- Sigilos ( @BrazenSigilos@ttrpg.network ) English81•4 months ago
Oh, my. I hadn’t even noticed how much less I’ve had to clean my Windshield lately. That is a very bad sign…
- henfredemars ( @henfredemars@infosec.pub ) English34•4 months ago
It’s been a couple years since I’ve had to scrape the bugs from my windows.
- snooggums ( @snooggums@midwest.social ) English13•4 months ago
I had to last week. It was the first time in years.
- KingJalopy ( @KingJalopy@lemm.ee ) English12•4 months ago
In Sacramento I clean mine almost daily. Just depends where you are really. Lots of farm land will always have lots of bugs.
- hessenjunge ( @hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de ) English11•4 months ago
Let me give another example:
Traveling from Central Europe to Southern Europe to spend your holiday. In 1980/1990 you had to clean your windshield a couple of times when driving there.
Not any more.
- jabathekek ( @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz ) English2•4 months ago
Unless they use shit-tons of insecticide. The farms around my home-town did, or started too a bit before I left.
- mexicancartel ( @mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English4•4 months ago
Waaiiittt… How fast you need to go to get flies on your windows? I think my place has much more flies but i never saw this thing
- Honytawk ( @Honytawk@lemmy.zip ) English8•4 months ago
Couldn’t that also be new improvements in car aerodynamics where bugs simply glide off instead of getting squished?
- Ephera ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English27•4 months ago
Apparently, it’s the other way around, presumably because unaerodynamic cars pushed around a big air cone, which deflected the insects.
- Jo Miran ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) English50•4 months ago
I’m 51, I spent the 90’s in Louisiana, and since my wife doesn’t fly, we have driven across the USA more times than we can count. In the 90’s, if you didn’t have a bug screen on your grill, the LoveBugs would clog your radiator and you would over heat. You also needed the windshield scrib and squeegee to scrub off the bug splatter every time you filled up. Now, you don’t need either of them.
- xenspidey ( @xenspidey@lemmy.zip ) English16•4 months ago
I have been thinking about this recently. How much of this is lack of bugs vs aerodynamics. I mean back in the day we all drove big rectangles. I’m not denying the fact that it could be a mass extinction of bugs. Just curious.
- Ephera ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English36•4 months ago
Nope, seems to purely be the mass extinction thing. In fact:
modern cars hit more bugs, perhaps because older models push a bigger layer of air – and insects – over the vehicle.
- hessenjunge ( @hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de ) English8•4 months ago
Same in Europe.
- ColeSloth ( @ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ) English7•4 months ago
Drove a ton in the 90s all across the US as well every year there was a couple several thousand mile vacations starting from near Kansas city.
The bugs were bad, but we never needed a bug screen on the grill. I never even remember seeing something like that exist, actually. Definitely less bugs now, though.
- Jo Miran ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) English1•4 months ago
Lucky. I-10 could get ridiculous between the black cricket things, the love bugs, the dragon flies, etc.
- octopus_ink ( @octopus_ink@lemmy.ml ) English43•4 months ago
This has bothered me for years. It’s a really strange thing to be telling younger relatives about how you legitimately could not drive any substantial distance without windshield cleaner at certain times of year. I remember them being plastered across the front edge of the hood and against the radiator after a long trip.
It’s one of the most visibly different things about the world today, IMO, and it’s a little eerie.
The sounds, too.
I was talking with my dad walking near to a place that had frogs croaking, and he got a little emotional and excited to hear them over the phone. Normally it’s just traffic noises now, and silence.
- jabathekek ( @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz ) English11•4 months ago
I remember the wasps always buzzing around the vehicle grills munching on all the dead bugs too. Now it’s just shiny and chrome.
- Vlyn ( @Vlyn@lemmy.zip ) English7•4 months ago
I still remember 10 years ago when I was driving on the Autobahn at 130 km/h and a juicy bug hit the windshield. It was literally a loud splat. Besides the grill always being covered in bugs.
Hasn’t happened since, nowadays I can count the number of bugs on the grill with one hand. And that’s after months of driving.
