we can't ignore technology just because it's Chinese, or focus so hard on Florida's coast we ignore an entire nation in peril.

Sea levels aren't going to be fine in 2099 and then rise a foot on the eve of 2100. They will continue to rise about 3mm annually, as they have already for the last 100 years.(on a more granular level slightly less than 3mm nearer 1900 and slightly more nearer 2100 but the point stands). Coastal land owners aren't merely going to see this coming. They've watched it happening for nearly 100 years already and managed to cope thus far. Cope is of course a bad word for building housing near the coast and at less than a foot above sea level. It's like how occupants at the base of active volcanoes 'cope' with the occasional eruption. All that is to say, the problem for homes built in such locations has always been a matter of when not if disaster will strike. The entire island nation of Kiribati is barely above sea level. It is one tsunami away from annihilation. Climate change though is, let me be brutally honest, a small part of the problem. A tsunami in 1914 would've annihilated Kiribati, as a tsunami today in 2014 would, as a tsunami in 2114 would. And we are talking annihilate in a way the 2004 tsunami never touched. I mean an island that's all uninhabited, cleared to the ground and brand new, albeit a bit smaller for the wear. That scenario is going to happen sooner or later, even if the planet were cooling for the next 100 years so let's be cautious about preaching it's salvation through prevention of climate change.

Your points on food production are, sorry, wrong. You are correct enough that local food growth is a big part of the problem. You are dead wrong that most, or even any appreciable amount is to blame on climate change now or in the future. All the African nations starving for want of local food production lack it for the same reason, violence and instability. From this point forward referenced as 'men with guns'. The people in Africa have, or at least had, the means to grow their own food. Despite your insistence that men with guns couldn't stop them from eating then, they still did and continue to. A farmer has to control his land for a whole year to plant, raise and harvest his crop or his livestock. Trouble is men with guns come by at harvest time and take everything. In places like the DRC or Somalia they rape the farmer's wife and daughters too. This has been going on for decades and decades, and it obviously doesn't take many years for the farmer to decide it's time to move their family, if they are lucky enough to still be alive. That is the population make up of all the refugee camps of starving people wanting for food. It's not a climate change problem, it's a people are horrible to each other problem. A different climate, better or worse growing conditions, is a tiny and hardly worth noting dent in the real problem.
CO@ emission restrictions do not equate to global economic downturn, they could just as easily mean global economic upturn as new tech is adopted and implemented.
I stated meaningful CO2 emission changes. That means changes that will sway us to less than 1 foot of sea level change by 2100 and corresponding temperatures. Those are massive and rapid reductions, and I'm sorry but that can not be an economic boon too. I'm completely confident that electric cars and alternative or fusion power will have almost entirely supplanted fossil fuel usage before 2100, and because they are good business. Pushing today though for massive emission reductions can only be accomplish be reducing global consumption. People don't like that, and they jump all over any excuse to go to war if it means lifting those reductions. That's just the terrible nature of our species.

As for glaciers, I did read the article. You'll notice it observed that increasing the spatial resolution of models changed the picture entirely? The IPCC noted this and updated their findings accordingly as well(page 242). The best guess by 2100 is better than 50% of the glaciers through the entire range remaining. The uncertainty range even includes a potential, though less likely GAIN of mass:
. Results for the Himalaya range between 2% gain and 29% loss to 2035; to 2100, the range of losses is 15 to 78% under RCP4.5. The modelmean loss to 2100 is 45% under RCP4.5 and 68% under RCP8.5 (medium confidence). It is virtually certain that these projections are more reliable than in earlier erroneous assessment (Cruz et al., 2007) of complete disappearance by 2035.

If you still want to insist Nepal will be without glaciers in 2100 please provide a source of your own or stop insisting on contradicting the science to make things scarier.

MacBook vs Yoga Dance-Off

RedSky says...

