Thanks!

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
*quality *doublepromote

i think the frog made a conscious decision from the beginning to simply fuck around with that snake and waste its time, escaping in the end and inconveniencing its day.

I've made that same comment before as a joke, but the reality of the situation is that global warming isn't about the temperature outside your window at any given time. Shifts of even a couple of degrees from established norms in certain areas of the globe can have serious implications to the natural processes that occur there.

Think about homeostasis in your body, we're endothermic which means our body temperature remains the same because for us to function properly at the basest levels we need to remain at about 98.6F. If you were to shift that temperature several degrees up or down, like when you have a fever of 103F, you feel horrible and sick. Imagine it weren't a transient virus or bacterial infection, but a permanent state caused by abusing your body over the years. I don't know how long the human body could last at a permanent feverish state, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant.

The science about the effect of carbon dioxide and other pollutants has been proven in the laboratory, there's no denying that if you pump the atmosphere full of it, heat has a much harder time escaping; simple greenhouse effect. Think about the amount the human race pumps out every minute of every day and then think about what possible effect that might have in 100 years from now. You might be dead, but somebody is going to have to pay for it. Nobody is saying there will be "The Day After Tomorrow" apocalyptic events (that's just shock value for entertainment), but crank the heat up a few degrees and you'll have major climate changes, rising sea levels, changes in rain fall and deserts forming where there were none, etc. etc., and then what will we do? Guaranteed, the cost in manpower and material to cope with those kinds of events over time will be far greater than the immediate short term cost of tightening our belts, learning to live without being grossly excessive, and developing new technologies to reduce our impact.

We're making changes to this planet that it has never gone through. There's absolutely nothing natural about the path humanity is following and the high impact technologies we've developed over the last 200 years. On the grand scale, we're behaving like bacteria, multiplying in exponentially greater numbers each year, consuming natural resources and excreting toxins... what happens when a human body is completely overrun by bacteria? They die. Is it so hard to believe that if we shit all over our planet without a care in the world, it won't begin to die as well? Then where does that leave us?

Just think about it.

I can measure it from a purely anecdotal and singular observational point of view. I joined the Sift on April 14, 2006. I watched gold stars go up right and left as I believe you needed 4 or 5 votes to get a video published (semi-dynamic queue escape value) and postings were unlimited. Then, postings went to 2 in a 24 hour period and then to 3 in a 36 hour period. Gold stars were pretty easy to be had.

After those good ol' days, the queue escape level increase to 6 (230 days ago) and then, later, to 8 (215 days ago). I think that is when I began posting when it was at 8. (My first post was approximately 130 days ago.) There was also a 6 day expiration in the queue which went down to 5 and is now at 4.

It was about 190 days ago that this happened:

Posts that have less than 2 votes after 24 hours will be discarded.

Posts that have less than 3 votes after 48 hours will be discarded.

This will happen once a day at the same time we do our usual daily queue discard.

We've also raised the queue escape level again, as the front page is still going through a complete refresh every few hours it seems. The new peak-time escape level is 9 off-peak is 8.

Nine days later the submission quota of three in the queue at any one time kicked in.

All of these changes seemed to resolve the increasing submission glut for a while. Since then there have been some minor tweaks as well as some cool stuff: promote, save, collectives, new categories, et al. However, gold stars are harder to come by and it seems that diamonds are going to be nigh impossible.

I'm wondering if by having a collective that the videos submitted could somehow earn points for the collective owner toward diamond status. I'm just thinking as I type, but maybe a percentage of the votes earned by the original submitter would also count toward the collective owner. For instance, dag submits a video to the Rock and Roll Collective that garners him 20 votes - well, then MLX would get 5 votes as well (or 10 or something along those lines). Then, for those who were able to attain gold stars (which is becoming increasingly difficult) would at least have some kind of a shot at a diamond.

Long way of saying - yea, it's gotten tougher, but, yea, the Sift is cooler, too.

Have a great night,

Sc