The world is cruel and ugly. There are plenty of justifiable things to be upset and distraught over. I don’t want to hear about those. I want to know what bizarre out of left field takes you have that infuriates you.
I’m still upset about Tenochtitlan falling and being buried. I’m a gringo, I shouldn’t have an opinion about Lake Texcoco being drained centuries ago.
Okay, if you’re looking for weird?
Bad perforations. Drives me insane. Any product that is perforated to tear easily, 9 times out of 10 they fucked it up and the perforations may as well not even be there or even make it worse
My vitamin packets: I try to separate one out but then accidentally tear open another vitamin behind it.
Cardboard food packaging: I start tearing a strip to open but then the strip breaks and leaves 3/4 still stuck on the packaging.
Plastic food packaging: “This bag is resealable!” Or, what they mean to say is that if you try to tear it open using the pre-cut line, you’ll tear below the resealable part.
Glass bottles/jars sealed with plastic: You’re lucky if you can even tell where they perforated it. Try ruining your nail pulling up every edge you can find until maybe it tears eventually (likely not where the actual perforation is, either). Or you can ruin a knife scratching your own tear against the metal cap instead.
Toilet paper: You’d think the sections that are already partially punctured would be the weakest point to tear most easily, but it’s actually the middle of the goddamn sheet, as we all know.
Bonus points for other packages where a top film or foil covering a container is weaker than the glue used to seal it around the edges, so you’re left with little bits of lid that can’t be removed except surgically with tweezers.
If you can’t fucking do food packaging right, save some money by not even trying and just tell me I need to use scissors or a knife, because that’s what ends up happening most of the time anyways. Fuck.
Exactly what I wanted. Good job.
Omg, the resealable bags that don’t reseal INFURIATE me.
That ring of glue and plastic and foil on top of bottle caps is so infuriating, gee thanks another wee bit of plastic that could end up in my body accidentally
There’s a wonderful bit of fiction writing where an armourer (I think, it’s been a while) had that exact thought: paper never tears where the holes are, it only tears between the holes. Therefore, the holes must be stronger than the paper. Therefore, to strengthen a material, add (impervious) holes. Ultimately, the strongest material is all holes.
Is that how they invented chainmail?
Glass bottles/jars sealed with plastic
Everything listed is valid but this one stands above the rest by a lot personally. Fucking hate this practice.
Any product that is perforated to tear easily, 9 times out of 10 they fucked it up and the perforations may as well not even be there or even make it worse
Interesting — I’ve always assumed that this was deliberate, in order to increase waste (and thereby sales). Do you really think that it’s because of something innocuous like incompetence or inattention?
Cathartic. Thank you
I feel so seen today.
banning permanent lights aimed at the sky would allow millions more people to see stars at night with no downsides. but nobody seems to care.
During covid or right after they turned off every other street light to save energy. It was great, they turned them off after 22h or something. Pretty much everyone hated it for no reasons. “It’s dangerous for the children.” The children that plat on the streets in the middle of the night? It wasn’t even pitch black or even close to. We still had more streetlights at only 50% running than many other places.
have you not heard of darksky.org?
it’s not like no one cares. just not enough
There are an absolutely unreasonable number of car dealerships near me that are the main cause of light pollution in the area. I once found a fantastic online pamphlet aimed at businesses directing how they can reduce pollution without reducing the (illusion of) security. It had all sorts of useful, illustrated info on flood light angles and the like. Unfortunately I’ve lost track of it, but if I ever find it again I’m going the rounds
One of the many benefits of only living in major metropolitan areas.
I love cars. I also love this planet. Cars are bad for the planet.
Moderation my guy. If everyone had a car they only drive on weekends or as a sport, there wouldn’t be an issue. So cars are not really the problem per se, it’s how we designed our world to revolve around moving in a car.
Sane take.
I’m also very much a “car guy”, but I fucking love that since covid and work-from-home I don’t have to do day-to-day driving anymore. I do less than 20% of the mileage that I used to do.
So yeah don’t get mad at car owners, get mad at return-to-office mandates and such.
I have never felt so seen on the internet!
I love cars and the environment. I really want EVs to be cool / better but we just aren’t there yet.
They still have issues with tire dust, but yeah they’re a lot better.
I mean better at being cars not better for the environment. I want a greener car but I don’t want to have to own a worse car to accomplish that.
If ICE cars were banned for everything but racing/recreation I’d be very happy.
