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Post by jdredd on Aug 8, 2019 14:22:38 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-food-supply.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"The world’s land and water resources are being exploited at “unprecedented rates,” a new United Nations report warns, which combined with climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself. The report, prepared by more than 100 experts from 52 countries and released in summary form in Geneva on Thursday, found that the window to address the threat is closing rapidly. A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming, according to the report. Climate change will make those threats even worse, as floods, drought, storms and other types of extreme weather threaten to disrupt, and over time shrink, the global food supply. Already, more than 10 percent of the world’s population remains undernourished, and some authors of the report warned in interviews that food shortages could lead to an increase in cross-border migration." Predicting the future is always an effort in futility, but I am the Lord of Futility (and Chaos) so I do it anyway. I don't know if I put it in a thread or not, but my prediction was worldwide famines by the 2050's (and the robot takeover in the 2090's), but perhaps I was being optimistic. Hey, a solution to the housing shortage!
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Post by jdredd on Aug 27, 2019 3:23:39 GMT -5
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/millennials-are-screwed-recession/596728/"The trade war is dragging on. The yield curve is inverting. Investors are fleeing to safety. Global growth is slowing. The stock market is dipping. The Millennials are screwed. Recessions are never good for anyone. A sputtering economy means miserable financial, emotional, and physical-health consequences for everyone from infants to retirees. But the next one—if it happens, when it starts happening—stands to hit this much-maligned generation particularly hard. For adults between the ages of 22 and 38, after all, the last recession never really ended. Millennials got bodied in the downturn, have struggled in the recovery, and are now left more vulnerable than other, older age cohorts. As they pitch toward middle age, they are failing to make it to the middle class, and are likely to be the first generation in modern economic history to end up worse off than their parents. The next downturn might make sure of it, stalling their careers and sucking away their wages right as the Millennials enter their prime earning years." Ha-ha! The Boomers are screwing the Millennials! What are the Millennials going to do about it? Nothing, of course. They learned well from the Boomers that it's Every Man for Himself.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 16, 2019 10:13:31 GMT -5
Once again, for a generation that is going to suffer the most from environmental degradation, the Millennials I know seem pretty quick to use a can of Raid for an ant, to drive miles for the most trivial of reasons, and to do a lot of flying places they don't really need to be. Not to mention driving big trucks, wanting big houses, and endless amounts of new clothes and furniture. They are making their bed and will have to sleep in it.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 18, 2019 18:38:12 GMT -5
As I watch our rivalry with China be invented on a daily basis, I ask myself once again: Will the Millennials buy it? Let's hope they are already too cosmopolitan.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 5, 2019 18:55:54 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World%20News"RIO DE JANEIRO — When the smoke cleared, the Amazon could breathe easy again. For months, black clouds had hung over the rainforest as work crews burned and chain-sawed through it. Now the rainy season had arrived, offering a respite to the jungle and a clearer view of the damage to the world. The picture that emerged was anything but reassuring: Brazil’s space agency reported that in one year, more than 3,700 square miles of the Amazon had been razed — a swath of jungle nearly the size of Lebanon torn from the world’s largest rainforest. It was the highest loss in Brazilian rainforest in a decade, and stark evidence of just how badly the Amazon, an important buffer against global warming, has fared in Brazil’s first year under President Jair Bolsonaro. He has vowed to open the rainforest to industry and scale back its protections, and his government has followed through, cutting funds and staffing to weaken the enforcement of environmental laws. In the absence of federal agents, waves of loggers, ranchers and miners moved in, emboldened by the president and eager to satisfy global demand."
While the Millennials sleep, the "lungs of the world" are burning. And even if they do wake up, what are they going to do? Hold a protest (yawn) when what they really need to do is put Jair on a scaffold.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 31, 2020 1:01:20 GMT -5
The Outgoing Generation (Boomers) continue to beat the war drums with China, while those who will have to pay the price (MIllennials) continue to sleepwalk. Maybe they are too busy partying like Gen X, their parents. They do whine about the lack of cheap housing, though. I guess they will just have to wait until the Boomers drop dead to get their hands on their oversized houses. I don't envy them.
