• hmonkey@lemy.lol
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    2 months ago

    Hitler lost WW2, the south lost the American civil war, and we haven’t all nuked each other (yet)

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        2 months ago

        No, it is genuinely a good point. The fact that its use so far has been entirely limited to the two that ended WW2 was certainly not a given. Some US military leaders wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea.

        The Korean War was so soon after WW2 that the strong taboo against the use of nuclear weapons hadn’t yet taken hold, and the USSR had a miniscule stockpile, so the US could genuinely have done it with limited risk to themselves. The fact that they didn’t use them is a really important turning point that helped build in the taboo against their use that has so far held to this day.

  • Doombot1@lemmy.one
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    2 months ago

    Near-infinite access to pretty much any information you can possibly dream of, content, questions, etc, on a little device in your pocket

  • will_a113@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I try to be a “silver lining” type of guy whenever possible, and a recent example that I’ve been using is mRNA vaccines. They were advancing achingly slowly before CoVID-19 basically turned the whole world into an mRNA lab. Now, thanks to that, there are vaccine trials underway for seasonal influenza, Epstein–Barr virus, HIV, RSV and several types of cancer. There’s even talk of a bona fide cure for the common cold.

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I regularly shop at a supermarket built on a site where people were burned as witches in the 17th century.

    A ship’s captain was away at sea and died after his ship was wrecked in a storm. Back home, his housemaid was accused of having created the storm and was burned at the stake. And there I am buying lemons and ice cream and toothpaste. It blows my mind.

  • Dae@pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    Statically speaking, globally, we are living in the freest, most prosperous age in recorded history. It was the most peaceful as well, but I am unsure if recent events have changed that.

    But by and large, we have more rights and are more prosperous than any other era of human history. And drspite the fact we could literally end the whole goddamn world right fucking now, it’s very, very clear that the powers that be really like living, and most conflicts are more focused and less destructive than ever before.

    It could very easily be way, way fucking worse. We are nowhere near the worst timeline yet.

    • P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br
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      2 months ago

      But by and large, we have more rights and are more prosperous than any other era of human history.

      Wall-E Buy-N-Large hehe

  • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I mean, we’re communicating over the Internet right now, which is pretty cool. Right?

    On Lemmy. For now. Things will change. But for now it’s pretty cool. Um.

    Hi. :waves:

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    There are multiple cases where pure chance and human hesitation prevented all out nuclear bombardment in the Cold War.

    So for that alone we are extremely lucky.

      • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 months ago

        The two types of semiconductors. N-types have a slight excess of electrons, allowing them to move freely and P-types have a slight lack of electrons, effectively making freely moving electron “holes”. By sandwiching them next to each other, you can create diodes and bi-polar junction transistors.

        And as we all know, bi-trans is an important part of queerdom.

        Source: has a degree in electrical engineering. And is bi.
        Edit: not cool enough to be trans though.

  • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Kids seem more aware of toxic behaviours and seem to clock their mental health better than I ever did. Even 10 years ago, talking about mental health was considered a taboo.

  • Sinuhe@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The evolution of our living conditions. We tend to forget how much things have changed. My grandmother grew up during WW2, she not only struggled to get food but also couldn’t go to school because she had to work (yes kids had to work, even in first world countries). She was heavily traumatized during the war because she had to take care of the dead bodies the Germans left behind them, she was only 16 at that time. The years after that were tough, she married a man from another country and was seen as an outcast. They worked their ass off all their life for very little money, then my grandfather died in horrible conditions and the company behind the whole thing has never been held responsible. My parents didn’t have much food either when they grew up but ant least they weren’t raised in war times, and they had access to basic education. As for me, I have done things my family couldn’t even dream of: I went to the university, speak 4 languages, married a girl from a different continent and we live freely in another country, there’s food on the table everyday, never had to go to war and even have time to waste watching shows or typing things on the internet. I am not saying the world is perfect today, there’s definitely a lot of things going wrong as well, but it’s definitely better than it used to be and we tend to forget that

  • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The way the moon is perfectly sized to just exactly cover the sun while still showing the corona and stuff like Bailey’s Beads. It’s an extremely rare cosmic coincidence, and a few million years before or after today and total solar eclipses as we know them wouldn’t be possible.