Racing series’ do not need to make their race cars green. They need to make their logistics fleets green. Race cars need to be able to remain loud and dirty. The sights, sounds, and smells of racing combine to create the majesty that is racing.
I look forward to a future of efficient public transit, no new ICEs on the roads and V12s back in F1.
Oddly, the wake-up call that made me realize I needed to step back from cars was at a racetrack. I was standing on pit lane with our race about to start, and was looking up & down pit road. There must have been 1000 gallons of gas all stored in 5 gallon jugs (100+ teams, each with 20-30 gallons, so probably closer to 2500 gallons in hindsight). And it made me realize we were all going to burn it all just for fun.
I do not regret my time racing at all, in fact I still encourage new folks to get out there & actually do it (check out ChampCar & 24 hours of Lemons!). I learned so much, had way too much fun, and made some simply irreplaceable memories. But I also feel it’s an irresponsible use of a limited resource. Still haven’t found a way to balance that equation in my head. For now, I’ve hung up the helmet.
Solar powered cars when?
Get an EV. Get a garage charger. Put panels on your roof. The future is now!
Didn’t the 2nd gen Prius have a solar roof? It could only power the ac and accessories iirc.
How I feel about motorcycles.
Motorcycles are better than cars though. On average they get many more miles to the gallon and they cause less traffic than the giant SUVs that Americans are addicted to.
It said weirdest. This is common and I see it a lot so not weird at all.
How am I supposed to care about a series that takes 4 years between seasons
The only show I ever liked enough for that was Venture Bros, and it was only that bad once.
4 years? What the f do you watch? Three Body Problem?
Maybe Severance? Was only 3 years between seasons 1 and 2 though.
One Punch Man 😭
Stranger things
I just rewatched this last weekend, immediately thought of it.
Hopefully the new seasons are quality, and therefore worth the wait
This is why I can’t do manga. I switched to webtoons and novels. Novels tend to just get dropped and that drives me nuts.
Bicycle drivetrains keep getting more complex and expensive. A 3x9 drivetrain is beyond adequate, bulletproof, and inexpensive. But NooOoOoOooo, it’s nearly impossible to get a quality bike with 3x9 now, without a full custom, DIY build. Everything has to be 1x11/12, which is expensive, touchy, and very particular, all while still lacking the gear range of 3x9.
It all seriously sticks in my craw.
Halleluja! I just want my Deore XT 3x9 back.
I’m sorry, 1x11? I’ve never really shopped for a bike more expensive than like $500 and the idea of getting less gear options for more money is wild to me.
There’s surprisingly a fair bit of overlap on the gear ratios of a 2 or 3x that makes a 1x11 or 12 have a similar range of ratios. However you do have to sacrifice either a bit of top end speed or climbing ability so you see a few more 2x on road bikes. I’ve never found myself wanting more from my 1x mtb drivetrain
Wait, you said a 1x can have a similar range, and then immediately followed up with:
you do have to sacrifice either a bit of top end speed or climbing ability
It is impossible for both statements to be true at the same time.
Or some differences in gear spacing. I’m not an expert in it, but tried my best to summarize a succinctly as possible
For mountain biking at least, 1xs are superior due to the narrow-wide chainring, not to mention completely eliminating a derailer and associated controls. I don’t understand how this could possibly be more complicated or expensive than a 3x9, but I’m sure these companies have found a way.
superior due to the narrow-wide chainring
Fully agreed. Narrow-wide rings are absolutely a boon to mountain biking as are derailleur clutches. And 1x is superlative for hard trail riding on that factor alone.
A factor in the issue I take is the proprietary nature of modern bike drivetrains. With older drivetrains, we could mix and match to our hearts’ content. But now, even within a component line, e.g. Deore XT or SRAM X[n], specs such as pull rates can be different even for the same cog count. “These are the only combinations of components we think you should use, and we will do everything we can to block you from customizing.” Shimano is especially egregious about this expensive mess, and they know it, which is why they tried to un-hash things with CUES.
Pretty much everything 3x9 all works together. Road derailleur and cassette with mountain crank and bar-end shifters? Sure! Gear range for days. I sincerely believe this is to sell more bikes. Want to climb hard pack and mixed surface? You need a gravel bike! Want to get groceries? You need a commuter or loaded tourer! Want to go on a fast road ride? You need a road bike!
It used to be really easy to build up a bike that could perform most bicycle functions well. Mixed-surface, loaded, commuter/grocery-getter, randonneuring, snow, rain, club rides… one bike with maybe a wheel change*. Good luck with that now. Gravel bikes are kinda filling that niche now, but the components and frame manufacturers are again trying to fracture that even further. The gravel drivetrain won’t have the range to cover all the use cases without a cassette or crank change.
