History

Well my US public school system spent 75% of history class and 25% of English class on the Holocaust so I’m actually feeling really well prepared for this section, the trick is not to go along with genocide if your country is supporting it

Go to school in the south, spend months on the minutiae of 1830s trade law and constitutional construction of enumerated powers, then WHOOP! We're in 1914, being dragged in to WW1 against our will!
- We’re in 1914, being dragged in to WW1 against our will!
  
  Honestly, a bit of a canard given how much of a Dixiecrat eugenics loving imperialist shit Woodrow Wilson was.
  
  Neo-Confederates bit hard on the Zimmerman Telegram and were some of the most enthusiastic WW1 hawks.
- I went to (an otherwise okay, but still a catholic) school in Connecticut and I learned that we won the Vietnam War.
  
  My dad was the right age, but neither he, nor his close family members or friends (nor my mother’s) were drafted. My friends’ parents were younger, so I didn’t personally know any Vietnam vets well enough for them to talk to me about it, and I didn’t think to doubt it. I didn’t find out until college (it was rightfully embarrassing, I was a libertarian arguing for the USA’s right to “bring democracy” to Iraq).
- That's crazy it misses out all of the important bits. In the 1830s the United States was on the international stage a relative backwater by the first world war it was a major superpower. Some interesting stuff happened in the middle of those two time periods to make that switch.
LOL the "vote 3rd party" crowd really is trying their adorable damnedest aren't they
- 8 yearold me would not have been able to grasp your position and 30 yearold me can’t either. Guess I’m too soft to compromise on ethnic cleansing.
I mean time on the Holocaust but no time whatsoever on the 30 years before it.
US public school system spent 75% of history class and 25% of English class on the Holocaust

How many of your classmates are Zionists? By comparison, how many are enthusiastic about First Nations civil liberties or reparations for Slavery?
- mods, please deal with this
MFW I see them coming for the jews again: https://giphy.com/gifs/firstwefeast-nba-complex-lakers-1GljPAy19hO991lkvh

It was supposed to be Space travel. Flying cars. Automatons and lasers. Deep sea robots that could explore any shipwreck and show us the animals of the deep. Nanobots and cancer-cures.

We were promised the world would be ready for millenials to get into every field and make the differences they wanted to be, and so much more, as Dragons hoarded all the money and chopped the legs out from every ladder.

I always think about this when this topic comes up. 9/11 happens and Bush says 'Drill baby drill'.

What if we had a president that was like 'hey maybe we should get over our addiction to fossil fuels and sever this toxic relationship with the middle east?' All the lives and money and time wasted on wars, and the destabilization it lead to in the USA and Europe which pulled people even further rightward toward this autocratic environmental suicide pact.

I wonder how different things would be if 1% of the people in Florida got off their couch and voted Gore.

EDIT I get y'all and agree but the point is that if Gore had won but just a bit more they wouldn't have been able to stop the count and send it to SCOTUS
- Or if the Supreme Court hadn't given Florida to Bush.
- Turns out Gore did win, but the election was handed to Bush anyway. We could've been in a much different world.
  
  A relatively long video on the topic (half hour) but a good one. https://youtu.be/jucDFrO89Ko
- ...Gore won Florida. Jus' saying
- Well it's on my list of things to change if a time machine is ever invented.
And we (millennials) went off and got our educations, and returned to the "real" world just to run into the brick wall that is Boomers- who've refused to retire, and who refuse to improve anything unless it benefits themselves, but are perfectly willing to gaslight everyone within earshot because they're incapable of admitting they're out of their element.

And now 20 years have gone by. Same fucking Boomers still hoarding and refusing to step off the top rungs of Corporate ladders.
- Baby boom generation ended in 1964. Retirement age for full social security benefits for people born between 1960-1964 is 67 years. Someone born in 1960 has slightly more than two years until full retirement age. Most boomers were/are not c-suite executives. Most boomers will rely heavily on social security benefits.
  Unfathomable why so many boomers are enthralled by the candidate/party that want to destroy social security. Something something, no war but class war.
I mean we do have lasers. We've had lasers for ages.
- Deep sea robots, too. We did it, everyone!
Jetpacks!
April fools!

And that's why the phrase "May you live in interesting times" is a curse.

The problem with knowing any amount of history is that any time anything happens you're just like:

'Oh. This again'.

It's somehow both tedious and horrifying.

Is there an analog for an extinction level event of our own creation and which persisted because of a variety of absolutely crawl reasons even after denial became the domain of idiots?
- Have you ever heard of the great oxidation event? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
  
  Though I doubt the anaerobic bacteria was aware enough to be able to deny what was happening in the first place.
  
  Every time I read about how we're finding micro plastics in places we thought they couldn't reach (blood-brain barrier recently) I think of the GOE.
What are your recent “oh, this again”s?

Best i can do is commercialized privately owned slave space travel organized by daddy musk.

- Two weeks!
- You won’t be able to afford it unless you’re going to work in the mines.

Well we got rich people spending billions of dollars to go to space for a bit. Unfortunately they come back too...

They should try subs
- Took me a while to realize which definition of subs you were referring to, but yes they should!

Instead all we get is AI-assisted Space Fascism.

Space Karen

The great beast is dying, sick with it's own poison. In it's final moments, it dies as it lived, devouring everything.

WHERE’S MY GOD-DAMN HOVERBOARD?!

Best I can do is collapse of democracy.

Dismantling of.

American democracy has been under attack since the Civil Rights Era. We're in the latest stage of "If we can't run things, nobody can!" bigot counter-revolution.

At least we finally got Europa Clipper 🙃

Honestly space travel is finally getting good again. Give it ten years or so and either the US or China will have people on the moon.
- India is putting in effort too, it's not great but once they figure out the kinks they're gonna catch up.
I watched the launch in class. Lol

Our universe is disappointing. Space travel would suck as much as you think. Like living in a can? Because that's what the laws of physics and our biology say will be space travel for us. We can't get places quickly, and there's no materials that can make a comfortable living space for any number of humans for that long.

Our Star Trek future is not coming. It's going to be like The Expanse, but worse.

I've got one question...

How big is the can?

It was supposed to be space travel, instead it was the internet and cell phones. Good trade.

Can't imagine space travel without high speed telecommunications
- Not sure what you mean. Apollo 11 used radio communication. It would have been possible to develop laser communication (i.e. light speed) without building a worldwide internet.

the frizz: let's see where the magic school Bus took us today!

or when!

oh, dear...

keesha furiously whispering to ralphie.

ralphie: a WHAT auction?

You're not in the wrong timeline.

You're just in the wrong country

American space exploration has gone the same way as American education, mass transit, and manufacturing, unfortunately.

Americans don't understand how absolutely owned they are. I'm not saying China is a wonderland but there are other ways of doing things. Capitalism has gone crazy I'm the US and the population doesn't understand whats happening.

I mean... we've had space travel for decades already. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Shenzhou, Shuttle, Crew Dragon, Starliner.

scifi is all just someones nice dream. an escape from a real world gone to shit.