What's on your mind?

[JonoBlade]

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I'm surrounded by these sanctimonious idiots here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and time after time they are exposed to be total hypocrites. That's what's so enraging, that they so often turn out to be not just as bad as, but so much worse than the godless heathens they like to claim moral superiority over. It's all projection, they go harder than anyone railing against all the debased shit that it turns out they're guilty of themselves.

I knew you were gonna say that. I wonder if they actually feel guilty about their "sins" though? Are you suggesting they don't actually believe what they say they believe? I guess that would make them smarter than I give them credit, but so much more evil. 

We all know about the evangelist that turns out to spend his evenings hanging around the glory hole at the local truckstop cubicle* but what are the actual statistics of such hypocrites? The hypocriticastaticals? I.e. while some may be hypocrites, surely it is not the majority.

I have some residual faith in human integrity and like to assume that the bulk of conservatives are as stupid as they present themselves to be.

*I know all the tricks now after listening to our lord Rob's audio book.

13 hours ago, Dead1 said:

I think the problem with modern progressives is they actually stand for nothing.  Economically they're all right wing or centre right at the best.  You never hear about progressives talking about nationalisation of industries, curbing immigration, curbing worst aspects of international trade (exploitation and environmental destruction)  or curbing consumerism.

They have espouse libertarian viewpoints for certain people - freedom of choice for nearly everything (including drugs) and even tolerance of people's right to be a criminal via decriminalisation and soft sentencing.  

Yet they promote censorship and cancelling of those they don't agree with - cancelling people, destroying statues, removing movies, banning symbols etc.

They don't ascribe to people having agency.  So whilst you are free to chose, if you make bad choices that's the fault of government.

It's almost perverse in that many of them would view listening to NSBM as a greater evil than actually committing a violent crime (coz that one's not their fault especially if the criminal is a visible minority).

And I say all of the above as a true left wing person.  

We've covered this before but it does help me crystallise where I stand on these kinds of things.

The immigration one is often the trigger point. On the one hand I know human population growth is our death sentence. On the other hand I know that immigrants per se are no better or worse than the populations they enter into.  And, as ecosystems break down, there will be more and more desperation to that migration, which by and large will have been caused by American lead western consumerist values. 

But India and China suck too. So, swings and roundabouts.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

7 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

I knew you were gonna say that. I wonder if they actually feel guilty about their "sins" though? Are you suggesting they don't actually believe what they say they believe? I guess that would make them smarter than I give them credit, but so much more evil. 

We all know about the evangelist that turns out to spend his evenings hanging around the glory hole at the local truckstop cubicle* but what are the actual statistics of such hypocrites? The hypocriticastaticals? I.e. while some may be hypocrites, surely it is not the majority.

I have some residual faith in human integrity and like to assume that the bulk of conservatives are as stupid as they present themselves to be.

*I know all the tricks now after listening to our lord Rob's audio book.

We've covered this before but it does help me crystallise where I stand on these kinds of things.

The immigration one is often the trigger point. On the one hand I know human population growth is our death sentence. On the other hand I know that immigrants per se are no better or worse than the populations they enter into.  And, as ecosystems break down, there will be more and more desperation to that migration, which by and large will have been caused by American lead western consumerist values. 

But India and China suck too. So, swings and roundabouts.

Not true Jon, you might not have heard but the experts have apparently reversed their position 180° on the population growth thing. In the 70's and 80's that's all you heard about, zero population growth was the desired goal because soon there'd be too many people for the earth to support and feed and we'd one day have to colonize space. China infamously instituted their one child policy in 1979, then later relaxed it to 2 kids for rural areas in an attempt to reduce rampant infanticide of female babies. 230k girl babies lost in 1981 alone. They ended it in 2015. It is said that over 36 years that policy prevented 400 million births.

But now in 2023 they don't have enough working age people in China to support their large older population, and two whole generations that can't make enough babies to properly repopulate because there's just not enough of them to get the job done. It has been said over the next 25 years their population will be cut in half from 1.3 billion now to 650 mil in 2050.