- Aralakh ( @Aralakh@lemmy.ca ) English21•4 months ago
Whoa, this is disconcerting. My folks used to run a rental car agency and I helped out every now and then by cleaning cars. I remember cleaning so many bugs off of cars 20ish years ago, and now on my own car - barely nothing. :(
- jabathekek ( @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz ) English17•4 months ago
I’m [emotionally*] ready for the hyper-industrialized moon-scape our planet will become once our environment completely collapses. I think there will be a point past which any environmental protection measures will be useless because there’s nothing left to protect so industrial landscapes will become the norm.
- Omniraptor ( @Omniraptor@lemm.ee ) English2•4 months ago
industrial landscapes need a base of natural resources and less developed regions with high birth rates (as a source of labor) to support them.
- Hossenfeffer ( @Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk ) English17•4 months ago
I’m so dopey. I thought this was suggesting that we’d invented some clever formulation to stop dead bugs sticking to windshields in 2020 and that we’d all have fully autonomous cars by 2050.
- Owl ( @BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ) English2•4 months ago
What is it about then 0_o ?
- WeirdGoesPro ( @WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English25•4 months ago
It is about how the death of the insects is a precursor to the death of the rest of us. In the 90’s, there were a lot more bugs in the world, and it was very noticeable on road trips. They’re all gone now.
- tektite ( @tektite@slrpnk.net ) English10•4 months ago
I was outside, next to a park on a lake, and I mentioned to someone the lack of ambient bugs. He was insistent that there were bugs around somewhere but it took me several minutes to locate ONE and it was the only one I could find.
No dragonflies, ladybugs, bees, wasps, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers… I couldn’t even see any ants, flies, or mosquitos. The one I found looked similar to a gnat. It’s spring here. There should be bugs.
- BurningRiver ( @BurningRiver@beehaw.org ) English8•4 months ago
I don’t know where all of you live, but my windshield is still an aria of death in the spring of 2024.
- Owl ( @BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ) English1•4 months ago
Same
- Owl ( @BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ) English1•4 months ago
Same
- interdimensionalmeme ( @interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ) English2•4 months ago
It is probably because newer cars are more aerodynamic and the bugs just fly over
- WeirdGoesPro ( @WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•4 months ago
- Liz ( @Liz@midwest.social ) English4•4 months ago
That’s a very small part of it. Most of it is that we’re destroying our surrounding ecosystem with multiple different pressures.
- Lenny ( @Lenny@lemmy.zip ) English17•4 months ago
Idk but I’m reminded of the 2002 adaptation of The Time Machine. One of the great achievements of our civilization was an advanced AI with all of our collective knowledge that you could converse with. Feels like our AI tech is on track to get there by the time we start dying off en mass lol
There are quite a few wonderful stories about the AIs continuing after humans are gone. “For a Breath I Tarry” by Roger Zelazny, and the whole of the Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, are some great ones.
That being said one of the critical points of “For a Breath I Tarry” is that the machines are just doing what they’re programmed to do, maintaining the infrastructure for no one and just sitting in their orbits keeping the power grid going and all, and are actively hostile to any effort to bring the humans back because that would make things complicated and isn’t in their programming (since although superficially they can converse and act “intelligently,” more so than humans, they can’t really grasp the purpose of things.) Also, “With Folded Hands” by Jack Williamson is another perfectly realistic one.
- XPost3000 ( @XPost3000@lemmy.ml ) English3•4 months ago
Honestly, having a world that’s just alone and empty, but not “abandoned”, sounds so soothing to explore, so liminal
Until insanity set in, but until then I’d have alot of fun just exploring the place for a while
- NaibofTabr ( @NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ) English1•4 months ago
Some explorations for you: (steam links for reference, but I recommend going into all of these blind, don’t read a lot of reviews)
“Slow Music” by James Tiptree / Alice Sheldon is another very very good story that’s exactly like that. Very liminal you could say; lots of going around alone in a world that’s all empty but still all well maintained and functional.
