What I want: The short version accountt1234

Today I was flattered by someone who asked what it is that I want. Before answering that question, I have to point out that I ultimately don't think it matters much what I want. First of all, my opinion doesn't have much of an influence on anything. Secondly, the things that will happen to us in the decades ahead are pretty much baked into the system by now. There isn't much left to salvage sadly. In the decades ahead, we're going to lose just about everything on this Earth that's beautiful, good and true.

I mean that in the broadest sense of the word. We inherited something beautiful and we managed to squander it. There is no way around it. We're in the process of losing the world's last megafauna and the world's last old growth forests. The world we inherited is perfect, what's limited is our understanding of it. What humans perceive as evil is a necessary part of the natural order. The enlightenment philosophies that look at our universe as a cosmological accident that can be rearranged through technology into a utopia are in the process of creating hell on Earth. We misunderstood what life is about, so now we're going to reap what we've sown.

I look forward to collapse, because I know that what will most likely happen in the decades ahead is a process far worse than collapse. What will happen to us in the decades ahead is the finalization of man's isolation from nature. This is going to be an era of intense suffering. Humans will live in enormous cities and grow isolated from each other. If they engage in labor, it will be highly abstract and completely divorced from anything that could intuitively appeal to a human being. There will be epidemics of suicide and drug abuse, as well as mental illness that expresses itself in the form of pointless mass slaughter.

Most people kept alive will live lives that aren't worth living. Think of the millions of elderly, not just in Europe but soon in China and much of the third world as well, who will be kept alive in spite of having lost their minds and having no sense of autonomy or dignity whatsoever. Think of the millions who will live in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, in dirt floor shacks. Look at West Point in Monrovia and realize that this is the future that lies ahead of us. This is what the population explosion has brought upon us. Nigeria went from 37 million people in 1950, to 182 million today, to 752 million by 2100 according to the United Nations. Feel free to explain to me how these people are going to live dignified lives. It's not going to happen.

The industrial system will destroy the last great natural treasures on Earth in an effort the preserve stability and feed those of us who live in the enormous cities that form the foundation of the industrial power structure. You can look at the death of the Great Barrier Reef as a harbinger of what's to come. Most of the world's megafauna will go extinct as well. We'll lose most of the world's remaining forests too. They'll perish in forest fires or simply be burned as biomass to generate electricity. To reiterate, we're going to lose everything that's beautiful, good and true. Most people will flee into video games and virtual reality to isolate themselves from the real world around them.

Now, when it comes to what I want, I would suggest that our best option right now lies in some form of military coup in a Western nation. A military junta would then rule the nation. The first step that such a military regime would have to take would be to use its biowarfare facilities to develop some sort of biological weapon that will be used to drastically reduce the global population. By what degree would the world's population have to be reduced? This is not simple to say, any number I put on this would be pulled from thin air. It will be necessary however to free up large swathes of land that are currently dominated by humans. To do so will require massive population reduction. The biggest reduction in population will have to happen in developing countries, but all races and nations will be affected to some degree.

If we assume that the world's population has been drastically reduced, the next step would be for the military regime to observe its population and see what can be done for them. For a large share of the population, the only real option would be euthanasia. I'm not suggesting that people would be shoved into gas chambers. Rather, it seems to me that people who suffer chronic illness would be given access to professionals, who would help them look in a honest fashion at what real quality of life remains for them. In many such cases, people would come to an agreement with their medical professional to end their lives in a humane fashion. This sounds far-fetched now, but there are many cultures and eras out there, where it was normal for large swathes of the population to end their lives. The Japanese had too many volunteers for their Kamikaze program, Nazi Germany saw entire villages depopulated when the native Germans committed suicide when the national socialist regime collapsed. If society would acknowledge that it suffers severe overpopulation and that it's patriotic for citizens to volunteer to help address the problem, it would not be difficult to get rid of large swathes of the remaining population.

Such a society would lose millions of its elderly, as well as large sections of its underclass. Most drugs addicts and alcoholics would be given humane means by which to end their lives, as well as most prisoners. Those who suffer mental disorders would be helped as well, in addition to those who suffered severe trauma. Children who were offered up for adoption or grew up with abusive parents would be helped too. I find it difficult to give a clear estimate of how many people we would lose, but I think that anywhere up to a quarter of the remaining global population could be removed in this fashion. Important here is to understand that this should not be seen as a form of cruelty. Instead, we have no place in society for large swathes of people, it is in everyone's best interest to provide such people with a dignified way out.

