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Miocene Anthropocene Future

Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 18 May 2019, 20:50:50

dohboi wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that there is already a mass extinction going on, mostly NOT having to do with the damaging effects of GW.


This is true. The rest of your post is a bit hyperbole and conjecture.

Habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species represent cause number 1 and cause number 2 of the current rise of extinctions globally. The mosquito and the rat have caused far more extinctions in the 19th century than GW has caused to date in the 21st century. Rats and mosquitoes caused the extinction of over 25 bird species alone in Hawaii in the past 200 years.

Going down on the food chain to insect vectors carrying blights and fungal diseases and the extinction rates go exponentially higher in the 20th century due to invasive species. Think American Chestnut caused by a asian blight carried by a bug or the Chytrid fungus spread from the pet trade that invaded native habitat globally and has alone caused the extinction of dozens of species of amphibians globally in the last 20 years. These are just a couple of examples. Go talk to some Australians if you want more info on the devastating impact of invasive species on native flora and fauna.

We get regularly fresh information regarding this first hand from specialists who visit us and are directly involved in working with the cause number 1 and cause number 2 mentioned above. We don't get climate change scientists coming here, my first hand inputs come directly from many of our guests dedicated to preserving biodiversity, doing taxonomy and also studying the ramification of invasives. A lot of my information and my own conclusions come from this interaction and what I have observed directly here in the 400 acres I know intimately.

I frankly have very little patience for posters who copy and paste studies from the internet and then draw hyperbolic amateur conclusions regarding global warming. It is one of my reasons I see the internet as decadent because one gets the impression by engaging in this way that they are actually having some sort of impact. What is all this posting about apocolyptic mass extinction predictions contributing anyway toward effective mitigation? When is the last time you paid attention to a Jehovah Witness who rang your doorbell?

Basically though I am in agreement Dohboi, yes, things are fucked up enough without piling on the future consequences of GW. But I see GW acting as glyphosate mostly on humanity, it will disproportionately impact the very fragile arrangement of humans and their slave flora and fauna. I welcome this along with any of the other vectors and direct pathogens that seriously but a dent in the out of balance status of human overshoot.

Furthermore, It makes no sense to dwell on future impacts of climate change when the cultural paradigm and inertia of feeding and meeting the aspirations of a growing population of Kudzu Apes has each and every government paralyzed to do any real mitigation. That is the sad and real truth. And it will become more so as the consequences themselves increasingly will create a reaction of putting out fires instead of addressing what is fueling those fires..... no pun intended. We are locked into this sad reality and external agency is the only viable mitigation, of which I predict climate change will be key.

Frankly, I don't give a rats ass for the dire straits of humanity heading into the painful decades of the correction of human overshoot, the BIG SQUEEZE as I like to refer it. My focus is on those pockets of refugee populations of native ecosystems standing on the sidelines waiting for the big squeeze to open space for recolonization. That is my singular focus actually. Refuge populations of flora and fauna is what will be key to minimizing the degree of extinction.

If the refuge population of native flora and fauna is completely obliterated like on many Philippine islands in SE Asia well then yep, this will be a grand royal fuck up and yes a mass extinction event. Look around though and there are vast and I mean vast areas of still preserved biodiversity and quite a bit of successful biodiversity studies during the past 50 years that have identified biodiversity hot spots and as a result national parks and preserves and conservation areas have been established. These refugee populations can be as small as a few acres..... The most iconic example perhaps on the planet is to fly into Borneo or Sumatra and look down from the airplane at the vast monoculture of oil palms that goes on mile after mile until you reach the small remnant national parks where Orangutans are holding on. A tiny island of natural ecosystem, of biodiversity surrounded by an immense mono culture of one of humans slave crops. The scenario in my head looks at the crash of demand for oil palm once consequences of human overshoot starts the retreat of our global population. As oil palm plantations are abandoned how long do you think it would take in Borneo for refuge populations of native ecosystems in those few remaining national parks to recolonize these areas? I have witnessed enough examples of this bounce back to be pretty confident at the answer.


Dohboi, since you recognize habitat destruction and invasive species as the current real cause of the rise in extinctions surely you should recognize that this is the one area where direct action can be taken, preserving remaining pockets and refuge areas that will represent the source material of biodiversity from where former human habitat will one day be recolonized.

The GW stuff is sadly not within our capability to mitigate, not with the inertia mentioned above. For this reason I see it as an ally to correcting human overshoot instead of something to fret over.

