Humanity making progress like it always does

Here's a fun one about the fish:

There's something wrong with this data.

The fraction of asses should be way higher.

Why is that supposed to freak me out? We cultivate animals for consumption and there's not a 1:1 absorption/usage ratio. Now add insect biomass.

TIL there are animals called Ass

This makes no sense... It says pets aren't included.

There are 500-700 million dogs worldwide. There are only just under 59 million horses.

I don't believe any of this as a result.

Edit: and 35 million camels ...and only a billion cattle. This entire thing is demonstrably bullshit.

Asses?

And that's only because whales and elephants are so massive.

Don't worry guys, the billionaires already built their bunkers and their space ships! Just as planned.

There is no cow level.

Similarly, watch this music video

It’s been a couple years since I’ve had to scrape the bugs from my windows.

Couldn't that also be new improvements in car aerodynamics where bugs simply glide off instead of getting squished?

I was thinking the other day that we no longer see bugs around the house I grew up in. When I was a kid my house was always full of bugs, we live next to a protected natural area, so it was impossible to keep them out. Anyways, I've always loved bugs so they were welcome. I moved out and whenever I go there are no animals to be seen. I can't even hear birds or see iguanas walking around. It's so disturbing.

I have been thinking about this recently. How much of this is lack of bugs vs aerodynamics. I mean back in the day we all drove big rectangles. I'm not denying the fact that it could be a mass extinction of bugs. Just curious.

Same in Europe.

Drove a ton in the 90s all across the US as well every year there was a couple several thousand mile vacations starting from near Kansas city.

The bugs were bad, but we never needed a bug screen on the grill. I never even remember seeing something like that exist, actually. Definitely less bugs now, though.

Same age. Dad taught me to always clean the windshield when we filled up. Yeah.

The sounds, too.

I was talking with my dad walking near to a place that had frogs croaking, and he got a little emotional and excited to hear them over the phone. Normally it's just traffic noises now, and silence.

I remember the wasps always buzzing around the vehicle grills munching on all the dead bugs too. Now it's just shiny and chrome.

I still remember 10 years ago when I was driving on the Autobahn at 130 km/h and a juicy bug hit the windshield. It was literally a loud splat. Besides the grill always being covered in bugs.

Hasn't happened since, nowadays I can count the number of bugs on the grill with one hand. And that's after months of driving.

Where I grew up, the city wanted to hire a bunch of trucks to drive around spraying malathion into the air. They had a vote, and the town voted overwhelmingly that, fuck no they did not want that, please don't do that, that sounds awful. Then they did it anyway.

Same thing; now there are pretty much 0 fireflies.

Blame the raking of the leaves. No leaves in fall means no place for the eggs to be laid and no place for the larvae to grow. It's another casualty to grass lawns. A "clean" nature is a place where nothing has room to thrive.

Oh I remember 2 years ago where I live there was so much fucking pollen. And we had no rain for like 2 months so the streets were yellow with it. I am not allergic to pollen and yet I was constantly sneezing and my eyes were irritated. It was such a relief when we finally had some rain to clear everything.

But girls are gross! We can't let our city streets and parks be sissies!

(/s)

There ARE fewer bugs, and that's a problem, but also cars are more aerodynamic and would kill fewer bugs these days regardless.

Hmmm... This article suggests the opposite.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects

What is it about then 0_o ?

There are quite a few wonderful stories about the AIs continuing after humans are gone. "For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny, and the whole of the Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, are some great ones.

That being said one of the critical points of "For a Breath I Tarry" is that the machines are just doing what they're programmed to do, maintaining the infrastructure for no one and just sitting in their orbits keeping the power grid going and all, and are actively hostile to any effort to bring the humans back because that would make things complicated and isn't in their programming (since although superficially they can converse and act "intelligently," more so than humans, they can't really grasp the purpose of things.) Also, "With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson is another perfectly realistic one.

Even if the AI can't converse well, there will not be many humans around to have human conversations so it will seem a normal chat.

Orlando Jones was my favorite part of that movie lol.

industrial landscapes need a base of natural resources and less developed regions with high birth rates (as a source of labor) to support them.

My parents never gave me money unless I worked for it

my road cars because its just dust.

I'm sorry. I legitimately can't tell if this is satire or not...

With a human body on the windshield?

Misread that, was thinking OG BSG Cylon behind the wheel... you know, the one with the red light that goes back and forth.

Idk my artificial monoculture of non-native grasses kept immaculately trimmed and racially pure with toxic chemicals applied regularly makes me feel better than my neighbors' artificial monoculture of non-native grasses kept immaculately trimmed and racially pure with toxic chemicals applied regularly.

That is how my daddy did it and that is how his daddy did it and their generations haven't set any cultural precedents that have been incredibly predictably devastating to life and the biosphere as far as I can tell in these recordbreakingly hot and insect free times. I mean sure, those other places are experiencing historic climate events, but that is just part of normal climate cycles that haven't existed in millennia.

