• andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Prominent singer-songwriter A. Rozenbaum, referencing russian classic writers Karamzin and Saltykov-Shedrin, once said:

    If you put me to sleep and wake me up in a hundred of years, and then ask me, what’s going on in Russia, I’d say: drinking and stealing.

    Another misquoted quote that’s probably invented by a comic Zadornov, but never losing it’s relevance, says:

    Russia has two problems: them fools and them roads.

    and some journalist add money, as they all start with D.

    I find these predictions and writings, including those in time capsules, fascinating. Some of them either are too correct, or thinking too nice of us.

  • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    venal /vē′nəl/ adjective

    Open to bribery; mercenary.
    
    Characterized by corrupt dealings, especially bribery. 
    
    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That for a hundred years this joke got closer and closer to hitting just right, but because someone couldn’t be arsed to wait two and a half months for the entire century to elapse, they posted this thing about the year 2024 … in the fall of fucking ‘23!

  • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This is a commentary on rage baiting news headlines. Yes. It’s as it always has been. That the world moves on despite the news saying the world is ending.

    • OpenStars@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It will continue for precisely as long as it continues to work… (plus probably a bit longer to account for lag time).

      e.g. one of the earliest historical writings on this planet made this statement perhaps 3,000 years ago:

      There is nothing new under the sun.

      But… we seem to still need to keep re-learning that, every few generations.

      • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is also the 1st time in history we could fuck up bad enough that it wont be recoverable. Climate change, nuclear war, biological experimentation, AI… it seems inevitable that we will erase humanity from the galaxy.

        • OpenStars@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Yup, it’s so weird even that we might also have the technology to save ourselves - like maybe AI should be ruling us instead of humans (bc that way whoever made the AI can be the secret king - surely that’s not new either:-P).

          But history does tend to run in cycles, for whatever that’s worth. One day the sun won’t shine down on us anymore, but so far it always has, even if that doesn’t mean that it always will.

          In any case, definitely some hard times coming up ahead, that much seems certain at least. Though extinction, while possible, is not a foregone conclusion. I mean, if even Kurzgesagt can find hope, it must be warranted.:-) video 1, video 2 focusing mostly on climate change

          • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I mean… kinda? If i do the math in my head… if there is a 1 in a million chance every day for something to happen. It seems like it wont happen.

            But a million days is just about 2,700 years. The human race has been around maybe 100 thousand? Its a bunch of probabilities stacked on top of each other, in a way that reminds me alot of the Fermi paradox.

            And we keep inventing new ways to do it and making the current ways easier. There are also plenty of non self inflicted ways it could happen. Commet or meteor, gamma ray bust, supervolcano, etc.

            It really isnt a question of if, but when. Before or after we become interplanetary or better intersolar-system species. My hope at this point is just not in my lifetime.

            • OpenStars@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Right, the ratchet effect, where once we extinct ourselves we don’t so much come back from that:-).

              Unless we exist in multiple realities, whether physical like if humanity was seeded amongst the stars, or like metaverse style, or maybe we are only a simulation to begin with, then it’s only our branch that would end, and even that ignores plot constraints.

              Then again, it doesn’t really matter, if we have no control over it anyway. What matters, it seems like to me anyway, is if we knew better and just flat did not care: if we are only responsible for our own parts, then conversely we are responsible for that much at least.

        • Globulart@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Pretty sure people though that in the 1910s, then again in the 1940s, then a few times in the 70s/80s, and now seems like a persistent feeling over the last 10-20 years or so.

          Eventually we’ll be right, but humans as a group seem to have incredibly bleak outlooks.

          • UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ya, by 1st time, i meant in the last generation of humans. Starting in the 30s or so when people started seeing the invention of the things listed above.

            I didnt mean like just now in the 2023. Or last decade.