That is my rant on this topic.

If there is a last point it is that I have never trusted the concern over climate change while everyone was looking the other way over the cause no. 1 and cause no. 2 of extinctions. (habitat destruction and invasives)

If you want to know the really sad truth concern over climate change is more about preserving the status quo rather than changing it.

Fixing threats to human resiliency is not a good idea at this late stage of human overshoot. The concern over climate change reeks of this hypocrisy.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 18 May 2019, 21:42:05

It's not like any mass extinction of any type will have any lasting impact on those Kudzu Apes, either. Whether it is shortages of food or clean water, pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, etc. etc., the human species has both intelligence and technology, and computers never forget. If 1% of say 9 billion humans survive after the environmment crashes, they will have the existing tech including most of the production facilities and copious salvaged raw materials, and they will be throttled by the feeble energy sources available after fossil fuels are gone. The result is that that 1% (which is 90 Million apes out of 9 Billion) will expand in numbers, steadily and remorselessly, until they again reach the sustainable limit of humans on the planet.

Then they will keep reproducing, until the next collapse.

Although the popular misconception is that we all slip back to a lower level of tech, that idea is simply not credible. There is entirely too much productivity gain from digital technology, networking, and information systems, and humans will never again be without such. The network stretches from pole to pole and if the post-AGW equatorial zone gets too warm for comfort, we will still live there using technology.

Whatever animal capacity the wounded planet has will always be 95% Kudzu Apes. We are not going away. Nor is healing the planet necessarily going to happen, ever.

Time to take a step back from the popular misconceptions, to see them as the nonsense they are.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 May 2019, 15:37:40

I have to say the conjectures of Ibon and Kaiser are diametrically opposed. Ibon sees the demise of Kudzu Ape and the consequent reemergence of vibrant ecosystems as a distinct possibility. While Kaiser sees a ravaged and eventually almost dead planet but our perserverance and evolution/expansion into the Cosmos. Fascinating.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 May 2019, 15:51:38

onlooker wrote:I have to say the conjectures of Ibon and Kaiser are diametrically opposed. Ibon sees the demise of Kudzu Ape and the consequent reemergence of vibrant ecosystems as a distinct possibility. While Kaiser sees a ravaged and eventually almost dead planet but our perserverance and evolution/expansion into the Cosmos. Fascinating.



Both visions see an evolution of sorts. One vision though is a linear projection and the other is cyclical. Which do you think more closely mirrors the rhythms of the cosmos?

KJ's vision is bold but humans stay the same and it considers only technology as advancing. With this vision there was no where else to go but into the cosmos. Hive mind fusion with the digital matrix is sci fi fantasy. One only has to look at what the digital matrix has given us to date and it does not speak well for its further evolution.

My vision puts humans through the gristmill of human overshoot coming back out the other side with the possibility of some lessons learned. Lessons either fleeting and temporary or more deeply embedded in whatever culture perseveres. Humility and deference is not weakness, it is the back bone of long term resilience and therefore a great strength.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 May 2019, 16:07:27

Ibon, I bet your scientists/naturalists guests would find Kaisers ideas both odd and amusing. The resiliency that Nature possesses is what you in your expertise have tried to explain to us. This gives me hope for life on this planet. I for one would rather die than form part of this hive collective that Kaiser envisions
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 19 May 2019, 16:16:36

There is a third model to consider, and I think it best fits the data and climate models and trends we already
see developing. This model has three steps.

(1) Human caused global warming adversely affects and then destablizes human civilization. Years of coastal inundation and the loss of coastal cities and agriculture combined with severe weather, famine, heat waves and forest fires, flooding, mass migration combine to cause civilizational collapse.

(2) Natural global warming continues after human civilization collapse due to continued release of CO2 from permafrost, continental shelves, etc.

(3) The loss of habitat due to global warming is so severe that the mass extinction event affects all the species of earth, with potential losses of 10% to as much as 90% of all species now on earth.

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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 May 2019, 16:32:56

Plantagenet wrote:There is a third model to consider, and I think it best fits the data and climate models and trends we already
see developing. This model has three steps.

(1) Human caused global warming adversely affects and then destablizes human civilization. Years of coastal inundation and the loss of coastal cities and agriculture combined with severe weather, famine, heat waves and forest fires, flooding, mass migration combine to cause civilizational collapse.

(2) Natural global warming continues after human civilization collapse due to continued release of CO2 from permafrost, continental shelves, etc.

