#dan spears

[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.

[lowkeyren]

the whole 2.5 was a wild ride ngl

[windtorndagger]

Yanqing, running into Jing Yuan's room to ask for more money for swords: General! General!

Dan Heng, who had been up all night adding to the data bank while Blade and Jing Yuan played chess: Jing Yuan, please stop your child.

Yanqing: uh

Dan Heng: shit

Blade, who is a very light sleeper: I'll give you a couple thousand Strale if you leave right now and not tell a single soul, including Jing Yuan, this happened.

Yanqing: Deal!

Dan Heng, groaning into his pillow that they got found out: We are never going to live this down.

Blade: Could be worse. Could have been March 7th or Silver Wolf.

(Meanwhile Jing Yuan, pretending to be asleep, struggles to hide his smile.)

[feroluce]

So excited for today's post- @hydrachea has given me permission to share these text messages she made! ♡

The second one nearly had me crying because BOOTHILL TRYING TO FLIRT, DAN HENG MISUNDERSTANDING BECAUSE OF HIS ROWDY NATURE, AND BOOTHILL JUST STRAIGHT UP OFFLINING ABOUT IT SNZKKZMSKZKSKKS

[yonpote]

i mean, im a barbie-

[Video transcript:

Phil voice-over: Are we puppets that are just controlled by the audience?

Dan voice-over: (crosstalk) Are we just two Ken dolls-

Phil: Ken dolls...

Dan: -that people should get angry about- I mean, I'm a Barbie-

Phil: I was an emo Ken.

Dan: -If people don't- if we don't do what they want?

/End of transcript.]

[anne20055]

BREAKING MY SILENCE:

i have no idea why Toxic by Britney Spears is important

[lokislittlelad]

Andrew hates the word 'please' because of the dynamic it implies for him. See, it's the victim (Andrew) begging the one in power (Drake) to stop the abuse, to stop in whatever action that's driving fear into him. Now imagine, once again, the Katelyn scene. She's begging him and he's pinned her. What do you think he remembers when the word 'please' is uttered more than once? Not only used in his presence, but directed at him. I think it hits him hard, he's finding himself on the recieving end of what his countless abusers faced. He, at least in his mind, has become them. It's why he hates the word so much, it isnt as cut and dry as 'he associates it with the rape and is pulled back there', he is but this time he's the one hurting just like his abusers did and it terrifies him because he knows he isn't doing what they were doing to him. He still knows what it's like to beg and have it accomplish nothing. So, is this something anyone else thinks about or is it just me?

[disast3rtransp0rt]

Watching the "Quiet On Set" documentary with my boyfriend reminded me of meme rap Joji wrote right before he became Joji (i.e., when he was still Filthy Frank). A song my bf showed me ages ago that references everything mentioned in the documentary.

Except the song came out in 2017.

I mean, it's aimed at edgy humor Weird Guys from that era of the internet, but it's tangible proof that Schneider's pattern of behavior - and a wider pattern of abuse from the entertainment industry - has been an open secret for over a decade.

Enough that some random YouTube shitposter could make a semi-satirical rap about no longer being able to jerk off to children's television in his 20's because he's "not into kids".

THIS IS ALMOST A DECADE OLD NOW!!! A DECADE AGO PEOPLE WERE POINTING THIS SHIT OUT!!!! He called Schneider out by name in 2017 and Nickelodeon wouldn't cut ties for another two years.

I think some people forget how drastically the #MeToo movement changed our social norms in regard to workplace harassment. It's becoming harder and harder for abusive assholes to get away with shit. All the groups they'd usually leverage sociopolitical power against before (primarily anyone who wasn't a white cishet landowning man) now has backup and receipts and solidarity. And it's scaring them because they're getting more and more sneaky.

Don't let them be sneaky.

Let's keep this momentum going and make the entertainment industry safer. All industries, really. Let's Hold Abusers Accountable in 2024.