Their selling point for W8 and attempt to compete with Apple's iPad was meant to be unity between desktop and tablet, but that was always a pipe dream. They put the cart before the horse by forcing Metro on people before there was any semblance of a mobile app base so it simply became a nuisance.

A mobile interface should have always been adapted into the standard Windows UI, rather than existing as a separate entity with separate complimentary versions of IE, media players. They seem be trying to bridge the two together in W10 but I think it's too little too late.

Realistically though tablets are largely about consumption, the issue was that this was forced on desktop. I mean sure, I've seen the Surface make a great note taking device (any large Wacom tablet would do this great), but beyond that? I mean the idea of doing anything beyond basic Word let alone Excel/Access work on a tablet is farcical.

Clicking manage literally does nothing, lol. But thanks. To be fair, I have modified W8.1 quite a lot (e.g. bringing back start menu) but I did the same with W7 and never had such problems.

spawnflagger said:

MS has a free Fresh Paint App, that's pretty cool if you have a stylus. Haven't found any others worth endorsing...

MS just wanted consistency between the Desktop OS, tablets, and smartphones. Unfortunately they forgot that people use desktops for production, not consumption. Windows 10 sounds more like Windows 8.2, but who knows.

As far as password, you could try to set a PIN instead (it's fast to type 4 digits to unlock). Or in desktop mode, right-click on Computer and choose Manage. Local Users and Groups snap-in will let you change password, etc.

MacBook vs Yoga Dance-Off

spawnflagger says...

MS has a free Fresh Paint App, that's pretty cool if you have a stylus. Haven't found any others worth endorsing...

MS just wanted consistency between the Desktop OS, tablets, and smartphones. Unfortunately they forgot that people use desktops for production, not consumption. Windows 10 sounds more like Windows 8.2, but who knows.

As far as password, you could try to set a PIN instead (it's fast to type 4 digits to unlock). Or in desktop mode, right-click on Computer and choose Manage. Local Users and Groups snap-in will let you change password, etc.

RedSky said:

Good metro apps are few and far in between, and the ones that do exist are usually gimped versions. It looks like it would be great with the tablet mode for general browsing, but really, without either iOS or Android's app ecosystem, the usefulness of a touchscreen is severely diminished. I don't believe it has Wacom-level precision for pen input (like Surface), which in itself would make it a great note taking device.

I don't like W8/8.1 on my desktop either, and regret upgrading from W7. For whatever reason I can't get access to user accounts settings (which has for some unknown reason been incorporated into Metro unlike virtually all other settings) because it crashes/hangs whenever I try to open it. So now I'm stuck with entering a password on my account each time I restart when I have absolutely no need to have one.

enoch (Member Profile)

radx says...

This article over at Truthout is a rather interesting read, albeit a bit long:

We're riding a global engine of ravenous resource consumption. We all know this can't go on forever, but the thought that it might come to a stop is so terrifying to all of us that most of the time we just want to live in denial.

A bit heavy on the eco-socialism, but a decent read nonetheless.

Also, the interrogation scene you posted convinced me to give Dredd a shot tonight.

EconPop: The Economics of Elysium

blankfist says...

Apparently sound economics is right-wing bullshit. Of course, none of the leftist statist will answer the question why the robots couldn't do the dangerous jobs instead of the people, nor why the healthcare tanning beds couldn't, or wouldn't, be mass-produced for wider consumption like most technological advancements. No, they'd much rather shit on everything and tell you what an idiot you are because you hate the poor and the roads and firemen. Simplistic fuckers.

The Most Amazing Taxi

Women steal new lawn from front yard

billpayer says...

Yes, the U.S. invented consumerism, but after destroying the middle class it's now a broke ass dust bowl.
Countries like Japan and the U.K. have taken shallow robotic consumption to a whole new level.

BBC - Will Self - Are we all suffering from consumption?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28756372

Reefie said:

We Brits learned from the most narcissistic nation in the world, can you really say that Brits are more consumer-oriented or self-centered than a sizeable portion of the US population?



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