You mean my kids?

More often than not.

Not true at all. There’s tons of adaptive pressure. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t see the thousands of pelagic and shorebird species that we do. But even if what you say about the threat from predation were true --its not-- there would still be adaptive pressure from differential reproduction rates and access to nutrients.

They’re probably just “dumb” in comparison to corvids and parrots and the like.

None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.

What a crock of shit!

Why would capital willingly poison its workforce as a deliberate policy? That makes zero sense.

I can see capital writing it off as a necessary side-cost of doing business, but I can’t see it as a deliberate policy.

Again, it makes no sense. Capital wants a relatively healthy workforce, not one that’s falling apart due to lead-caused neurological decrepitude.

I have a cousin who still insists that her mom died of pneumonia and that it wasn’t COVID. Her husband is currently in prison for storming the capitol on January 6th, which tells you all you need to know. It’s weird because she’s the only one in my extended family who’s even remotely into far right craziness.

Allegedly there are two known instances of people in the US dying due to complications from the vaccine, though one of them wasn’t the mRNA vaccine that the anti-vaxxers were most scared of. Compare that to the over 1 million people who died from COVID.

That and the fact that everything about our society shits on working people and tells them that it’s their own fault that they aren’t rich like the college-educated elites who look down on them.

It doesn’t actually make any sense, but I am telling you that this is a huge part of the resentment that Trump was able to tap.

I can and do agree with everything you argue while also maintaining the objectively obvious fact that context matters in politics.

You either get it or you don’t. I can’t help you with your lack of reading comprehension.

They specifically said that “you can be mad” about it.

You want to have it the way that they’re pushing some kind of agenda, when in fact they’re simply stating what’s true.

Fair play.

but that would require major reworking of large areas.

Yes, that’s precisely what will be required. There’s no getting through this without implementing massive changes to our way of life. Everyone wants there to be some kind of easy get-out-of-jail-free card, but that’s not how it’s going to be.

There’s ample evidence that living in small-scale tribal societies really is the best for our emotional and psychological health. There are entire books on the subject. The problem is that we can’t go back to that, nor would we want to. I would argue that we are still figuring out how to adapt to agriculture, it having been such a recent development in human history.

I don’t necessarily know what the best path forward looks like, but I do know that what we’ve built here in the US isn’t sustainable because it’s not working for too many people.

It depends on how you measure it. People living in small-scale tribal societies tend to be universally happier than people living in big industrialized societies, but they also face a lot of problems and challenges that we’ve eradicated through technology.

We’ve spent the vast majority of our existence as a species living in small pre-agricultural bands in which it was virtually impossible to accumulate real personal property or wealth. Consequently, a person’s status was determined not by how much they owned, but rather by their merit and relationships with others.

Wheat is a relatively recent development in human history, as is agriculture in general. It changed everything but for better or worse, agriculture is a trap, and once you start transitioning to it, you can never go back.

I used to be a big tele skier, but over the years I figured out that I prefer riding a snowboard when it comes to steep and deep powder.

To me it just feels better.

You do what makes you happy and I will as well.

I’m old, in my 50s, and have no interest whatsoever in telling anyone what to do or how they should enjoy the mountains.

I leave that shit to the kids. No one my age actually gives a fuck.

Thanks for the response. That makes sense and I think I’m probably on-board.

Cry me a river…

I’m increasingly of the same opinion, however, I dislike the fact that even talking about nuclear as a potential bridge technology is such a polarizing issue.

I am very far from being an expert on the subject and accordingly don’t have a strong opinion either way as to what role, if any, it can usefully play in transitioning to sustainable energy models.

What I don’t like is the immediate labeling of either side of the issue as somehow automatically being indicative of bad faith or “shilling” on behalf of a larger, nearly conspiratorial interest.