Enough of this meta Meta social media stuff from me today. I'm an artist and I really ought to be posting art. Here's a gouache #painting of some trees I did 23 years ago, when I was 19. There are more of these and I'm gonna toot them.
Here's another gouache #painting, from 23 years ago. These paintings were done from life on a wine tour I did with my grandfather in Victoria, Australia (I was 19 and knew less than nothing about wine*). I the river in this picture is the Murray or one of it's tributaries. #art
*Now I'm 42 and while my experience with wine is prodigious, I still know nothing.
One popular solution to the Fermi paradox (the mystery of the universe seeming so empty of life except for earth) is called “The Dark Forest” solution. This is the idea that there is life out there in the stars, but, like a soundless forest menaced by a great predator all the other living civilizations have the good sense to keep silent and not attract attention— except for us. We don’t know any better— yet.
@futurebird@john It's also a question of time. Round-trip messaging can take thousands or millions of years at the speed of light, and we've been signalling and listening for only a few decades. Maybe we'll get a reply long after our sun has burned out.
@futurebird@john My favourite explanation is that civilisations don't survive their Industrial Age for long enough to spread out into space. Once they begin using a lot of energy and raw materials, they ruin their home planets' biospheres and collapse. If they survive, they return to a low-tech life without any chance of another Industrial Revolution.
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