No, you're just pissed because we didn't succeed.
Should we be happy that you failed?
If the 70's are "too far back" crack open a history book and learn about them. Laziness is not a valid excuse. Especially since it's a hell of a lot easier to access information these days than back when I was in my 20's.
It's 50 years back now. It's like a sad sports team looking back on past glories if you have to go back that far to show that the US cleaned up its act.
You know, when I graduated college we were also in a recession. Your generation isn't the first to graduate into a weak job market although yes, yours is worse than what I faced.
...But it hasn't recovered yet. The jobs didn't come back, the wages (especially compared to inflation) haven't gone up, the housing market hasn't gotten any cheaper. We've sent a generation in debt going to school only to tell them that there aren't any jobs for them. That didn't happen to your generation.
In fact, it was NOT my generation in charge up through the 90's it was the so-called "Greatest Generation" (more like, the most self-inflated generation) who fucked everyone else over. The generation before me in the US could retire at 65 with full social security benefits, but they voted to increase that age so now I have to wait some years longer before I can do that. They've gutted public education, punched more holes in the social safety net, and basically made everyone more frightenend and desperate.
Your problem is that up until recently your parents sheltered you from the harsh, brutal facts of the world. Now the facts have bitch-slapped you and you suddenly think you've "discovered" something. No, you haven't. EVERY generation goes through that sort of wake-up call. The world is not fair. You are not given a fair deal. Shit people did generations ago will hurt you. You're ability to do anything about that is sharply limited. And, oh, by the way - the universe is an inherently hostile place that will try to kill you and you're going to wind up dead in the end anyway. Welcome to adulthood!
I've been on my own since foster care at 15, I wasn't sheltered from shit all Broomstick. I grew up in a single parent household that didn't get child support from my drug addict father. I never had the chance to at post-secondary education and went straight into the workforce when I graduated high school in '06. I didn't have the luxury of going to school, being a pilot, being middle-class before becoming poor as you did.
Boo-hoo you don't get to retire at 65 even though quality of life and life expectancy went up. My generation my not get to retire at all with how the population pyramid has shaken out. Oh, and companies don't offer pensions so readily these days either so even working full-time isn't enough to get those funds coming in. But tell me again how Broomstick has it so bad.
You're right. They didn't have your interests in mind. At most they had THEIR interests in mind, and in the case of the environment, often not even that.
Yet you seem puzzled at my anger...
Great - close the retail stores. Do you know how many unemployed people will be the result?
It's already happening though. Malls are dying, stores are slowly merging into massive warehouses and, for most products you don't need to see them in person to know what you're getting. With the exception of things like clothing where many people want to test for fit before buying anything, there's very little that isn't easier to buy online.
Excess labor is becoming a problem - sure automation and on-line stuff is more efficient, but it results in more people with nothing to do. Unless we have something like a Universal Basic Income you wind up with hungry, homeless people when you don't have enough jobs to go around. That tends to cause problems.
That's already happening Broomy, this isn't just me making idle plans. The jobs are going away and we're no closer to UBI or affordable retraining that we were a decade ago. Get ready to lose what little work there is or to get paid even less than you are now as a machine takes all the low hanging fruit away from the lower classes.
Hey, I'd be up for running a forklift in a warehouse for an on-line distributor of goods (I already know how to drive a forklift) - but then there's the problem of getting me to the workplace all over again.
Why would they want that, it's easier to build an automater warehouse and not pay you to do a job a line following robot can do. Amazon is already doing that and many others are following suit.
I'm going to take a wild guess and assume the smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles are a feature of urban life. People living out in rural areas - and Canada has a LOT of rural territory - find trucks more utilitarian. Then there's the far north (which proportionally Canada has more of than the US) where travel starts getting more expensive and less efficient but I don't want to digress too far.
That was my thought, but you see a lot of trucks in cities too.
Even so - you CAN get a usable car for $3k around here, in part because there are more used cars available here than where you are.
Yeah, so your plan doesn't work universally and has the added issue of ensuring that substandard cars keep rolling beyond their scrap by date. Also, $3k for a used car would have been 5th of my income some years, it's well out of my reach.
Yes, yes it does.
