July 15. Random links. Does Earth have a shadow biosphere? The idea is, we used to not know about microbes because we didn't know how to look for them, so maybe there are more kinds of alien life on Earth that we still don't know about. This opens a subject that I followed for years before I got into the anti-civ thing, and I'm still into it years later: fringe science. The book Biological Transmutations by Louis Kervran describes experiments where chemical elements seem to appear out of nowhere in sealed environments. Kervran thinks it's being done by known biological entities through unknown processes, but it could be the work of unknown entities. Getting weirder, Trevor James Constable wrote a book called The Cosmic Pulse of Life, where he claims to have used special photography to see giant amoeba-like creatures in the atmosphere. Weirder still, if you read enough Charles Fort and John Keel, you get a sense of shadow life on Earth that is not even exactly physical.
Reddit comment thread, How is it that most older men don't give a fuck? I hate the top answer, "Older men have real problems," because having bigger problems as you get older is nothing to brag about. But farther down there are lots of great answers. In my experience, every time something bad happens and you recover from it, you no longer fear that thing.
How virtual reality porn could bring about world peace. The author tries several kinds of VR porn and they're all lame, but one is interesting:
If everyone sat down, popped some goggles on and saw what it was like for someone of a different gender or sexuality to have sex, our shared empathy would go through the roof. At the next G8 summit, Cameron and Obama and Putin should all experience first-hand how gruesome it is to be humped by a horny bloke.
He's mostly joking, but I still think he's too optimistic. Look at how the internet puts all the knowledge of history at our fingertips, and people use it mostly to confirm what they want to believe, not to challenge themselves. If we have a choice, we'll tend to use virtual reality the same way.
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