Capitalism rewards cut-throat behavior. No surprises there.

The centerpoints of major waterways and roads are often the places with the most conflict, especially when it’s good fertile land that someone might want to live in. Different religious sects have had major presences in the region, some even established there - the first Christian Roman Emperor was born nearby. They’re also positioned directly in the path of many cultures, both ancient and modern, attempting to increase the size of their own Empires.

The land was built on conflict.

While humans continue to choose competition instead of collaboration with other slightly different humans, it will remain in conflict - much like other strategic arable accessible locations we see in the headlines.

Climate change will slowly increase the amount of land affected by conflict, when resource shortages become more severe from natural disasters; but the flashpoints are places like the Balkans.

I’m pleasantly surprised they didn’t start up again sooner. But, like, in the tiniest glimmer of silver lining kind of way.

Edit: tl;dr We all live in a shitty Civilization game but with less predictable players.

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In places that were invaded, resistance were thrown from the top of buildings after they were interrogated, their bodies were left there to be collected by whoever dared. At night all you could hear were their screams while they were being tortured in cellars by the Gestapo. Dissidents were hanged from lampposts in the main street and left as warnings. The concentration camps were often in the middle of the town, not placed at a distance to avoid offending the locals.

And the next generation in those places grew up right next to those concentration camps and mass graves. They were raised by physically and psychologically scarred people, in places that were not funded by the Marshall Plan reconstruction funds that even West Germany received. Decades later there was still rubble and half destroyed buildings.

I appreciate there is much trauma involved in losing any family, friends or community members to war, or to experiencing the bombs being dropped around you. But, I think the level of cruelty and fear experienced by invaded regions was next level. And I don’t think Germans generally understand the details of what life was like for the places that were occupied - but that is only my suspicion. I can’t understand how else the AfD could discuss deportations or receive such a huge proportion of the vote.

Neither Axis aligned country tesidents nor the invaded would cherish reliving it, but they have had and continue to have very very different experiences as a consequence of the war.

There’s nothing more human than killing each other to stop war, either.

The human species’ best creations have been through collaboration on new ideas and projects, but we keep going back to the old competitive methods that have clearly demonstrated that they don’t make good long term solutions. We just don’t learn.

Thanks for standing up to Nazis. It gives those of us who had family experience the horrors wrought by fascists in WW2 hope that Germans haven’t been won over again by the same poisonous ideas.

The word “fossil” could have made an appearance in this article title, and yet it is noticeably and somewhat misleadingly absent.

It seems to me that if we’re talking about addressing starvation, war and political instability, then allowing the demographic who largely are responsible for food production and family health to lead and participate in a single (probably 1 hour long weekly) conversation on TV about those issues might be a key step to better understanding the core problems facing them and increasing democracy by ensuring 50% of the population is heard. Problems can’t be properly addressed until they are accurately identified, and missing 50% of the the population’s voices about problems won’t help.

Also, for just 6 people to address a huge communication gap on a national scale in multiple media formats that can reach a population that is largely illiterate? That sounds like a hugely impactful and solid strategy for organizing important community projects and initiatives that increase stability.

What specific projects would you suggest to these 6 women that address the problems you have identified and make a larger positive impact than their current efforts?

Is it possible that people with lived experience might have a better knowledge of their needs and the next steps in fixing their own problems than you?

More important things to worry about than journalism on issues that affect (at least half) the entire population? Issues that have never been acknowledged institutionally due to women being denied employment and education? In a country that ranks fourth lowest for gender equality globally, maternal and infant mortality rates? Do you really think Somali women have nothing to add to these conversations that hasn’t already been covered?

Adding to this: Bilan’s self introduction video (1 min 41 sec, hardcoded English subtitles). Sorry, no transcript for those who rely on real text. I wanted to watch this but I was left with no information in the article on how or if English speakers even could.

The entire Western media’s approach to African nation reporting also enrages me. The continual insistence of media (especially UK based) on choosing photos to remind us that black Africans are poor and “backwards” is shameful racism. It’s no wonder that African nations are distancing themselves economically and ideologically from the West when their colonizers allies’ media machines continue to treat them this way.

“Before the war, I used to play with my friends,” he said. “I can’t play because of my injury. I can’t play, and I don’t have friends, and I don’t have anything.”

Acquired disability is a problem that will exponentially increase with climate change and industrial pollution. Wildfires create smoke that triggers heart and lung problems. War creates amputations and trauma. Drought increases food prices and creates malnutrition. Floods spread malaria and infection and other poisons. The stress on the body from any of those can in turn trigger other underlying health conditions and other genetic inefficiencies.

If we don’t stop spending all our resources on killing each other and start spending them on helping each other, more people won’t have anything. Just like this 12 year old child.

It’s a reference to one of the most culturally important stories in Buddhist countries. Not knowing about it is like consuming English media without knowing anything about Shakespeare’s plays.