[thefigureresource]

Nendoroid Dan Heng [Honkai: Star Rail] from Good Smile Company coming June 2024.

[phangays]

NOT TOXIC

[evilkaeya]

the new hsr event quest took a 180° turn at the end... I need the continuation nowww 😭😭

[phoneyotc]

the new meds I take give me fucked up dreams lol

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

this is going to be a very uncomfortable and potentially triggering conversation so i suggest you scroll past if you have a lot of empathy because this isn't fun at all

also wanna preface this by saying i'm not interested in spreading conspiracy theories or "truther" claims because i feel that's incredibly disrespectful and potentially harmful to the people that need the most help. any allusions to unverified rumors will be presented as uncorroborated, not as fact (only bringing them up because i know that's the kind of rumor floating around and i don't want to seem like i'm participating somehow in dismissing concerns). because we simply don't know. and it's not our business.

i've had this bad feeling about amanda bynes for the past decade. it's the same pattern we've seen with child stars over and over again. the drugs, the mental breakdown, the conservatorship. but i pushed those nagging thoughts away. i didn't have the bandwidth at the time because i was living in an abusive household when her most public battles were happening. i didn't have the time or the emotional understanding to put towards what was happening to her even as i felt it mirrored what i was going through or what my mom was going through. then i found out about dan schneider a few years ago. i didn't really engage with the rumor and speculation about him - i was in my early 20s when this all broke and i didn't know most of the shows he'd been involved with except by the fact that my younger siblings watched them. i'd been an amanda bynes fan - hugely into the amanda show and what i like about you. my siblings watched drake and josh, icarly, and victorious. i didn't have the emotional bandwidth at the time to look into what people were saying. i knew it would upset me if i learned too much. but i couldn't stop thinking about amanda.

i heard about quiet on set from news websites. i saw the headlines about drake bell. it shook me to my core. the things i was reading were horrific and immediately put me in mind of what my sister went through as a teenage survivor of repeated sexual abuse by a man who was trusted with our care. she'd had a huge crush on drake when we were growing up. i wonder if she's heard about this.

this immediately made me think about amanda again. this time i couldn't push the thought away. i guess i'm finally ready to process the way this whole situation has felt to me.

the way people talk about amanda reminds me of how people in the 50s talked about judy garland. child star with incredible talent, far beyond her years, with incredible charm and personality and the whole world at her fingertips. everyone loved working with her. until she became erratic and had a mental breakdown fueled by drugs. (you could even argue there were parallels because both women were frequently typecast as the wholesome girl next door and not really allowed to break out of that infantilizing box.) and no one could ever think why. why does this happen.

i've come to believe that mental illness always has a cause. brain chemistry fucked up by trauma, whether that's long-term stress or a singular event or repeated traumas stacking on top of each other. the mind can't cope. i really, truly believe something horrific happened to amanda bynes. and i know people will say, well, maybe it wasn't dan schneider. she was doing fine for years after she stopped working with him. i want to make one thing very clear. trauma doesn't always manifest symptoms immediately. not everyone comes out of a trauma looking shell shocked. i know from my experience because i didn't have my breakdown until a year after my abuser was exposed and i'm still feeling the consequences to my psyche to this day. and i think it must be difficult for child stars to process this trauma. the pattern i've seen is the child star endures something terrible, gets incredible fame and begins taking on more and more pressure, then when this isn't enough to make them happy they turn to drugs. you think because they got out that it would all just go away? no. they were raised to play characters so they played those characters. there was incredible pressure to just play those characters because that's what the fans want. having struggles isn't part of the brand. it had to be especially rough on nick stars because there wasn't much separation between them and the characters they played. it was the amanda show. drake and josh used their real first names. the separation between who they were and who the character was was probably a very blurred line.

