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My dude, only 24 years have elapsed in this century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century, the 25th year has only just started. Try again next year.
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Extreme poverty worldwide is down from 38% to 8.5% since 2000. Global median income has doubled in that period. And yes, that’s adjusted for inflation.
Oh, and renewable energy generation as share of the global energy mix has consistently beaten expectations during that period, too. Solar, specifically.
Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise. The extreme poverty crap is propaganda by the world bank who lowered the poverty line for no other reason than to make capitalism look good.
That stuff about renewaple energy is simple greenwashing. The only year since 2000 when CO2 emissions went down was in 2020 thanks to COVID.
Doesn’t look that way to me, given that the change has been pretty smooth and shows up on specific regions and adjusting for outliers and inflation (and matches the rise in median income).
More importantly, it’s not incompatible with global inequality on the rise. Different stats measure different things.
Renewable energy beating expectations is the opposite of greenwashing, it specifically compares actual generated renewable energy against previous projections. If you want to poke holes into it for the sake of… denying anything good has ever happened, I guess? you should instead point out at how disproportionately that growth is driven by China.
And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.
And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.
The only reason to care about renewables is if they prevent climate change. Why am I supposed to be happy solar panels exist, if CO2 emissions are increasing?
Because more solar means that the increase in CO2 was much less than it would’ve otherwise been without solar. An ocean liner doesn’t turn on a dime. First emissions increase less than they would’ve, then they increase at rates lower than years past, then they stop increasing, and then finally they can begin decreasing
Because those are two separate parameters. Less solar panels don’t mean less CO emissions, they mean more. You are cutting down on one metric even if you’re not reversing the trend.
That is an absurd question, by the way. Why are you supposed to be unhappy we’re making more solar panels in this scenario? What is the downside?
Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise.
You are one of the many who has equivocated the ‘wealth gap’ with the incidence of poverty, when there is no direct casual relationship between them at all.
All the wealth gap essentially is is just a label of who has the most wealth. But you don’t need to be anywhere close to that to be stable/comfortable.
Fact: if everyone on Earth was poor, the wealth gap would be zero. A small/non-existent wealth gap does not equal things being in good shape.
Fact: The correlation between the size of the gap and the incidence of poverty in world history is negative–in other words, long ago, the gap was smaller, and many more people were desperately poor.
Fact: It is absolutely possible for there to be a wealth gap, even one as large or larger than the one we have presently, while no one is poor. Further, it’s extremely unlikely that the hypothetical total eradication of poverty would shrink the gap at all, or even slow its growth.
Fact: If you waved a magic wand so that everyone in every county of the US, for example, had their income raised to the median, essentially wiping out poverty nationwide, the size of the wealth gap would literally be unchanged–the gap from broke to comfortable is nothing compared to the gap between comfortable and ‘wealthiest on the planet’.
New wealth is created constantly, it is not zero sum and never has been. And there will always be someone who has the most.
P.S. The World Bank’s poverty line has never been lowered that I can see, only raised, most recently in 2022 from $1.90 to $2.15 per day. So no idea what you’re talking about with ‘lowering the poverty line to make capitalism look good’.
Interesting video, thanks. I think the main point is that most (historical) data has a lot of gaps and wrong interpretations / extrapolation. People like Pinker seem to (perhaps just ignorantly) somewhat cherry pick data and use it as an argument for their optimistic statement.
More plebs suffering under capital owners = global poverty rate went down
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I guess that’s why America has so many school shootings 🤡
Name another country with the same problem
I don’t know too much about the median income, but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off. Also, at least according to Wikipedia, the latest definition of extreme poverty was made in 2015, before the recent inflation spikes.
And “beat expectations” is just a non-statement. What were the expectations? And how does it matter if we’re still on track for a climate catastrophe? We’ve crossed the 1.5°C target.
but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off.
That’s what happened. The bimodal world income distribution has become unimodal as the working class of East Asia has seen a lot of improvement. Inequality in the first world went up since a lot of working class jobs left their countries while the wealthy were able to get richer.
Hey, I’ll take poor countries getting a bit better off before any benefits to any American any day. That’s good news, so point made.
