Had to put on pants to go outside due to artificially created laws.
Facts 😢
I dunno I kind of hate sitting where someone else’s sweaty ass has sat on first. I’ll let this one slide.
Just don’t sit then, ever again!
Not so much me. It’s, in fact, my fetish.
But you take them off when you kiss a mirror on the lips
I don’t care if you hate him; he’s right on this. this entire thing is bullshit.
Who hates him?
A lot of people think he’s become a bit of a wanker on social media and IRL. Some of his tweets are cringe and makes him doing like he’s lightyears up his own ass.
I was one of them until I realized that in grand scheme of things, he is net positive. So I don’t care if he is cringe, I learn quite a bit from him and I wish more influential people were smart like him.
Fair enough. Maybe I just miss Carl too much
That’s always understandable. I think the bigger picture here is that we sometimes forget that they’re all humans, not just public figures. They have other thoughts and opinions that aren’t curated for the world.
Plus, Sagan’s era didn’t have Internet. People weren’t sharing with the world every single fucking thought that came out of their head. I’m sure we would’ve heard Sagan say some dumb shit here and there if he had to produce today’s world’s kind of content.
Great!
Now consider why the “public” started turning on him in 2021 or so.
Sometimes I think he forgets he’s there to be the science guy and makes it about himself a lot, but when he gets on a science rant that’s when hea good, just going on about his love of science and why it’s cool as fuck.
Getting James Cameron to fix the stars in the Titanic remake boosted his ego a little bit, but I get that, I’d be a bit ego filled if I was able to make James Cameron change something in his film.
I don’t use twitter (never have tbh) so I’ve only ever seen screenshots of his more infamous tweets, but I have listened to a LOT of his startalk podcast. Most of the time he’s an entertaining person and seems to admit when he doesn’t know enough about a given subject (although I’ve seen a lot of criticism that he does tend to talk about things he doesn’t know, it doesn’t seem to be that way in the podcast at least)
He can be annoying in some of his podcasts though and you can feel his guests being diplomatic about it while still hearing a bit of annoyance in their voice or next sentence etc. But overall I rather quite like him, despite the Internet’s disdain for him.
More people making science popular and easily digestible is always a good thing IMO. But I’m also biased because I’ve really liked NDT since I was a kid due to seeing him in space documentaries when I was young, and I still love his version of Cosmos.
Apparently a lot of women who had to work with him
I think it actually is interesting if you’re going to call out humans as a species of animal!
All across species from unicellular to megafauna, from plants to fungus, you can find mechanisms used to defend an individual’s physical territory. Ants and bees from the same species will fight and kill others colony members of they stray into their territory. Bears will fight and kill other bears. Our closest relatives, chimps, will go to war with neighboring chimp bands.
Artificial borders are humans way of saying “this is my territory enter at your own risk”. The REALLY interesting thing is that we have established systematic exceptions to the behaviors we see in nature. “Ask us before you come and you can visit and be safe here from those that enforce our territory.”
The temporary nature is unique, many social animals will permanently adopt an outsider into their group on occasion, equivalent to immigration, but I’m not aware of any that have pre-agreed temporary violations of group territory.
I guess you can draw that comparison, but then human territories are exponentially bigger than anything an equivalent social animal might claim as “enter at your risk” area. A traveling pack of dogs can just go around another pack’s territory. We can’t do that, we’re boxed in. There’s no neutral space left. I guess you could argue there’s international waters, but that’s practically inaccessible to most people.
okay I don’t know how to articulate this properly but i’ll try;
fukn get rekt ngt
This is a call for world federalism. I support it, but it’s probably ahead of our time. A democratic world federation (a truly united nations [of earth] perhaps) would be able to more effectively solve many (global) problems.
Or it’s a return to how things were before nationalism rotted the brains of basically everyone on Earth
You’re imagining a false history. Before nationalism it was tribalism which is just small nationalism. Before that it was “if I see a male of my species I may have to kill them”.
Probably once aliens make their apparition, there’d be a much greater incentive to unite
It’s crazy to think that the level of border control we have today would be unfathomable to someone even 100 years ago. If we go a bit earlier, how could you even ID someone without photographs?
