yougottabetheguy

I like cool stuff and things. He/Him. 20s. That is a real picture of a shop I went to

[jabberding0]

Optical illusion

[yougottabetheguy]

You know things are bad when the Financial Times says that shareholders are being too greedy [x]:

"If corporate spending on new projects and facilities does not pick up, countries will “not be able to sustain growth”, Álvaro Pereira, outgoing chief economist at the Paris-based organisation told the Financial Times.

While the cost of capital fell after the financial crisis, the research found that businesses are failing to undertake the “profitable marginal investments” that should be possible as a result, with companies in a number of countries boosting shareholder payouts compared with pre-crisis trends."

Full article below cut

Weak business investment is threatening global growth, the OECD has warned, with corporate spending in most advanced economies failing to return to past trends after the financial crisis and pandemic.

Net investment across the OECD nations has dropped from 2.5 per cent of GDP before the 2008 crisis to 1.6 per cent of GDP for the median country, with the pandemic delivering a further blow, according to the organisation.

If corporate spending on new projects and facilities does not pick up, countries will “not be able to sustain growth”, Álvaro Pereira, outgoing chief economist at the Paris-based organisation told the Financial Times.

Only two advanced economies out of 34 it tracked had surpassed their prefinancial crisis net investment trends as of last year: Israel and Portugal. Just six countries are above their pre-Covid-19 investment trends, including Canada, Italy and Australia.

Average investment among the group is 20 per cent below levels that would have prevailed if pre-financial crisis trends had continued, according to an OECD working paper. It remains 6.7 per cent below the pre-Covid trend.

Last week, the IMF upgraded its forecast for global growth amid signs that US President Donald Trump’s trade war will inflict less damage than initially feared. However, its forecast of 3 per cent growth this year still marked a slowdown from 2024’s figure of 3.3 per cent and the 3.7 per cent average before the pandemic.

Multiple factors are playing a part in the phenomenon but “pervasive” policy uncertainty is a key cause as businesses are buffeted by repeated shocks, warned Pereira, who is to be the next governor of the Bank of Portugal.

Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout has added a fresh reason for corporations to hold back from big spending decisions, the OECD said, adding that business investment had fallen across all major industries.

“Uncertainty has been very pervasive since the financial crisis and we have had a lot of big crises,” Pereira said.

“Sooner or later if we don’t have more investment you will not be able to sustain growth. It is absolutely vital.”

While there has been strong growth in digital and knowledge-based investment, that has failed to offset the impact of higher depreciation and weak investment in physical assets, leading to continuing declines in net business investment as a share of economies.

If current elevated levels of uncertainty prevail, real investment could be trimmed by 1.4 percentage points by the end of next year, the OECD added.

While the cost of capital fell after the financial crisis, the research found that businesses are failing to undertake the “profitable marginal investments” that should be possible as a result, with companies in a number of countries boosting shareholder payouts compared with pre-crisis trends.

The tension between shareholder returns and investment has been most acute in the UK’s troubled water sector. English water companies have paid out £83bn in dividends since privatisation 34 years ago, more than a third of the £230bn companies spent in the same three decades on infrastructure.

The conflict is apparent in other industries. Oil major BP is under pressure from investors to make deep cuts to spending to protect payouts.

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

"procrastination won't work in college" ok so. yes it will. but it's a lot more dangerous. I always used to hear about how i won't be able to procrastinate when i get to uni, but really, you can just become an even more dangerous procrastinator. you don't have a weekly quiz and graded homework to keep you on track. if i decide to not go to intro to quantum for a month because 12pm is too early for me to make it to class and i'd rather eat breakfast, then i can just not, and I can cram the whole thing the night before the final. This does work. I have not done badly on any exams this year despite being a severe procrastinator, and my GPA this year is like a 3.97. However. This does come at the cost of your sanity and health. I cannot recommend this strategy. You should learn to not procrastinate, but you cannot proceed with the mindset that eventually you'll run out of ability to procrastinate and you'll be forced to actually do things on time. You can always procrastinate. You just end up sacrificing your health.

[yougottabetheguy]

...yeah.

I spent months designing a remotely operated wind tunnel for my final project.

