^^^^ First reasonable thing anyone's said since thread revive
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 28 June 2021 21:50 (two years ago) link
I'll admit that I'm not having kids in the vain attempt to avoid my responsibility and duty to take care of all the children in the world.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 28 June 2021 21:53 (two years ago) link
I dont want kids because it would impinge upon my many future holiday plans and meals out
― Eschew things thirty two times before swallowing them (darraghmac), Monday, June 28, 2021 5:43 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
My man.
― Vin Jawn (PBKR), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:45 (two years ago) link
It’s 9 am in Seattle and we are going to break the June high temperature record set yesterday, which will be broken again tomorrow. Because I am well off I could drop $700 to get a hotel room and avoid spending this interim in our uninhabitable house. I will probably kill myself circa 2050.
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Sunday, June 27, 2021 9:14 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
being able to drop $700 on a hotel because it's hot out means that you have the material recourses to proviide any child you had would have one of the most comfortable lives anyone has ever had in the existence of humanity
― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:50 (two years ago) link
They’d still have depression and then probably kill themselves
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:54 (two years ago) link
I expect the 2040s or so to closely resemble CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:55 (two years ago) link
silby, I like you and hope you are doing well. You don't seem like you are doing well, at the moment.
― Vin Jawn (PBKR), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:57 (two years ago) link
Anyway even if it weren’t a sneak peek of the end of the world today it’s not my only reason for not having kids, for example I want to save my money for things like hotel rooms, useless tungsten cubes, and meme stocks
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:57 (two years ago) link
I wonder what percentage of generations legitimately believed they were living in the end times
I don't know if the fears of millenarian English peasants concerned that Aethelred was the Antichrist really impeach the concerns of someone staring down the barrel of climate change/mass extinction and nuclear annihilation.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:57 (two years ago) link
I was worse yesterday but icymi the earth is dying and I don’t like the look of it xp
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:58 (two years ago) link
I’m not going to “feel better” in any permanent sense
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 22:59 (two years ago) link
Being alive is bad and I think objectively speaking it’s only getting worse
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:01 (two years ago) link
xp I haven't missed it. I (sometimes) think about it and it's like sticking your hand in a fire.
But you can only do what you yourself can do. You aren't responsible for everything.
― Vin Jawn (PBKR), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:02 (two years ago) link
Importantly I’m not responsible for bringing a child into this shitty earth and I feel morally superior about it
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:06 (two years ago) link
If “being alive is bad” isn’t it good that the Earth is dying? Not trying to be a jerk—this is a compelling position espoused by Kirsten Dunst’s character in Melancholia.
― treeship., Monday, 28 June 2021 23:11 (two years ago) link
Idk maybe
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:13 (two years ago) link
If “being alive is bad” isn’t it good that the Earth is dying?
while it is, at a minimum, rather inaccurate to use one's own experience of what it feels like to be alive as a guide by which to measure all other human lives, it is presumptuous beyond belief to assume that all living things experience life or value it as you do personally.
― What's It All About, Althea? (Aimless), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:23 (two years ago) link
Yes, don't talk to me about your Black Death killing half the world's population, I've got real problems to worry about.
― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:25 (two years ago) link
The Earth is not "dying" — the Earth is simply becoming uninhabitable by humans.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:29 (two years ago) link
presumptuous beyond belief to assume that all living things experience life or value it as you do personally.
this must be your first time reading silby's posts
― underminer of twenty years of excellent contribution to this borad (dan m), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:31 (two years ago) link
Not just humans unperson. We’re living through a mass extinction event.
― treeship., Monday, 28 June 2021 23:33 (two years ago) link
At least in the 14th century the Black Death was going to have a hell of a time making it to the western hemisphere - the technology to transport diseases to every corner of the globe in days is pretty new in the grand scheme of things.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:43 (two years ago) link
Just another rerun of "life is good/bad" with everyone doing their bit, nbd
― Eschew things thirty two times before swallowing them (darraghmac), Monday, 28 June 2021 23:58 (two years ago) link
and so travel agents wear the commemorative brooch inscribed "nobody gave the Black Death more hell"
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
though i did have the distinct feeling, mid commercial, that Trivago guy would one day kill us all
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:03 (two years ago) link
Trivago girl otoh ❤️❤️
― Eschew things thirty two times before swallowing them (darraghmac), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:04 (two years ago) link
To sum up, the position taken by Kirsten Dunst’s character in Melancholia, as paraphrased by treesh and which he maintained is "compelling", is in my view logically untenable and ethically way off base. We should buy copies of the script and jeer at them.
