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Cake day: February 4th, 2024

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  • Oh man, this is a thing I wish more people understood. The day of the first real human flight and the day a human being walked on ground that wasn’t earth only have about a 66 year gap. A lot of old folks who watched the moon landing saw the invention and proliferation of the airplane in their lifetime.

    However, the engrams and algorithms that make up the human mind have been in constant development for tens of thousands of years. Far, far longer if you want to count previous versions that led up to what we’re packing. A popular trope in some older fiction was to displace prehistoric critters into the modern world and detail the chaos. But that’s us. We’re it. We’re the cavemen in a world of microscopic circuit boards.

    Our achievements have far outpaced our ability to constrain them. Like, when we discovered radiation, we started putting that shit in everything. Fucking toothpaste. And sure, we learn, we improve, we adapt. Humans are exceptionally good at that. But it just seems to me as it has seemed to far bigger minds than my own that we’re still banging rocks together and fighting over resources, it’s just now the rocks have a faint glow and the resources are measured in GDP


  • I mean, the list kinda goes on. Sure, the conduit guys aren’t breaking their back, but they’re pretty casual in the lift til someone falls out. The guys that do garage floors will be on oxygen in their mid-50’s. I know a couple master cabinet makers who can’t count to ten. And absolutely a lot of it can be mitigated (wear your fucking respirator) but the problem with this kind of work as a rule is the damage is additive. You have an expiration date for this kind of work that often falls shy of what the soft hands would consider normal. I don’t know. I think we are in dire need of folks willing to do the hard work of keeping shit running. I love being self-sufficient in a world of services, or being a help to a neighbor in over their head. But those industries need to recognize that 60 hour weeks not counting commute make people unable to live, so they eventually jump careers or take a tumble they can’t get back up from