(3) The loss of habitat due to global warming is so severe that the mass extinction event affects all the species of earth, with potential losses of 10% to as much as 90% of all species now on earth.

CHEERS!


That is not exactly a model but is a possibility. I don't dispute the threat of extinction levels exceeding 5 or 10 %

So estimates range around 7 million species or organisms of terrestrial life on our planet at 2 million in our oceans.

Let's take everyones worst case scenario and put the extinction levels at 90%

That remaining 10% of 9 million is 900,000 species.

That is a pretty intense shuffling of the deck.

Last time around we got birds as a result.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 May 2019, 18:34:44

Well, just another feedback propelling us into a different climate regime
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/conten ... 3546141223
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Revi » Mon 20 May 2019, 14:44:56

Great article about how Peak Oil may save us, somewhat...

https://www.greenpeace.org/internationa ... s-climate/
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Plantagenet » Mon 20 May 2019, 18:19:20

Revi wrote:Great article about how Peak Oil may save us, somewhat...

https://www.greenpeace.org/internationa ... s-climate/


An interesting read, but the Greenpeace articles confuses "peak oil" and "peak conventional oil."

Yes we are at peak conventional oil.

No, we are not yet at peak oil because oil production from nonconventional sources like tight shales has proven to be much more prolific then the old "peak oil" theory predicted, allowing global oil production to continue to increase long after conventional oil production has plateaued.

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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 20 May 2019, 22:25:23

Sooo, this whole thing is 'for the birds'?? :)

Ibon wrote: "Refuge populations of flora and fauna is what will be key to minimizing the degree of extinction. "

I agree, and I applaud your efforts in this direction and I appreciate your rant/explanation.

But note that not all of us have been ignoring habitat destruction and invasive species. But my brother, who worked at a high level for World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly WWF), focused a lot on those issues, and I have noticed that we as brothers tend to avoid focusing much on the same issues/topic: I started taking Chinese in high school, but when he followed in my footsteps there, I switched to Sanskrit and the classical languages...So I was and remain very aware and concerned about those sides of the threats, but find my central focus has become GW (though in GW circles, I find myself often the one who points out that even if we managed to solve GW by some miracle, we would still have the larger crisis of loss of community of life on the planet to deal with.)

Anyway, I also share your (thin) hope that some humans will not only come through the bottle neck, but will also have learned some lessons. The recent election in Australia, however, does not help strengthen my faith in this scenario--a region pounded heavily by some of the worst that GW has inflicted on the planet so far, and yet they elected a climate-denying pro-coal administration...go figure. :cry:

I know that you seem to also be certain that GW will damage human civilization so much and so quickly that this GW-induced crash will actually allow for much of non-human life to bounce back a bit (Chernobyl-esque). Correct me if I get that wrong. But I have to say that Plant's scenario/model/possibility ...whatever... much more likely and much more in keeping with our best understanding of most other earlier mass extinction events.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 21 May 2019, 04:37:34

dohboi wrote:

I know that you seem to also be certain that GW will damage human civilization so much and so quickly that this GW-induced crash will actually allow for much of non-human life to bounce back a bit (Chernobyl-esque). Correct me if I get that wrong. But I have to say that Plant's scenario/model/possibility ...whatever... much more likely and much more in keeping with our best understanding of most other earlier mass extinction events.


Basically yes that is my position and it comes from a place that is well considered.
I see no evidence of human agency fixing the problem of human overshoot. As consequences continue to worsen what possible course change can happen that we pull some rabbit out of the hat at 1 second before midnight? Because as you yourself know being well read on the topic of GW we are indeed right now at about 1.2 seconds before midnight. That honest assessment made me humbly submit to the feedbacks as the agents of change. Not because I ultimately want that or am misanthropic. It comes from a logical conclusion.

That Kudzu Apes will be disproportionately effected by the consequences of anthropogenic GW is clear because of the extreme footprint we have on the planet and the very complex nature in how modern civilization functions globally. GW will be destabilizing. It already is beginning to do its job actually.

Long after human over population corrects and our species falls back to some fraction of our current population what is GW then without all those humans? Anthropogenic in origin yes but not any longer Anthropogenic in its course moving forward. However severe the extinction levels rise to , and Plantagent's assessment might be correct, the remaining biodiversity will adapt in the marvelous fecund nature of life on this planet. And this will take place as refuge populations from remaining natural ecosystems radiate out and move into all those former human landscapes. Hopefully somewhat better integrated with the remaining human beings who will no longer be Kudzu Apes. Is it possible that Homo sapiens will go extinct because of these events? Yes. Extinction is our eventual fate anyway by the way. Never under estimate human resiliency though. I don't believe we will go extinct any more than I believe that the extinction rates will reach that high of a percentage. Humans are resilient and so by the way is life on this planet.