So you support killing people via inflated used car prices then?
I would have been unemployed and homeless. Probably would have wound up either back with my parents or living with my sister in Buffalo. I would have lost all my worldly possessions.
That sort of happened to my other sister - after her oldest son was in a car accident she lost her own car, her job, her home, and everything she owned outside of a suitcase with clothing in it. The start of her getting back on her feet was getting another car - when she couldn't crash on someone's couch she could at least sleep in it. She used it to relocate, then to go to and from work so she could finally get another apartment and start rebuilding her life. My sister wasn't a stupid or dysfunctional human being - she has a master's degree, no drug or alcohol habits, no mental or chronic physical illnesses... what she had was string of bad luck and bad occurrences. Because reality is a motherfucker and isn't fair.
So you knowingly support a program, car buyback, that kills people or forces them into homelessness. Yet my idea of just taking away the cars and forcing change is evil...?
That is indirect discrimination and the burden will fall disproportionately on the poor.
Scrap value is a pittance compared to the worth of a car that's working at all - those "junkers" aren't necessarily unreliable or particularly dangerous, they're rendered unusable not due to mechanical failings but by fiat. At least be honest enough to admit that.
"...reality is a motherfucker and isn't fair." Why does that quote work when it's about something you're invested in but cause you to get your back up when I suggest doing something that causes the same?
Currently, my 20 year old truck has a resale value of somewhere between $2500 and $5000. Given that it's low mileage for it's age, isn't rusting, and doesn't have any current problems I'm inclined towards the high end (and I have actually had offers in the 4k-5k range for it). Scrap value is around $250.
So yes, if you declare by fiat my truck is now a junker and no good and can't driven, and "offer" me $250 for it I'm going to see it as you taking something of value from me. And you bet I'm going to bitch like hell and swear a blue streak over it.
That's why "cash for clunkers" did NOT offer scrap value for the cars - they offered several thousand dollars for them, comparable to trade-in value or at least the low end of private sales.
Cash for clunkers drives up used vehicle prices which you admit kills people. My suggestion to get rid of clunkers all together might do so to a greater degree, but at the same time, it forces people to find other solutions and rethink city design in mass transit in a way your bandaid solution doesn't. Force people to adapt and they will, string them along and they adapt to just crawling along as they are.
You're willing to pin all that's wrong in the world on the US, but when it comes to space technology suddenly you're claiming ownership? Sorry, no - YOU do not have space technology, WE do. Canada has not, and can not, put a person into even low orbit, much less on the Moon. That's US technology, not yours. Arguably, that was also USSR (now Russian) technology - they didn't put a man on the Moon but I think they could have done so had things gone just a bit differently. Unquestionably, Russian space technology can put a man into orbit (and still does). China can do it, too. YOU, that is Canada, can not. That's you taking other people's stuff again. I correct my impression of your - you're not a murderer, you're a thief.
You can't steal something that doesn't exist Broomstick. The US has at present the exact same capacity to put a man on the moon as Canada does. They had that, but you squandered it and may never get it back.
No, sorry - YOU, Canada, did not slash funding, the US slashed funding. Because we decided we wanted to spend our money on other things. Personally, I disagreed with that but as usually when it came to a vote my side lost.
Just more proof that the US doesn't deserve the position its enjoyed and likely never has.
Humanity will one day be extinct regardless of whether we get off this rock or not. The only question is whether that will be sooner or later.
Yeah, but I'd rather the last human dies shortly after the last black hole evaporates, not because of a rogue spacerock in the next hundred thousand to million years.
Our species will die one day regardless. I hope we will be replaced by something better that will remember us with some fondness and a little kindness, but since I'm aware reality is a motherfucker I'm not expecting that to happen. In either case, I won't be around to know the outcome.
Evolution is not extinction. It's a gradual change between what we are now and a form adapted to new conditions. That species may still consider itself human if indeed a technological soultion (genetic engineering or a sythetic replacement for flesh) doesn't render evolution a footnote in our history. That is if we last that long.
Oh, great - we've proven that pond scum and cockroaches will survive almost anything. Um... didn't we already sort of know that? We haven't proved HUMANS can survive in space long term. Or even for one normal length of lifespan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_in_space
That doesn't seem like pondscum to me.