― What's It All About, Althea? (Aimless), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:08 (two years ago) link
better change your surname to 'von jeer' bc that's what we'll do to the many copies of your script we bought, lars
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:12 (two years ago) link
at some point, they'll plead with us: "just pay somebody to watch Melancholia on Hulu and transcribe it" or "please buy one script and print multiple copies" but we'll say "that would be ethically way off base". so we will keep buying the script from scripts.com, one per Jeerer (rip netherlands euro 2020), to prove how logically untenable it is.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:21 (two years ago) link
It’s not my position, as should be clear from the posts I made above, section 1c, third clause. I was just trying to tease out the conclusions of silby’s premises. This is making me remember one day, years ago, when I was logged in and posting in this kind of way and silby said “this isn’t the agora of athens treeship my god”
― treeship., Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:45 (two years ago) link
Which was funny i thought
it seemed to me when I watched the movie that Kirsten Dunst's character was not espousing a position so much as she was feeling a hitherto unknown sense of equilibrium as the world outside of her became as apocalyptic as the world inside her, but I didn't pay very close attention so I could be wrong.
― Lily Dale, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:47 (two years ago) link
classic
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:47 (two years ago) link
xp
Ultimately having a kid or not is an incredibly personal choice and shrouds not be judged by outsiders that one who chooses not to have kids had some ulterior motive like “wants toparty unimpeded by responsibility” or that those who choose to have kids “just wanted mom to shut up about not having grandkids”.
― Van Halen dot Senate dot flashlight (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:49 (two years ago) link
otm
Personally I am inclined to not have kids because it's hard enough as it is, teaching all these brilliant, curious, hopeful middle schoolers and wondering what kind of world they're inheriting, but I also think there's an argument to be made for continuing to do lovely human things like raising kids for as long as it's possible. My cousins in Juneau AK have a bunch of kids who run around fishing and camping and messing about in boats like the Swallows and Amazons, and whatever happens to them in the future, they've undoubtedly had a charmed childhood.
― Lily Dale, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 00:52 (two years ago) link
ppl shd be able to have 1 kid, as a treat
― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:13 (two years ago) link
my partner and i had dinner at her friends' apartment the other night and they have a kid who like... clearly both had a better childhood and is way smarter than any of us. i get the impulse
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:18 (two years ago) link
t'ship, isn't the Earth dying a big part of why "being alive is bad" (particularly as applied to future beings itt). By saying "being alive is bad so it's good the Earth's dying", you are really bringing "the Earth's dying so it's good the Earth's dying" to the table.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:22 (two years ago) link
also seems obvious, if the goal is to minimize suffering, that you'd need to rule out any alternative to the Earth dying, which is going to yield much suffering, to see the Earth dying as a net "good".
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:34 (two years ago) link
Three tykes and you're out.
― I can yeet a yeti (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:35 (two years ago) link
if you feel we are on an irrevocable march to Earth death, perhaps you can take a small comfort in the thought. it seems a bit monstrous or pompous to be so certain in one's knowledge of the future to take that comfort, though (even if you end up being correct).
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:40 (two years ago) link
Life on earth will end eventually and the longer you push this date back, the more people will live and suffer in the interim. Better to peacefully extinguish the species, kind of wind it down, by stopping procreation now. This is the anti-natalist argument. It is not my position at all, I want to be a father.
― treeship., Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:45 (two years ago) link
but it seems like you could "wind it down" without extinguishing the species. though, that sounds like an awful idea that could be used to justify a lot of suffering if ever taken beyond simply not having children.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:50 (two years ago) link
I accept "life on earth will end eventually", but only because it's so vague to be definitely true. one is making a pretty big bet if they use that thought to justify decisions that will play out over the timescale of one human life.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:55 (two years ago) link
i dont think we shd work to end the human race, i do think we shd end capitalism, i think we will need to have children to grow up and end capitalism, sry kiddo, those means arent gonna seize themselves!!!
― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:56 (two years ago) link
i wonder if the character 'forky' was invented by a pixar ilxor with a soft spot for silby. there's even the series of shorts framed around asking "New Questions".
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 01:57 (two years ago) link
while my heart is with silby (and by extension VHEMNT and various forms of anarcho-primitivist nihilism) in terms of "yup bad idea", my head always remembers the wise words of a fellow enviro-activist: "you can't let the assholes have all the kids"
― sleeve, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 02:17 (two years ago) link
also, kids rule
― sleeve, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 02:18 (two years ago) link
u know what gandhi said "breed the change u want 2 see in the world"
― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 02:23 (two years ago) link