This is my assessment. Not my choice of outcomes but it is my honest assessment.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Revi » Tue 21 May 2019, 10:28:19

Most of the tropics become uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperature. What were formerly temperate zones become difficult to live in due to storms and droughts. I wonder what portions of the earth will be habitable? Maybe it's time to get some land up near the Torngat mountains in Northern Quebec?
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 21 May 2019, 10:47:19

Revi wrote:Most of the tropics become uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperature. What were formerly temperate zones become difficult to live in due to storms and droughts. I wonder what portions of the earth will be habitable? Maybe it's time to get some land up near the Torngat mountains in Northern Quebec?


The equatorial regions around the world will have less extreme fluctuations of temperature than the higher latitudes. If you look at South American capitals like Quito, Bogota, La Paz they are all in high central valleys well over 9000 feet in altitude surrounded by millions of hectars of the Andes mountain range. From western Venezuela through Colombia, Ecaudor, Peru, Bolivia and down into Chile. A huge area of this geographic region today is Paramo habitat, tropical alpine grasslands above the tree line and in many places framed by snow capped volcanoes that reach over 6000m (19000 feet above sea level). These central valleys well up above 8000 feet are some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land today for potatoes and corn. There are millions of people who inhabitat these high central valleys in the Andes today as they did 500 years ago when the Inca empire dominated this region.

Uppermontane and cloud forest habitat will slowly drift up into the current Paramo habitat as the planet warms. These areas will remain very habitable for human beings for many mellinium, regardless of the severity of sea level rise and temperature rise.

Papa New Guinea has this same habitat. Highland areas of equatorial Africa as well.

Pockets of Homo sapiens will find refuge in high latitudes and higher elevation areas in equatorial regions.

Our planet is not monolithic, it is highly diverse.

The consequences of climate change will be a game changer, epic and in many regions brutal. Other areas will remain hospitable for human beings.

I like very much where I am sitting right now growing coffee at 6500 feet above sea level at the base of a mountain that tops off at over 9000 feet. If there is a family legacy here my grandaughter might be switching crops to plantains and moving the coffee up the slope of the mountain. Or maybe she will be brutally murdered by some descendants of indigenous people who will then move in here . In the big sweep of history of the story of humans this would be irrelevant.

If we consider how much genocide humans committed during the past 500 years as we ramped up to current Kudzu Ape status why would one think that the descent will be any less brutal???

Genocide is another one of those correction agents to human overshoot although this is one of human agency. Wars and genocide might be the only real contribution to the correction that comes from human agency. The rest will be external.

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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 21 May 2019, 19:20:34

Interesting that over at Arctic Sea Ice Forums there is a parallel conversation going on in the thread 'places becoming less livable,' and some of the wisest voices there (imho) concluded that highlands in the tropics and midlatitudes were safer places to be than the warming far north.

On your statement, "the extreme footprint we have on the planet," we can agree, but I would add that GW will eventually prove to be the most extreme and destructive footprint that we ultimately make on the living community of the planet and the systems that support it.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 22 May 2019, 06:36:13

dohboi wrote:On your statement, "the extreme footprint we have on the planet," we can agree, but I would add that GW will eventually prove to be the most extreme and destructive footprint that we ultimately make on the living community of the planet and the systems that support it.


GW is like plastic in our oceans, part of our footprint but actually more of a consequence that will linger long after our population recedes. Plastic breaks down in time and CO2 levels will as well and the complexity of life adapts.

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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 22 May 2019, 10:03:34

Perhaps, Ibon. But I'm curious about what you think about the claims that most previous mass extinctions were primarily driven by GW. Are they wrong? If so, why? If not, why wouldn't the current GW episode, the most rapid in the history of complex life, not cause at least as high a rate of extinction as the previous events?

Thanks ahead of time for your always-thoughtful replies.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 22 May 2019, 11:03:30

dohboi wrote:Perhaps, Ibon. But I'm curious about what you think about the claims that most previous mass extinctions were primarily driven by GW. Are they wrong? If so, why? If not, why wouldn't the current GW episode, the most rapid in the history of complex life, not cause at least as high a rate of extinction as the previous events?