And it's not just China, other countries are in the same boat. In Japan they're refusing to have babies, shools are being shut down, small towns abandoned, shrinking workforce, disproportionately huge elderly population, more deaths than births, their 126 million population is headed to 0.

1804 we first hit 1 billion earthlings. 1927 we hit 2 billion. 3 billion people on earth when I was born, 4 billion when you were born, 5 billion by 1987, 6 billion by Y2K, 8 billion now. They're saying we'll peak at some point in this century and then it will be a precipitous decline as sharp as the rise.

All over the western world, US, Australia and Europe population growth has fallen to dangerously low levels where we don't even replace ourselves because the wealth gap and stagnant wage growth with high inflation has left the millennials and 20 somethings unable to afford to buy homes and have families. People well into their 30's still single living with mom & dad or "flatting" with friends, living like college kids instead of settling down and starting families like previous generations would have done. Which means in 20 -30 years there won't be enough working people to support you Gen-X geezers in your old age. I'll be dead by then of course, but I worry what life will be like for my 9 year old kid.

And no I wasn't saying that most sanctimonious Christies are debauched and depraved, just that a surprising number of them have been exposed as sick fucks, and a surprising number of the debauched and depraved have turned out to be Christies. Just like a surprising number of Catholic priests have turned out to be kiddie fiddlers, but obviously not most of them. That whole vow of celibacy thing was just a bad idea from the start. Denying that natural side of ourselves can make people do fucked up shit.

Also you can't just blame America for the world's love of excess, decadence, overindulgence, waste and consumerism. Because most countries that have been able to achieve sufficient levels of wealth and disposable income have been only too happy to join us in our mindless consumerism and excess. It's human nature to want stuff and feel the need to keep up with the Joneses. Everyone spends their money on something and thinks it's the other guy who's throwing his money away on stupid shit. And without consumerism the whole economy collapses. You wouldn't want that to happen now would you Jon-O?

[Dead1]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Not true Jon, you might not have heard but the experts have apparently reversed their position 180° on the population growth thing. In the 70's and 80's that's all you heard about, zero population growth was the desired goal because soon there'd be too many people for the earth to support and feed and we'd one day have to colonize space. China infamously instituted their one child policy in 1979, then later relaxed it to 2 kids for rural areas in an attempt to reduce rampant infanticide of female babies. 230k girl babies lost in 1981 alone. They ended it in 2015. It is said that over 36 years that policy prevented 400 million births.

But now in 2023 they don't have enough working age people in China to support their large older population, and two whole generations that can't make enough babies to properly repopulate because there's just not enough of them to get the job done. It has been said over the next 25 years their population will be cut in half from 1.3 billion now to 650 mil in 2050.

And it's not just China, other countries are in the same boat. In Japan they're refusing to have babies, shools are being shut down, small towns abandoned, shrinking workforce, disproportionately huge elderly population, more deaths than births, their 126 million population is headed to 0.

1804 we first hit 1 billion earthlings. 1927 we hit 2 billion. 3 billion people on earth when I was born, 4 billion when you were born, 5 billion by 1987, 6 billion by Y2K, 8 billion now. They're saying we'll peak at some point in this century and then it will be a precipitous decline as sharp as the rise.

All over the western world, US, Australia and Europe population growth has fallen to dangerously low levels where we don't even replace ourselves because the wealth gap and stagnant wage growth with high inflation has left the millennials and 20 somethings unable to afford to buy homes and have families. People well into their 30's still single living with mom & dad or "flatting" with friends, living like college kids instead of settling down and starting families like previous generations would have done. Which means in 20 -30 years there won't be enough working people to support you Gen-X geezers in your old age. I'll be dead by then of course, but I worry what life will be like for my 9 year old kid.

 

 

You speak of population decline as it's a bad thing.  If the planet is to not be turned into a wasteland and living standards are to be maintained, a huge chunk of humanity has to cease to exist.  And what better way than declining population.