What would happen to those people who remain? When we have lost billions of people, we can hopefully begin to abandon large swathes of land that are currently used for industrial agriculture. These plots of land would have trees grow on them and as a result begin to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A military regime would be important in this situation, as the economy would be reconfigured in a fashion that makes most people involved in manual labor. People would spend their days planting trees, others would spend their days harvesting food. Most industrial processes would be gradually phased out and replaced by manual labor. Most of our transportation would be slow, as this drastically reduces fuel use. As a result, global carbon emissions would plunge.

The major population centers that have not been wiped out, would be dismantled. Most of the world's people would live in small villages with their genetic relatives, except for a small elite of people who are "gifted" with leadership abilities. What do I mean with gifted people? I am thinking of people who are better than the rest of us in every imaginable aspect. People who are intelligent, contemplative, socially competent, good-natured, physically strong and mentally healthy. Those people would be given a military training and be encouraged to raise large families. They would mostly be tasked with debating among each other the pressing issues of their time. Based on their judgment, policy would ultimately be decided.

Most modern technology would be phased out, or the use would be severely restricted. As an example, it would be forbidden for people to have cell phones or computers inside the house. Most villages would have at most one or two computers, that are mostly used for administrative work. The people would not have any television in their household either. Instead, most people would spend their leisure time involved in some form of creative activity. They would engage in theater, music, dancing or some other form of art. Everyone would take on the role of consumer as well as producer. Many would spend most of their time engaged in nature conservation. They would spend their days giving guided tours to others, removing invasive species and improving the habitat for threatened species.

Waste would be highly taboo in this society. Most people would not own their own refrigerator. It would similarly be rare for people to live by themselves in a house. Instead, most possessions would be shared by villagers. A village might have one or two cars, that anyone is allowed to use when necessary. Throwing away old products would be taboo, every village would have some specialists who can generally fix most broken items. Old men would know how to repair electronics, old women would know how to repair clothing. As a result, resource consumption would be very low. Because everyone is healthy, there would be very little need for brick roads as well, most people would travel by foot or bicycle.

Important to note is that people wouldn't be left isolated, or made to figure things out for themselves. Everyone would have an annual health checkup, to see whether they suffer any potential defect. Healthcare would be rationed, in the sense that most of today's expensive treatments wouldn't be available. Cancer for example, would mean euthanasia, even for children. Most mental problems would be addressed through entheogens. Such entheogens would also be used by caregivers to prepare sick people for the prospect of death. The limited budget for healthcare that would be available would mostly be spent on preventing disease. The main method through which disease would be prevented is by ensuring that everyone participates in society to the best of their ability. There would for example, be zero unemployment. Everyone would be engaged in some sort of activity that fits their talents and desires. Psychologically satisfying manual labor would be more widely available, because machines would be phased out. Sociologists are correct in that most human disease today ultimately has a social cause.

The military would probably have to play a major role in society. In particular, the military would be tasked with the ability to maintain an offensive strike capability. To put it differently, a society that is mostly pre-industrial, does not engage in global trade and is sparsely populated would be easily vanquished by outside forces that seek to extract its resources. As a result, the military would be tasked with maintaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons, that would be sufficient to annihilate anyone who sought to intervene in their society. This is tragic, but I do not see any other means by which a society like this could be preserved. It would also be necessary to forbid access to foreign media, as industrialized nations would otherwise seek to instigate insurrection among the local population, who never understand what they stand to lose but only see what others have that they don't.

This will be without a doubt controversial among all my right wing readers, but the main tools society will have to use to prevent internal insurrections among the population will be sex and entheogens. Abortion would be legal and socially accepted. Promiscuity within villages between villagers would be encouraged, the legal availability of cannabis and a number of hallucinogens should serve to create the kind of environment where people feel comfortable being promiscuous. Young men who do not have access to young women tend to take up arms, this is what contributes to the chronic bloodshed seen in the Middle East. I experienced directly for myself that most of my anger disappeared when I found a girlfriend. For this reason, it has to be ensured that all men have access to young women. This means cultural changes, that make women less hostile to the prospect of polyandrous relationships. If this proves to be too difficult, the other option that is available is to ensure sex selective abortion. This would be used to get rid of a fair share of male births, perhaps 20% of males would be aborted.

I am well aware that most of these suggestions must seem outlandish, cruel or naive to other people. It is however, the closest thing I see to a solution for our problems. The industrial revolution itself was our main mistake and any society that wants to create lives worth living for its citizens would have to figure out a way to reverse the consequences of the industrial revolution. This will not be simple and will always require a strong military regime that can protect its society against the consequences of the maximum power principle, which tends to cause societies to pursue maximum growth.