The English name is Journey to the West and the monkey is Sun Wukong in Chinese or Son Goku in Japanese. You might notice the main character in Dragon Ball Z has the same name, but the monkey king is referenced constantly in all sorts of Eastern media. The synopsis and main characters sections in that Wikipedia link will give you the general idea, but I would recommend reading or watching any of the versions to get a better understanding of the vibe.

Your metaphor is basically just calling them arrogant and reckless, lacking a good strategy and rushing in to things.

Thanks friend, I really do appreciate it. I’m still one of the much luckier ones at the end of the day, even if I’m having no fun being one.

It has been exceptionally frustrating to become someone who gets treated with suspicion by pro-science people though. Even though my statistical insignificance puts me in the company of literally millions of others, there are many millions more who really did make bad choices that warrant some suspicion. (Edit: Actually no, I’ve changed my mind. Nobody deserves the suspicion at all.)

Yes, I’m very aware of my statistical insignificance that causes everyone to assume I did something to deserve long term consequences of covid. Between the antivaxxers who scowl at me for wearing a mask the rare times i dare be in public, the extreme pro-vaxxers who ask increasingly invasive medical questions to find a reason that I must have done this to myself, society leaving me to rot now they’ve all moved on because the vaccines solved everything, and the doctors telling me they have no strategies for me because there isn’t enough research… I promise that I haven’t forgotten that I’m the tiny and easily dismissable minority, despite my covid-triggered amnesia.

People always remind me of it when I don’t fit their narrative of the irresponsible or gullible fool who bought into the anti-science grift or flouted restrictions. Perhaps it’s because it’s more comforting to remind themselves that it’s improbable that they will also end up as one of the forgotten. At least, for now, until the ridiculously contagious and quickly mutating virus happens to not play nicely with their own latent medical issues and unknown genetic errors.

I’m sorry your friend was deceived by the propaganda that the vaccine was worse than the disease. And I’m sorry that you blame them for being deceived instead of understanding that fear causes people to make poor choices.

I got long covid after 4 timely boosters. It blows that people assume we don’t exist.

I rolled a natural 1 for END(ocrine function) in the womb and ended up with one of the comorbidities they didn’t predict would be unfortunate with covid.

Unfortunately doctors know very little about hormones overall, which ironically makes it pretty easy to cover as a topic when researching possible ways to make your body do… the whole being alive thing. Serotonin happens to be one of the main hormones I’m tinkering with to try to partially unfuck what covid did to my brain.

Getting jacked is a physical process that requires mechanical damage and healing to individual muscle fibres all over the body in every muscle (unless targeting specific groups only).

Placebo effect is possibly the result of people actively influencing their hormone levels and balance to encourage hormones that promote healing. Specifically increasing serotonin, that we know plays a big role in sleeping, which is where you do most of your healing. Serotonin also makes your entire food to energy pipeline function. More energy allows more energy to be dedicated to healing. Serotonin is also used to create ATP, which activates the muscle fibres.

So I would guess that you could probably increase the speed of getting jacked via placebo effect because your chemical balance is altered to promote serotonin. But you couldn’t be sedentary and get jacked. And you could maybe not outpace someone else getting jacked if they’re spending more time exercizing than you.

Disclaimer: I am not medically trained, I’m just someone who has been forced by circumstance to learn about the endocrine system and its tyrannical rule over organisms.

Funny that the Pope loves the rule of law when the Vatican refuses to cooperate in international lawsuits against them, which they can easily do because they can deny warrants as a sovereign entity.

Return the Nazi loot, Vatican. Then maybe you can look a little less hypocritical when asking others to cooperate in international justice systems.

You can’t just cover things back up. Archaeological digs have been slowly buried over time in environmental conditions that allowed for their preservation, or in Pompeii’s case, initially very quickly and then slowly. Covering it back up would not only ruin the discovery potential of future investigation that relies on identification by context (for example, dating a pot by the chemical composition of the surrounding and previously contained materials, but it would also endanger anything we’ve found by introducing an uncontrolled and entirely new environment. It’s not like we can layer on the ash and other stuff in the same order it was deposited and in the exact same location with the same chemical composition.

Conservation is a necessary and very active effort as soon as something is found, because the act of studying it aleays causes at least some initial destruction.

“Most of Israeli society will say: ‘Why not? It’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom, it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense’.”

Extremists Jews have become what they swore to destroy. The holocaust was the core justification for the creation of Israel, and while I never expected peace in the Middle East, I didn’t expect them to start committing the same atrocities within living memory while using the same fertile land propaganda metaphors.

The UN fucked up hard when it formed the country and the Security Council voting system needs to be reformed based on this awful lesson. The world is less safe than ever, and nuclear weapon proliferation is accelerating rapidly, so the UN SC is just not achieving their own goals either.

This is what a failing civilization and species looks like and I’m not enjoying being on the sinking ship. Happy new year.