It's pretty cool. The uni has been making experiments controlled over the internet so that students don't have to come in to do them in person. When we're talking about measuring vibrations and damping, you really don't need to see it in person. But it's good to have physical data, so a happy medium was created. It really came in useful during Covid, so the uni is invested in keeping it going. (And you don't need to hire demonstrators)

But I overcooked it in terms of energy levels, doing regular coursework and the project, so now I'm facing exams that I have a few days to revise for while burnt out :/

I didn't attend most of my lectures in second semester. I was just so endlessly tired and in pain. That sort of sapped my morale a bit. But I did keep up with lectures as best I could, catching up every so often. But I can tell in my revision when I did keep on top of work and when I didn't. My orbital mechanics is piss easy, less so for turbo machinery (even though it's basically isentropic flow with corrective factors slapped in).

I wrote my project report (25 pages) in 8 days, sleeping 40h in that time, even spending 24h straight at my computer. I know it isn't good, I know it's not going to be very highly graded, but it's done.

Don't be me. I'm sure everything will work out in the end, but I'm just so tired and drained. It's not hard to keep on top of what's been taught in lectures that week. Then have the diligence to work on assignments weeks in advance.

By all accounts, I shouldn't even be at uni with Long Covid brain damage, never mind getting 60%, but I've made it this far, I can't give up now, even if it does cost grades and health. I couldn't have done anything more.

[ayeforscotland]

This is the funniest tweet I’ve ever seen.

[thelazyaesthetic]

Dude, you can’t just post this without showing what that guy casually described as “a plate of fish and chips”

[scope-dogg]

How much of a twat do you have to be to have fish and chips that looks like this

Six chip twat

[yougottabetheguy]

WAIT

The seal on the plate means that this is a Houses of Parliament meal! He's an MP, so he's probably in the Member's.

List of venues in the Houses of Parliament (btw which are subsidised by taxes, but is not considered an MP expense so isn't deductible. He still claimed £230 000 in expenses for 2020. On top of his MP salary.)

In the interests of transparency, the House of Commons is committed to publishing sample menus and tariffs for Catering Services' venues

And sure enough,

This isn't a fancy poncy place this guy is going to, it's the actual catering facilities for MPs.

I wouldn't pay £8 for the smallest piece of fish and six (6) whole chips, even if it were in the centre of London. Mostly because you wouldn't catch me dead in London

[yougottabetheguy]

My flatmate likes washing chicken before cooking. That's fine. It's pointless, but if it makes her feel comfortable, then it's whatever.

BUT

Not when the water is on too high and splashes all over the drying rack, where my freshly washed stuff is!

[yougottabetheguy]

Also, while I'm on about french politics, Marine LePen (far-right leader) might be prevented from being elected if she's found guilty of embezzling EU funds on Monday. Her party has been accused of stealing about 3 million € from the EU budget through the use of fictive personal aides.

Very excited about the decision.

The far right won't have a memorable leader anymore, Macron can't be president again, so maybe the 2027 election could be won by a strong and charismatic centre or left leader? (If the right doesn't smell the blood in the water and splits again, and the left doesn't self cannibalise)

[yougottabetheguy]

lol

Source: Le Monde (paywalled) In French/English

Revealed by French economic daily Les Echos on Friday, March 28, the letter [wrote] "We inform you that Executive Order 14173, ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunities, signed by President Trump, applies to all suppliers and service providers for the US government, regardless of their nationality or the country in which they operate," wrote the embassy employee, who asked respondents to sign "within five days (...) a form for compliance with the US anti-discrimination law."

Le Monde also reports (unofficial translation): "The Foreign Trade Minister stated Saturday March 29th that "American anti-DEI demands for French companies, like unjustified trade tariffs, are unacceptable. France and Europe will defend their companies, their consumers, but also their values."

Which is really funny, because in France companies aren't allowed to know someone's ethnicity/sexuality before hiring. They still do, and get around that kind of legislation by hiring people who have photos of themselves on CVs, or have people film themselves doing tasks or take tests, but the law is simple: don't ask, don't tell.

Apparently, companies are trying to hedge and delay as much as possible: being on the list is bad business in Europe, but you get access to the US market. But what can you do? The tactic might be to claim that XYZ GmbH is a separate legal entity with a different hiring scheme to XYZ Inc, and therefore not subject to tariffs/demands/whatever foolish fascist thing goes through Idiot in Chief's head. Or a generalised "we all refuse to sign" could mean a lacklustre response and the issue is dropped till later.