If you see a red thread in my scenario of collectivism, you are correct. I don't like to have a strong government, I'm actually a (patient) anarchist, but I think it's necessary to have a strong authoritarian government to face the challenges we will have to deal with. I think that collectivism is necessary to help humans cope with the consequences of technology. Technology has the effect of rendering our own individual decisions wrong, by placing us in an environment where our natural impulses are not what's best for us. As an example, the average human can't be trusted not to eat too much high calorie food that leads to obesity. Technology filled our environment with high calorie food, so now we are dependent on collective decisions to restrict the amount of unhealthy food we're exposed to. We similarly have to be protected against our individual impulse to be lazy, as well as against our individual impulse to seek to take care of everyone. In addition, technology allows individuals to engage in activities that are profoundly harmful to other human beings. As a result, the development of new technologies necessitates the development of government regulation to stop us from inflicting misery upon one another.

Submitted August 11, 2016 at 02:07AM by trigger-expert http://ift.tt/2aMnwQD accountt1234

The Art of Sourdough: Accountt1234's official sourdough recipe! accountt1234

What you will find below is my official sourdough recipe. It's based on a Dutch recipe that I found on the internet. I translated it for you and added some of my own thoughts and experiences with it to it. I use the metric system, I'll put American notations later on perhaps. I sealed my recipe in plastic, so I can still use it after armageddon.

I put my own recipe here, because I don't like most recipes. Most of them seem to add yeast, even though this is completely unnecessary to make a good bread. The dough can rise by itself without adding yeast, it has naturally occurring yeast strains.

You can always ask any question you might have in the comments. Have fun!

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Traditional sourdough bread

Ingredients

-Salt

-850 gram of spelt wheat or rye flour. I recommend whole grain rye flour, with some spelt flour at a later stage if you find rye alone to be too bitter.

-5.80 dl/ 580 grams of water

Preparation

1. Put in a bowl 140 gr. of flour with 0.8 dl/80 gram water to make your starter. Mix it thoroughly. Resist the temptation to add more water! Knead the dough into a little ball which is relatively soft and sticky. Put the ball back in the bowl and cover with damp cloth. Leave at room temperature. Unless you have a cold room, I recommend making sure at least every 24 hours that the cloth is still wet. After 72 hours, the dough should rise slightly and should smell a bit sour. The scent kind of reminds me of beer. If it worked: You have your starter ready.

2. Add 125 gram of warm water to the dough and 210 gram of the same flour. Knead until it is once again a ball. The dough should be firm but not stiff.

3. Put the dough back in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth and leave it at room temperature. You can give it a blanket to keep it extra warm. Leave the dough standing for somewhere between 24 to 48 hours. The longer you leave it to ferment, the more sour the eventual bread will taste, so this is up to you to decide. More sour bread also means you can preserve it longer.

4. After the 24 to 48 hours have passed, you can finish the dough. Put the dough back into a mixing bowl and add 3.75 dl/375 gram of water. You can add some salt to the water it if you want, but it doesn't need a lot of salt. Now add 500g flour of choice and knead it for about 10 minutes, until it becomes a smooth paste. The dough should be soft but not sticky.

5. Now take 250 grams from the dough and put it aside in a separate container, with a close lid. Store the 250 grams in your refrigerator, or your freezer.¹ You can now put the remaining dough in whatever shape you want. You can make a round flat bread but also put it in a bread form. If you put it in a bread shaped container, it's a good idea to add bakery release paper at the bottom of the container first.

6. Now put a damp cloth over the bread again. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 8-12 hours.

7. After 8-12 hours have passed, you can bake the dough. Preheat your oven to 180 degree Celsius, top and bottom heat for a bread with a rather hard edge. For bread with a softer edge that's easier to slice, heat your oven to 200 degree Celsius. It's better not to use a hot air oven. But the bread near the bottom of the oven. Beneath the bread, put a tray of hot/boiling water.

8. If the oven is at 180 degree, bake the bread somewhere between 60-90 minutes. If the oven is at 200 degree, 60 minutes should be enough.

¹ The 250 grams of dough are your starter for the next bread! This allows you to skip step 1 next time you make a bread. In the freezer, it stays good for months. If stored in your refrigerator, it has to be used within three weeks.

• When you start making a new bread, take your starter and put it into a bowl.
• Add 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of warm water, mix thoroughly.
• Leave it for 12 hours in a bowl with a wet tablecloth on top of the bowl. Store the bowl in a warm place where the dough can reactivate.
• Now continue onwards, starting with point 2.