Also, we've had animals reproduce in space as well.
Japanese rice fish, Oryzias latipes, spent 15 days in 1994 abord the Colombia Shuttle where they reproduced:
http://cosmo.ric.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SPACEMED ... nts_E.html
ICE-First-Aging is one of several experiments that investigates the effects of space flight on a model organism in the nematode worm family (Caenorhabditis elegans) and aims to develop links to human physiology in space. The organism chosen for this study is known to be able to mate, reproduce and develop apparently normally during space flight.
Fruitflies have also reproduced in space.
This means we can grow food in space even in space without any form of gravity or rotating habitation module.
So yeah, educated yourself before saying it can't be done.
Answer the question - should someone be prosecuted for murder because their efforts at CPR failed to revive the person?
You're saying the only thing that matter is results. That the end justifies ANY means that will get you to the goal. Are you sure you want to live in that world? Because if that becomes the rule we live under I guarantee things will be even more fucked up than they are now.
If that person caused the initial injury via neglect that's manslaughter at least. Or is criminal negligence beyond your ability to understand?
There is it again - you people didn't give me the result I want so I'm going to punish you. Sorry - the answer you get isn't always the answer you want to hear.
Fun fact - the planet isn't dying, even if we are in the midst of a major extinction event. There will be life after us.
Fat lot of good that does for us, eh?
Also, yeah, you get judged based on results. You don't get a participating ribbon for trying and failing. You get scorn and admonishon for fucking up a perfectly good planet.
You're a whiner because all you do it piss and moan. Don't like the world? Get off your ass and at least TRY to change in rather than mewling about how mean your elders are.
Hard to do that when you're born into poverty and never given the chance for higher education. I'd love to go to school, but my credit rating and lack of income prevent that from being a viable option. I don't have the means to help outside of bitching and hoping people that could help notice and take interest.
...and here we're back to why people don't like you.
Wishing suffering and death on people isn't cool and worse yet, it's not constructive.
Your tone has been so very constructive as well. Pot. Kettle. Broomstick.
Yep.
Because you're totally neglecting the problem of radiation. Radiation doesn't affect plants or insects like it does people.
That's what dirt or water is for. They both insulate rather well and tend to be plentiful on every major body in the solar system we'd want to land on. The moon included.
Yeah, you'd need to build a hole for your shelter to land in or set down in a crater well out of direct sunlight, but those are relatively minor issues in the grand scheme of things. It's not easy or cheap, but if the US gave NASA more than a pitance it could be done.
And no, life requires more than just "water, solar, and shelter" - there's all sorts of minor and major elements and compounds required to grow food and sustain life long term. There's maintaining air as well as water. There's the problem of maintaining a solid shelter to keep the artificial biosphere intact where there is no atmosphere to shield against rocks falling out of space.
Yes, but trace elements should be brought with you and recycled as a matter of course. The atmosphere, while not a perfect mix, can be made from water and electricity to give a CO2 O2 H mix. As for rocks, they're less of an issue than you think.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016 ... dd50256f2b
Yeah, you'd want a whipple shield over head, but those don't need to be heavy or complicated.
Building a Moon base wouldn't take just a little effort, it would take a LOT. A lot more just to get stuff to the Moon, and a lot more stuff needed because resupply missions would be further apart and cost a LOT more. We'd have to go deep to protect against radiation and flying rocks, so you're looking at a major mining operation just to start.
I'd personally, after testing the concept of course, favor blasting out the wall of a deep and sturdy crater with explosives. Then send in a series of rovers to break down and remove the rock, perhaps building a larger earthworks at the mouth of the cave. Beyond that, you can send the station over in parts over a series of missions.
It wouldn't be cheap, but conceptually the idea is fairly simple and only requires money and manpower to achieve. No sci-fi tech required, just political will and capital.
Exactly. I didn't cause the problem any more than you did. I, too, was born into a fucked up world with mouthbreathing idiots in charge. At best, like me, you'll spend your life trying to make a difference only to have smart-ass ignorant kids bitch that they sky is falling and it's all your fault.
You've handed us an even worse world than you got and expect sympathy for doing so? Dream on.
