It’s happening in Canada too with this heat wave. So much infrastructure depends on temperatures being within reasonable margins.
Most infrastructure is based on historic weather patterns. Alabama doesn’t build for 3’ snow drifts and Alberta doesn’t build for 47C temperatures.
one of the most fascinating and legitimately wonderful things about the internet is that it has given humans the ability to spontaneously collaborate no matter their location for no reason other than the sheer joy of it and that concept is neatly captured in this little video where a bunch of strangers made a cohesive and complex piece of short music around a video of a cat drinking milk silly
Anonymous asked:
Venus has LOCKED tectonic plates??? How does that work? How are they even counted as individual plates if it’s the tectonic equivalent of Pangea?
bunjywunjy answered:
it’s not so much that Venus’s tectonic plates are locked, it’s more that it never had them in the first place!
which is a major surprise, actually, because Venus is the most Earth-like of the other planets in our solar system.
surprise?
“what,” you may say, flailing in consternation, “about Mars?? why are we trying to colonize Mars if Venus is more Earth-like???”
and it’s a good question! Venus IS technically more Earth-like in the sense that it’s right next door, is a solid 80% the size of Earth, and has both a working atmosphere and a liquid mantle composed of molten rock, BUT- it’s also important to note that Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system and it rains boiling sulfuric acid at almost all times! our first probes to the damn place actually melted. MELTED.
this is what Hell looks like.
BUT ANYWAY so Venus is the planet in our solar system that’s the MOST physically similar to Earth, our dear mother who does not rain boiling sulfuric acid on our heads hardly at all ever, so it’s kind of a shock that its geology is COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT.
see, Earth’s outer crust is broken up into a series of mind-breakingly-massive tectonic plates that sort of skid around on top of the liquid mantle, slowly drifting in different directions driven by Earth’s rotation and bonking into each other randomly like a 300-million-year-long Pinball tournament!
but on Venus, the entire outer crust is a single solid piece sitting on top of the liquid mantle, like the peel of an orange.
though not as good for you. because of the whole Boiling Acid thing.
and contrary to what you might think, this actually makes Venus a VERY VIOLENT place! the outer crust twists and deforms slightly as the liquid mantle spins under it, like a water balloon being flung repeatedly against a wall by a small child, but all of that force can’t really be dispersed because the crust is a single solid piece of rigid rock!
so what happens is that this force builds and builds and BUILDS until Venus can’t take the strain anymore and has a very volcanic tantrum about it.
unlike the rest of the solar system, the surface of Venus is made of relatively new and entirely volcanic rock- because the entire planet is basically having a planet-wide eruption event at all times, with multiple huge volcanos just spewing gigantic amounts of liquid rock everywhere like it’s their damn job, to the point where Venus is just getting resurfaced like a McDonalds parking lot every epoch or so.
aren’t you glad Earth doesn’t do this? I am SO glad Earth doesn’t do this.
(much, anyway)
uh anyway that’s why we’re trying to colonize Mars instead, and why plate tectonics are a GOOD thing! thanks for coming to my TED talk bye
earth kinda attempted to do this once (google ‘siberian traps’) and it caused the biggest extinction event in its history. so that was fun.
From wikipedia, bolding mine --
This extinction event, also colloquially called the Great Dying, affected all life on Earth, and is estimated to have killed about 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species living at the time.[11][12][13] Some of the disastrous events that impacted the Earth continued to repeat themselves on Earth five to six million years after the initial extinction occurred.[14] Over time a small portion of the life that survived the extinction was able to repopulate and expand starting with low trophic levels (local communities) until the higher trophic levels (large habitats) were able to be re-established.[14] Calculations of sea water temperature from δ18O measurements indicate that at the peak of the extinction, the Earth underwent lethally hot global warming, in which equatorial ocean temperatures exceeded 40 °C (104 °F).[15] It took roughly eight to nine million years for any diverse ecosystem to be re-established; however, new classes of animals were established after the extinction that did not exist beforehand.[14]
Yikes!
note that it wasn’t the lava that made everything so hot, it was the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses spewed out by the volcanoes.
also, The Great Dying is the most metal name of any science fact ever.
Good news: if you’re currently laying around and not producing anything, you are a credit to your species.
I’m an ant biologist and I’d like to point out that ants also spend a significant percentage of the time doing nothing.
Turns out sometimes the most evolutionary useful thing you can do is chill and not wear yourself to shreds, whether mammal or insect. It helps you deal with emergencies and adapt to change. Plus, you can act as living food storage!