- Mycatiskai ( @Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca ) English5•4 months ago
Even if the AI can’t converse well, there will not be many humans around to have human conversations so it will seem a normal chat.
- nightofmichelinstars ( @nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz ) English5•4 months ago
We could put two in front of each other and let them ping pong nonsense for all eternity.
- blindsight ( @blindsight@beehaw.org ) English9•4 months ago
I see you, too, saw the 24/7 live Biden-Trump “debate” Twitch stream.
Trump: “I got better things to do, like stuffing my pee-hole with tic tacs, or having syrupy sex with a maple tree. Anyone else got anything to say?”
This is one of the best things I’ve seen on the internet so far
- GluWu ( @GluWu@lemm.ee ) English15•4 months ago
My parents never gave me money unless I worked for it and washing their cars was one of those few things they did pay me to do. I remember always having to scrub bugs off the front, it was the hardest part. I’ve literally never washed my road cars because its just dust.
- kora ( @KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English6•4 months ago
My parents never gave me money unless I worked for it
my road cars because its just dust.
I’m sorry. I legitimately can’t tell if this is satire or not…
- GluWu ( @GluWu@lemm.ee ) English8•4 months ago
What are you confused about? Some cars I’ve owned cannot go off road, maybe a bumpy dirt road here and there. Other cars I have owned I bought specifically because I needed them to go where there isn’t pavement or even a road. They get a lot dirtier and need cleaning just to stay functional.
- kora ( @KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English6•4 months ago
Well, It sounded like you had more than a few cars, like currently. Which I found in stark contrast to the rest. Now i’m not confused, thanks!
- TransplantedSconie ( @TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee ) English12•4 months ago
Last panel should have one of those stock scanning robots behind the wheel.
- ReallyActuallyFrankenstein ( @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ) English1•4 months ago
Sorry, can someone explain? If there are less bugs, that’s attributable to something I should know?
- RuBisCO ( @Rubisco@slrpnk.net ) English11•4 months ago
Do you convert dead organic matter into fertile soil or pollinate flowers? They do. If insect populations were to vanish, so would humans. They perform too many vital functions that humans cannot.
- ReallyActuallyFrankenstein ( @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ) English2•4 months ago
Yes… Sorry, I didn’t mean I didn’t understand what bugs do or why they’re important. I just was trying to understand the meme. I was not aware that there’s universally less bugs. I haven’t seen this covered in news.
- RuBisCO ( @Rubisco@slrpnk.net ) English8•4 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
TW: this entry can be hard to read.
- ReallyActuallyFrankenstein ( @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ) English2•4 months ago
Thank you.
- flora_explora ( @flora_explora@beehaw.org ) English2•4 months ago
I don’t have a good source and I think it may be a more complex, but at least in Germany various media have frequently cited a number of 70% insect biomass decrease over the last 50 years or so. As a biologist, I wouldn’t be surprised if isn’t even more if you compare it to preindustrial times and the decrease in biodiversity is probably much higher as well.
- Kaboom ( @Kaboom@reddthat.com ) English2•4 months ago
OP literally never leaves the city.
- Wugmeister ( @ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•4 months ago
I have noticed this in the suburbs specifically. Just over the span of my short life I’ve seen pretty much all the bugs in any area I’ve lived in disappear, along with the bats that eat them.
- Kaboom ( @Kaboom@reddthat.com ) English1•4 months ago
Have they built it up a lot while you were living there?
- Wugmeister ( @ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English1•4 months ago
Not terribly? My hometown only expanded by one housing development, but most of those houses have not sold. But we had to close our windows at night because the mosquito sprayer trucks would spray so much fog that it impacted my mom’s breathing. When I was a kid we had fireflies and bats in the backyard.
As for my current town, I am not surprised at the lack of bugs since it’s all corn and nothing but corn; no real rivers, no big ponds, no forests near town, nothing that could shelter bugs outside the houses.
- ReallyActuallyFrankenstein ( @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ) English1•4 months ago
I’m not in the city right now. The key word in my post was “attributable.” As in, what’s causing the phenomenon?