I suspect this will be a decoupling force between the States and Europe. I suspect that unless Europe drops the ball super hard on resource deals (like the Mercosur agreement, which France objects to) or new investment in manufacturing (which all the money is going into defense atm), EU stocks will go up to the detriment of US ones, as is the current trend. Companies don't want to deal with political instability. It's just a fact for large, slow moving corporations.

Maybe the UK's market deregulation is actually a valid strategy in this climate to attract more foreign investments. (Except not to the detriment of cutting disability benefits. What the hell, Rachel!)

An active poaching strategy by EU companies might very well be the play here. If governments gave tax breaks on US immigration, that'd be a good idea. It's not like there's an opportunity cost for it.

[yougottabetheguy]

It has occurred to me that Chocolate Guy/Amaury Guichon could probably make a fully edible clock.

So old timey grandfather clocks work by swinging a pendulum from side to side. The definition of a second (until we standardised it to the speed of light) was created just after the 1789 French Revolution as the amount of time it takes for a 1-metre long pendulum to swing from side to side. Yes, any weight on a string that is exactly one metre will stabilise into a 1-second swinging motion (at least until friction slows it down too far).

So this swinging motion engages a ratchet gear that is under constant torque. This is done with either a spring, or a heavy weight on one side of the ratchet gear. The ratchet is such that it will turn only when the pendulum is at the bottom of its' swing. And voilà, you have a wheel that spins a certain amount every second, without fail, using only gravity.

Which could theoretically be made out of chocolate.

The problem is actually the bearings. Chocolate on chocolate has a lot of friction. What sweet thing/edible thing can be used instead?

Hard waxy sugar, like the shells of Mentos or Skittles or M&Ms is a possibility.

Potentially, gummy bears shaped into troughs with olive oil would have very low friction indeed.

The reduction gears needed to turn seconds into minutes and hours also need to be low enough friction to not gum up.

The cables to hold the weights could be made from gelatin, if the weights are small enough.

We could, if we tried hard enough, make a fully functional chocolate clock.

Oh, and the Ferris wheel he made that one time? That can also be powered to turn using gravity too.

[yougottabetheguy]

Being in pain is just so fucking boring.

When it fluctuates and gets just a bit worse, you kind of have to sit there and accept that you're going to be a little bit stupider for a while. Just till the pain subsides to lower levels. Just till you can actually stand up again.

[bentwristemu]

How do they keep making later and later stages of late-capitalism

[crazydiscoturkey]

through innovative, synergistic solutions that align strategic stakeholders along key performance indicators

[dioptre-hertz]

fun fact: there are quite a few academics and scholars nowadays who argue that we are no longer in the late stages of capitalism, but in fact the early stages of something completely different. david graeber puts it thus:

Any number of names have been coined to describe the new dispensation, from the "democratization of finance" to the "financialization of everyday life." Outside the United States, it came to be known as "neoliberalism." As an ideology, it meant that not just the market, but capitalism (I must continually remind the reader that these are not the same thing) became the organizing principle of almost everything. We were all to think of ourselves as tiny corporations, organized around that same relationship of investor and executive: between the cold, calculating math of the banker, and the warrior who, indebted, has abandoned any sense of personal honor and turned himself into a kind of disgraced machine.

varoufakis calls this new era "technofeudalism", and in his book of the same name he describes it this way:

So, what is my hypothesis? It is that capitalism is now dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. In that role it has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call technofeudalism. At the heart of my thesis is an irony that may sound confusing at first but which I hope to show makes perfect sense: the thing that has killed capitalism is … capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial era, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful than its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host. [...] Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor: rent. Specifically, it is a form of rent that must be paid for access to those platforms and to the cloud more broadly. I call it cloud-rent. As a result, real power today resides not with the owners of traditional capital, such as machinery, buildings, railway and phone networks, industrial robots. They continue to extract profits from workers, from waged labour, but they are not in charge as they once were. As we shall see, they have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital. As for the rest of us, we have returned to our former status as serfs, contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labour – in addition to the waged labour we perform, when we get the chance.