😳

Do you convert dead organic matter into fertile soil or pollinate flowers? They do. If insect populations were to vanish, so would humans. They perform too many vital functions that humans cannot.

Climate change.

Pollution leads to a decline in the bug population. Pollution = human byproducts (including byproducts of imprisoned animals) causing global warming and climate change affecting habitat; pollution = pesticides and chemicals which make it harder for insects to reproduce; pollution = plastics, trash, and environmental contamination; pollution = human changes that are functionally useful for humans (like roads and farms with pesticides and cities) but may be not helpful for insects.

The joke is that at first, having fewer bugs is nicer because a lot of bugs are annoying.

The joke is also that while it's convenient at first, in another few decades it means EVERYTHING will die, so it's not actually a good thing.

The joke is also the obliviousness of the human driver, who is relieved to be dealing with fewer bugs, not realizing that they are missing for the same reason he's about to become extinct.

There are decreases in pretty much all types of animals that are neither human nor domesticated by humans, and for bugs there are decreases of bees, and there's been discussion that the world is experiencing and extinction event.

Wynn Bruce set himself on fire and died trying to alert people that these trends pose a problem for humankind and no one cared. David Buckel also set himself on fire trying to warn people. It doesn't matter at this point.

The problem is religion. People are stupid and believe in imaginary bullshit that doesn't exist and society accepts this as normal thinking. Psychiatry says bizarre religious thinking is a symptom of schizophrenia, but normal religious thinking is acceptable if enough people believe it (in an unscientific capitulation to popular opinion in a "scientific" field that is hardly ruled by scientific rules). Religion is always illogical and it's dooming us all.

People believe god would never create a planet that could be destroyed and don't understand math or how to analyze scientific data. On top of that, greed caused by capitalism means that for most poor people, they are just struggling to get by and really can't contemplate next year much less 100 years from now.

Most pollution is caused by not only poor resource management and not correctly taking into account externalities of pollution into the markplace in creating government rules (and conservative economic theory means making rules to deal with externalities) but also caused by just too many people. It's sad, but likely some horrible virus like bird flu killing most of the population is the only way in which the planet remains habitable. The fact that only Communist China has successfully been able to reduce their population through non-economic policy declarations (as opposed to restricting resources) is a sad commentary on some of the problems of democracy when so many people just can't understand math and instead embrace religion. (China also is a large contributor to pollution and this is not meant as exculpation of the Chinese Communist Party, but rather a brutal look at how religion has played a large role in decimating the environment.)

If people weren't religious, they could understand these problems. But instead religious idiots take pleasure in making fun of Greta Thunberg as woke because they are literally too stupid to analyze graphs and intelligently assess data. That's okay, if humankind lacks the intelligence to deal with this problem, then war famine and plagues will perhaps succeed since human reasoning has failed. Religion allows these people the comforts and safety of their delusions as a cocoon away from the anxiety and fear caused by dealing with reality, which can be harsh. Unfortunately, people in this delusional cocoon make really stupid decisions so we're probably all going to die.

Often when bacterial populations with limited space and infinite glucose supplies are left to their own, they pollute and pollute and population grows exponentially until suddenly the pollution is too much and nearly all of them die. Glucose = oil; petri dish = earth; colony collapse in a petri dish = 7.99 billion people suddenly dying.

If some horrible disease like bird flu suddenly killed 4 billion people, perhaps AI could swoop down from the metaphorical cloud and help humanity manage resources in time to stop us from all dying, but probably it's too late for even that.

(When you hear Elon Musk say people need to populate the planet even more, I think he knows what is about to happen and is taking the rational position that fleeing earth is the best option for survival and it will be hard to flee earth is everyone is so scared of death they stop working. So his message of "everything is fine, let's increase the population and also thereby pollution even more" is dishonest, but highly rational. I don't know if this is actually what he thinks. His hostility towards trans people also seems strange so I suppose it's possible he is that illogical, but his response to that may be a result of a lack of empathy caused by severe autism, whereas telling people to keep increasing their numbers may be a rational lie so he can increase the likelihood of fleeing earth prior to planetary collapse.)

A certain subset of people have given up on trying to convince people of anything or do anything, figuring it's like arguing with the sun rising and setting and that planetary biosphere collapse is just an inevitable part of nature. Others set themselves on fire to warn people, some people hold cardboard signs and gather and chant and think that will change capitalist societies and wake people up from the delusions of religions, deprogramming people through signs held up by large numbers of people. A lot of people are aware on some level, but don't like to feel existential dread and so they just sort of ignore it.

OP literally never leaves the city.

Gaia does it for free if you just wait long enough,

Yeah the data indicates we've killed so many they haven't been able to repopulate fast enough.

They're not avoiding the roads there's just not as many bugs flying around anymore