Thanks ahead of time for your always-thoughtful replies.


I don't know enough to comment. More importantly, I don't know to what degree you can extrapolate comparisons to past events.
So many parameters make it doubtful you can draw apples to apples comparisons.

This is pure conjecture. And actually, I think mostly irrelevant to the issue we confront. Which is not so much trying to guess the long term trajectory of the consequences but rather how do we reel back the juggernaut of humanity.

As I mentioned in my above post we agree we are 1.2 seconds before midnight. So what agents besides external consequences are going to correct human overshoot. The only human agency I propose as viable short term is genocide and war.

The collective seems to sensing an overcrowded world. Brexit, anti immigrant sentiments, nationalization on the rise. And we need at this time a global alliance that all nations will commit to. Exactly when each country wants to go rogue.

So that is the issue more than anything else, more than the science of GW or whatever technology conversion from fossil fuels to electricity etc.

That is the main issue period.
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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 22 May 2019, 15:15:32

Ibon wrote:....the issue we confront... is .....how do we reel back the juggernaut of humanity.....that is the issue more than anything else, more than the science of GW or whatever technology conversion from fossil fuels to electricity etc.

That is the main issue period.


I agree.

Reeling back the juggernaut of humanity is a very poetic way to express the central problem facing humanity.

But for the earth, the problem is different.

The earth is having to deal with extremely rapid climate change.

And the earth, for a billion years, has responded to episodes of climate change by lurching into extreme climate responses that wind up exterminating much of the life on earth. These extreme responses are called "mass extinction events," and Its likely that the human juggernaut, through its foolish exploitation of fossil fuels, is releasing enough CO2 into the atmosphere to trigger off quite unpleasant responses from the planetary system. Our fossil fuel use is causing so much global warming that terrestrial ecosystems and habitats are being destroyed, the oceans are acifidifying to the point that shellfish can't grow shells, and normal climate patterns are being disrupted.

The ancient Chinese curse "may you I've in interesting times" is totally appropriate now. We are indeed living in interesting times.

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Re: Miocene Anthropocene Future

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 22 May 2019, 15:35:52

Up thread we were talking about how different latitudes and elevations will vary in coping with climate disruptions.

There is a gradient here, low lying island nations in the Pacific like the Maldives and some nations in Micronesia represent one extreme and high altitude fertile valleys like in the Andes of South America represent the other.

Coastal low lying cities in the mid latitudes like Miami and NYC and Charleston represent another extreme vs say Ashville NC or the Pacific Northwest representing another.

I did just have an insight, a glimpse into the future.

We wont ever have a global alliance of nations joining together in any effective climate mitigation. We may see a series of tepid "Paris" type bullshit agreements but nothing that will have any real teeth. Consequences are going to slowly get worse but for the first decades be very asymmetric in their impacts in reference to varying vulnerabilities in the examples of nations and bio regions mentioned above.

Why should Colombia in South America enter into any compromise regarding a global alliance when they will fare quite well while the Maldives disappear? Or why should North America, US and Canada, over extend themselves trying to save Bangladesh?

We are going to enter an epic with our global civilization where every nation will be impacted , but some will be losers far more severe than others. Those that have the good fortune of cooler climates and fertile agricultural lands will suffer as well but they will eek through. Other countries like the ME, some SE Asian countries will be devastated.

Even the mass extinction event that Plantagent refers to is not going to be monolithic, there will remain a lot of asymmetry in how severe the consequences are. Why do you think there even were survivors in past mass extinctions? Because of this asymmetry.

The point most relevant for all of us and for our children and grandchildren is to understand that climate change is going to break globalization and cooperation among nations as we have known this in the 20th century. Nation states are going to go rogue, go it alone, make loose alliances only in so far as it represents a win win for short term emergencies.

Nobody who hates Donald Trump wants to hear this but history will mark his presidency along with the Brexit issue as a major turning point in world affairs, the beginning of this splitting apart. His presidency will not be an anomaly in this regard. Maybe his tweets and perverted character but not his orientation regarding geo politics.

Newfie mentioned and I agree that there is collective awareness around the planet, among citizens and nation governments that there really is a human juggernaut and that Das Boot ist Voll. Do I need to even mention immigration?

We keep stating that only 5% understand global warming. I say bullshit to this. Most of the planets human inhabitants get it, even if they can not articulate it. And for those that aren't getting it governments are moving in directions where citizens will be socialized toward this brave new world.

That is my prediction as of May 22, 2019
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