People could tell which village you came from just by your accent, strangers would easily stand out
Sure, but go to a city and you’re just another import. Go to another country, and you’re just “the foreigner”. Through almost all of human history, you could just kinda leave your past behind if you just ran away
I think about this a few times a year and I become sad each time. We only get this one planet in the whole ass universe. And we can barely see all of it, unless we’re lucky and/or rich (at least moreso than most of humankind).
It’s profoundly ridiculous.
I was flying to south East Asia, looking at the digital map of the plane. From above, you can kinda see the country lines.
What made me feel that incredible sadness is that within a 1000 mile radius, a child born might live in a world where they struggle with starvation and have worms in their stomach, or wake up each day with anime and toys. Some countries have so much wealth and resources. Where others barely have anything. I think about all of that as I fly to my vacation destination, having been incredibly lucky to have been born in a pretty wealthy country.
One could argue that you can be poor/abused anywhere. But there’s a clear difference in quality of life here.
One could argue that you can be poor/abused anywhere. But there’s a clear difference in quality of life here.
Very true. You’ve captured my exact sentiment here.
And also, the very fact that you can be poor even in rich countries is an even greater failure of the system. Nobody in a “rich” country should be impoverished. There are plenty of resources there to take care of everyone as long as we all work together. But the system rewards only those who work for themselves.
Hell, no one in the world would need to work more than 10hr a week if it was our goal and we just decided to equitably and efficiently share resources.
That would be pretty sweet if accurate. Just satisfy the bare necessities and be free the rest of the time. Exploring other topics, for fun and benefit.
If we can supply this many people with the basics necessary for survival and work under our current extractive systems, and these systems concentrate resources in the wealthy few, then we clearly have enough to raise the standard of living worldwide. All the while reducing individual labor requirements,
Mobility is better now than it has ever been, so don’t get too sad about that.
But only for the rich. If you don’t have money, you can’t
escapeleave your country. Barely even travel in your own country. Society has broken our nomadic heritage. We did it to ourselves eons ago when we started cultivation of the land, but with the modern borders and stuff, it’s just been made so much harder.Cool, just down vote instead of having a conversation…
You’re totally right about this. I find it frustrating in a different way that the ability to travel is easier and possible, which hasn’t been the case for the majority of humanity, but (generally) artificial restrictions prevent it from happening.
I’m from Canada and my partner was born in Europe. When I hear how easily she was able to travel by train and plane, it makes me sad that we don’t have a similar system. Even airfare is significantly cheaper there because trains are a worthy competitor.
A friend of mine who has relatives in China has talked about how people my age (university age) have been using the new train system to see so much of their country than they otherwise would be able to.
I hope that eventually there will be a similar transit system in Canada that allows poor people to see the country they live in. And I understand that by even living in Canada I don’t really count amongst the global impoverished population. I understand the privilege.
He somehow managed to make border abolition sound uncool. Many people don’t agree with it for many reasons, none of which were it being uncool until this tweet
Join Schengen! It’s easy, unless Austria abuses it’s Veto rights
Typical Austria… (i actually have no idea if this is typical , the only thing I know about Austria is Hitler was from there 😅)
“ ‘Private property is the smallest unit of warfare’ - The Environmental Rescue Team Handbook”
— Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers (2023), chapter 15
Sure, as soon as we all agree on what form of government to have and what actions it should take, or at least the point at which we are all willing to not take up arms in opposition against it, we can get rid of these artificially conceived borders.
what he’s really complaining about is queuing, not borders. first world problem.
Weird way to misinterpret the obvious.
That’s how I read it. Rich man angry he had to stand in line.
You think that’s bad? Every April I have to hand the country I live in a bunch of papers with numbers on them just to exist. If I don’t, they send men with guns. How crazy is that?
oh this bloviating asshat
Yeah fuckface, borders are this thing in geopolitics which ALSO involves OTHER sovereign nations that might not WANT your fucking moron face there
Missing the message because you hate the messenger.
What is the message? That borders are dumb?
Yes. Borders are dumb.
Countries are just lines drawn in the sand with a stick.
With a gun, now
Yes, it’s lyrics from a song, though.