so, to put it another way: perhaps we are no longer in the later stages of capitalism, a system whose defining feature is that power belongs to those who own the means of production and can therefore profit off the labor of people they hire to work their machines and factories - but rather in the early stages of an entirely new hegemony, characterized by the fact that power is largely held by feudal overlords who have claimed dominion over specific segments of daily life through technology.

for example, under varoufakis' view, platforms like Amazon or Etsy aren't really markets in the traditional capitalist sense; they're more akin to fiefdoms, where everyone who wants to participate must do so subject to the whims and desires of the overlord, who takes a cut of everything and carefully controls what people are allowed to buy, sell, or even be shown. these corporations don't just make money by taking a cut of a worker's paid labor; they make money by charging rent for any activity that takes place within their domain. sure, your employer siphons off some of the profits you generate when you work your job - but both you and your employer are also constantly paying rent, paying tribute, to Amazon Web Services to be able to host a website, to Google for advertising, to PayPal every time you make a transfer with a surcharge... thus these companies are primarily characterized by their ownership of specific domains of everyday life, rather than by their ability to profit from what their workers sell and produce.

this is obviously not the only way to understand our current economic and political climate, just one particular lens through which to view it, but. food for thought!

[etoiledunord]

I took a class earlier this year for my MA in Communications and Technology that called it “platform capitalism.” One of the texts was the book Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek, which is available to read for free here.

One thing that I’d like to add to this discussion is the fact that these platforms rarely only have one function. The service being offered to the consumer is often the secondary function of a platform. The primary function relates to data. Facebook’s secondary function is as a social networking site; its primary function is as an advertising platform using the data it collects about its users. Mobile games track your search history. Amazon makes most of its money as a cloud platform, not as a marketplace. Micro-transactions are definitely a thing, as is the platform taking a percentage of any sale it facilitates, but the real rent consumers are paying is with their own information. This information isn’t just used to show you bespoke advertisements, either. It can get into the hands of political parties, law enforcement, and other groups you’d rather not know about you. This is something I’ve heard called “surveillance capitalism.”

Platforms need regulation, but not the way people usually think. It’s not about racist tweets that users post, it’s about what information platforms track about those tweets and what they do with that information.

[yougottabetheguy]

I so desperately need to write about Marine Le Pen (French far right party leader and presidential nominee for her party).

Members of her party were voted into the European Parliament. Le Pen only became head of the party in ~2010. The EP allows for personal aides and various expenses to the MEPs to do their jobs and live in moderate comfort while travelling for their jobs (in theory).

However, Marine Le Pen and 24 other members of her party have been hiring fake MEP assistants from 2006 through to 2016 and their pay being diverted into her party's coffers.

This was flagged way back in 2015 but wasn't brought to the courts until a few years later, at which point Le Pen put up such a stink over her potential presidency that the courts put her case to the side. Now, for some reason, but I assume it's either pressure from government or from European prosecutors, that case has come to the courts. It's been ongoing for about 6 weeks and will last till the 27th, with a verdict coming out in 2025.

The prosecution yesterday announced that they want her and the 24 others to pay a 300 000€ fine, be jailed for 5 years with potential for early release, and a 5 year ban on political activity.

The prosecution has been highlighting how critical her position as party leader was in the embezzlement claim, stressing the party's financial difficulties in the beginning of the decade, the ease with which that embezzlement could be done, and a message from the party's bursar/treasurer saying: "We'll only make it if we make serious savings thanks to the European Parliament." and emails suggesting that they were taking too much at once. Additionally, the work being done by these ghost MEP assistants was vague, unimportant, and difficult to prove was actually being done.

It's funny that Nigel Farage, the far right UK party leader was also embroiled in EU pay scandals around the same time, hiring his wife as an MEP assistant.

The French prosecution has found that Le Pen embezzled about 4.8 million € over that time, but paid back 1.3 million € claiming that paying it back wasn't an admission of guilt.

Naturally, Le Pen has been shouting on Twitter about how this court case is trying to kill her presidency and is subverting the democratic process. It's fun to mention that she campaigned against EU corruption and embezzlement when she was running for MEP, only to turn quiet when she became one. It's Ad Hominem, I know.

The evidence is a bit flimsy, relying on the jurors to fill in the gaps, but constructs a very nice narrative that is impossible to shake. The requested penalties aren't unheard of, but the timing is certainly unusual.