Moar rant, moar example: my partner works in an LBS. We can literally afford to buy any bicycle we could want. She wants a general-purpose gravel bike, and it’s not even a case of “just spend more money to get these additional features.” Component selection on a pre-built, geometry, wheel selection… all tightly engineered to cover as few use cases as possible. Okay, we’ll build from a naked frame. Oh, the more racy geometry frames lack braze-ons and can’t fit a 50mm tire.
*It makes complete sense to have a full-squish mountain bike for the aggressive off-road stuff, and those bikes are necessarily different. Even for that case, I can hang with the LBS trail/flow rides on my do-almost-everything bike. My current do-everything took me more than six months to source compatible parts and troubleshoot. This used to be a matter of just pulling the trigger on the parts I wanted.
As someone who has a 1x11, all I have to say is:
Push click, push click, push, push… push…
I don’t know what this all means, but I do know my son blows through bikes like crazy. The chain always, always get fucked up and falls off. Even with a cover, even if it’s a more expensive bike, they don’t last.
I had the same bike all my childhood needing nearly no repairs, yet my kids bike is constantly broken.
The root cause of what you describe is a build or maintenance issue. Properly built, tuned, and maintained bikes don’t drop chains.
Lol The root cause is a 12 year old with ADHD.
Agree with the overall sentiment: the trend towards more complexity is silly, but triples are terrible.
Invasive species.
My region is absolutely infested with Siberian Elm and Tree Of Heaven (A.K.A., the “semen tree”). You cannot cut them down, because they will resprout like a hydra from the stump. You cannot dig them out, because the smallest root left behind can and will resprout wherever it is, leading to a many-year game of whack-a-mole.
I have near-daily fantasies of going around with a powerful backpack sprayer filled with glyphosate (Round-Up) and an application wand that can extend from 1m to 10m, and hitting everything just as they’re sending nutrients to the roots for winter.
The problem is, Glyphosate is highly restricted to purchase and own in Canada unless you have both the appropriate class of Pesticide Applicator’s License (an agricultural variant, for example) as well as the venue to use it in (own or manage an orchard, for example). Thankfully my family owns an orchard, and I am starting the process for the former.
But still. It’s an absolutely bizarre thing to be obsessing over and I. Just. Cannot. Help. Myself. Every time I drive and see clumps of those disgusting trees, I start to uncontrollably strategize how I could hit them with glyphosate in late September.
I hate the spotted lanternflies! When they’re small and black and white they hop and scare me! When they’re a bit bigger and red they’re more scary! Then they get WINGS. Eurgh.
We also have the tree of life around which is what they enjoy munching on. I’d like both gone!
I found out all the ladybugs here are the invasive ones. And if I want to buy ladybugs for pest control, I can only buy the invasive ones. Annoying.
We do at least still have some native pollinators and other bugs.
Lanternflies are so pretty! But there are so many of them again this year.
One of the hallmarks of a destabilizing and imminently pre-collapse ecosystem is when certain fast lived species like insects have sudden surges or collapses in population.
And I’m talking about short-lived species that typically have yearly cycles. Something that can respond very quickly to sudden surges or absences in food or environmental niches, but which does not normally see sudden population fluctuations in a healthy ecosystem.
insects, and plants.
also people mistaken the asian lady beetle for native ones, and those are also invasive and very noxious.
blue gum here, cali doesnt want to get rid of this invasive species, because its “iconic” its a huge fire hazard, and they are designed to burn due to massive amount of oils they produce in thier native environment of australia. they also grow very fast compared to montery pine and cypress. Also thier leaves and bark drop very frequently and that is also a fire hazard because of the oils, and they have allelopathic affects near the trees.
We have Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) here.
Ive been battling it for years. I mentioned bittersweet in my comment down thread, but I’ve won my battle with bittersweet. I pluck it everyyear and keep it at bay. I have not won with this fast growing (so fast) shrub tree. You cut it down, it grows back triple, relentlessly. It’s everywhere. I hate it so much. If it could just chill and be a bush, it would be fine, but no, ive a 40 foot tree bush in the back that was cut to stub 5 years ago. 40 feet tall, in five years. I hate chemicals, but when I get to the day I can afford to haul away 40 ft of tree bush brush, I will definitely be spraying this shit this time around. Fuck invasives. I go down the road and the forest edges are just bittersweet and autumn olive, also called japanese silverleaf. It’s ugly.
