Iunnrais

As a kid, I’d hoard Halloween candy and eat it one bit at a time over the course of months. My parents never threw it out, and I’d typically still have some of last year’s candy when the next Halloween came round. Chocolate never goes bad, in the sense that it is dangerous to eat it— it just separates out which might not taste as good, but if you don’t mind that, it’s fine to keep around. I was fine with it. And of course, my favorites were always the hard candies and other sugar based ones, not the chocolate anyway.

I mean, it’s possible, but I still find the “bored people plus tendency towards cruelty to animals” theory more credible.

I mean, it is. Always has been. Pretty sure the scholarly record supports it pretty darn well.

Studies have shown that more expensive placebos are genuinely more effective than cheaper placebos. Not in the sense of, “har har, it’s a placebo, 2x effectiveness of zero is still zero” but actual reported higher rates of improved health and diminished symptoms.

It works in a similar way with audiophiles. The sticker shock is part of the effectiveness for them.

Before potassium mines and nitrogen extraction methods were discovered, bird droppings, typically from islands that were covered in mountains of the stuff, were the main source of fertilizer in the world and the main limiter of human population. Without these sources of bird poop, literally millions, potentially billions, would have died. You remember malthusianism? A fair bit of that was based on not having enough bird poop.

That only works when people are able to successfully find a comfortable place in the system, then the urge to say “fuck you, got mine” grows more and more, making conservatism increasingly likely. But when the system breaks and multiple entire generations stop getting theirs, FUGM stops being a possible option— you ain’t got any to say got mine about.

Accumulated lead poisoning over decades also helps contribute to an increase in likelihood of conservatism as a person ages. Perhaps even more substantially than what I said before.