In other words "I don't have a good answer so I'm going to pout".
No, in other words, Broomstick is ignorant of common knowledge about Chinese pollution in an environmental thread and choose to bitch about when other people expect her to be up to date on the issue. I'm not worried about China because, as I stated earlier, they are making massive investments into going green on a scale that dwarfs any current US program.
You said it, you own it. If I get blamed for what my parents did I'm sure as hell going to hold you to what you said a few posts ago.
Blame me for a hypothetical solution to a problem which I've since admitted was a poor take... Seems logical. As does calling a person murder for posting an idea on a message board and later recanting on it.
I'll blame you for things which happened and all you have on your side is blaming me for an anxiety induced bad idea which I recanted on the next day. Who's the petry one here?
We're all going to die in the end whether or not we get to space.
Yes, IF we get to space we might survive a bit longer. We might even leave a descendant species or two. But in eventually our light goes out, just like every other species.
Do you think evolution means that one species dies and a couple new ones crawl out from their corpses and trundle onward? The species that come from humanity will be human because they will change so slowly that, baring some major leap forward fueled by technology or a mass extinction event that leaves a new dominant intelligent species in charge, we will likely always consider ourselves to be some version of human.
The exception might be once we get out among the stars and adapt to entirely new worlds but again that's an evolution not an extinction.
Yes, it does.
If we change so much we're no longer the same species then yes, H. sapiens is extinct at that point and some other, related, species goes on. That is how evolution works. That new species will be our descendants, but they won't be us."
They may consider themselves us and thus be us. It's also not the same kind of extinction that I'm talking about and you know it.
You're not listening to me, and you're fucking ignorant.
Says the person that thinks China is the leading producer of polution on the planet and who thinks that evolution is the same sort of extinction as what happened to the Dodo... Rich.
If you don't like our "leadership" then YOU take over that spot. Or will that cut too much into your pouting time?
The odds of doing that without coming from money and going to a top educational facility are rather poor and you know it. Maybe you should have done that instead of wasting your time and money flying around burning fossil fules for fun while you had both the time and money to make a run for some local office. Unlike me you had a chance to do something and didn't take it. That's way worse than not having had the chance at all.
See, that's my point - we used to be the first largest economy. We're slipping and fading and it's time for someone else to come to the forefront because no country remains on top forever.
In some economic terms you might still be first. Your drop down the charts also has more to do with the rise of China rather than any real US decline.
The US economy has always set the trend for the world economy and, as of 2019 that hasn't changed.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explo ... &ind=false
For somebody that calls me ignorant you sure do get a lot of facts wrong...
Yes. So why do you dump it all on the US?
Because you were at the wheel over the span of time that the damage happened? I thought I was making that clear.
Nope.
Hey, ask your First Nations how well things have worked out the past century or two. Ask the child migrants shipped to Canada from the UK how things worked out for them. In the end, Canadians are just as human as anyone else and just as liable to greed and corruption.
Yes, that is true. We have committed some of the same crimes that the US has in our history and continue to have areas we should improve on. We're also nowhere near as bad as the US is in terms of social issues, income inequality, renewable energy generation... It's almost like we're you but better in every way.
Look up the fucking history of the god-damned British Empire - which your nation remained a part of long after mine left - and tell me that. How about fucking Germany precipitating not one but two world wars? ANY country in Europe that had "new world" colonies. Australia and what was done not only to the convicts unwillingly sent there but also the natives.
You don't know history. All you know is that you live next to some noisy, obnoxious neighbours and you think things are better over somewhere else. They aren't, really.
The fact that the US and Canada have the longest undefended border in the world and haven't invaded each other (at least not since the early 19th Century) should be a clue that neither is the Worst and Most Terrible Nation Ever.
I should have seen this pedantry coming. Let me restate that, since becoming a superpower, name a western nation that has caused as much damage to the world as the US has. The US lags on social issues, healthcare, wealth inequality, has caused massive wars, destabilized governments across the globe. Contrast that with what Germany has done since WWII. Or what Japan has done.
Yeah, you kind of stand out as being shitty.