[vague-humanoid]

[anarchistmemedistro]

[freerangecatmilk-blog]

Okay this is the cable news shit I grew up with that gave Bush era apologia to bombing civilians that made me into a john McCain fan (i cringe looking back on tht)

US cable news is held by the rich to sow class divide by framing the minorities within our class as the aggitator rather than the fucks who hoard the homes and money - "oh no, it might be the family being paid $3/hr tht took my job" when it's literally the rich abusing the poor and needy to consolidate more wealth and power

I'm literally 3 hours from the border and I've never experienced the "invasion" I keep hearing fascists scream

Side note, had a boss tell me she saw Venezuelans eating dogs, literal racsist brain rot

I fucking hate conservatives

No war but class war

[crazy-pages]

But we do understand how "teehee, let's give builders more money" is different than literally "if we expel a racial minority it will fix our country", right?

RIGHT?!?!?!?!

[yougottabetheguy]

So French politics is a total mess right now.

But we need a tiny bit of backstory to fully understand why.

In 1944, France took back its' territories from invading armies. The 4th Republic was declared when De Gaulle stepped down as commander-in-chief-in-exile.

The 4th Republic tried to be parliamentary, but also incentivised coalitions, which constantly broke down. So there were massive political instabilities which came to a head in the Algerian war of independence in 1958. French soldiers, living in Algeria, threatened to invade the mainland if the head of government didn't give up peace talks with the Algerian rebels. So De Gaulle, the man who brought freedom back to France and fended off American imperialism post-WWII, was called on to solve the crisis.

He decided to form a new semi-presidential republic, that wouldn't be bogged down by giving excessive power to the elected assembly.

The President is directly elected for 5 years, and so is the lower house (Assembly). To be eligible to be president, you must have the support of at least 500 mayors or regional councillors over the entire country. (Yes, that does mean that the French people are asked to vote at least 5 times every 5 years: mayoral, regional, legislative (lower house), presidential, and European). The upper house, the Senate, is voted in indirectly by all representatives (mayors, councillors, Assembly members).

Phew.

But also, the Assembly can overturn the Presidency by a simple majority vote. And the President can, at any time, dissolve the Assembly.

This means, that since the legislative and presidential elections are very close to each other, that the presidential party/coalition has always had a majority in the Assembly, except for a few occasions. (I think Mitterrand didn't have one)

It's a presidential republic because the President has strong executive power, and can pass executive bills without the Assembly's approval: so called Article 49§3. Article 49§3 is meant to break parliamentary deadlock on critical issues, like national budgets, by forcing the Assembly to take action. The Assembly can overturn the President and block the bill by simple majority of registered Assembly members, not just those who turn up to the vote. So it is a political gamble. Mr Macron has used this to bully his party in the past: "Vote for my controversial retirement pension reform or vote me out and lose your seat."

But also, Mr Macron is a scheming, conniving bastard. He used the rise of the far right to his political gain: in 2017, he presented himself as a centrist. He was young, smart, an economist, hot, and had a wife with intrigue (they met when she was his French teacher in high school). And he won out against the far right. His party was founded in 2015, so no-one knew what to do with him.

But then, over the years, we slowly realised that he was financially liberal, socially centrist, and morally bankrupt. He was accused of putting his friends in power and generally being money grubbing. But his international appeal was pretty good.

So then he won again in 2022: hoping that the left wouldn't form a coalition (they did), that he could hold down the centre parties (he couldn't), and the far right wouldn't become larger (it did). But he still managed to get a slim majority. Thus heavy use of 49§3 to align his party.

All in all, the left were/are furious. Twice now, they did the political good deed of voting for the candidate they didn't really like to block the one they hate from getting in. So tensions were high.

Now in 2024, the far right win big in the European Elections. They get a sizeable share of french votes (mostly from low turnout by other parties). Macron decides to dissolve the Assembly 2 (?) days later.

Huh?? Why?? What?? Tf do we do now??

So now we have a legislative election in a month that no one saw coming. Everyone scrambles. The left form a coalition in 2 weeks, their manifesto cobbled together by sleepless nights. The right, once composed of 2-3 parties, has split, the vast majority of the traditional right now have joined the far right. The centre is gutted, save for Macron's party, who's effectively subsumed their voter demographic.

The legislative elections have a 2 round system: everyone votes for who they actually want in round 1 and settles in round 2.