As for “beat expectations”, I was going off a specific study showing multiple official forecasts and how far behind actuals they all were, but unfortunately I don’t have it handy.
But the data is the data, so here’s another example from an Australian blog post: https://evcricketenergy.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/2030-renewables-in-australia-forecast-2024-update/
And some data on renewable generation overtaking fossil fuels in the EU: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2024/09/Report_Wind-and-solar-overtake-EU-fossil-fuels-in-the-first-half-of-2024.pdf
I don’t know why people look at this as such a binary. Climate change isn’t an on-off switch. This has to happen regardless. Faster is better than slower. Climate catastrophe or not, we need to figure this out, it’s about how bad things get before we do and how much extra work and impact we have to deal with from going over certain thresholds. Going over 1.5 doesn’t mean we can give up now, we still have to get the renewable transition done, even if now we also have to deal with a bunch of humanitarian crises that wouldn’t have happened had we transitioned sooner.
Lord of the Rings (movies) came out this century. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
JRR Tolkien would like a word.
I know the sorts of words he likes, and I just haven’t got that kind of spare time right now.
It feels to me like it all went to shit when Bush stole the election from Gore - using the Supreme Court I might add.
I’m 37 this year and I remember being a kid at a time when we were all more optimistic and well off. When a middle class existed in the west. When we were told the world was our oyster and we just had to study and work hard to get anything we wanted. That piece of advice was valid to a handful of us millenials, diminishing to those born in the 1990s. My husband is 31 and has never been on an overseas holiday - the differences in privilege just being born 6 years later are stark and upsetting. It’s only gotten worse for younger generations and the people who did all this are cackling as they push their boots in harder on our throats.
As a pacifist I just don’t know what to do anymore other than try to live my life among the damned and hope it resolves itself before something comes for me and mine.
Born 1980 remember all the privilege we had before that day. Hell at 19 I lived on my own in one bedroom apartment. I remember working at Walmart in my 20’s and still afford to have an apartment of my own. Started to go down hill in 2006. Before then I never needed roommates or someone else help pay bills.
Even at 22 making 6.25 an hour and had a studio apartment. You couldn’t do that now on 12 an hour. Not without living in a getto.
Well, that was a soft coup, so yes.
They literally ignored election results.
yeah i;m 41 and remember when i could buy ammunition without a question asked, when i was 10, and canadian. ive been fucking mad at the federal government for 30 fucking years over their demanding i give an open search warrant to the cops to legally possess what was over the counter to me as a child. “what radicalized me” fucking federal Liberals
The first quarter of this century is over at the end of 2025.
2001 was the first year in this century. 2025 is the 25th year in this century. 2100 will be the 100th - and last - year in this century.
(1 was the first year in the first century, 100 was the 100th - and last - year in the first century. That’s why every subsequent century starts on xx1 or xxx1 as well)
So 2000 was still 2nd millennium?
Yes, but most people ignored it and celebrated the new millennium at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000 anyway.
See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium#Debate_over_millennium_celebrations
It’s quite interesting. For example Fidel Castro made sure that Cuba celebrated correctly at the end of year 2000. And the U.S. Naval Observatory, official timekeeper for the country, held a party for the new milennium then too.
Can’t we just redefine it? That doesn’t seem reasonable in my mind.
(This is a joke, I know how awful that would go)
We have redefined it. The thing about language is no one controls it. If enough people want to call 2000 the start of the new millennium, then that’s when it was. It’s all arbitrary numbers anyway.
I meant in the sense of “Make Year 1 Year 0, shift all dates back one year, cause a lot of headaches when dealing with dates written down before year shift vs after year shift, but at least the 3rd millennium now properly starts at 2000”, but you have a better point
If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000. But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.
Don’t you remember all the pedantic asshats saying that 2000 wasn’t a new century? “There was no year zero!”, “People just want all the digits to change!”, “You’re celebrating a year early!”
I don’t, to be honest. I wasn’t exposed to much pedantry back then. I wasn’t exposed to many people on general, but that’s not a conversation for this place :D
I’m an old fart who graduated high school in '99, so I was right in the middle of all the blossoming internet pedantry.