Russian thistle. These asshole things pop up all over the yard and driveway and I go around and pull them out of the ground with welding gloves. Sometimes I get stabbed even through welding gloves. I can completely understand why someone would blast a cancer causing chemical across their whole yard. I’ve been experimenting with everything else but I’m too worried about my dog to do roundup.
Don’t send me videos if the background audio is some asshat wheeze-laughing about whatever supposed funny thing is playing. It’s never funny and it ruins my interest in watching the shit immediately.
I feel the same about videos with titles like “Try not to laugh challenge” - well guess what, I’m not watching your video and I won your challenge, plus I saved myself some time. Just… leave it to me to decide for myself what I find funny, okay?
“Watch to the end!”
Came here to add this to the comment chain haha. It’s never worthit.
Yep. If the video has to explicitly encourage you to watch it, just imagine how worthless it is.
There are so many people who are fundamentally wrong about what the Fermi paradox means, and proceed to present their shower thoughts about “what if everyone just, like, decides not to colonize the universe” as if they were profound or novel insights.
Explain then
No. I get enough of this in the subreddits and communities where it comes up naturally, I’m not going to get into a debate about it here in a thread where the subject is specifically how annoying it is to debate this stuff.
I’m not looking to debate. I just don’t know what you are talking about
Well, alright, but I’m not going to argue about any of this.
The Fermi paradox basically says “based on what we think we know about how the universe works, we should be seeing obvious signs of alien intelligence in it. But we don’t, so we’re wrong about something we think we know.” The problem is that we don’t know what we’re wrong about.
It is common in various science fiction and space related subreddits for people to confidently sweep in and declare that obviously the reason that aliens aren’t around is <insert some vague shower thought here>. As if all the thousands of researchers working on these concepts were all just a bunch of idiots who hadn’t thought of whatever they’d thought of.
A common class of these sorts of shower thoughts involve assuming that every single alien species and culture, throughout all of time and space, conform to some particular notion they have of how aliens should think. Some sort of “prime directive” or Nirvana-seeking conscious refusal to go out into the cosmos to colonize new solar systems, or conversely some kind of pessimistic self-destruction that everyone dives into without exception. I try to explain why these sorts of explanations don’t work well, I question their basis for making these assumptions, and I usually get some form of “oh, so you’re saying you know how all aliens are going to think and behave?” Shot back at me. Which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what I’m saying.
Another common theme is the “nothing will ever be possible in the future unless we’ve already done it now and have an economically practical example” approach, usually to try to argue that space travel or colonization is impossible. The other day I had someone who ultimately argued that it was impossible because steel would evaporate over time in a vacuum, so building spacecraft that lasted longer than a few centuries couldn’t be done. I pointed out the examples of billion-year-old metallic meteorites and he dismissed them because “meteors don’t need structural stability.”
I try to address these arguments rationally, with math and references to actual research, but end up butting into a position of pure faith. It’s incredibly frustrating. As befits the topic.
That was an absolutely fascinating rabbit whole. Thank you so much for explaining!!!
You’re welcome. I’m still dreading that someone will respond with a “but what about…” though. This is a debate that haunts me in so many other communities, I want to think I can escape it at least a little while. :)
I got so frustrated at one point that I had an AI make a song about it.
k
Thank you!
Respect
Loud lawnmowers. Ass hats who maintain the classic American yard. Every Saturday morning on cue, the whole neighborhood erupts into noise. It’s so loud.
Everyone in my area has about a quarter acre of land, yet here come the zero turn riding mower guys, mowing their grass too low, every weekend, just to water it the next day.
They are loud, disruptive, and just remind me we are slowly killing the planet every day for vainity yards.
I have a reel mower from the 1950’s I found and fixed up. I got a lot of compliments the first summer I used it, it has self shapening blades and works mostly well. Folks were shocked I was using it, one lady stopped and even gsve me a “you get it girl!”, like what? It’s a quarter acre people, and takes me 30-40 mins. Why do they need giant gas guzzling, louds stinky mowers? After a few years with the reel mower, I did get an electric line trimmer, … I’m crazy, but sometimes I mow most of my very small lawn with it when I dont want to fix and use my reel mower. It’s quiet, it doesnt smell, and I have control to skip over dirt/sparse patches. I can leave areas longer where I see native plants popping up. I feel like im working with the land, not just decimating it.
