#declining population

[psych-meup]

"Why is no one having babies anymore?" They cry.

Gee, maybe because, since you made abortion a state's rights issue, I could die in several states if I get pregnant?

[unbfacts]

Ireland is the only country in the world with a smaller population today than it had in 1800.

[sergle]

this stupid fuckin youtube recommendation was specifically formulated in a lab to piss me off

"RED STATES"? YOU MEAN THE MAJORITY OF THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES???????????

[blendereels]

If you were to inspect the last remaining octopuses in Stain'd-by-the-Sea, you may be surprised to see that they are entirely black. Their ink is exceptionally dark and incredibly staining. As the octopus population has shrank and been pushed into smaller pools, the same few schools of octopi have been used for their ink, becoming gradually darker.

Stain'd octopuses were named after the town closest to their habitat rather than their discoloration, which is a recent development. The Stain'd octopuses that still live in the sea have retained their ability to change colors.

[peantisdeliriouts]

Anyway they won’t allow comments OR reblogs (my guess is so they can stay in their echo chamber and so they don’t have to own up to spreading misinformation) so I’m going to debunk this misinformation here on my own post.

Sharks are, in fact, NOT on the verge of extinction, that is clear by a simple Google search. Certain sharks species are ENDANGERED or VULNERABLE which has nothing to do with JAWS and everything to do with the fishing industry. Of course because they are endangered and vulnerable they RISK extinction in the future but they are not 'on the verge' of it.

List of endangered and vulnerable shark species

Sharks, rays, and similar species are killed NOT because of an American movie but because of overfishing of sharks. In certain cultures, shark fin soup is said to be medicinal and provide a wide range of health benefits. Despite no evidence of such being true, certain cultures still fish for sharks for their fins alone. This is deadly because of the way sharks breathe. They need to be in motion in order to breathe and without their fins they slowly suffocate to death.

Source of why sharks are currently endangered

Last, lets finally bring up JAWS and why this argument doesn't prove the point of "fiction can affect reality" in the way they think it does. JAWS causing people to be more afraid of sharks did NOT cause shark-finners and shark overfishing to occur or get worse. The "JAWS effect" doesn't actually exist in any meaningful way beyond people from the USA being more afraid of sharks. JAWS did not have that much of an impact in other parts of the world where shark fishing is common. Of course the movie JAWS DID inevitably lead to people killing sharks, but not nearly to the scale most assume. Shark-fishing tournaments were set up and fishermen at the time would catch as many sharks as they could. This did lead to a big decline of sharks in the US east coast due to the overfishing. Keep in mind that this, however, does not account for the millions of sharks killed for their fins every year.

Did JAWS have an impact on the way people (especially in English-speaking countries) saw sharks? Yes it did, the uneducated masses at the time had no idea how sharks actually functioned. Did JAWS cause a decline in shark populations in the US? Yes it did, fishing contests put in place greatly affected the sharks in the East coast of the US. Did this have a greater impact on shark populations as a whole and their decline? Nope! The biggest reasons sharks are endangered as they are now is because of overfishing, shark finning, and bycatch (catching a fish and then discarding it because it isn't the fish you desired/can sell).

Link 1 about the "JAWS Effect" myth

Link 2 about the "JAWS Effect" myth

[gaymurdersalad]

wait, do peter and dee know theyre at the same location?

[ Heya! I’ve been getting these kinda of questions a lot, and while it’s answered in the pinned intro post, I figure I’d just go ahead and clear it up. ]

[ Peter and Steven work at the same location while the rest of the cast kinda roams.

Jack is hopping from location to location to try and amend Dave and Henry’s utter bullfuckery, Henry is roaming around to do more bullfuckery, Dave is following both of them simultaneously and leaving a path of destruction wherever he goes, Dee is an ethereal entity and goes wherever she is needed, and Oscar just fucking wanders. Like what the hell does he even do anyways? Love that guy.

Hope this clears things up! If y’all still have questions don’t hesitate to ask! ]

~ Mod Chribs, Chribsfully

[scopophobia-polaris]

Whoa, writing and angry letter and throwing it out works, anyways, there has been a rise of smugness from Liberals on bsky recently and....im Garfield in their ear you see "you are not immune to propaganda" i whisper. You really want to keep bring up idiocricy like that? Well, what if we put you through the IQ test, huh? You think you'll get it? You think IQ is a real thing and not some cracker eugenisit shit? You think poors are dumb and overbreed like rabbits? Unlike higher class purer folk with big brains and money? Awwww you think we should outbreed? Outbreed people? For "IQ"? Like ELON? LIKE A FACIST.