It's chaos.

After round one, the left have a 30% hold on the country, the centre have 20%, and the far right have 35%.

Everyone realises that the far right have a real chance at winning a majority. Le Pen pushes her electorate as hard as she can: she doesn't just want to be the biggest party and get to form the government, she wants a majority and overturn the President.

The left choose to pull out of places that they aren't going to win to avoid diluting the vote. Days before the 2nd round, Macron has said nothing similar. A few days before, his message is simple: "We're not going to do anything. We won't pull out of races we might not win." It's a kick in the teeth for the left.

The end of the second round looks like this:

Purple is the left coalition, yellow is Macron, blue is traditional right, brown is far right.

With 182 seats, the left have the most, and should form the next government. Not by law, but by convention.

Macron has 168 seats, the far right have 143.

The majority is 289 seats. No one is close, but a coalition would work.

Unfortunately, that's a problem: since no government in the past 60 years has had to form a coalition, no one knows how, and aren't amenable to it in the first place.

But the left are ecstatic. They struggled so hard to unite, they defied all odds to challenge Macron, and now they have the institutional (but not legal) right to name a Prime Minister (head of the lower house).

This all happened before the Olympics. So Macron declares that there must be political unity during the Olympics. So everyone agrees and keeps quiet for a while.

Side note, Mr Macron has called himself the "God of Time" in private meetings, since he believes that he can dictate when things happen, putting off decisions and important meeting by leveraging the might of french bureaucracy at them. But that kind of tactic wears thin very quickly.

After the Olympics, and the fiasco that was, politics can start again. The left, after an awful lot of arguing and trial and error, name Lucie Castets as Prime Minister. She's smart, female, and merely socialist (as opposed to communist). The far right immediately oppose her, declaring that they would vote to overturn her as soon as she is sworn in. "Blah blah blah not strong not good too extreme".

So they try again. And again. Until Macron, who is the person who swears in the Prime Minister, invites potential candidates from different parties to his office. So now, somehow, Macron, who didn't win the majority of seats, is choosing the PM. He invites Hollande, Sarkozy, Mélenchon, Duflot, Cazeneuve, Bertrand, Castets to try and find a leader who might not be immediately overturned.

The left insist that any extreme right candidate will be overturned. The far right insist that any candidate with an inkling of leftism will be overturned. Macron's party stays quiet.

So we arrive at today: Michel Barnier is our new PM. He's right wing. He voted against decriminalising gays in the 80s.

His inauguration speech had catchphrases like: "Access to public services, security in daily life, and immigration control". He promises to establish a "German-style" cabinet, made up of ministers from all parties. But we'll see how that goes.

So...yeah...I love how the left got the most seats of all parties and is now completely out of government.

Macron _could_ have formed a left alliance and chosen to uphold french dignity. He _could_ have chosen an ex-centrist PM. He _could_ have chosen compromise, but instead bent the knee to the right because they're more vocal.

Maybe I'll update this as time goes by. Maybe I'll be too depressed to do so.

[orcflorist]

fuck you (runs your cast iron pan through a dishwasher cycle)

[orcboxer]

my seanoning

[bigandretired-deactivated202501]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Hilarious that the comedy comes from the part of the name the parents didn't pick

[thefloatingstone]

Do you ever think about Doggerland?

Like how fucked up is it that it’s just….. gone.

I tend to forget about it and then when I remember it again I’m like “Oh yeah! There’s like an entire country sized stretch of land that’s just fucking GONE.

well…. “gone”….

[thefloatingstone]

Things I have learned since making this post;

The running theory (I can’t remember if it was definitive proof or not but I try not to make concrete statements on history any more) is that what caused the sinking of Doggerland was not the slow heating up of the Earth leading to a gradual melting of ice and snow causing the rise of the ocean….

What flooded Doggerland was a massive fucking CHUNK of Norway FELL INTO THE OCEAN and it caused the largest tsunami we have physical evidence for on earth and it fucking flooded Doggerland IN ONE SINGULAR DAY with a rush of water so strong, large and powerful it literally had the force to rip people to shreds when it hit them

[kedreeva]

Doggerland on Wikipedia

[brightwanderer]

I do think about Doggerland, fairly frequently! And I feel it’s important to point out that its disappearance absolutely was because of “the slow heating up of the Earth leading to a gradual melting of ice and snow causing the rise of the ocean”. By the time of the tsunami, the land area would already have been reduced to a handful of small islands.