That last part is probably more an ant thing than a human thing, but hey, live your dreams.
it’s also a bear thing, which absolutely explains me
Doing absolutely fuck-all is how antarctic sea sponges live to be over 10,000 years old, so live your best, longest, laziest life.
Remember lions? Fellow apex predators?
Yeah, they spend 16-20 hours of the day laying around, socializing, raising Cubs and napping.
The last 4-8 hours are spent hunting.
Wait wait, they’re not a primate so they don’t count.
How about Orangutans?
Well, they spend 90% of their time awake just hanging out in food-rich areas, eating fruit and leaves, socializing, raising children, and chilling.
Well, they’re not people so it doesn’t-
How about Stone Age people in Europe?
They probably worked 3-5 hours per day, every day. (Though seasonal changes in food scarcity could change that)
Laborers in ancient Egypt worked 8 hours, with an hour break at lunch. They did this for 8 days, then rested 2 days. That sounds familiar. Except… they also had regular time off for festivals and holidays, and only worked for about 18 out of every 50 days.
Artisans in imperial Rome generally worked from 6am to Noon, and then had the rest of the day off… and only worked for half the year, due to all the holidays and festivals they got off.
But that’s too easy, what about a Peasant in medieval England?
6-8 hours per day, with Sundays off, Farm workers put in longer hours at harvest time but worked shorter days in winter when there are fewer hours of daylight. Economist Juliet Schor estimates that in the period following the Plague they worked no more than 150 days a year, due to the long holidays and many festivals.
Ugh, let’s go poorer. 17th century France. Starvation was afoot for the working poor!
During the reign of King Louis XIV, the workers of France had it tough, and hunger for the poorest was a fact of life. The typical working day was as much as 12 hours long, but two hours were set aside midday for lunch and perhaps an afternoon nap. Nevertheless, the Ancient Régime is said to have also guaranteed peasants, labourers and other workers a total of 52 Sundays, 90 rest days and 38 religious holidays off per year, meaning they worked just 185 out of 365 days.
So what changed?
The industrial revolution, baybe~~
New factory owners could work their employees to the bone due to a lack of regulation and abundance of cheap labour.
The typical factory worker in mid 19th-century England toiled away for a soul-destroying 16 hours a day, six days a week, 311 days per year!
THAT nightmare became the standard by which western society began to judge “work-life balance” and anything gentler than the industrial factory’s unfettered brutality is considered “softness”
(So many people died being mangled in those machines. Hair handkerchiefs went into style during American industrialization because working women would otherwise get their hair caught in the machines, and be either scalped or be bodily pulled inside to die…. But that’s a horror for another time)
Americans in 2020 worked an average of 8.5 hours per day on weekdays, plus another 5 hours on weekends.
Taking out federal holidays and weekends, we work 262 days per year. Most of us get 5-9 sick days to take per year. (Yes, a fixed number, no matter how sick you really are), and usually either no paid vacation, or 7-15 days paid vacation, depending on seniority and the company. Unpaid vacation doesn’t have a max, but taking it often risks you getting fired.
Even comparing against the poorest laborers in ancient history the current working structure for humans is, frankly, inhumane.
We are mammals. Let us rest. Let us celebrate holidays and attend festivals. Let us attend to our homes and families.
Even the ultra wealthy folks who got their heads chopped off gave us more time off than this!!!
Someone in the comments said something like “humans are instinctively industrious and productive, as social creatures!”
Buddy, that’s a lie fed to you by capitalism.
In our default state, we attend to our families yes, but we also party like hell, lounge around, and make fantastic works of art just to be proud of ourselves. We made beautiful things for the joy of creating them.
Stone Age humans may have spent a couple hours hunting and gathering, but DEFINITELY spent loads of time painting every available surface. Time and weather washed most of it away, but some places like Arizona and Colorado still preserve a few of the endless murals made by ancient hands.
Evidence shows that the ancient world was COVERED in paintings and etchings - just saturated with images of birds and beasts and humans, sunsets and cool weather. We invented mythologies and painted about them. We did something impressive, and painted about it. We taught our children how to paint and lifted them into our shoulders so they could mark the ceiling.
In our most base state, humans will work enough to survive, but our instincts demand we use all other time to create art. We want to communicate. To make connections.