They ride these giant mowers up and down the street, they mow dirt just the same as they mow field. I literally get triggered everytime I hear one start up, so often, it’s a running joke in the house. It’s a quarter acre lots here, not baseball fields.
Perfect lawns, but then its just bittersweet growing wild on the edges taking over trees.
I also hate bittersweet. Like, really really hate bittersweet. It kills everything and takes over gardens. Invasive garbage that may seem like a cool plant to the unknowing eye, but it is invasive garbage everyone just looks past as it kills our native trees and plants, suffocating the life forms they parasite off from. I have to stay vigilant to keep it from my yard. It is persistent, it’ll tear your house down if you let it.
I hate lawnmowers and bittersweet. These things make me feel distraught.
I agree with you. There’s something a little nostalgic about lawnmower noise, but if you live without it for a while it’s so much nicer. I don’t have lawns at any of my house- crushed coral and desert dirt- but it’s been nice to see everyone get irritated with draining gas and fixing carburetors every year and switch to electric mowers which are mutch quieter.
I can tell you’re not a homeowner.
What the fuck else are people supposed to do with their yard?
If you don’t cut the grass, it grows and eventually you’ll start getting brush. Not to mention lots of idiots have HOAs which mandate they cut the grass.
Reseed with clover and then plant moss and native flora. Its good for helping out bees and other pollinators and invites other wildlife into your yard if live up against woods like I do. I’ve seen rabbits, raccoons, deer, flocks of turkey, and even a bobcat once.
HOAs can eat my whole ass.
And today on Lemmy we learned that bees thrive on the right amount of the nutrient sterol 🐝 😊
Man, it’s telling how many of you believe things because you never tried them yourselves.
Get out into the real world. Get some experience.
Plant native species! Anything but lawn grass!! For the love of insects and ecological diversity.
Have you tried this?
Where I live, native species is brush that will eventually cover my entire house.
Edit: yes I am trying this right now. I’ve planted a bunch of native species in one area of my front yard. They seem to be taking well, next summer I will plant some more in a other part. Mulch around the natives helps to keep the weeds and grasses down.
There are often more than one native species of plant. And repairing a yard ecosystem takes time and care and attention. I understand folks have little spare time with full time jobs and whatnot, but an imperfect naturalized yard is better than a sterile grass monoculture that requires a ton of mowing.
So… I should go through all of that trouble because you don’t like hearing lawnmowers?
I’m curious what planet you are from where you think anyone would do that.
Brush that will cover your house is likely not a native.
What makes you think that?
Native pants tend to have checks and balances in their environment. Kudzu, eastern honeysuckle, English ivy, vining nightshade, all of them will eat your house if you take them out of their native environment.
I explained how I do my yard in the comment. I don’t let it go crazy, I maintain it. I have made four garden beds here since getting the house, and that’s in addition to the four already here. Both for flower and vegetables. I have a potted plant corner, and a “track” where the grass grows low or turns to dirt from my son doing laps around the house and playing baseball in the back. If I was a millionaire (I’d move) I’d like to put stone on the “track” he made because it follows the natural curves of the yard. The front yard is sparse, it’s so dry and like sand, I don’t have to mow that side, I hit it with the trimmer if it gets wild. I’ve seeded with clover and a native grass type. I keep a small patch over grown, circling around a tree, maintain it with weeding, and give space back for the insects. It’s filled with purple flowers most of the year. A typical lawn care person would just mow it over.
What I’m getting at, is folks with brown grass they still mow weekly. Whether its going to rain or not, weather their grass is long or not, they mow it to check it off their list. Every weekend. Then, if you look, some houses like this, there’s invasives just growing everywhere on the edges of their properties. So lazy. To mow ones lawn, fat ass on a riding mower for less than a quarter acre of lawn, just mow it and put it away, while thier tree line suffers with invasives.
My goal is to have no grass, but my son’s track and baseball area, and the rest garden. As it stands I only have to mow maybe 40% of my yard, and I’ll be damned if I’ll fall in line to get a riding mower to kill beneficial plants every weekend, while leaving the harmful ones.
People who loudly watch videos on their phone in public spaces or stores/restaurants should be caned.
I don’t want to listen to your ignorant ass braying like a fucking mule at some right-wing hack reheating the anti-trans memes he found on Reddit while I’m eating breakfast with my wife. Maybe you should put the phone down and meditate on why you’re the only person in this place eating alone.
