is 2016 the worst year in human history?

well yeah, he was basically marvelling at how ~6 people can have died while a different ~6 people are still alive, which nngh everybody get a fucking grip already

I entirely sympathise with treeship's "I feel like I'm going insane" except he and I have apparently woken up in different twilight zones because from where I'm sitting mine is the minority viewpoint that actually makes any kind of sense according to the rules of the reality I went to sleep in

All I'm saying is, someone is killing celebrities and wins is involved.

sorry for your losses

yeah I know it's all arbitrary and it doesn't mean anything, point is as someone born in the mid-80's its weird to lose people who you can remember having hits and being a big cultural figure, over those who have been dinosaurs your whole life. it just affects you in a different way. maybe the first time my generation has started to feel, I dunno...kinda old? if it was all about whose music I was most attached to I'd say losing 2/3rds of ELP was the worst (lol) but they've always been "in the past" in my mind...hell the fact that they released two albums in my lifetime is still very strange to me.

still seems better than 1346, where if anyone in your village was famous it was probably cos their rotting corpse was hung on display at the town entrance as a public example

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

OK

can we move on now

Chicxulub impact fans hardest hit

lol at results
Maybe if more Star Wars cast members had killed themselves in sympathy

at least no one voted for Roman Sack and Siege of Juersalem

Good thing no beloved musicians are going to die now that 2016 is over.

This rookie general (Zeng Guoquan) for the Qing dynasty captures 8000 Taiping soldiers in an unlikely rout. His battalion commander helpfully explains that they have to kill them all now. Zeng then reluctantly subordinates the task to him and goes off to hide in his tent. The Commander sets up a killing station where people get beheaded in batches of 10 at a time "finishing by the light of lanterns just after the sun went down that night"

His brother (Zeng Guofan) wrote several letters to Guoquan over the following days - first more sanguine, suggesting his brother find a way to bury the thousands of corpses or else pile them onto old boats and send them down the river so the stink wouldn't bring disease into his camp. But as he realized that the slaughter was weighing heavily on Gouquan's conscience, his letters became more reassuring by telling him if Confucius were alive, he too would say it was right to exterminate the rebels.

This General Beheaded 8000 Captive Soldiers...And That's Okay!

Probably for the "why am I such a dick" thread, but have felt a rage I don't quite understand every time I see facebook / twitter posts along the lines of "quit it with the fuck 2016 meme - there's no magical meaning to a year" or "whew, glad it's 2017 now and all of your heroes are safe" - I don't think these ideas / sentiments are wrong, exactly, it just seems like such a patronising attitude, like they think everyone else is an irrational idiot for indulging in some sort of semi-magical thinking when (a) everyone does and (b) the world isn't always a worse place for it. But I should get over it I guess.

yep

surprised there was no option for "every year is worse than the previous year"

ban years

ban years

mods?

they would but even the worst one only got 16 fps

read about the Great Leap Forward the other day. 55 million dead, wow that 20th century was evil

not if those 55 million were stood in the way of a beautiful future

I'm dying to get hold of that new Tan Hecheng Cultural Revolution book, but £18.20 for an epub download is more than I'll pay.

2017 thus far featuring less celebrity death but more dystopia

Alan Colmes rip
Fuck you 2017

no

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

That’s a woke kid’s dream come true

should i run this again with 2020

definitely

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

We're still in April!

rank the past five years in order of terribleness

i'll start

5. 2019 - came out
4. 2017 - moved, got new job, bought house
3. 2020 - ehhhh.
2. 2018 - severe depression (recurrent), treated with tms but overall unpleasant
1. 2016 - dad died, lost job, also it was 2016

or, like, just go on speculating what was really worse, the black death or the an lushan rebellion. not sure i have much of a horse in that race.

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

Governments around the world in those named single years didn’t respond to massive climate crisis events by relaxing or waiving checks on fossil fuel extraction.