[tartagliove]

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!!! i'm SUPER excited because i just heard my first mourning dove of the year! in fact it's still cooing outside the window WAHHHH i feel like it's been so long since i've heard one. so now i am having a fantastic start to my Friday >u< i hope you all will have a lovely day too!! <3

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is a troubling article by UT Austin economist Dan Spears on predictions that world population growth will peak sometime during the 2060s to 2080s, and then will rapidly decline. We all know on some level that human population growth cannot continue at this pace, but the sudden drop that experts predict in the near future is alarming--as are the predicted consequences of a rapid human population decline.

This is a gift 🎁 link that will enable anyone to read the full article, whether or not they subscribe to The New York Times. Here are some excerpts from this interactive article.

The global human population has been climbing for the past two centuries. But what is normal for all of us alive today—growing up while the world is growing rapidly—may be a blip in human history. Children born today will very likely live to see the end of global population growth.A baby born this year will be 60 in the 2080s, when demographers at the U.N. expect the size of humanity to peak. The Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna places the peak in the 2070s. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington puts it in the 2060s. All of the predictions agree on one thing: We peak soon.

And then we shrink. Humanity will not reach a plateau and then stabilize. It will begin an unprecedented decline. Because most demographers look ahead only to 2100, there is no consensus on exactly how quickly populations will fall after that. Over the past 100 years, the global population quadrupled, from two billion to eight billion. As long as life continues as it has — with people choosing smaller family sizes, as is now common in most of the world — then in the 22nd or 23rd century, our decline could be just as steep as our rise.

The article goes on to say:

[...] What would happen as a consequence [of a rapid decline in human population]? Over the past 200 years, humanity’s population growth has gone hand in hand with profound advances in living standards and health: longer lives, healthier children, better education, shorter workweeks and many more improvements. Our period of progress began recently, bringing the discovery of antibiotics, the invention of electric lightbulbs, video calls with Grandma and the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm disease. In this short period, humanity has been large and growing. Economists who study growth and progress don’t think this is a coincidence. Innovations and discoveries are made by people. In a world with fewer people in it, the loss of so much human potential may threaten humanity’s continued path toward better lives.

I encourage you to read the rest of this article. Whether or not one agrees with Dr. Spears's arguments, they are thought provoking.

[edited]

____________________ Sara Chodosh created the graphics in the article, which were used to create the above gifs.

[more-flotsam-and-jetsam]

Responses to poll by the Pew Research Center, June 2024

[lionsenpai]

right, the new and never before seen phenomenon of people being (checks notes) stupid, aggressive, or mentally ill lmao

[just-in-cays]

.

[caseoftheblues]

fuck. when was the last time i saw a butterfly

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

this creature haunts my every waking thought

[ophilosoraptoro]

Why American Sperm Count Dropped 41% in 50 years

[no-longer-in-the-laboratory]

|| CW--- MENTIONS OF SA ||

There's this trend on tiktok that's been going on for the past few years that's always bugged me. Well, not much of a trend as much as it is the status quo of the marine wildlife fan community on there. If you've been on sharktok at all, you've almost definitely seen it. Comments on cute videos of sharks about how "evil" dolphins are, people posting videos with scary music about how dolphins are rapists, that they're insanely cruel and sadistic, basically the stereotype of Shark: Evil & Dolphin: Good but reversed as this sort of "REAL marine biology fans know that dolphins are ACTUALLY the evil ones and SHARKS are the perfect sweethearts!" Sentiment.

These are wild animals. It is completely unfair to assign human morals to any of them, period. Dolphin species are declining at an alarming rate, as are sharks. Treating either of them like some sort of evil sea monster that goes around torturing people out of nothing but sheer malice isn't going to accomplish jack shit.

"but dolphins toy with their prey! It's torture!" So do cats.

"But dolphins also rape other dolphins" So do sea otters. So do penguins. So do squirrels, to the point where female squirrels have evolved methods of protection from the males of their species. They are not humans. Stop treating them as such. It is not fair nor productive to put animal behavior on par with abominable human crimes. We know better, they don't.

"Dolphins kill more people a year than sharks!" No they don't. Where the hell did you hear that even. Your chances of getting killed by either are extremely low.

The dolphin thing started off as a meme a few years ago, but it's stuck around as a sort of inside joke on sharktok and I'm just overall really sick of it.