Yeah, that is probably what I miss most about Reddit. Science articles have really deep discussions about the topics there. Here, the comments are mainly just one or two jokes and an asshole or two with a superiority complex.

The fediverse has some really good tech discussions. I hope we can get more scientists soon to elevate those discussions.

I live in Northern California and every time articles about Cascadia come out I have nightmares for a few days. Then I forget about it again. Unfortunately, I think this is also the attitude of the people in charge of infrastructure and earthquake resilience. To be fair, they’ve got their hands full with wild fires and like, being baby sacrificing socialist pronoun witches or what ever us Left Coast-ests are getting up to these days. We have a good time though.

If you actually read the article you would know that this is not a prediction of any kind. It is about a paper that was recently published which further clarifies something that was already well understood, that the Pacific northwest is just as likely to see extremely large magnitude earthquakes as any of the other large subduction zones. The PNW isn’t alone in being woefully under prepared for large earthquakes, California and parts of the Midwest (New Madrid) are also burying their heads in the sand on this issue. The facts of the matter aside, dumping some myopic shitpost about your holiday plans on a subject that involves the lives of millions makes you come off as a complete psycho.

Edit: Who exactly jokes about natural disasters which are quite literally waiting to happen? Doesn’t seem particularly funny to me 🤷

Edit2: You know, I actually hadn’t considered the possibility that this was a joke, mostly because it just isn’t a funny thing to laugh about. Especially in a science based community. But in hindsight I do stand by the comment. This kind of joking about earthquakes like they are an impossibility actually does contribute to the flippant attitudes politicians and the public have to these things. It’s not unfunny because I enjoy being the fun police, it’s unfunny because it’s a statistical certainty that an event like this WILL happen somewhere eventually and if they aren’t taken more seriously they will kill a lot of people. So it isn’t necessarily the earthquake that ultimately lead to those deaths, it’s attitudes like this where we crack questionable one liners about it instead of taking actual steps to mitigate risk.