Given westerners pollute the most, allowing their populations to crash is the best solution.

 

China thrived because of one child policy because it stabilised out of control growth rates.  Basic maths in economics is economy has to grow faster than population for there to be a benefit (modern neoliberalism broke this but anyway).  If China hadn't curbed population growth, it would not have been able to improve living standards as much as it did.

India's population growth impedes it - there's too many young people entering workforce and not enough jobs (hence emigration is high).  That's the same problem in a lot of places in Africa and Middle East.  It creates restlessness and harbours resentment and extremism.

 

Also human population as a whole won't hit decline as other parts of it are growing out of control.  Eg Africa's population is scheduled to go from 1.5 billion in 2023 to 4.2 billion by 2100.  A lot of places like Egypt ( current 109 million, 205 m in 2100) and Bangladesh (population 170m) are fucked under not just global warming but even under old environmental circumstances.

The population of the planet by that stage is 10.4 billion but that assumes the Africans, Indians and others actually do what demographers think they might do and stop having as many babies.

However the UN keeps missing it's forecasts because these groups keep having more children and not less.

In fact Africa kinda blows up every single "law" of sociology and economics.  Nothing there tends to work under the established economic models.

 

Oh and as living standards start to decline around the world due to current economic trends, you can probably expect increases in number of children even in west. 

 

Quote

You would have been pleased to know my wedding song was Sweet Child O' Mine by your favorite LA sleaze rock band. This was Sept '88 and 4 or 5 songs from Appetite were all over the radio. But before the song could end a brawl broke out, the cops were called and things went rapidly downhill from there.

A rather ominous start to your marriage!  Was it you doing the brawling?

 

Mine was shit too - ceremony was good, reception was fucked.  Everyone was a right unsupportive cunt right up to it and the day wasn't much better.

My parents (since disowned) were complaining throughout the reception, photographer was horrible and demanding and didn't do what we wanted her to, one of my brothers was reading a book throughout the ceremony and reception, the other was broody and resentful.  We'd practised a tango properly but my wife didn't take into account her ridiculous dress so we couldn't do it. properly and it looked stupid.  To cap it off this nasty "agony cunt" cunt my wife thought was her friend just got her drunk and depressed.

 

Fuck weddings.  I would have eloped if I could.  My wife agreed in hindsight.

[JonoBlade]

12 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Not true Jon, you might not have heard but the experts have apparently reversed their position 180° on the population growth thing.

That's all very interesting, but the more people there are the more land you have to clear to grow food for them and build housing. Ecosystems are already collapsing and none of that gets any better with more population.

You don't seem to be able to grasp that you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. 

Can I have a citation for the report where "experts have apparently reversed their position 180° on the population growth thing" please. I'm just using logic and very simple maths. If you slash and burn nature to make room for more humans (and what they want to eat) with no end in sight, the planet dies. It's really simple.  

[GoatmasterGeneral]

3 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

That's all very interesting, but the more people there are the more land you have to clear to grow food for them and build housing. Ecosystems are already collapsing and none of that gets any better with more population.

You don't seem to be able to grasp that you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. 

Can I have a citation for the report where "experts have apparently reversed their position 180° on the population growth thing" please. I'm just using logic and very simple maths. If you slash and burn nature to make room for more humans (and what they want to eat) with no end in sight, the planet dies. It's really simple.  

Calm down Jon-O, I'm not saying they've changed their minds and have now decided to promote exponential population growth as a good thing. The 180° shift I'm talking about is that they had been predicting continued upward population growth 30 or 40 years ago and thought that was a problem; but now they're predicting that the world's populaton will be peaking sometime this century. Most developed countries have already peaked, US in the 00's, Europe, China, Russia and Australia in the late 90's. After the peak then we will begin a fairly sharp precipitous world population decline over the next 50 - 100 years. Old people dying off and not enough young people being born to replace them. Which would suit your needs quite well because you think we already have too many people on the earth. I have no strong opinions on this myself, I can't control or affect the world's population so it is what it is. But they say apparently when birth rates fall too low too fast to where you don't have enough working age people to support your older population (which is China's perdicament) that's not good in the short term. It'd be a lot easier on a country to have a more gradual population decline.

