It’s a bit of a shock after years of hearing that this thing will happen in the future, to realize that the future has arrived and it’s within our lifetime. Kinda how you look back and suddenly realize that your favorite movie is now closer to world war 2 than it is to present time, but it still feels like last year.
A consequence of Ceaușescu’s natalist policy is that large numbers of children ended up living in orphanages, because their parents could not cope with looking after them. The vast majority of children who lived in the state-run orphanages were not actually orphans, like the name implies, but simply children whose parents could not afford or did not want to look after them.
So it often comes back to the economics of the situation. Kids used to make money, helping on the farm and stuff. Now kids cost a lot of money and paying women a substantial amount (and not the pizza party amounts) to have children is deemed economically nonviable.
The weather services did see this coming and were giving red alerts. Local governments were like “nah, it’ll be fine.” It’s straight out the movies with the classic “we don’t want to cause any panic in case the scientists are wrong.” It’s especially damning after the exact same ignoring red alerts already happened in Germany and Belgium.
At this stage, it’s ignoring reality. Yeah, preparing and being ready for this kind of catastrophes is expensive but rebuilding everything isn’t cheaper. It’s why experts already said that in the end it’s cheaper to prevent climate change than dealing with the consequences.
You can have succession wars, incompetent inbred rulers and overexploitation without any climate change. But climate change would make it more likely to happen and make the outcome worse.
Any system will become broken is the same way. The top always gets greedy.
Usually it’s a combination with dysfunctional politics, war, resource depletion and climate change.
Everytime with a project when you ask a document that says what has been agreed with the customer and the estimate for a planning and they look at you like a deer in the headlights to then forward a document from the sales guy that just says “we’ll do everything” and a phone book sized map with “a few additional demands from the customer.” Yeah, that project is auditioning for a role as the Hindenburg.
That’s old news, no? I recall reading that basically from 2°C there is no more economic growth, what means a lot of people are thrown under the bus. From 3°C there is no more economy, meaning no food, heating, fighting everywhere. From 4°C there is basically no more humanity.
Then you look at the USA where a large part of the population really wants there to be a King Donald the First.
Traditionally kids do the rounds for candy on December 31th or on epiphany (three kings bringing gifts) around here. It depends on the region if one of those traditions is maintained.
Everybody forgets poor ol’ Saint Nicolas.
Probably most of those vacancies without simply disappear if the wages are not allowed to be exploitative.
If you pay in a supermarket with your card and ask for a cash withdrawal too, you have to sign the receipt for receiving the money.
Because the french believe in Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The first one the USA can fully agree on. But the second one, equality, is a deal breaker.
Meanwhile nurses and other care professionals are leaving the field. They love what they do, up to a point.
Many employers have tried the “if you love what you do, you’ll love it without any raises, benefits or help.” And now there’s a lot of additional administration and bureaucracy to get all those important metrics and KPI.
Less people are willing to do the training for the job and more are leaving. Same thing happens for teachers, child care, elderly care.
It’s not the diarrhea itself, it’s the sudden “critical pressure reached, 30 seconds until launch” moments that make things difficult.
This one is street legal and flight certified: https://www.pal-v.com. The others are still doing certification. But yeah, it’s not really what people thought the future was going to be. It never is. Retrofuturism exists for a reason.
And the modern replacement for the helicopter is the eVTOL. That one is also often called a flying car, although they’re not street legal. As far as I know nobody died in an eVTOL yet.
Sounds like the perfect excuse to subject any vehicle coming from a country that deals with Russia (cough China) to some additional time consuming bomb checks. They can’t say it’s tarrifs or unappropriate as there is a legitimate threat made.