⸶ overshot ⸷

“Overshoot” is a nice word, several meanings to it. This, the year of our Lord 2023's earth overshoot day, for example, fell on August 2. And when Voltaire's Candide was first published in 1759/277, less than 250 years ago, there were less than 800 million people on this, the best of all possible worlds — a literal tenth of today's 8 billion.

On this page with “overshoot” I merely mean to refer to content I hadn't the time to jot down somewhat properly elsewhere on this site. The links below are in no other order than when I came across them.

And then, not too long after 🇲🇦 Morocco got shook by a quake, torrential weekend rains killed thousands of people in 🇱🇾 Libya as dams burst in a country made up of desert. 😶

srsly such misery..

And meanwhile, more wildfires ignite all over new places; and we learn the Amazon rainforest, lung of the earth, may turn into savanna in a future coming for us too soon. One too many faster-than-expecteds, there truly is no end to it, so perhaps there's no point in continuing to add bullets to this list. So let's maybe not, and stop. Near-total resignation the only recourse, this is how things will be getting worse and worse, as they get worse.

Tom, 15/9/23

PS: And yet, a 7/11 addendum.. Higher up my insufficiently educated self couldn't really make sense of the concept of a “five-sigma” event, but apparently yesterday we found ourselves in an UFB six-sigma predicament. 🤔 I don't understand these words; my worn soul will have to settle for ever higher degrees of “fabulously unlikely”, faster than faster than expected — all semblance of normality gone, unfathomable gobsmack. 😔

Pulling our predicament back into the abstract, things become gloomy. Stepping back from harsh science and straight-up facts, handing over said predicament to sentiment and pondering — oh, the humanities.. The Medea hypothesis; and capitalism, or human civilisation, as a cancer..

We really did have everything, didn't we?
⿻　I mean, when you think about it.

Had I had Leonardo's poetic license clout, I'd have added another "to have", as we really had to have, and then indeed had everything, didn't we? Living a life more luxurious than that of kings and emperors of yore.. Here in the north, at least, because in the south it always remained more like miserable peasants, still. So who's to blame? Plenty of blame to go around, but it won't be you or me, the populace gobbling it up and mostly unwittingly, mostly powerlessly paying dearly for it. An arm and a leg. “Reagan and Nixon killed us all” 😔 and #ExxonKnew.

Crazy to think about, but ultimately it was all mere high school playground vibes, rehashed as adults, magnified in fossil euphoria, and with accordingly dire adult consequences. Like a toddler with a gun, or a Weimar Germany with a grudge and tanks. It literally took just a few dozen banally evil, nasty, greedy, willingly or/and dim-wittedly short-sighted psycho motherfuckers on a power trip, accumulating petty worldly personal wealth. These revolting blowhards with an obligatory pathologically vain, insatiable, voraciously anal hard-on for eternal, ever-growing growth, literally chose to.. yes what, literally. End. Us & It. all.

the game is closed..

Much thanks guys. Total madness. Gobsmacking insanity. We were too late to recognise you as our Great Filter. Clogged with filth, but no replacement filters were available anyway.

As a rule, I have no love for the death penalty or eyes for eyes (Exodus 21:24), but these people truly deserve something unthinkable, far worse and more humiliating. At least, for whatever that's worth, when all has shrivelled up and crumbled into ash and no amount of wealth can save (never mind feed) them anymore, their spawn, the rich – mayhaps consisting of 99% mucky scum of the earth – will probably be among the last to die.

Living the luxury life an agonizingly vivid, close and ever-burning aching memory. I hope, nay wish anguish full of cold tears, nay breathtaking fiery lonely fear will be their sole companion for a good long last while, keeping them alert and conscious up until their final wasted miserable smelly breaths. Their tired fading, maybe confused souls wondering “why couldn't I see”, as their sight glazes away, their eyeballs break, and their broken ego dissolves into puny oblivion. Where they won't be warmly welcomed by the rest of us. Maybe we'll be in purgatory and, at times, allowed and able to laugh at them in hell.

MEGAPHONE