Fertility rates by country

 

The fertility rate is simply how many kids each woman that's born can be expected to drop. Replacement rate needs to be 2.1 to maintain the current population. That's the break even number, anything over that and the population will grow, anything less then it will shrink. India for instance has the exact break even rate of 2.1 so they will neither grow nor lose population in the near future outside of migration or mass deaths due to war or pandemic or something.

China on the other hand has seen their fertility rate fall off a cliff and drop very low to just 1.2 so they've already begun their downward population spiral. USA's rate is 1.7 so we're on the decline as well, but less steep than China's. Australia 1.6, NZ 1.8, UK 1.6 and Northern Europe as a whole averages out to 1.6. South America 1.8, Southeast Asia 2.2. Some countries are a little higher like: Israel 2.9, Phillippines 2.7, Pakistan 3.3

But the main place where population is still growing like crazy is Africa with most African countries having rates in the 4's & 5's, and a few: Chad, Somalia, Niger and the Congo that are over 6, you can see all the deep red on the graph above. They don't precict some of those countries' rates will fall below replacement level til later in the century as you can see in the very bottom graph.

The whole list by country (you can sort the list by the rates or alphabetically) is here if you'd like to peruse it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

 

China

 

US

 

 

[Dead1]

GG That is some great info.

From an environmental perspective fertility isn't the whole picture.  Populations in most high carbon/high polluting economies are still growing because they are importing surplus people from elsewhere.

Does it matter Australia's fertility rate is below replacement when it's scheduled to double its population by 2100.   And Australia is extremely high on a per capita pollution rate (eg carbon per capita top of OECD and 11th world wide).

 

With environmental collapse affecting poorer countries more, it will probably just mean that even larger populations will simply move to the west which will ramp up pollution even more.

 

And note border controls are increasingly non-existent and many elite groups are opposed to them  eg opposition to Trump's border plans whilst supporting carrier battle groups based in Japan.  Both progressives and business groups are opposed to border controls and free trade and other agreements remove barriers to "flow of labour".

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Dead1 said:

GG That is some great info.

From an environmental perspective fertility isn't the whole picture.  Populations in most high carbon/high polluting economies are still growing because they are importing surplus people from elsewhere.

Does it matter Australia's fertility rate is below replacement when it's scheduled to double its population by 2100.   And Australia is extremely high on a per capita pollution rate (eg carbon per capita top of OECD and 11th world wide).

With environmental collapse affecting poorer countries more, it will probably just mean that even larger populations will simply move to the west which will ramp up pollution even more.

And note border controls are increasingly non-existent and many elite groups are opposed to them eg opposition to Trump's border plans whilst supporting carrier battle groups based in Japan.  Both progressives and business groups are opposed to border controls and free trade and other agreements remove barriers to "flow of labour".

I wasn't even looking at it from an environmental perspective, more from a socio-economic perspective. I grew up in the 60's and 70's when the US and other western countries' fertility rates were in the mid 3's, and now 50 years later they're in the mid 1's. No one saw that coming. Many years ago people routinely had more kids to have more workers to support the family and as a hedge against high child mortality rates. But now in the modern world kids have become a financial burden and people simply can't afford to raise 3, 4, 5, 6...ankle biters anymore. The fact that big bad China's swollen 1.4 billion population has peaked and is now projected to be cut in half by the end of the century due in no small part to their one child policy which ironically had been intended to combat over-population is pretty fucking wild. India just passed them as the most populous country in the world now. While this will undoubtedly be a positive for the environment as China is a major polluter, it will be an unmitigted disaster for China's socio-economic well being and their status as a world superpower. We're essentially looking at the impending social and economic collapse of China which will likely affect the geo-political world in myriad ways both good and bad that no one has even thought of yet. I'm no fan of the CCP, I just find this kinda stuff fascinating. I could see China's collapse being a problem for your mob though down under there because when the shit gets dire you're one of the main places that will have to deal with a good portion of the outflow of Chinese who'll be jumping from a sinking ship. And you guys don't have the infrastructure or the capacity to deal with several million of them all at once like we could.

