• For decades the Commie photos from Venus have been a delight, but I had no idea there was audio of that horrible wind.

• I've heard it said that copper as a micronutrient can have this same effect. (Per Lomborg, charities are therefore passing copper cookware to impoverished Africans at no charge, which is literally a brilliant bargain. A few million for pots and pans buys a generation with stronger brains!)

It's amazing how many presumptions from psychology have been discredited in recent years.

This guy seems to sink about three of them every week.

• Brats.

• Palau also used to play that 'not-until-it's-complete' game… There were all these commercial buildings, small business places, with rebar sticking out of the top and incomplete paint. Looked like hell.

Tell me President Big Mac comprehends this. Yeah… Sure he does.

That was six days ago, so....

Especially this darkest hour, we can't let our primitive, racist nature dictate our response to each other's fundamental humanity!

This young man with an Asian name is exactly correct!… We should follow his suggestion at the end of the tweet.

On the 'Brats' link, if you have a kid this isn't anything new. There are an amazing number of diseases kids get from other kids that only leave them with a drippy nose or a mild fever that will put your adult ass on the curb for weeks barely surviving.

…Though "Kung Flu" might be acceptable, too.

BTW, where is David Carradine while all this is going on?

Oh. Right.

I wondered why AR-14 was trending on twitter earlier, and I sensed that Quid Pro Sundown Joe had done something.

https://twitter.com/BoKnowsNews/status/1237387463246708736

Oh.

The University of California-Santa Barbara hid an agreement with federal regulators from a judge considering how to penalize the university for violating a student’s rights, according to his lawyer.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/ucsb-hid-federal-settlement-from-court-in-title-ix-due-process-loss-drastically-lowering-its-penalty/

From Crid's link:

"People aren't surprised when I tell them there are 13,000 Covid-19 cases outside China, or when I tell them this number doubles every 3 days. But when I tell them that if growth continues at this rate, we'll have 1.7 million cases in 3 weeks, they're astonished."
_______________________________________

Yes, the math is astonishing.

That doesn't mean that that formula will actually be forced to HAPPEN...especially as people do all they can to prevent it.

It's sort of like the phenomenon of the global population doubling every 40-50 years, starting in 1927, when we had 2 billion. Even if you start with 1965, the end of the baby boom, it only took about 41 years to go from 3.3 billion to 6.6. We reached 7 billion in 2011. That does not necessarily mean that we will reach 14 billion in 2051; since 1970, the formula seems to have changed to "every 12 years, we increase by 1 billion."

But that would mean that by 2051, we'd be at about 10.5 billion. That's still pretty scary.

And according to Worldometers, we reached 7.77 billion today at...5:09 p.m., ET.

> especially as people
> do all they can

You meant 'especially IF people do all they can'... Right? No visitor on this blog is more apt to infer broad (if shallow) social impropriety than you are....

I mean, *I* don't trust Americans to do "all they can." Who would trust them? (Only about 50% provisioned here… And if water and/or electrical services fail, I'm dead/dead/dead.)

You're right that nobody knows. But that makes me wonder where you wanna sit on yesterday's March 9, 2020 5:19 PM matrix.

> That's still pretty scary.

I don't do "scary." I feel a profound rhetorical repugnance to the word "scary," which is most often heard from liberals too shallow or too timid to describe their reticence in meaningful terms.

[A.] Overpopulation is not the problem. To be blunt, it's most often invoked (though never by you, Lenona) as a thin veneer over the pettiest kind of racism... 'Too many *brown* people, darn it!'

[B.] The world achieved 'peak baby' in 2018: From here on out, the number of Pampers filling our landfills will decrease. World population continues to grow because we are living longer.

1. You got a problem with that?
   
   
2. If so, what year were you born, again?

Coronavirus Live Thread. No 13

since 1970, the formula seems to have changed to "every 12 years, we increase by 1 billion."
_____________________________________________

I slipped up - I should have said 1975.

_________________________________________

World population continues to grow because we are living longer.
______________________________________

I know. I mentioned that years before, when I quoted from Conservation Magazine.

People like to say that the problem is the low death rate, not the (somewhat low) birth rate. But no one's going to suggest raising the death rate. So what else is there to do but figure out how to manage the problems that come with an even lower birth rate? Plenty of people are still having babies that weren't exactly wanted by the couples in question, after all.

