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It's very unlikely that a galaxy collision would meaningfully affect anything for us except our view of the night sky (over millions of years).
Well over the course of the collision, the solar system could get ejected from the galaxy. But also the collision is predicted to occur nearly 10 billion years from now so the sun would have already consumed Earth. Overall, probably a bad thing for the economy
Personally, I find it extremely unlikely that the Sun will be allowed to proceed down its natural path. In principal, stars can be engineered. It doesn't require any radical technology; it's more just a problem of scale. I fully expect the Sun to be still burning strong a trillion years from now.
As for whether Sol will be thrown by the merger either out of the galaxy or into the galactic core? I think the Sun will go in whatever direction we choose it to go.
We can't even cooperate with one another to stop climate change - something happening on the scale of a human lifetime - and you think we'll engineer the sun to stop expanding over the course of a billion years, and then steer it?
Actually, I kind of admire your optimism.
smh somebody needs to reinsert the solar system back into the VHS player, it came out again
E: ejecto seato cuz!
Even if the solar system was ejected, I don’t think anything would change. As long as no large objects came into the solar system to disrupt our orbit of the sun, we probably wouldn’t notice.
I believe in a star trek future that lasts billions of years. I mean hopefully we're exploring other galaxies at that point, but if we're still only galactic, losing the cradle of humanity would be devastating
That is, basically, how the MBA class operates. Everything comes down to what they can do to exploit a situation.
Orphan Crushing Machine
At least dead kids are giving value to the shareholders
/s
This is why my Dad thinks climate change is hysteria. WSJ ran an article (basically) positing that geoengineering will fix it anyway, and it’s best to pump the economy (with oil) to get there.
…Which I was particularly hurt by.
I've been reading geoengineering papers for a decade+, and the most practical theoretical ones boil down to desperate plans like “bathe the South Pole in sulfuric acid rain” that are still so heinously expensive it’s basically sci fi. And that’s assuming “tipping points” don’t materialize. Gah.
There's also the, cause massive algae blooms in-between shipping lanes to try to soak up lots of carbon.
The method is by dumping millions of tons of iron ore dust into the open ocean.
One guy tested it, and it did cause an algae bloom. He didn't do smaller scale tests, just dumped a ton or so of iron ore dust into the ocean.
Doesn't all that algae kill off water life?
It can, or it can feed the ecosystem and cause a boom in fish populations. It really depends on where the bloom is and how big.
So using this logic 9-11-2001 was ultimately good for the economy
It’s been commonly held for a long time that the deficit spending and industrial gear up for World War 2 are what finally shook the US out of the Great Depression, which has created a deeply-seated association between war and economic stimulation. It’s worth revisiting that question for today’s extremely different conflicts and economy. It may not be true anymore, and if not, that seems worth knowing.
Similarly, there’s a long history of warfare driving technological innovation. I think this one is even less controversial. It’s just a fact. But pointing that out doesn’t mean I’m recommending we go to war for the sake of innovation.
They have the most disgusting reporting. It arrives at my office, and sometimes when I want to punish myself or know my enemy I’ll crack it open.
We're all just a number on a spreadsheet to them. A unit of input labor, a liability, etc. You shove this number of laborers in one side, and you get this amount of profit out the other side.
I don’t think OP knows what literally means. The wsj did not ask the question in the title. It asked a different question.
Oh I’m with you, but I stopped fighting for the word “literally” when the damn dictionaries gave up and added shit like this:
2 informal : in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
I literally died of embarrassment.
… will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or inju
I stopped fighting for the word “literally” when the damn dictionaries gave up and added shit like this:
That other guys link says they did that over a hundred years ago.
But I guess that was just for the unabridged dictionary.
@scarabic Depends on the dictionary. Some are better than this.
Anyway, you don't have to accept what M-W says if you don't want to. No one owns or controls English.
Dictionaries have armies of people who decide these things, based chiefly on where they stand on the P-D spectrum. M-W is "strongly descriptive", meaning they cotton to popular misuse. And that's a view you can accept or not, as you please.
Some of the more 'popular' dictionaries do this to make more money over time.
Damn you, Big Dictionary!
Not all dictionaries, true. But enough of them have given in that appealing to dictionaries at all becomes a stalemate. Good luck debating the D-P spectrum with someone who can’t use “literally properly.
And no one owns English, true. That also means though that I’m in no position to complain about anyone’s usage of words. Eh. It’s just not a battle I pick anymore.
I’m not a hardcore prescriptivist - I just dislike changes that destroy useful nuances. And I think that’s a good, utilitarian standard we should be able to apply universally.
Like nowadays “decimate” just means the same thing as “devastate” or “destroy” and we no longer have a specific word for “reduce by one-tenth.” Sure, that word is only occasionally needed, but we didn’t need a third word for destroy/devastate at all. And I still wonder for half a second, when someone talks about an army being decimated, if they mean 1/10 or totally.
The dilution of “literally” is similar. It reduces our options for specificity and often leaves you confused about what someone is saying. That’s a bad change IMHO and dictionaries should resist it. The whole point of dictionaries was to retard the morphing of language. They’re a big reason that change has slowed down since the times of Chaucer. But they have abdicated this and become mere linguistic enthographers.
I still think there are different standards for filler words during conversations and titles in writing. In this case, the post title is simply a lie. For example:
Title: Florida Man Actually has Three Legs.
Content: guy’s got such a big dick, he’s practically a tripod.
In this case, that’s a misleading title.
Edit: I also wanted to add that a title is parsed on its own, without context. Of course, “literally” can mean “not literally”, but one needs context to figure that out. In this title, such context is not there.
I hear you. There’s room for confusion in much more than just titles, too. Often when someone reports something “literally” happened it’s some thing on the edge of credulity, but not past it, and you have to stop and clarify “wait, so the cop asked to search your car and you literally shit your pants?”
Thanks for the link, this was a good read. OP’s title still sucks.
In English, the plural "there are" is collapsing into the singular "there's" such as "there's five cars over there". A lot of language changes happen this way. It annoys people who think about language.
literally asked
It's a newspaper: how else are they gonna ask?
Well actually, newspapers are incapable of posing questions as they are not sentient beings
@wreckedcarzz I don't know why so many people seem to think it's cute or funny to write like a drunken toddler.
Me, giving a random toddler at the McDonald's PlayPlace another shot: I totally agree
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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