 

Trump never had a border plan. His handlers just told him to talk about a wall during the 2016 election cycle because they knew they could get the xenophobes on board with that, and it worked like a charm. People sure do love to hate on foreigners. But the reality is we don't have open borders and Democrats in Congress aren't opposed to strengthening our border control. Some of them just understand that spending $200 Billion + on a two thousand mile wall through difficult terrain is not the answer. That was just a campaign talking point they came up with for him that the xenophobes and white power crowd fell in love with so then he had to go all in on it. But obviously we could spend far less on high tech border control solutions that would be much more effective than a rusty $200B wall that can be circumvented with a couple of ladders and a rope. Except of course for the parts that fell over in the wind because they gave out contracts to cronies insted of qualified, experienced contractors. No ladder needed for those parts. Funny though how Republicans always vote against border security bills because they need that issue to remain in play as a talking point to keep their constituents stirred up and voting red. That's their playbook, fuck everything up cause as much chaos as humanly possible, then blame Democrats for it so they can make the case that they need to be reelected because they're the only ones who can fix it. When everyone who's paying attention knows they're the ones that fucked shit up in the first place. 

[Dead1]

China's collapse could be more like Japan's - atrophy and slow stagnation.

 

That border should be the primary concern of the US military.  And not just to stop illegal immigrants but also flow of drugs from Mexico and (ironically) flow of weapons to Mexico.  US is biggest provider of weapons to Mexican and other cartels!  You see on news many of them are switching from dirt cheap AKs to heavily kitted out AR-15s (and also bizarrely Israeli made weapons such as Tavor - US subsidises Israeli defence and Israelis sell drones to Russia, all manner of defence tech to China and small arms to drug cartels).

 

And a wall on its own is useless.  It would need extensive manning, drones, aerial surveillance.  Where to get manpower and money - why scrap US forces in Europe and have the Euros pay for their own defence.  That's 100,000 men and tons of dollars saved to buy drones, additional surveillance aircraft.  Oh and scrap Israeli and Egyptian defence aid while they're at it - that'll free up more cash.

 

Here in Australia scrap that stupid AUKUS program that even US Congress is smart enough to not want to sign off on despite Australian government delusions.

[AlSymerz]

Someone went overboard on Lamb Of God's metal cruise.

Apparently they circled back and spent something like 9 hours looking for him but didn't find him and are returning to port. Someone reckons they saw a bloke being chased by security and he dived off the back of the boat, but that's unconfirmed.

I don't think I've heard of anyone going overboard on these music cruise ships before. Hear about it occasionally on some cruise boats but this might be a first for a metal cruise.

[FatherAlabaster]

8 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Someone went overboard on Lamb Of God's metal cruise.

Apparently they circled back and spent something like 9 hours looking for him but didn't find him and are returning to port. Someone reckons they saw a bloke being chased by security and he dived off the back of the boat, but that's unconfirmed.

I don't think I've heard of anyone going overboard on these music cruise ships before. Hear about it occasionally on some cruise boats but this might be a first for a metal cruise.

Stuck on a cruise ship with Lamb Of God? Yikes. I don't blame him at all.

[AlSymerz]

Well there is that. But you'd have to say he knew what pain he was going to be subjected to when he paid several thousand dollars for the ticket.

[MacabreEternal]

Week off work ahead, been a tiring year so far and so some downtime is long overdue.  Coffin carrying duties done at yet another family funeral this past week - one of the good ones this time, gone at a ripe old age but still too soon for my liking.

