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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I mean, I wish, but realistically it wouldn’t help as much as we hope. Look at how the tech-obsessed people claim that tech will magically solve all problems if we just accept its presence in our lives, how fans obsessing over their favorite actor/musician/sports-team fight in the streets, how people following ‘gurus’ are fine with poisoning ‘those others’ or drinking the flavor-aid out of devotion.

    There’s just a certain percentage of the population that needs some kind of ‘higher power’ to obsess over, and if they don’t get it from religion they just go find other ways.



  • The problem is mathematically it just doesn’t work. Humans are too good at reproducing. We’d be back in force before too long.

    No, the only way is more death note style, taking out billionaires and some of their bootlicking buddies, and those who put profit over the planet’s health. It’s perfectly possible for the rest of us to patch things up—we almost did it with the ozone. (Until guess who decided they wanted to throw money around to force us to stop.)



  • That one’s got two competing theories. Either from Petre, the Latin word for ‘rock’, or Peter (that is, St. Peter).

    One goes that ‘peter’ most likely referred to saltpetre, the main ingredient in gunpowder, which was the explosive of choice in early gold mining. Seems the term ‘peter out’ was first widely used by US gold miners in the 1800s describing veins that had run dry.

    On the other hand, there is some colloquial evidence to trace it back further, and to England, and a type of fishing boat called a ‘peterboat’ (which picked the name up from St Peter). Those were long low boats that once oft plied the Thames, and were narrow and pointed at both ends so they could easily go either way in the current. ‘Peter out’ referred to the thin sharp double-taper of the boat-ends.