I mean, the rest of the world rightly gets pissed off at some of the bullshit done by the US... as they do when one of the other big powers does something harmful or stupid or inconsiderate. But no, I don't think the entire rest of the world wants to see the US disappear, or destroyed. They want the US to change from what it is at present. "The world" doesn't hate China or Russia or the UK or Germany or Japan or any other country like that.. There are certainly conflicts between different countries and factions, but no one is universally hated (well, maybe North Korea...)
Part of your problem is that you project yourself onto others. YOU wouldn't mind dying for the rest of the world... but by and large the rest of the world doesn't feel that way. You have hatred for the US... but not everyone else does. You want to throw the poor of the world under the bus... but not everyone else does.
You yourself stated that the world is sick of the US playing dear leader. Hate may have been too strong a world but global opinion of the US isn't great and hasn't been for a while. You probably don't fully realize how others feel given that you live in the belly of the beast.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... -9-charts/
I hate to break it to you but world news tends to center around the US. Other nations don't have a choice execpt for caring about what the world's second largest economy and largest military will do.
1) If you don't like how we lead then YOU do the leading.
2) If you don't like how we lead then YOU do the leading.
3) If you don't like how we lead then YOU do the leading
It all comes down to quit your bitching and DO SOMETHING. Preferably something that does NOT include genocide.
No other western nation has the resources to lead and the west would be skeptical about Chinese leadership. Unless the EU crystalizes into a proper nation you're the best we've got. Try to do better, when you have all the advantages people expect things from you.
Canada ALSO has a massive land mass, huge tracts of arable land, massive deposits of mineral wealth, ports in all those oceans, and no neighbors threatening war - why aren't YOU the world's superpower? Come on, come on - what's your excuse?
Not nearly to the same extent as the US, it's no secret that most of Canada's population lives along the US border. This isn't because we want to be close to you, it's because it's where the weather allows us a decently long growing season.
It's a bit of a read, but
this page should illustrate the issue with feeding a large population. Canada just never had the farmland to grow the population
This Canadian government page also rather succinctly illustrates why Canada didn't have the same chance the US did simple due to lack of land suitable for farming.
[url=
http://www.mappedplanet.com/tuebersicht ... emperature]These temperature maps[/utl] also show why Canada couldn't be a superpower, we're simply too damned cold.
So no Broomstick, we didn't have the same chance that the US did. We couldn't support the crops. Thus we couldn't support the population. Without a massive population, you can't be a superpower.
Try educating yourself before making such laughable claims.
Oh? What about putting people in space? Oh, right - YOU claimed that, conveniently dropping the US out of it.
Because space wasn't a solely US effort even during the cold war. or did you forget those German scientists captured and pardoned that formed your technical base to allow for spaceflight? Spaceflight and even the moon landings were never a solely US thing even if you funded them.
Sure, just forget all the technological, medical, and agricultural advances the US was involved in. They mean nothing. Forget feeding people after WWII so they didn't starve to death - a war we did not start, by the way, and actually tried to stay out of for a number of years. Forget helping to rebuild the ruins left by WWII. Forget stuff like the GPS constellation which we paid for and maintain but everyone else can use. The internet? You're welcome. On and on.
Sure, we've fucked up, too, and done bad things. But we've made a few positive contributions along the way.
Being a superpower tends to lend itself to that just via economy of scale. I'm way more impressed by what nations like Germany and Japan due with a scant fraction of the resources. Try using yours efficiently sometime and maybe you'll make advances worthy of your size.
Nope. But I don't advocate killing half the planet to "save" the other half, either. Unlike some people. Or taking away the means of making a living for millions of people.
You've already admitted that the plan you favor kills people too. Don't act all innocent.
Kind of like everyone who's ever been on top, ever.
You keep regarding the US as some sort exceptional, singular event. It's not. It's just another empire. In the 19th Century you would have been making similar complaints against the British Empire. If you had lived under Spain or Portugal in the Colonial Era you would have had a LOT more to complain about.
Yeah, but I never grew up in a UK or Spanish lead hegemony. Had I would be bitching about them instead.
Being at the top means having lofty expectations placed upon you. The US hasn't lived up to those in decades and thusly get called out for it.
Also, I've been sourcing my claims. Please start doing the same for your asspulls.