Oh, very unclear if you wanted people to get that. Looks like a normal sentence. 🎶
The message is Neil’s daddy obviously didn’t love him
NDT the goat of saying rly dumb shit but everyone thinks it’s somehow enlightening. he’s like Jaden smith but Twitter likes him
I mean I agree with him here. It’s ridiculous how we are still this tribalistic species while basically everyone would be better off when we would work together (e.g. climate change would be non-existent)
In tribal times, there were no maps and the borders moved a lot, but when you crossed them, you generally got driven back or killed.
This goes back to before there were humans, and all other territorial animals do it, too.Bold claim stating that climate change wouldn’t be real if we just worked together. As if we didn’t live in an ice age as the same species we are now.
Just evolve into a homo without tribalism then and outbreed the rest of us
It is possible to agree with something and still believe it is terribly presented.
Passports weren’t a general concept until the end of the 19th century. Before they were mostly to allow passage to certain areas inside one country, rather than for movement between countries. There have been Identifications for Nobels and Diplomats though.
Anyways the whole concept is mostly a concept of modern nation states not of ancient tribalism.
I think the point is that the tribalism led to the creation of the nations/states in the first place. I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
This was also my understanding and I begrudgingly agree with NDT that borders and states and tribalism are bad. I don’t agree with complaining about lines. Damn dude, sucks to have to be a regular participant in society, maybe of bureaucrats got paid better or there were more people working the passport desk.
Or… and i know this is fucking wild, he made up that story because in the US you get passports in the mail. Yeah, you have to maybe wait in a short line for some steps but overall you just send in your info and wait 6 weeks.
To be fair, trusting mail with my passport still terrifies me, even though it maybe shouldn’t
The state is formed by the historical mode of production, its like a contradiction that is the resolution to all of the other contradictions present in market social relations. In other words the state is based on how stuff gets made, and who accumulates the value inherent in the stuff, which is in essence the congealed work that went into making that stuff.
Politics and culture is always a factor in what shape the state takes, since politics and culture are social structures and sources of power themselves, but politics is downstream from production
Eh, that’s one view. In The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow propose that the State arises from the intersection of three forms of social power. These are sovereignty (control of violence), bureaucracy (control of information), and politics (control through charisma and culture). Historicaly each of these has existed as the basis for societies alone and in combination without the concept of a state.
The State is a meme, a technology like religion or money, which provides a framework for the distribution and application of those 3 forms of power. It isn’t the only possible framework for that, but it’s outwardly destructive nature and self-propogation have ensured that the modern world is structured around a narrow set of configurations of the State.
I really wanna read that book, maybe this year :) I almost stole it from my wife’s cousin at Thanksgiving this year
I don’t think what you’re saying contradicts me, I agree my explainer is one view, one which addresses political economies, and the GrabGrow view is another more anthropological view. Unfortunately Marx never finished his anthropological works although there are a lot of notes from the end of his life that are worth parsing.
Saying it’s this one thing, when it can be scientifically understood as either or both things, is more like orthodoxy which I try to avoid. Both views help to understand a complicated topic made of historically shifting dynamics and changing aspects.
What your explanation doesn’t address that mine does, is what is the “social power” that congeals into these forms? It takes different shapes throughout history, but can be understood coarsely as “wealth”, which is the accumulated value of human labor. My explanation better reflects the class character of the state. However if we are to try and actually affect the world for the better, as we should, we would be better equipped with both views (and likely a few others) with which to determine truth in the functioning of political economy, than one or the other alone.
Drag has seen criticism of the term “tribalism” as it normalises the idea that tribes were bad. Tribes were actually way more sensible than modern governments. Blaming the unique problems of developed societies on indigenous tribes is kinda messed up. Sectarianism is a better word.
I typically read your comments in Barney’s voice
I blame everything on people that speak about themselves in the 3rd person.
Yes, but… did you know, if you kiss a mirror you will always kiss yourself on the lips. How’s that?
actually schizoposting before it was popular
Saying dumb shit with smart words is pretty tight tho.
Expressing the basest of notions with the loftiest of words is the pinnacle of wit.
We live in a society
We live in a patchwork of societies, I think is the thing
Bottom text
Sadly.
I take it you’re not from the US, as we’re trained from birth to be overtly hostile to the concept, as well as each other.
There’s no team in I, and society would be a slippery slope to evil socialism.
But hey, we are oh so very free… to die in the gutter alone as other Americans tell us to hurry up as our continued existence is negatively impacting their property values.
