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I am growing increasingly distressed with the dystopian nature of the present timeline
I don't even know what to say anymore.
The Coolest Coffee Maker of the 19th Century Was a Tabletop Train
This is a video of an Oksapmin woman demonstrating the Oksapmin base-27 counting system.
When you’re a duck and have places to be, but safety is key
West Point is about to graduate its largest class of black women
When 19th-century American women visited Turkish harems, they came home with very different impressions than their male counterparts.
Beanee-Weenee-Corny-Worny-Cracker-Wacker
How Did Chickpea Flour, A Staple Of Indian Cuisine, Become A Health Food Sensation?
Bear Continuously 'Bribes' Guard Dog with Deer Bones So It Can Dig Through Family's Trash
Why Are American Men So Obsessed With Steak?
‘Zombie cells’ buildup in your body may play role in aging
When It Comes to Waging War, Ants and Humans Have a Lot in Common
Luring Refugees: N.Y. Cities Desperate for People Try a New Strategy
Why Can’t California Public Schools Quit Teaching a Eurocentric Version of State History?
Schools turn to technology to reduce toll during shootings
Two 4-year-olds have died by guns in separate states in the past two days
Abortion restrictions carry political risk for Republicans in 2020
How the War on Drugs Kept Black Men Out of College
Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End.
The rapes haunting a community that shuns the 21st Century
Why It's Hard Ban The Menstrual Shed
Under Modi, Hindu hardliners turn Indian theatre into a battleground
‘Why do I fear to go out in my own country?’ In Modi’s India, rising unease among Muslims.
Extremely young? Europe’s extreme-right wants your vote
No More Deaths Trial Opens as More Bodies Discovered Along Arizona-Mexico Border
The Coolest Coffee Maker of the 19th Century Was a Tabletop Train
This is a video of an Oksapmin woman demonstrating the Oksapmin base-27 counting system.
When you’re a duck and have places to be, but safety is key
West Point is about to graduate its largest class of black women
When 19th-century American women visited Turkish harems, they came home with very different impressions than their male counterparts.
Beanee-Weenee-Corny-Worny-Cracker-Wacker
How Did Chickpea Flour, A Staple Of Indian Cuisine, Become A Health Food Sensation?
Bear Continuously 'Bribes' Guard Dog with Deer Bones So It Can Dig Through Family's Trash
Why Are American Men So Obsessed With Steak?
‘Zombie cells’ buildup in your body may play role in aging
When It Comes to Waging War, Ants and Humans Have a Lot in Common
Luring Refugees: N.Y. Cities Desperate for People Try a New Strategy
Why Can’t California Public Schools Quit Teaching a Eurocentric Version of State History?
Schools turn to technology to reduce toll during shootings
Two 4-year-olds have died by guns in separate states in the past two days
Abortion restrictions carry political risk for Republicans in 2020
How the War on Drugs Kept Black Men Out of College
Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End.
The rapes haunting a community that shuns the 21st Century
Why It's Hard Ban The Menstrual Shed
Under Modi, Hindu hardliners turn Indian theatre into a battleground
‘Why do I fear to go out in my own country?’ In Modi’s India, rising unease among Muslims.
Extremely young? Europe’s extreme-right wants your vote
No More Deaths Trial Opens as More Bodies Discovered Along Arizona-Mexico Border
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Saw a meme on FB. It went something along the lines of "Being informed is outraging. Being outraged is exhausting. Being exhausted makes it harder to be informed." And there's just SO MUCH to be informed, outraged, and exhausted by lately...........
re: Dystopia
The advantage of longevity is perspective. You have no idea what a colossal bummer America was c. AD 1974. There was a reason President Jimmy spoke of a “national malaise.”