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Post by jdredd on Feb 6, 2020 3:12:40 GMT -5
While the right celebrates that Trump is on a roll and the Dems are in disarray, I'm seeing a lot of propaganda about the horrors of Socialism in the right wing press. They seem to be scared that so many young people do not seem to share their hatred of it. Is it just me or have conservatives done a crap job of selling the wonderfulness of Capitalism? Are they perhaps rebelling at being told Capitalism is their only option? I could understand that. And that inequality is intrinsic to Capitalist Darwinianism and they just have to suck it up? If you are one of the losers, tough sh*t? A Sanders Democratic Party will get it's ass kicked in November, but at least there is a "choice not an echo". ".
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Post by jdredd on Mar 12, 2020 19:13:05 GMT -5
So it looks like Bernie, the Millennial's pick, is being shot down by rotten Boomers of the Democratic Establishment. Will this make them even more apathetic than they already are? Or charge them up for 2024? It's a character test that the Boomers failed after 1972.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 21, 2020 23:24:48 GMT -5
Here is a silver lining for the Millennials: If enough Boomers drop dead from C-19, it will free up a lot of housing!
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Post by jdredd on Mar 25, 2020 16:05:44 GMT -5
I'm hearing some noise about a draft. Why, I don't know. But talk about a great way to further radicalize a generation!
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Post by jdredd on Apr 17, 2020 0:07:01 GMT -5
Now I almost feel guilty starting a thread titled "The Millennial's Funeral". While they are not the majority of people actually dying, the breakdown of the boom economy will affect them greatly for a long time to come IMHO. They have now seen two examples of Capitalism's boom and bust cycles, with busts in 2008 and 2020. What conclusion will they draw? Or are will they be content with business as usual until the next bust? There must be a better way, one not so vulnerable.
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Post by jdredd on May 12, 2020 17:19:49 GMT -5
You have to feel sorry for the formerly oblivious Millennials. First there was the Great Recession, and now the Covid-19 Depression. (I'm ignoring Gen X since their numbers were less and they seem to like being MIA). Is the postwar "way of life" in peril? It's hard to imagine a world where consumerism is not the meaning of life. What else is there? Can things get back to "normal"? Maybe we'll all be working on the farm again. OK, not likely. How about some kind of religious/political anti-materialist mass movement? OK, not likely either. How about Libertarian inspired anarchy? That scares me. OK, most likely is a return to business-as-usual. So don't sell your vacation home in Ibiza just yet.
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Post by jdredd on May 14, 2020 22:34:44 GMT -5
Well, actually I would feel more sorry for the Millennials if they weren't such dupes. But they seem to be being led by the nose into a new Cold War, this time with China.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 19, 2020 21:43:44 GMT -5
"The Coming Urban Exodus" is the title in a column in a recent WSJ, written by Daniel Henninger. He theorizes that the recent unrest in various cities in the USA will trigger a migration of "young families (Millennials) and recent retirees (Boomers) from the cities." Well, maybe. I can see the codgers heading for quieter senior enclaves, but are young people ready to accept living in the cultural wastelands of the burbs? Was a few days of noise enough? Do they want their kids to adopt the crass values of the suburbs instead of the sophistication of the city? I don't know.
On a related subject in the same day's WSJ, none other than that genius Karl Rove has passed judgement on the "Autonomous Zone" in Seattle, and he finds it wanting. Well, that settles it. I'm sure the young "anarchists" and whomever else is part of that are right now saying "Gosh, if Karl Rove thinks it's a bad idea, lets all go home and watch "The Rookie" instead!"
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Post by jdredd on Jun 26, 2020 19:41:40 GMT -5
I was oddly attracted to a copy of Newsweek with the cover title "OK Millennial" with the subtitle "Boomers are the greatest generation in history". Seriously. So I dropped nine bucks for it (!) and read the article. So what I got was the usual listing of how much more prosperous (that is, how much more stuff) we have now than we had in 1969, an argument that could easily be in the WSJ and The Economist. Yawn. And worse, the writer brags how TV and movies are so much better with the examples being "SNL", "Animal House", and "Hill Street Blues". Gag. And of course he brags about computers and cell phones. Makes Satan smile. We'll see what history has to say. Well, not me, but the Millennials will.
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