China is so bad when it comes to this. A single train car can have like 10 people on their phone speakers - its utter chaos and I genuinely don’t understand how people can live like this. When wife and I travel we’re both wearing noise canceling headphones lol
Who decides when a species becomes naturalized / stops being invasive? As an example, the European Starling has been living in North America since 1890 and are still considered invasive. They have natural predators. The ecosystem is adapting around them. Just let them have citizenship already!
Another thing: Taxonomy. Just all taxonomy. If a shark and a trout are both fish then we must also be fish because both of those animals are closer relatives to us than they are to each other. Obviously the way we define a fish has to change. Why has nobody done this? There are a TON of things like this in taxonomy and that all make me absurdly angry.
If they weren’t known for taking a single bite out of every fruit on the tree/vine/bush and ruining entire crops/gardens they would be more welcome. * Shakes fist at starlings in the tomato garden *
Also, isn’t the taxonomy thing being addressed with clades and what not?
Yes and no. Clades still have issues with things like hag fish.
Well, fish doesn’t really have a scientific meaning… https://youtu.be/uhwcEvMJz1Y
That doesn’t really make it less agitating though. There is a group of birds called jays (like blue jay) and the word jay is scientifically meaningless. It is still infuriating to me that these birds aren’t even vaguely related to each other in many cases. Just name them something else. Make it make sense. Koalas are not bears; just call them koalas. Guinea pigs are not from Guinea and they aren’t pigs. Horned toads are lizards. There are many examples of this. The names of animals don’t have to describe what they are, but they should not be accepted when describing the animal as something it is not. Animals should not have names that conflict with their taxonomy.
Invasive is just a slur for things people don’t like. Same thing for weed.
all of my hatred and disgust is perfectly and completely justified
bingo.
like LED headlights that are obviously way too bright. no, I don’t care that you bought it like that. you chose to buy it like that. you are the consumer and you have responsibilities. you are therefore an asshole. perfectly justified and reasonable take.
Random thing I was disappointed by recently. I live near a hospital that has a pizza vending machine near the cafeteria. So whenever I have to go to the hospital for appointments and stuff, I like to get some pizza. I went for an appointment a few days ago but the machine was broken so I didn’t get to have pizza.
I really wish we’d have gone down the “vending machines everywhere” timeline instead of what we did. I love vending machines.
This shouldn’t be weird, but I’m consistently upset at how dumb the average idiot is.
It’s scary how stupid most people are without even realizing it and I hate how I have to suffer for it every day.
Not enough people winning Darwin awards anymore LOL
I hate how so many seem to have cushy jobs and infinite money while barely having enough brain cells to balance on two feet. Like, you can barely read and make more money than god.
I am stupid, but I’m one of the rare ones that knows I’m stupid.
I get a bit frustrated sometimes to see stars and think of the universe burning away it’s entropy without anyone putting it to useful ends, like most of the universe going to waste before anyone can even reach it.
without anyone putting it to useful ends
You never know; we might be a car battery.
In the context of the universe as a whole, what even is “useful”? Maybe its just here to shine bright for a few trillion years and that’s all it needs to be. Art doesn’t need to be useful.
If human history tells us anything its that we’d somehow suck the beauty out of it all in the name of profit.
I’m not really a nihilist or anything but it seems like almost anything we touch turns to shit. I’m all for colonizing the moon and Mars and making use of the asteroid belt but on bigger scales, maybe its better off to just sit back and enjoy the view?
I tend towards a variation on utilitarianism, from that point of view energy in a finite universe that could be used to support intelligent life in some way, but isnt, is unethical, and while that might not really demand much action from us right now given that space development is a very, very long term project by nature and we’re already working on developing the most basic forms of the requisite technology, it still seems a bit frustrating to lose that which we cannot reach. Its not just us either, statistically speaking it should be extremely unlikely for life and advanced intelligence to occur once, but only once, so I take it as a given that theres more out there somewhere, but evidently it cant be that common or else hasnt gotten much further than us, given all the stars we can see out there.
I dont really think everything we touch turns to shit, I just think we judge ourselves much more harshly than we judge “natural” things. I dont really care that much if the people that go off to the stars do so because of some desire to harvest them for some kind of profit or put up a space-mcdonalds at alpha centauri or whatever, as long as someone goes. Obviously I would prefer they build a nicer society there than just a rehash of what we have here right now, but in my view even the crappiest society is preferable to a dead rock or inanimate clump of gas, even if it is an aesthetically pleasing rock. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say, and I think we can make beautiful things, or failing that, and least find the beauty in what we do make, if we try.
Yeah but that’s justifiable (and existential).
Imagine all the cool planets that’ll never be observed