“Working” or “being productive” is not on that list.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
not to get political but im begging you guys to stop coming to hawaii. in maui theyre asking to put a ‘pause’ on flights bc we literally do not have enough room or staff to service you. the roads are so full that its causing a major backup when ppl need to get to work.
on top of this, i heard that by September? theyre expecting to get rid of the mask rule (if 70% of ppl are vaccinated/all goes well) but ill be honest w/ you, i know many locals arent getting the vaccine and i know plenty of tourist arent gonna take the necessary precautions.
homeless hawaiians aren’t even allowed to sit or lay on sidewalks to keep up the “paradise” image for tourists
- “Hawai‘i has the highest rate of homelessness per capita among the 50 states” (another source)
- do you remember when zuckerburg bought hawaiian land in kauai? then filed lawsuits agasint families that lived their? that land BELONGS to the natives and its extremly harmful to the community.
- at this very moment, hawaii is one of the most EXPENSIVE places to live on top of not having a liveable minimum wage ($10.10) this is why many children still live w/ their parents (+ having no space) in order to SURVIVE here, youd have to work full time for at least $15.50 (more links)
- in this article it states that “The Living Wage Calculator from the MIT says that one adult in Honolulu needs to make $16.59 per hour for a living wage. If that is a couple with 2 children, each adult needs to make $17.70 per hour.”
- everything is more EXPENSIVE; food, household appliances, clothing, etc bc everything is shipped there.
- “the median price for a single family home in Hawaii was $885K. Condos are selling at a median of $454K.”
- “Average rent in Hawaii (Oahu) for a studio will vary based on location but expect to pay around $1,670 with Waikiki studios going from $1,400 to about $1,700. Average rent for one bedroom apartments in Hawaii (Honolulu, Oahu) is $1,743”
PLEASE stop vacationing in / moving to the occupied Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. You are actively participating in violent settler colonialism when you do, even if you aren’t white. Never in my whole life have I seen our airport THIS packed!!! Our islands cannot support this many people – especially during our dry season and in the middle of a PANDEMIC!
Tourism makes it impossible to keep up with the rising cost of living. It brings in revenue and with that, becomes the fake state’s priority. Tourism pushes native Hawaiians from their land and homes, puts locals at risk for covid19, directly harms the delicate environment and native species here, houseless folk (many whom are native Hawaiian) are being illegally swept to make room for tourists at beaches, and locals are being restricted and fined for using water on east Maui, all while hotels can use up all the resources no problem and our government approves a million dollar home construction for new part-time residents (when locals who have been here for generations are being thrown into poverty, barely staying afloat, losing businesses and even their homes). “Hawai’i has become the Blood Diamond of the Pacific. We are mined for our splendor, and our residents live the every day, complex consequences.”
It’s absolutely VILE what is happening here. I hope yall know that Hawaiʻi was overthrown and occupied by the US military, and isn’t even legally a state! Hawaiʻi is not your vacation spot, so you better tell your family and friends to stay at home.
𝖜𝖉𝖙𝖍𝖙𝖉𝖜𝖈
Never forget that the War on Drugs was fabricated to criminalize certain communities.
It's a fantastic point, but John Boyega's net worth also puts him at $6 million. When he says eat the rich, he isn't safe either...
There’s a pretty big fucking difference between six million and one trillion lmao
Not to mention the way the money was made
An actor being paid for a role / doing some advertising is a world away form a man setting up a cooperate money machine that horrendously exploits workers
This is something I hate SO MUCH about how tumblr talks about money.
Like, I get that famous actors have large amounts of money, some of them are even probably overpaid (I have complicated thoughts about how actors are paid because of the nature of acting as a career), but they are exchanging labor for money, and their salaries are an expense involved in making a movie.
But like... an actor is paid for a job. They’re a worker like the rest of us. Bezos isn’t paid for a job, he’s paid for being the person who owns Amazon and despite being obscenely wealthy, he does all sorts of shitty things and to underpay and exploit his workers, and avoid paying taxes, so that more of the money Amazon generates will be profit (worker’s salaries are not profit, they’re a business expense).
These two mechanisms of acquiring money are fundamentally very different.
The reason why billionaires are evil aren’t because having money is bad, its because to get a billion dollars you have to cheat. You have to take it from someone else. If Bezos paid all his workers and suppliers fairly and treated them well, and paid his fair amount of taxes, and etc, then it literally wouldn’t matter how much money he earned, because he wouldn’t be doing anyone any harm. But its not actually possible to amass a billion dollars (a full order of magnitude bigger than a million) while behaving in an ethical manner.
Remember folks, proletariat literally means you get paid for working, whereas bourgeoisie literally means generating money via OWNING. Yeah, even the high profile actor isn’t your enemy on that basis alone - but the media executives dictating their contracts and careers are.