Comment by markyc
3 hours ago
what will our grand kids be shocked to read about us and our acceptable 'cigarettes'?
plastic everywhere
social media as news
teflon
fossil fuel cars
sugar/ultra-processed food
3 hours ago
what will our grand kids be shocked to read about us and our acceptable 'cigarettes'?
plastic everywhere
social media as news
teflon
fossil fuel cars
sugar/ultra-processed food
Ha ha, the replies to your comment have become a laundry list of people's grievances and/or agendas.
Not only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.
Yeah, Nazis again surprised me and I'm not even a young person.
I figured sure it's a pattern, but it'll take like 150 years or something, nope, here we are in less than 100 years and there are Nazis again.
> plastic everywhere.
plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
> social media as news
Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
> teflon
teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.
> fossil fuel cars
will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.
I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"
>Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
This is not a catastrophe by any stretch of the imagination.
> Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
Perhaps. But “social media as news” is definitely going to get a lot worse.
> Teflon ... It will stick around.
Please tell me that was a deliberate choice of words :)
> fossil fuel cars
All or almost all of fire is my guess. My guess is that celebratory fire is last to go, bonfires, fireworks, in 2070 probably roasting marshmallows is at the edge of reasonable behaviour, but the idea that we deliberately burned things as part of normal life will seem very odd.
In 1870 fire is the usual (and incredibly wasteful) way humans make light and heat everywhere. In 1970 there's more abstraction, the light is electrical but from thermal generation, so there is still fire but it's somewhere else, and your heat is more likely from fire inside a metal box in a distant room, a gas, oil or in some cases coal boiler to heat air or water.
My guess is that even in pessimistic models in 2070 that's all electrical and the electricity is generated from sources which do not involve fire. PV, wind, hydro, even the geothermal and nuclear plants don't actually make fire to heat steam, they're just hot.
Fires—interesting point.
I'm in a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska that is maybe 5 years old—new housing development. There are no chimneys on any of the homes.
When I was in the Bay Area, sure, not a surprise. I am surprised the Midwaste gives a shit.
(To be sure, everyone seems to have fire pits in their backyards, ha ha. You take what you can get, I suppose.)
Perhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...
Meat not as a treat, but as a staple
Huh? As has been the case since our species evolved into homosapiens?
yes, And smoking has been around for 1000s of years and only recently it became common to ban it in shared spaces
Medication for normal emotions
No, it's going to be about either the roll back of nuclear reactors or various social movements.
Covid vaccines to young and healthy individuals
Thanks for reminding me. Hopefully antivaxxers