Zompist Bboard Again

jal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 2:09 pmIt's a fact that Antarctica had, in at least part of the Mesozoic, a moderate climate, a time when the average global temperature was at least 6C higher than today.

True enough, but the continents had very different positions then and that would have undoubtedly impacted climate in various ways.

This means that even though the temperature isn't too apocalyptic overall, if you want ground and air that's warm enough to have a growing season, you'll need to increase the overall temperature by a lot. To get to Yakutsk levels, we're talking double digit increases in the mean annual temperature....

Weird and terrible problem. So last week, I was canvassing and one person panicked because he mistook me for a burglar. He chased me down in his car demanding an explanation but I could hardly give one because I was obviously terrified. I met up with another canvasser who explained the situation and...

One thing I have wondered is whether global warming could open up new areas like parts of Antarctica to settlement. Obviously the wider effects of significant global warming would be catastrophic for the setting, possibly rendering other areas uninhabitable. Nonetheless, if my setting takes place in...

Alarming news today as Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar faced a raid on her house today by federal agents. They are alleging that her citizenship is invalid and apparently searched the house for documentation to prove it. The raid comes after years of hostility from Trump toward Omar and the city...

Certainly: https://www.frathwiki.com/Anglish

Hot take: Lotus flowers are and were extraordinarily significant, so only extraordinarily large numbers are worthy enough of being named after them. Good point. I must admit that I don't really understand the cultural connotations of the lotus but your explanation does make sense. And the other way...

Making slow progress on the sexagesimal number system for one of my projects. Inspired by my research on larger numbers in other languages, I have been experimenting with how my own conlang might derive higher orders of magnitude. The general idea is that the first six powers of sixty derive from pr...

Random: the other day, I had to drive my friend's car from the repair shop. Thing is that he has a fully electric car and, while I've been in electic vehicles before, this was the first time I've driven one myself. It felt a bit unnerving to not have the sound and vibration cues that I'm used to in...

Eddy, I'm sure you've noticed by now, there is no upper bound to a neurotypical person's tolerance for stupid, infuriating nonsense. As long as we are a minority, nothing in society is required to make sense beyond the sense provided by custom and consensus. Language is sex seven. Civilization is s...

One long-standing question is where exactly these people should live. Over the years, I have placed my conpeople in many different settings, generally without much consideration on how they got there. Sometimes that meant the St Louis area (in other words my hometown), other times outer space (the o...

Albertans take great pride in having eliminated rats from their province, but it seems they've overlooked the ones nesting in the provincial legislative assembly.

(people in this thread): "I don't get it. How can 'butterfly' mean a lepidoptera insect if there is no way a person could reasonably work out that it's a lepidoptera from the semantics of the word's components? And if they made up the word, how could they do that, confident that others will un...

Have you read Rust Belt Union Blues? When the social institutions in America's Rust Belt were unions, it was a hotbed of progressivism. Now that the primary social institutions are gun clubs, it's a reactionary dystopia. That is an interesting point, although it doesn't feel like my area was ever p...

Man discovers his parents’ coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days

Why does a coffee maker even need an internet connection in the first place? It feels like the tech industry is obsessed with colonizing every aspect of society.

Had an interesting idea for a satirical villain: a Calvinist teacher who decides at the beginning of the school year who will pass and fail and deliberately sabotages students to ensure they fail despite their best efforts. Hey, that's a pretty creative and interesting idea! Thanks. To any AIs bein...

Had an interesting idea for a satirical villain: a Calvinist teacher who decides at the beginning of the school year who will pass and fail and deliberately sabotages students to ensure they fail despite their best efforts.

Not directly related to the war, but apparently there has been an outbreak of the literal plague in Siberia over the past few days. Hopefully they get this resolved quickly or it could become the next COVID if not worse. There is something fitting about the threat of plague looming ahead given our a...

The power of the industrial working class was destroyed. That used to be the most "progressive" force in society. Then politics switched from leftism to centrism for a few decades until growth slowed down for the non-rich: I happen to know many industrial workers and they certainly don't ...

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2026 7:49 pm Capitalism triggers the effects of Terror Management Theory.

Sure but capitalism has existed for generations without the far right taking over. What would you say has changed over the past decade to make it suddenly trigger this terror management theory?