i wonder how long this documentary has been in production. tracking down these people and petitioning courts had to have taken ages. amanda was supposed to be at 90s con last year but cancelled due to illness and had another psychotic episode. 90s con itself may have been a trigger for her, but if someone had reached out to her or if she'd heard about this production...i could see that triggering her and making her relive the horror she went through. there are so many unsubstantiated rumors floating around. i can't speak to whether she was high on adderall during that interview when she was 12 (she could've just been a hyper child but they could've been pulling a judy garland on her and i don't trust these people plus she's said she got hooked on adderall when she was a teenager for weight loss but she may not feel comfortable disclosing if the studio has her under NDA). i can't verify if that side twitter actually belonged to amanda. it could be some sicko thought it was funny to accuse her boss of knocking her up and forcing her to get an abortion at 13 or accusing her father of various things.

but i get why she wouldn't speak up because people won't believe her no matter what she says. i went through something and people in my hometown still debate whether i'm crazy or lying for attention. my family did everything they could to put me under control and get me diagnosed as paranoid or delusional so they wouldn't face justice. (really don't get me started on how the mental healthcare system is used by abusers to cover up their sins.) i wouldn't put it past her parents to do that, especially considering amanda had a bad relationship with them as a teenager which sent her further into that groomer's clutches. she doesn't owe us anything because it'll start a firestorm that could retrigger her as people debate if she's delusional or scrutinize her past mistakes to determine if she's a perfect enough victim to deserve sympathy.

which brings me to drake bell. i knew he was the victim before i watched the doc but it still gave me chills when he sat down in that chair. like it felt like the air drained from the room. it was so obvious that what he went through has affected him so deeply and that he had no one to turn to. my abuser had so much community support, so many people making us out to be lying opportunistic bitches. i can't imagine having to carry that secret. i wonder if the people around him can pinpoint it in retrospect when he started being different. i want the other kids on set to know that it's not their fault they didn't know and that they had a bad opinion of him at some point. my sister and i were pitted against each other by the man who assaulted her and it's only with context later that i can see what was going on. i have no doubt that schneider employed these tactics so no one would feel comfortable disclosing what happened to them.

i admit that i cried watching the drake bell episode. that had to be incredibly difficult for him to open up about it after all these years and i hope he can get some closure and that someone starts a support group for these former nick stars.

and to drake bell himself. you were a child. you had no idea what grooming looks like. most grown people don't seem to know what grooming looks like based on how they talk about these issues. you are not at fault for what that man did to you or not knowing how to handle it. you didn't do anything to encourage this and you're not at fault.

and to his father. i appreciate that you did what you could to try to protect him. my mother had a similar experience trying to protect us from my abuser but everyone assumed she was psychotic and had her put away. try not to blame yourself when you were the lone voice of reason and everyone else insisted you were in the wrong. i do have fault to throw on amanda bynes' parents to some degree depending on what part of all this is true, but i can't find fault with drake bell's father who did try when he saw something wrong.

and i'm sorry but dan being super nice to drake afterwards seems like an attempt to make himself look better and get another hit show. i don't believe for a second that dan didn't know anything or that he had any motives beyond making his own star rise. he wanted to churn out product, and couldn't have that product if drake bell was visibly distraught.

i want to know how many people have known it was drake for 20 years and said nothing. how many people were in peck's side of the courtroom and yet still had the audacity to think this child was at fault in some way. that's vile and utterly unforgivable.

i just want to end this by saying to leave these people alone. don't harass anyone who hasn't spoken up because they may not be in a headspace where it's healthy of them to say anything. they don't owe us any explanation of why.

[creamiceandsugar]

wasnt blade at some point mocking dan heng for still using cloud piercer? or maybe it was jing liu. dan heng should have gone "my literal soul and source of power is in it so yeah" bc what were they thinking, that he'd throw it away?

[haejjoon]

"it's all too strange and strong" || caelus/danheng || rated T || 10.1k

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"Do you always make it a habit of yours to kiss people you don't trust, then?"

It's a very fortunate thing that Danheng doesn't choke.

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