You’re in a safe space among friends here, feel free to expose yourself whenever you want!
…wait…
Expose myself? What kind of amateur fighter do you take me for?
oooh that kind of expose!
Nah, I had no PC or internet, not many friends and my parents didn’t do a lot of the “meet up with other parents so the kids can play together” stuff because we’re all socially dysfunctional.
They’ve now moved on to “water isn’t wet, it makes things wet”.
I guess it’s nice they want to be smart at least, even though their idea of smart is to copy some bit of pedantry they saw someone else do.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
But people chose to celebrate the new millenium in 2000 because it’s much more fun to have every single digit in a calendar year change than having only one digit change and calling it “a new millenium”. Also, January 1, 2000 looks and feels so much cooler in my opinion, unless you write it in the dd/mm/yy format (mm/dd/yy wouldn’t make much of a difference), in which case 01/01/01 has that nice satisfying feeling of all variables being the same value.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
That was the point of my question, the disbelief of “wait, 2k is the last year and not 1999?”
And I think it would be even easier if one could just look at the thousands digit and tell from that. It would be even more easier if the millennia and years and such were all 0-indexed, so you’d have the zeroth millennium spanning 0-999, the first millennium 1000-1999, the 19th century would be 1900-1999…
Would be nice, but unfortunately you can’t change a calendar system the world is so incredibly used to. Just the change from the Julian to the Gregorian was a massive change.
I know, I can but dream…
On a 1’ ruler, the first half inch ends at 0.5". All of the measurements within that first inch are “0.x”. “1.x” will be in the second inch. “2.x” is in the third inch.
Calendars don’t work like that. 1 January 1AD is in the first year, not the second. 31 December 1AD is still in the first year.
364 days after his (ostensible) birth was December 31st, 1AD. At midnight that night (364.999… days) 1 full year was complete, and we entered the second year.
3650 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 11AD.
36500 days after 1 January 1 AD is 1 January 101AD.
365000 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 1001AD.
31 December 2000 was the last day of the second millenia. The first day of the third millenia was 1 January 2001.
Year 1 AD would have started on March 1st, as Pope Gregory hadn’t happened yet. Also, no-one knew they were in the Julian Calendar AD yet either.
See, the ruler analogy is why I was so confused, because that’s how, intuitively, I would have expected it to work. I just never actually checked if that’s correct, and now it turns out that it’s not.
2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.
That makes it even worse
Yes, the third rolled in 1 jan 2001.
That doesn’t make much sense though, year 0 does exist. We define our calendar based on Jesus’s supposed birth year, not his birth year+1. Or?
Year 0 doesn’t exist because it’s either before or after Christ being born. What would year 0 be?
There’d also be asymmetry if there was a 0 A.D. but no 0 B.C. (as that wouldn’t really make sense)
Yeah, year 0 doesn’t exist, it goes 1BC -> 1AD
Only programmers start counting with 0. All the normal people start with 1.
You mean normal people start at 0 and non-programmers sometimes start at 1?
How many apples are you holding right now? Is it less than 1? How would you count that?
When I write that normal people start at 1 then I mean that normal people start at 1, funny enough. Also, I am currently holding 0 apples. No need to start counting.
Sounds like you started counting at zero apples.
Is 0.5" within the “first inch” of a ruler?
1AD is every date within the “first year”.
0.5 years after his ostensible birth is a date within that first year: 30 June 1AD.
1.5 years after his birth is not within that “first year”; it is within the “second year”, or 2AD. Just like 1.5" is a measurement that falls within the “second inch” of a ruler.
No? It’s not 2026 yet
Is the year 2020 part of this century?Edit: am dumb
Yes but 2000 was not.
Sorry, I meant 2000, and thinking about it, yes I guess that’s correct
Found Arthur C. Clarke
So much good stuff has happened (in addition to all the bad stuff that also happened). The US elected its first black president. The ACA although far from perfect is a massive massive improvement over the situation that existed before it. There have been lots of improvements in medicine like rna vaccines, which have been in development for decades, and thankfully all that hard work came to fruition right when the world needed it and it saved millions of lives worldwide.
