Why shouldn't infinite growth be possible?

You want to the documentary to end with David Attenborough saying that it is too late to revert the destruction of natural habitat?

I, too, would appreciate this. "Look at what is getting lost because of YOUR choices and votes." It would be the truth.

"It's too late" and "It's your fault" are two different claims. The second one is clearly true, but it's never too late to stop making things worse.

Many people here like the bougie narrative that we’re all equally to blame, for obvious reasons. A vote is a vote is a vote.

Since this is the truth, yes, I would like the documentary to end by saying it is too late for natural habitat regeneration.

Many things are the truth, so it's really a question of framing. Another truth: humans have done reversible and irreversible damage to their natural environment; they can collectively reverse some of the damage and prevent further reversible and irreversible damage.

To focus on only irreversible damage -- especially as David Attenborough, somebody who over the better half of a century has earned massive respect and trust from people all over the world -- would be wildly irresponsible.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

If this was a pure advertising piece, I might agree. In this case, it's more "hey I wrote a book on this, these are other books that are great". That's kinda different at least in my mind.

While I generally do not trust information from "advertisements", in this case I don't see how this is any worse than including a list of sources in the bibliography. What this could be is an attempt to use those other books to sell the author's through some reflected glory (or SEO-fu) but in that case, the author is still incentivized to recommend good books.

You mean you've _never_ bought a book for its bibliography?

Kettle? Cattle?

Cattle of course. But not an LLM Text .) which is good

> Why is that? It's a fair question.

I think most of those students would answer that they are protesting the US government's complicity in this particular injustice -- which doesn't apply to the other injustices you list. I have a hard time imagining that most people asking this fair question can't think of that obvious answer.

I hadn't really thought about it from that angle. But it's certainly reasonable.

Do you think if the US wasn't selling weapons to Israel that there wouldn't be protests and a lot of social media posts similar to how other humanitarian disasters are treated today? I guess would it be on the same level?

I wonder if there's a correlation across western countries with respect to protests and a given country's participation in selling weapons to Israel. I recall there were/are a lot of protests going on in Ireland with respect to the conflict but I know Ireland doesn't sell weapons to Israel. But there have been of course other cases in Europe where the country does sell weapons and there are protests. Maybe there's a rhyme and reason here, I'm not sure.

I appreciate your understanding here.

Another way to put it: the point of protesting generally isn't solely to express being upset with an injustice. It's to get some actor/stakeholder - usually one's government - to DO something about the injustice.

Because of this, it's entirely rational to NOT protest with equal opportunity for every injustice that occurs around the world. Those American campus students aren't just protesting to make noise, they are hoping that their government leaders - that DEPEND on their votes - will cease enabling atrocities.

The American government hates Iran with bipartisan support and has it sanctioned to hell and back, I have no idea what I'd protest American leaders to do here?

> The American government hates Iran with bipartisan support and has it sanctioned to hell and back, I have no idea what I'd protest American leaders to do here?

Well you could rally in support of more action, or protest outside an Iranian embassy for example to put pressure on them. I was reading that something on a small scale happened in the UK and they took down the Iranian flag from the embassy.

> Another way to put it: the point of protesting generally isn't solely to express being upset with an injustice. It's to get some actor/stakeholder - usually one's government - to DO something about the injustice.

Sure, I don't disagree. But let me ask, do you believe that if the US wasn't selling weapons to Israel that the public would react to this particular conflict in a way that's similar to how it reacts to other conflicts around the world? It's obviously hard to speculate about because it's just the world we live in and counterfactuals around these things are incredibly difficult and inaccurate, but something tells me there's something unique about this conflict and even in countries that don't sell weapons to Israel we do still see rather large scale protests and rallies and such.

What do you think?

>Well you could rally in support of more action, or protest outside an Iranian embassy for example

You're describing methods of protest, but not demands. What specific action do you believe Americans should demanding from their representatives re: Iran, that the US government isn't already doing? We bombed Iran just this past summer, are you saying we should go back for round 2?

>obviously hard to speculate about because it's just the world we live in

The world we live in is the world where the US gives huge financial, material and political support to Israel. Your statement feels akin to saying "Sure there is a gigantic elephant in this room right now, but something tells me there's some unique reason why everyone is complaining about the room being cramped. Especially compared to these other rooms that don’t have a giant elephant inside.”

> You're describing methods of protest, but not demands. What specific action do you believe Americans should demanding from their representatives re: Iran, that the US government isn't already doing? We bombed Iran just this past summer, are you saying we should go back for round 2?

Well this action puts pressure on Iran, and in the case of the UK maybe more pressure for the UK to do something. You're right that the US government is already opposed (rightfully) to the Iranian regime and so additional rallies or protests might not have much effect but it could reinforce the government's stance and to show support. You can rally in favor of something, and protest against something, can you not?

> The world we live in is the world where the US gives huge financial, material and political support to Israel.

Yea but then you have to balance that with Iran giving huge financial, material, and political support to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups who take up arms and fight and kill people and stuff too.

But the point wasn't to suggest that the US doesn't give these things to Israel, which if you want to introduce "the real world" you have to include Iran and friends (Russia too now that I think about it, they've been helping Iran), but to just speculate on whether we would still see the level of protest we do today even if the United States didn't give weapons to Israel. I'm unsure. But it's a hard counterfactual to run, and I'm just mentioning it because the primary argument I see for the reasoning that more people care about this issue is specifically because the US sells/gives weapons to Israel. That's all.

Yea. You know when I joined the military and went to Iraq I was pretty upset I didn’t get to bring home any gold or my own barrel or two of oil. Or even a washing machine! Disappointing.

Surprising how little he's in the office - it probably only works since he’s already a CEO who does a lot of stuff, is beloved, etc

This is a great development -- it's surprisingly difficult to high quality scans of a lot of Escher's work.

Did Jimmy Kimmel celebrate the assassination? (He did not.)

No, Kimmel accused Trump supporters of publicly trying to distance themselves from the shooter.

Yes, but in the same breath Kimmel said the assassin was a MAGA supporter.

Kimmel's words:

"...the MAGA gang [was] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them..."

The assassin may have indeed once been a MAGA supporter - his family certainly appear to be so. But political beliefs can change quickly as his history demostrates:

The assassin found true love in a transsexual roommate/lover.So overcome was he by his love for his transsexual roomie and so offended by MAGA supporter Charlie Kirk's objections to LGBTQ+, that he engraved LGBTQ+ graffiti on 30-06 ammo and shot Charlie Kirk in the neck with one of the bullets. He left the remaining bullets with the rifle IIRC.

Was the assassin a MAGA supporter at the moment he pulled the trigger? Beats me!

"I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage."

counterpoint: I’m surprised “delulu” wasn’t already in OED and certainly would not consider it “cutting edge” slang in 2025 (quite the opposite). Just because one person hasn’t heard certain words doesn’t mean they don’t belong in what is meant to be a comprehensive dictionary. In fact, if you needed to know the meaning of every word that is added to the dictionary, then you would have no need for a dictionary! Never having heard a word has nothing to do with whether OED “called it too early.” To make that judgment one would want to find external evidence.