In general, a true tsunami (caused by displaced water) is never going to permanently submerge an area of land, because the water displacement is temporary and it will return to where it came from (causing huge damage on the way, of course). However, with islands that were already barely above sea-level, it’s definitely possible that such a huge inundation just obliterated their topsoil and left them below water level.

It’s hard to say, though, because the end of the last Ice Age was a wild time for water moving around and getting into places it shouldn’t. In particular, as the glaciers melted you’d often get huge meltwater lakes forming behind dams of ice and rubble which might then burst, suddenly dumping nearly inconceivable amounts of water all over the downstream terrain. One of these bodies of water, Lake Agassiz in North America, was so huge that it covered multiple states, and it’s thought that it drained very suddenly into the Atlantic ocean about 8000 years ago (i.e. contemporary with the flooding of Doggerland), dumping so much water into the ocean that global sea levels rose 1-2m over the course of a couple of years.

And if you’re wondering - yes, it’s theorised that this event, or the combination of the others like it, was responsible for the flood myths that exist in so many cultures. Coastal and lowland settlements around the world would have found themselves in a period of time where the sea just kept rising - not overnight, but inexorably and seemingly without any end in sight. Many, many cultures would have retreated to higher ground, only to find a few months later that the water was once more lapping at their doors.  In some ways I find that even more profoundly terrifying than the idea of a wall of water sweeping everything away.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Has everyone seen xkcd Time?

You should probably see xkcd Time

http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/

xkcd Time - at your own pace

[o-craven-canto]

That’s not the only case!

That region had tropical climate, even at the peak of the last glaciation. There could have been a thriving agricultural civilization in those bygone river valleys 10,000 years before it started all over again in the Near East, and we wouldn’t know.

[cansomebodytellmewhatsgoingon]

Oh, dude, the amount of outburst floods that happened at the end of or during the Pleistocene is OBSCENE. The Altai Floods, which created giant ripple currents like sixty feet tall. The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, which could explain the lack of Paleolithic sites on Turkey’s northern coast because they all drowned. The Missoula Floods. The Missoula Floods. Floods with the height of skyscrapers that would hit you like a truck going down the highway. Floods that were 50x more river flow than the Amazon and happened in an area 38x smaller. Floods that happened SO often and were SO strong that they literally created the Channeled Scablands and is partially why the area isn’t very forested because all the topsoil got scrubbed away.

And don’t even get me started on the Zanclean Flood, because WOW

[pied-piper-pluto]

Someone else might have already mentioned Some Facts About Doggerland, a piece of writing that gives me huge emotions every time I read it, but if not please enjoy!

[mumblingsage]

To fellow Doggerland fans, I also want to shout out Julia Blackburn’s Time Songs: Journeys in Search of a Submerged Land.

[mumblingsage]

In honor of this post coming back around on my dashboard, here are more maps of Doggerland through the ages, from Barry Cunliffe’s Europe Between the Oceans.

[elalmadelmar]

The one that always gets me hardest is the theorized flooding of the Mediterranean. In other words, at one point the Mediterranean was much smaller and most of that basin was dry land. There’s an old series of fantasy books exploring what a civilization on the floor of what’s now the Mediterranean sea might have looked like (and being fantasy, there’s magic and psychic animals and such; being older, I can’t exactly recommend it since it’s a Product Of Its Time in some very unfortunate ways), and ending with the crisis of their whole world flooding as the last remaining fragment of the land barrier across the Strait of Gibraltar crumbles away and lets the Atlantic in.

It’s hard to know what might have been down there, since we can’t exactly do archaeology on the seafloor.

[utopians]

life becomes so beautiful when you start cooking rice in liquids other than water

[utopians]

put that basmati rice in the cooker with coconut cream and chicken stock and an entire onion that you've diced and sauteed with garlic until transparent. and some salt and pepper. Trust me

[youaremyeverlovin]

[effemimaniac]

"Uncle Benadryl's one minute rice" one minute what? awake? left to live?

[hubblegleeflower]

New Tumblr is now such that I cannot just go to the post with the recipe but must reblog the gatorade and uncle benadryl if I ever hope to make rice with coconut cream.