Submitted May 20, 2015 at 09:58PM by proebolaforever http://ift.tt/1Hhz9C8 accountt1234

Apocalyptic climate change accountt1234

There's reason to believe that climate change is going to be quite a bit more destructive than we would presently anticipate. To call it apocalyptic would not be an understatement. There are potential outcomes within the realm of possibilities that our civilization would simply not survive.

During the end of the last glacial period and the beginning of the Holocene, the temperature of the Earth increased a lot. As a result, the ice began to melt. This changes the pressure on the land mass. It also changes the pressure on the oceans, because of the rise in sea level. This leads to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In Iceland, volcanic activity increased 30-fold during the last deglaciation period.

We can look at our Earth today and see that similar changes seem to be happening. Volcanic activity has increased in the last few years. Enormous earthquakes seem to have become more frequent too. Since 1900, we've seen an increase in earthquakes with a magnitude exceeding 8.8

Some of the most likely places for earthquakes to happen are those places where the ice is currently melting, like in Greenland and Antarctica. If this happens, it would accelerate the ice loss there, thus accelerating the rise in sea levels. Is this a bad thing? If volcanoes erupt, it should temporarily reduce the rise in temperatures. In addition, if earthquakes increase the land ice loss, this increases sea levels. This is important, because as the earth warms, methane hydrates in the ocean are at risk of destabilization. When sea level rises, the increased pressure increases the stability of the methane hydrates.

Climate change even seems to be caused a pole reversal. It is estimated that ice melting and sea level change can explain 90 percent of the eastward shift of the magnetic north. The Earth's pole shift is rapidly accelerating. The Earth's magnetic field is now weakening at a rate of five percent per decade, ten times faster than people first thought.

What does this mean? When the poles shift, we'll be temporarily stuck without the magnetic field to protect us against radiation from the sun. The Earth's magnetic field protects us against coronal mass ejections. Coronal mass ejections are responsible for suddenly destroying electrical devices, causing massive blackouts that can take months to fix and affect millions of people at the same time. Now that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening, we become increasingly vulnerable to such an event.

When such a massive blackout happens, everything you can think of ceases to work. I can think back of what happened in my own country a few weeks ago in a power shortage. Ships can't sail through rivers because bridges are closed, or cars can't cross them because they're open. With no traffic lights, car crashes happen, blocking traffic. Trams and metro cease to work, trains are stuck in the middle of nowhere because they use electricity, people with electrical cars can't move anywhere either. The airport here in my city could not have planes land, despite there being electricity, because part of the coordination is done at Schiphol, our country's biggest airport, where no airplanes could land either.

People get stuck in their house, because they physically can't walk up and down the stairs. People get stuck in elevators. Someone has to come to help them get out, but with no traffic lights, car crashes happen, blocking traffic. Water continually has to be pumped up in my country, because we live below sea level. When there is no electricity, the pumps cease to work, which given enough time leads to flooding of entire neighborhoods. Many people have electrical plates, thus depending on electricity to cook their food. Refrigerators cease to work, causing food to spoil.

With most money being electrical, stored on RFID cards, many people will be unable to pay for food, because they don't have physical cash. Looting happens, because security cameras cease to function. Given enough time, the spent fuel pools of nuclear power plants begin to overheat, which will require constant intervention to keep them cool. If this doesn't work, the spent fuel pools begin to release radiation, which means that the environment becomes so radioactive that people who try to prevent a further release of radiation will die in the process. Then, what remains of us will serve as a warning for future generations.

Submitted April 13, 2015 at 07:42PM by imbackagainbros2 http://www.reddit.com/r/accountt1234/comments/32fyue/apocalyptic_climate_change/ accountt1234

Thoughts on the recent landing on a comet accountt1234

After ten years of hard work by more than a thousand people, a space probe has managed to land on a comet in outer space. The first question that has to be asked, before all others right now is: Who the fuck cares? People are offended that others care more about Kim Kardashian's fat butt than about pencil-dicked STEM-nerds landing a robot on a comet on the other side of the solar system. I think it is completely justified for people to be more interested in Kim Kardashian's butt than in some space probe, for reasons I will outline below:

Unlike the Rosetta mission, Kim Kardashian's fat butt will actually affect you. It is likely to spread sexually transmittable disease throughout the population. If you have a habit of exchanging bodily fluids with gangster rappers and similar figures, it is more directly relevant to you than the comet, as unlike the comet, it poses a genuine risk to your life expectancy.