Since we appear to be in constant rain here look like I need to get the weights out of the shed and make use of the bench indoors for the forseeable.  Won't be getting much opportunity for decent walks out anytime soon so need keep the fitness up somehow.

[AlSymerz]

I realise other people have different thoughts on the idea but I've always thought of coffin carrying as the final insult. The job you give people as a final single finger salute once you can't do anything else.

[Thatguy]

3 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

I realise other people have different thoughts on the idea but I've always thought of coffin carrying as the final insult. The job you give people as a final single finger salute once you can't do anything else.

I'd never thought of it like that, I guess having never carried a coffin nor ever likely too. And every funeral I've been to has been a cremation as will be mine.

[AlSymerz]

It's not a job I would want. Imagine if the dear departed was of really large size and one person dropped their end. It can also look a bit weird when the bearers are different heights.

I've only been to one funeral that wasn't a bakery too, but there was no coffin bearers.

 

[MacabreEternal]

Well, even with a cremation the coffin still needs to get into the crematorium.  Although I am sure drones will get involved at some point.

[AlSymerz]

Funerals I've been to were at the bakery they just go behind a curtain and the rest is unseen by anyone but bakery staff.

My dad's mate used to work at one before he retired. We had a tour of the place and unless the coffin is headed out to the yard it's all handled behind curtains.

 

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

It’s terrifying how quickly this year has flown by. Oh and stressful that this upcoming Thursday will be the first full service of my course. I at least we are split into teams to handle one station, and so it isn’t quite as overwhelming as it could be

[Dead1]

On 11/4/2023 at 8:10 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

Stuck on a cruise ship with Lamb Of God? Yikes. I don't blame him at all.

Great band!  I love a lot of their stuff and listen to them regularly

 

Sucks for the dude but given the amount of booze consumed by metalheads I am a bit surprised it didn't happen earlier.

[FatherAlabaster]

1 hour ago, Dead1 said:

Great band!  I love a lot of their stuff and losten to them regularlyn

Yup, that checks out

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Yup, that checks out

I was gonna say Friday that I hoped it was Randy Blythe who fell overboard. But I figured some people might take that the wrong way.

[Dead1]

8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I was gonna say Friday that I hoped it was Randy Blythe who fell overboard. But I figured some people might take that the wrong way.

You're just jealous he is a beautiful man in a successful band.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

18 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

You're just jealous he is a beautiful man in a successful band.

Actually, I used to think in an alternate universe they might have been a good band with another singer. But I can't get down with the Blythecore. Dude just rubs me the wrong way, he competely ruins that band. Haven't heard anything from them in a minute though, since like Sacrament era. But the massive stadium rockstar status they've achieved since then leads me to believe they probably turned super commercial and suck even 10 times harder now, because Sacrament was bouncy commercial nonsense for the casuals to begin with.

[Dead1]

20 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Actually, I used to think in an alternate universe they might have been a good band with another singer. But I can't get down with the Blythecore. Dude just rubs me the wrong way, he competely ruins that band. Haven't heard anything from them in a minute though, since like Sacrament era. But the massive stadium rockstar status they've achieved since then leads me to believe they probably turned super commercial and suck even 10 times harder now, because Sacrament was bouncy commercial nonsense for the casuals to begin with.

 

Lamb of God have been stuck in an increasingly deep rut since Sacrament.  They toned down commerciality slightly after Sacrament but it's been pretty much par for course for 17 years now!  LoG's drummer even quit because he was bored with the band,  he said he was "unwilling to paint by numbers."

 

It's the Nuclear Blast formula - make a successful album and then rinse and repeat formula for as long as you can. 

 

I haven't even bothered buying their last two albums because the formula's fully exhausted in my opinion.

 

 

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Looks like Thursday I’ll be channeling my inner Ramsay, I don’t see any other way. My team will actually meet the expectations for our first proper service of the course. Fortunately, I used to be a team leader from my days doing group work at university.