And tons more good stuff happened. We’re talking about 25ish years, so of course tons of good stuff happened in addition to everything else
Let’s see if the the ACA survives or if it’s replaced with concepts of a plan.
I ate a really nice curry in 2014.
I learned how to make a really nice curry.
And that places closed a week later because of health code violations right?
It’s not over until next year.
Has anything good even happened?
Yes, definitely. Americans are realizing that their country is shit too and they are not exempt from falling into an Autocracy. Maybe that will teach them a bit more compassion with other people around the world and will stop the arrogance of bringing “democracy” (because it’s “clearly the best form of state”) to countries who don’t want it.
The american system is not a guarantee for the wellbeing of the people, and now that americans finally understand that, we can start actual constructive dialogue based on mutual respect, i hope.
Lol, ok, they totally didn’t realize their country used to be good and will vote for anything thatll fix it, or at least, shake the fucking jar.
The country has always failed its people, and those of other nations worldwide.
Not according to those who think that the new century only began in 2001 because the Christian calendar has no year 0 or smth.
So in the year 2000 it wasn’t a new century? Seems pretty stupid
Yep. That’s because there can’t be a “0th year after that one geezer was born”. It’s -1 BC (the last year before) and then immediately 1 AD (the first year after).
(I know they did the calculations wrong and it should actually be somewhere around -6 to -4. That doesn’t change the fact that there is no year 0.)
Of course there can be an 0th year.
Kids don’t start at 1 because they can’t be 0, you start counting by days weeks and months and then years. This wasn’t even a problem though, because in the 0th year people weren’t walking around referencing dates according to whatever calendar we use.
If no years have elapsed then it’s the 0th year.
It sounds to me as though some idiot named the 0th year “1”, which just happens to be a numeral.
Kids start at 0 because they’re not yet 1 year old. They’re only 1 year old after their first birthday and during the second year of their life. Jesus wasn’t 1 year old during year 1, it was just year number 1 after his (supposed) birth.
Edit: I just remembered: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning
How 'bout we don’t give a fuck and use a sensible system instead?
What did I do to you…? I was just explaining what the reasoning for “there’s no year 0” is. I don’t agree or disagree with it. What would be a more sensible system exactly? One based on anything other than the birth of a mythological figure? Sure. Got any suggestions that are implementable without exorbitant effort?
Just adding a year 0 would be enough. Other than that, the human era.
You know that would shift every year after 0 one down, yes? We’d be in 2024 now. That doesn’t seem easily implemented.
That’s… not the only option. We could also shift down everything below 1. Sure, that would shift some historical dates, but would not really affect any part of modern life. And we already have situations where we need to account for different calendar systems (e.g. the October Revolution actually happened in November, according to our current calendar), so we know the world doesn’t end. And when Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar, which was more complicated than adding a 0 somewhere, the world didtend either.
So you’d want the year leading up to Jesus’ (supposed) birth to be 0. Okay. Why though? Never mind that it doesn’t make sense to start counting at 0 (calling the first instance of something the “0th” instance), I’m still puzzled over what the benefit would be. I’m not saying the world would end, I’m just not seeing why.
Russia switching to the Gregorian calendar was aligning itself with its neighbours, the world has changed significantly since then, having the “correct” date, i.e. the same as everybody else, has become A LOT more important.
Boomers 401k and McMansion values exploded
Their rich owner daddies got richer
Rest of working people gonna need to work harder so they can live their best lives!
I met and married an amazing person this century, so I’ve got that going for me which is nice.
Congratulations! Same here!
Congratulations! Same here!
Congratulations! Same here!
Obviously not everywhere but marriage equality made great strides.
Saw this post right below:
“# Steam On Linux Ends 2024 With A Nice Boost To Its Marketshare, AMD Linux CPU Use At 74%”
Steam is frankly a horrible measure of Linux adoption because of the Steam Deck. I guarantee that most of the Linux users on Steam are people with Steam Decks that do not use them as their main PC.
