Nucular Powaaaaah (git gud 'murica)

[Fiye]

I mean Coca-Cola's been funding all sorts of wacko science articles like the recent 'Coca Cola will hydrate you!' bullshit. Shits been going on for ages.

Humanity hasn't changed. The methods just evolved to take advantage of our technology.

[Thunder]

Historically doesn't usually mean 100 years max

Not to mention, even if you did, the internet, facebook, twitter, instagram etc supersedes the hell out of the reach newspapers/radio had, + magazines later, and even commercials when every american household had a TV.

And never (until the last decade, thanks to the internet) has there been an entire industry based on literally pumping out fake stories, fake news, and other utterly pointless shit that's not reflective of anything going on in the planet for the sake of ad revenue


I made some dumb jokes earlier about linking terrorism with coal plants, but that's what it'd really take to sway public opinion quickly on nuclear. Because nuclear in the title of BS grabs people's attention and nobody will look at thoughtful stuff about nuclear being good when there's fear based shit about meltdowns, nuclear waste, $ sinks, explosions, danger! And that'll be exactly what the internet gives them because it makes money. And politicians, unlike monarchies/dictatorships, really listen to what the public wants because the politician wants to be reelected next cycle. As much as we joke about "oh the man's in control", it's really us. All of us, collectively. With the internet in everyone's back pockets we're as much different from humanity a couple hundred years ago as a grasshopper is from a locust (a grasshopper becomes a locust when a lot of grasshoppers get together and "swarm", for those who don't know)

[Waraji]

Technically, in your example, "the man" is still really in control, as it's "the man" that controls the media that controls our way of thinking.

[Thunder]

But they don't control what we want to read, only what they put out for us to choose to read.

Even if "the man" had a change of heart they couldn't lead humanity anywhere else than where it's going because some kid would start their own dumb website full of titles that had keywords like MELTDOWN, DANGER, FEAR, CHANCES YOUR DAUGHTER GOING TO DIE IN A NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE HIGHER THAN YOU THINK, blah blah blah

..and we'd all end up clicking on those vs whatever "the man" wants.

It's not as top-down as you're describing. "the man" and people are very interconnected, might as well call them the same thing. It's like we're forced to hold hands into our demise because one can't change what the other's incentives are. The man wants money by taking our attention, and we want our attention directed at whatever the reptilian part of the brain (focused on hunger/resources, fear, and sex) want. "The man" is as much our slave as we are his

[Kryssan]

At least we still have RTGs? Not that anyone is talking about Cassini or New Horizon's power sources.... ( you might remember all the Plutonium concerns in 2010+ )

Speakin' of, this happened:

DOE finally makes Pu for NASA again ( link )

[dasva]

Hmmm reading up seems a few places were considering it the last couple of years but yeah once again oak ridge wins at nuclear power. Wonder if they will consider using commercial means like thorium fuel cycles instead of just test reactors like this one.

[archibaldcrane]

I hadn't seen this before - a cool breakdown of radiation exposure from various sources (from eating a banana to standing next to Chernobyl as it melted down).

http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png

[Salodin]

Some one posted that awhileeee ago. Good read though.

[Kryssan]

The XKCD image saw a few repeats by various posters in the Fukushima thread.

There are a few others of decent quality as well, but I wish there was one that conglomerated Becquerel / Curie / Rad / Röntgen / REM / Gray / Sievert ( or at the very least the SI ones - I know the rest of the world doesn't actually use Curie / Rad / Röntgen & REM anymore ) and the difference between contamination ( especially something that explained the content that provides the radiation levels mentioned in a similar chart - like for example with bananas ) and radiation in something of a similar vein that people could more readily understand. The shit / stink and cookie analogies only go so far and don't provide any substantive / quality explanation for why what's in it matters ( ie. equivalent dose ).