Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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This is a great set of stats, linked below. It imagines all humans on the planet are boiled down to 100, then extrapolates all kinds of things. At the end is a test of memory and attention, which is also cool.

An example:
Think about this - If you live in your own home, are able to eat full meals & drink clean water, have a mobile phone, can surf the internet and went to college, you are in a minuscule percentage of the population and are a highly privileged person this day.

--snrp--

Amongst 100 persons in the world - only 8 will live or exceed the age of 65!

If you are already over 65 years old - be content, grateful and cherish life, grasp every moment.

If you did not leave this world before the age of 64, like the 92 persons who did pass before you, you are truly blessed amongst mankind. Take good care of your own health. Cherish every remaining moment.
https://extragoodshit.phlap.net/wp-cont ... com2_.html

Worth a few minutes, from the Extra Good Shit web site.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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These truths are self evident if you’ve done any traveling in the developing world. I remember taking a hot shower at home once after returning from the highlands of Bolivia on an extended backpack travel as a young man. I suddenly saw the small miracle for what it was: to have hot water coming from the wall at the twist of a knob. It felt so amazingly good I was happy, almost giddy. Simply a new perspective I gained from my travels after a lifetime of hot showers growing up in the United States.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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I may need to borrow a liver for extended stay. But I made it past 65. I don't feel privileged because I worked my ass off for it.
Been in some tough places like Bisbee in the upper Amazon where you get back and take a hot shower, or even a cold one is like OMG !
Even a couple weeks in the desert without running water it really tough.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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I too have seen some rough & very poor places traveling the world on the deck of a Warship. One of my adopted daughters has seen the worst abuse humanity has to offer - far worse than I have been through. I’ve seen 2 people burnt alive and a sailor loose his legs below the knee. All this gives me reason enough to have gratitude for the relative security and safety I live in. My parents and ancestors struggled so that I could be here and in some small measure of security and have an education to somewhat make sense of the forces of this world. It also gives me reason enough to be prepared and be involved in my community knowing how dangerously thin the veneer of western civilization is.


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Re: Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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My wife likes to say it’d be helpful if everyone knew their "expiration date" — as in the date you die. You know, for planning purposes. Of course, most of us don’t. Perhaps the closest thing a healthy person has to gauge longevity is life expectancy. For example, a baby born in the US in 2021 has an estimated life expectancy of about 76 years, according to the latest report from the National Center for Health Statistics. Our life expectancy varies depending on our current age, sex, race and ethnicity, and where in the US we live. Unfortunately, this new report shows a startling rise in death rates and decline in longevity.
COVID-19, drug overdoses, and accidental injury accounted for about two-thirds of the decline in life expectancy, according to the 2022 report. Other reasons included heart and liver disease and suicides. The drop in life expectancy would have been even greater if not for a bit of good news: decreases in deaths from chronic lung disease, pneumonia, influenza, and Alzheimer’s disease.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why ... 2210202835

My parents died in their mid to late 60s, I'm older and in much better health. I remember years ago visiting a CA state hospital as part of a college class, CA at that time housed 4,000 patients in that facility built for 2,000 patients. I came home grateful my family didn't have anyone with acute psychiatric disorders. Years later I worked on a disaster operation and saw up close poverty on an American Indian reservation, I was very grateful I had a job and an education.

Saw an article last week on the death of the oldest living person, a nun in France who was 118 years old. She lived through WWI and WWII and even survived COVID last year. She worked until she was 108, she attributed three things to her long life, working, a glass of wine and chocolate every day.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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Yeah, I turned 70 a couple weeks ago. I'm in the 8%. Not the 7% because beer. Yet, beer is proof that god loves us and that she wants us to be happy. I can live with that, just not quite as long as that lass with wine. So it goes.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Fascinating reasons for gratitude

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I am 67 this year and my wife is 64. Without the "miracle" of surgeries we've had would we be alive? While none were directly life-threatening, they would have killed us a few centuries ago. My hernias could have strangulated, we would have lose our first child without modern C-sections--or he would have been severely damaged (cord around his neck), her hysterectomy prevent bleeding out, etc, etc, etc. And, of course, Covid. I'm now on a 2nd course of Paxlovid because it flared up again after the 1st course was finished--and that's despite have 2 mRNA vaccinations and 3 mRNA boosters (including Omicron), I STILL caught it.

How much of this is because we live in our wonderful bubble? I

n my extended family, my 93 year old MIL is the last, since my father's youngest cousin just passed in her late 90's, and my wife's last aunt passed at around 90. Our generation--the boomers--have only lost 3, maybe 4. My wife's cousin of heart disease, another cousin of hers who vanished years ago and MAY be dead, and another of her cousins who died in the first Covid wave after stupidly insisting on going to their synagogue that was an early cluster. And I lost a cousin to Leukemia back in 1973--she was only 21.

It is my firm conviction that our ability to live so much longer than in previous centuries is due to two factors that cannot exist alone, but must exist together:
1st--The dynamic equilibrium of a true competitive compromising democracy, where laws are fairly imposed and enforced by executive, legislative and judicial entities, allowing for debate and the freedoms we recognize as "Western Democracy" that reaches from Japan to South Korea to Taiwan, to Australia and New Zealand, to parts of South America, most of North America, and, of course, Western Europe.

2nd--Free Scientific inquiry into virtually everything. There will always be freeloaders, cheats, and corporations that will GLADDLY let patients die rather than lower gouging prices on life-saving medicines, (See today's NYT art on Humira which costs $88,000/year and made $114 billion SINCE its patents theoretically expired). Everything from vaccines to anti-biotics to modern mRNA vaccines, surgical techniques, etc--all of modern medicine and ways to stay healthy have come from our "Western Democracies". Cuba being the very rare exception.

But as Western Democracies fall under threat, here, the UK, Italy, France, have fallen in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and failing in Greece, such progress falls back with it. And we see it. The US "The Greatest Nation in the World" mainly leads in GDP and military spending, but is falling behind in health care--unless you're in the elite or near-elite. Infant mortality in the US is about the same as Cuba, and far worse than all the other Western Democracies and this tracks directly to the rise of the radical reactionaries who misleadingly call themselves "Conservatives" when there's nothing conservative about them. Just as an example: 1.1 million Americans have died from Covid in just 3 years, when, had PROPER containment measures been put in place, that number would have 1/10th of that. Had Trump been re-elected that number would EASILY have reached 2 million because of his idiocy and fundamental evilness.

So as our Democratic Republic continues to hang on a thread, that everyday threatens to break, we shall continue to see our life-expectancy fall, our risk of not receiving available treatments for disease increase, it will all fall apart.

We've seen that in the greatest populations with either no democracy or failing democracy, their efforts at stopping Covid have been feeble--China, Brazil, India, Russia, and their medical research has either been faulty, or non-existent.

That's my thesis.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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