https://www.city-journal.org/html/mr-sammler%E2%80%99s-city-13087.html
Now that we live in New York’s second golden age… Hip young residents of the revived Lower East Side
or Williamsburg need to know that it’s possible to kill a city, that the streets they walk daily were
once no-go zones, that within living memory residents and companies were fleeing Gotham, that
newsweeklies heralded the rotting of the Big Apple and movies like Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy
plausibly depicted New York as a nightmare peopled by freaks…
Central Park promenaders who now savor the lush Great Lawn or the sublime Bethesda Fountain should
know what a heroic effort of philanthropy and policing it took to reclaim what less than two decades
ago was a dusty, sterile, graffiti-marred wasteland where dope dealers and muggers reigned. Nothing
you see today is the pure production of nature but springs instead from civic will and vision…
It was bad everywhere, in everything. When last did you hear the phrase, “manufacturer’s defect”? Fatcat union featherbedding meant Detroit cars were so badly built that parts were falling off them as they drove off the lot. “Busing” meant exporting race violence and crime into the suburban schools, which were effectively destroyed, driving the white flight farther out… Inflation, “stagflation,” pollution…
Alvin Toffler coined the term “Future Shock” to describe a society changing for the worse, the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate social upheaval of a nation cracking apart down to its foundations. It was an ugly, violent, sad, bad time. [Even the fashions were infamously ugly.]
So today’s “dystopia” has big shoes to fill, and I don’t see it as anywhere near doing so… Yet. The bills for the 20th century’s petroleum spree are coming due and that’s only going to get worse - you should enjoy what you have while it lasts!
Updated to add: For the conspiracy-minded, something else going on then: When last did you hear Northern Ireland mentioned in the news? “The Troubles,” the IRA, Sinn Fein, all of that - it was bad, and had been for decades, and suddenly clic - the fire was turned off under it and it all just stopped. That ugly mess just cleared up like rainclouds and is gone. How? Why?
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Yo quiero cheat codes.
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Loved the article on chick pea flour. I had no idea it had become such a health fad. I personally love it when it used in flitters.
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But I do find that scrambled silken tofu is pretty similar!
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Ugh.
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That's an interesting idea, that I've seen echoed in various stories. In Jack Finney’s Bid Time Return, the main character travelled back to New York City in the 1870s, and he knew he’d succeeded when he saw, actually saw a building on the skyline that he knew had burnt down in the 1930s! In those days the arm and torch of the under-construction Statue of Liberty was mounted in Central Park. Fleeing the bad guys, he and his girl climbed into it and he reversed the trick - and she screamed, suddenly finding herself hundreds of feet above open water!
Updated to add: Oh, a direct example of what you’re saying: In P K Dick’s original The Man in the High Castle, Mr Tagomi meditates upon a piece of modern (not pre-war!) American-made jewelry, and finds himself in our world. It’s not pleasant. Horrified, he wishes himself back out of it, and knows he succeeded when he sees his own office building reappear. Whew!
Quantum Edition
The Berenst(E)ain Bears Conspiracy Theory That Has Convinced the Internet There Are Parallel Universes - VICE
Re: Quantum Edition
Re: Показуха
I personally am aware of how unlikely is this reality. For the Soviet Union to obligingly go belly-up without any thermonuclear fireworks of any kind is literally improbable - unless, as I’ve long suspected, they’d pulled the biggest con job in human history and never had anywhere near as many nuclear warheads as we were led to believe, if indeed any!! (beyond what they set off out at Novaya Zemlya). “Power perceived, is power achieved,” but if making nukes were anything like easy Iran would have a bunch by now - they’ve been trying for years… That may be the breakthrough revelation of the 21st century, that the astronomical sums of money and brains burned up by the Cold War US and NATO were unnecessary.
“The World Next Door” (1987)
This might interest you:
“Let It Be”
Re: Quantum Edition
Here's some others: https://www.ranker.com/list/crazy-examples-of-the-mandela-effect/elle-tharp
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I put my trust in community: we're all in this together, and the more we have each other's backs, the better off we all will be. And I say we CAN change the world; we CAN cut our carbon emissions before it's too late; we CAN stop the pollution and habitat destruction; we CAN stop all the myriad forms of human exploitation and oppression; we CAN reduce our global population without sacrificing our genetic diversity... all the things we want and need, we can have; its not too late to get them. It won't be easy; in fact it'll be the hardest thing our species has ever had to do, but we CAN do it, if we put our collective Will to it.
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