"Nothing except diamonds is above the law of scarcity value."

When I say "scary," I'm thinking of the current situation (the virus spreads best in crowds, after all), wars over oil, water, and other resources, drought, floods, famines, etc. Those things are happening - not to mention automation taking away more and more jobs - so I'd say there's not enough room for a population that never stops growing.

Plus, as I already hinted, I'm thinking of the gradual cheapening of people in a world where it's too easy to take the very existence of human beings for granted. E.g.: "Who cares about poor villages getting wiped out by disaster X? Let them starve - we have other, better villages to worry about!"

> People like to say that the
> problem is the low death rate,
> not the (somewhat low) birth
> rate.

Can you help me understand what you mean? Which problem needs our attention? If the problem is that weak parents have too many kids, I'll instantly agree with you, but I'm not sure that could ever be solved by policy... Though of course, monsters and others are going to try. Authority over the lives of others is fun, after all.

> wars over oil, water, and other
> resources, drought, floods, famines,
> etc. Those things are happening

Can you name a war for a resource presently in motion? Not a miserable political welter (e.g. Eastern China & Tibet), but actual shootin'? 'Hand me those manganese ingots or I'll bomb your granddaughter's school over there,' that kind of thing? Anywhere?

The truth is, that doesn't happen. First, because the United States has been such an overwhelming power that no one wages a war without our tacit approval... Wars are usually about other things. (And an explicit letter of permission to kill is very difficult to extract out of Washington. Even presidents don't get them very often.)

Secondly, when people are deeply motivated to acquire resources, they make the deals they need to make.

There's renewed concern about automation in these years, but in general, the essentially global pattern of exploding wealth in your lifetime (and in your mother's, and in her mother's) has meant that an increasing population decreases scarcity. New people —especially free ones, and most especially free women— don't just bring scarcity through neediness: They bring solutions through work, cooperation and innovation.

In particular— Drought, floods, famines are almost always political problems, not natural ones. I can show you books about this… Now and throughout history, famines don't happen because there's no food, famines happen because people aren't allowed to get at it. In a properly running society, people know where the water is, how to keep it where it belongs, and how to get at it when it's needed.

The thing to be scared of is never that there are too many people. You're here, after all, and that's delightful… Everyone's glad to have you, and 7.5 billion of your best friends.

The problem is that too many of them are small-minded busybodies, oblivious and conformable personalities who're easily manipulated by hideous leaders.

Can you help me understand what you mean? Which problem needs our attention?
______________________________________

The economic problems that happen when people insist on using birth control, either because they don't want children or can't afford them. (Maybe we could start moving toward a classic - as in, pre-20th century - thrift-based economy and push for a social thrift movement as well? That would make it easier for childless couples to think "well, maybe we COULD afford one child.")

I'd also say that the problems of children who are already here should come first. For example, homeless children. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." So maybe conservatives, instead of nagging young people and middle-class people to have more babies, should focus on helping poor children instead - and on helping poor young men have more faith in their futures so they'll actually LOOK for jobs and make themselves more marriageable. (Yes, I'm aware that simply providing jobs is not enough, as J.D. Vance pointed out in "Hillbilly Elegy." But it CAN help - and that applies to poor young women as well, who don't see opportunities for themselves, other than motherhood.)

Two very good books:

"When Children Want Children" by Washington Post journalist Leon Dash (1989)
(Dash mentions that teenage boys want babies as well, if only because "with her on the Pill, I couldn't feel like a man")

"Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage" by Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas (2005)
(the authors claim, IIRC, that many poor women simply feel that it's better to be a single mother on welfare than never to be a mother at all, and given the lack of job opportunities and shortage of men with non-criminal records, they don't feel they have a choice)

Any job that's "provided" is by definition not going to create wealth.

But the things you're talking about are distinctly intimate problems.

And the only institution I can imagine being continually involved in their alleviation is the church... And that's a tough truth for people to swallow.

Also —

> "with her on the Pill, I
> couldn't feel like a man"

I've never across six decades heard any sentiment of the kind composed on human lips. Mr. Dash is pushing the folklore a little hard, there....