Unlike the comet, it harbors a variety of different forms of life. It is likely to harbor millions of lactobacilli, propionobacteria, it might very well harbor staphylococcus epidermis. It can sustain all these different germs. More importantly, so can your fat butt. The comet doesn't harbor anything. Anything that might have survived the journey from Earth to the comet would certainly die there. Nothing survives there, the comet is scorched by the sun.

The comet doesn't affect you. You can't smell it, you can't touch it, you can't stand on it. You can do all of the prior three with the other big object that received a lot of media attention lately, if you're willing to invest some effort into it. If someone claimed the comet does not even exist, you would have no way of proving the opposite to them. They can show you pictures of the dead rock, but anyone could make those on his computer.

Here's the thing you don't seem to get. Humans are irrelevant in space. The computers were willing to take some of us with them to the moon, but after that, our business in space was over. We're heavy, we're expensive, we're sensitive to the radiation in space. We have no business in space. We're given computer signals, from a machine that tells us what it happens to see on a particular spot on the surface. You don't see anything real. You see a different few photons radiated out of your computer screen, based on the server of some other computer, which if we go all the way through the chain of communication bases itself on what it was told by a machine that was sent out into space.

You're fed science-fiction scenarios about space, in an effort to get you excited about it, but there's nothing to be excited about, because you're not going into space. Perhaps the Chinese might set some people on the moon to prove they can do the same thing as the Americans, but after that, it's over. Nobody can afford to send people out into space. Europe can't afford to keep Greek children from fainting during gym lessons from lack of food, do you think we're going to Mars? That era is over.

A handful of people were lucky and got to jump around for a bit on the moon in special suits, the rest of us got to see grainy video footage of it. Sending humans into space is dangerous to their health, costly and inefficient. Computers are taking over from here. There won't be humans landing on comets, or humans mining asteroids. There's no need for us there, artificial intelligence can do it much cheaper and safer than we can. You're going to sit on Earth and the computer is going out there showing you its holiday pictures. You don't like watching your own friends show off their holiday pictures, why do you suddenly care about the pictures a computer sends you?

What if those thousand people spent the last ten years traveling through the Amazon rainforest? Wouldn't they have benefitted more? You want to see a moon landscape? Save our fossil fuels and ignore space, travel to the nearest desert. Outer space is like a desert but with less colour. Except the desert will surprise you with the occasional camel or even an oasis. Outer space won't. It will bore you to tears after a week.

There isn't jack shit out there that's worth exploring anyway. I've seen bugs show up in my bedroom that are more interesting than that piece of rock. I've seen anthills here in my country that I could stare at for hours. How long do you think it would take you to grow bored of a giant grey piece of rock that smells like rotten eggs? Yes, that's right, it smells like rotten eggs and cat urine.

Why should we be excited about a dead rock that smells like the refrigerator of a crazy cat lady? This comet is the very opposite of life. It's static and sterile. It looks like a test object God put into an alpha version of the universe that was never removed. It is interesting in the same way an abstract painting left entirely blank is. It reminds us of how lucky we are at home.

"But it tells us more about the universe!" Us. You said it right. It increases our collective knowledge. Who cares about our collective knowledge? Your individual knowledge of space is probably embarrassingly low. Could you navigate a ship using the stars at night? Chances are the light pollution of thousands of STEM-nerds in your neighborhood sitting behind computers at night reading about a dead rock makes you incapable of even seeing the stars.

If we find out tomorrow that the robot claims the comet smells more like donkey urine than like cat urine and all scientific theories are thrown into disarray as a result, does it matter? Step on a mushroom in your local park and you wouldn't be able to tell me what you just killed, it doesn't matter to you. You specialized in a specific brand of STEM-nerdism and feel a sense of power when its control over nature is increased, any other branch is like a rivaling tribe competing for its own share of government subsidies and student tuition.

Outer space is like going out of bounds in a poorly programmed video game. You can walk on forever, but you're not going to encounter anything particularly meaningful. Nobody put any effort into putting anything interesting out there, the programmer figured you'd find out there's nothing there and move back. How many more billions are we going to spend walking out of bounds? Freud claimed that we have a death drive, the desire to explore the absence of life, to pursue self-destruction and return to the inorganic. There are more exciting ways to go about it than to stare at pictures of a rock that smells like a cat pissed on it, a smell we will never even smell, because even if we sent a human he'd have to be protected against the vacuum. Visit an underground cave instead. How many people could we have sent out there to explore underground caves, for the budget we have spent on building a robot that sends pictures of a dead rock to STEM-nerds back on Earth?

Fuck that rock.

Submitted November 15, 2014 at 02:15AM by myohmywtf http://ift.tt/14nCTpw accountt1234