HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

yeah, dam failures are pretty spectacular. Maybe we're collectively cooler with them because 1) they've been part of our accepted collateral damages list longer (hundreds of years) and 2) because we know better where the fall out will be we put more marginalized people there? I would be really interested in looking at property values or something like that for regions in suspected dam burst zones and neighborhoods that are just outside them.

on topic onion sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjfrJzdx7DA

Predicting it now, "Worst oil spill in the Red Sea" as no one does anything.

Seriously, reading about it is like living in the world of this Onion video: https://youtu.be/yjfrJzdx7DA

"This disaster will have been preventable. All of the warning signs are here, yet no one will have done anything about it." Indeed.

Will be happy to be proven wrong.

Aptly parodied by the Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjfrJzdx7DA

⬐ donkeyd

Wow, that's just perfect. Many of the old Onion video's are worth viewing even over a decade later.

https://youtu.be/yjfrJzdx7DA

It will probably be the stuff "hidden" (it's really not, our eyes are just closed) behind many layers that will do us in on a major scale.

While worrying about nuclear weapons and weaponized viruses, we're strip mining the planet dry, creating extremely resource consuming stuff just to throw it in a landfill every year, while at the same time pumping the atmosphere and soil full of shit that kills plant life and other animals.

So, when this process inevitably leads to a catastrophic breakdown of the planet and human society, we'll be like "ah shit, all the signs were there, but we didn't do anything".

We should preemptively build a memorial for all the human lives that will be lost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjfrJzdx7DA

⬐ gnulinux

There is a great science podcast called "ologies" every episode is on a different branch of science. There is one episode on "Eschatology" which is the scientific study of apocalypse (i.e. unrelated to religious, mythical apocalypse etc, eschatologists study the probability of things that can have existential risk to our species).

In this episode eschatologist Phil Torres [1] claims that (according to some convincing estimates) humans living right now are a lot more likely to die due to a catastrophic event that can wipe out the entire species, compared to dying in a car crash. Since some of my relatives died in a car crash, I was scared of dying this way my entire life, and this put everything in such a weird perspective. As Hawking said, we're likely in the most dangerous part of the entire human history. If we don't get our shit together in the next few decades, our species will never see the next millenium.

Go listen to this episode. It's on Spotify. (I'm not in any way affiliated with that podcast, I just listen to it every once in a while)

[1]: https://twitter.com/Xriskology

> but it seems like every avenue of "you deserve it" is being explored on social media

Trolls are still a thing, this is what they do

Edit: As other comments are pointing out, poor planning is not unique to Texas [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjfrJzdx7DA

It reminds me of The Onion's bit, "Memorial Honors Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster" https://youtu.be/yjfrJzdx7DA