Covid, WFH, Musk, The fall of Twitter, Netflix plateau, Reddit Blackout, Crippling interest rates, Trump, Decentralisation, Tech Antitrust, Ukraine
Adding in Edit: AI, Climate Crisis, Nazis, Fascism, Democratic backsliding, automation, mass unemployment, rising homelessness, wild fires
How are you feeling these days?
We sure do live in interesting times
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Democratic backsliding?
Prime examples being the stuff around Brexit or Roe v Wade
Or Poland’s PiS party and their anti-democratic partisan judge nominations and the currently ongoing attempted elimination of the largest opposition party through McCarthyism.
Needless to mention ex-democracies such as Turkey, Hungary, etc.
Honestly, I’m starting to think the Nazis may have won, and they just shifted their strategies to playing the longcon.
The wave of populists across the democratic world has lead to more corruption and complacency at the top and more distrust and disconnection with the average voter.
Notice how 90% of that are rich people causing or amplifying those situations to happen?
COVID - Trump sabotage any effort made to prevent the spread and we lost 1 million people due to that.
Climate Crisis - Oil Giants/Automobile industry sabotage the public transportation which would have a long term ramification to reduce oil consumption overall.
Nazis/Fascism - Rich People fund/outright purchase mass media to create chaos in public perspectives and polarize the political parties. Koch Brothers are funding far right politic and pushing hard for nazism.
Ukraine - Putin and the Oligarch
I could go on. Almost all of the problems begin and end with the rich people. #EatTheRich
I have been trying to mention this trend to people as much as possible when they bring up issue X. A divided populace is easier to control, and here we are with various “culture war” topics constantly on the news, more and more fear mongering etc etc. But for every divisive cultural issue, there’s a group of rich people who stand to gain, in one way or another, from the division itself and the fact that it keeps us (the poor-er majority) from solving real problems.
The fact is, if we fix the wealth inequality problem we fix a lot of others, and we would also be able to focus our collective energy appropriately at the others which may not naturally fall away.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t focus on everything – but our best bet for a livable future is to start eating the rich now.
Edit: a word
And that I agree.
Canadian wild fires as well.
The fires are the worst for me. When the world feels bad I just want to escape outside…so when it’s smoky I just feel really trapped.
To be perfectly fair, the world has always been screwed up in a hundred different ways at any given time. It’s just more immediately visible to every single person these days
True, at least now more people are taking notice. But those working against the populous are more brazen than ever too
I think the main difference is that now we have the technological power to fuck things up irreversibly (hope we still have chance against climate change, but im not sure a mass extinction could be prevented and not just moderated at this point)
From what I heard, the netflix password sharing change ended up being a net-increase in subscribers even accounting for the exodus caused by it.
So while they were going downhill for a while I think their password sharing crackdown surprisingly benefited them.
I think that’s a tricky one; I technically still have an active account despite canceling. I feel like the fall-off will happen on people’s next billing cycles
oh absolutely. how many people got blindsided by the crackdown and setup their free trial to binge the last of their shows fully planing to cancel before they get billed? They count as new subs.
I’m honestly finally looking at getting a NAS and going back to
physical mediathe high seas
i am tired
This, more than anything. But I do try to fight that because I know that’s apart of the strategy to keep people docile. (In a non conspiracy theory way?)
It’s not a conspiracy theory. This is exactly what’s happening.
Jesus will soon return and take his chosen. I personally doubt that list will include me because while i think “god” may exist i dont think he pays attention to or really cares about us. He is just playing World of Tanksor something
I prefer this quote because, IMHO, a god does not exist…
“Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?”
-Epicurus
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
This part is quite scary when you think about it. If he did exist, and was able and willing to help, but he didn’t consider anything the world was doing as even a blip on his radar, what horrors are yet to come?
I’m a hard core atheist but those kinds of sayings always bug me as just being semantic word play. They essentially equate a higher being’s power with the ability to do something that is impossible simply based on the definitions of the words themselves.
Can god create a square that’s a circle?
No?
Must not be a god then!Just silly. There’s endless valid arguments against the existence of gods without having to resort to linguistic trickery.
If God was truly benevolent, why did he allow all those kids to die in Sandy Hook & Uvalde, as well as allowing toddlers to starve to death across the entire country of Sudan?
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…”
Because there is no God. If there’s something out there, it’s not benevolent. Reality is far more than what we understand even in physics. Just read up on Roger Penrose but moreso, I don’t think there is any sway towards good or evil. Existence is just this.
To be honest, 2023 has feel relatively calmer than the past few, I guess covid being that all encompassing to life. Of the things on your list I do think AI is probably the first thing that comes to mind when I think of what we are “on the brink of”. This leap that happened the past couple years in LLM was shocking enough, wondering what the next couple are going to look like.
It really does sound like a new version of We Didn’t Start the Fire.
We didn’t start the fires, it was Shell and Exxon, BP and Mobil
The times we live in are riddled with problems but I have to continue on with my life regardless.
OP sounds like an R.E.M. song
(Verse 1)
Covid pandemic, life’s tragic,
Work From Home, no more traffic,
Elon Musk in the space race,
Twitter falling from its grace.Netflix plateau, lost its glow,
Reddit blackout, a serious blow,
Interest rates, an upward hike,
Donald Trump, another strike.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Verse 2)
Decentralisation, global reformation,
Tech Antitrust, digital conflagration,
Ukraine crisis, world’s at bay,
In this whirlwind, we lose our way.Artificial Intelligence, the next experience,
Climate crisis, deadly seriousness,
Nazis, Fascism, old fears return,
Democratic backsliding, when will we learn?(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Verse 3)
Automation, job annihilation,
Mass unemployment, rising desperation,
Homelessness in the city streets,
Wildfires burning, the heat repeats.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Bridge)
From the pandemic to the space frontier,
Through the crises that we all fear,
From the ashes, we’ll still rise,
In our hearts, the human spirit never dies.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
But when we are gone, will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on…(Outro)
We didn’t start the fire,
But we hold the power, in this defining hour,
We can tame this fire,
Though we didn’t light it, we have the strength to fight it.Considering the COVID pandemic is still mass infecting people (with somewhere around 1/10 people getting Long-COVID, and some percentage of those people being disabled long-term) and now it’s leading to weakened immune systems and fungal infections, my guess is another mass health-disruption event is what we’re on the brink of.
Or maybe mass homelessness and poverty. Does anyone remember that two-parter from Deep Space Nine where they go back in time with ghettos in San Francisco? Past Tense. It was set in 2024.
I’m fine. Covid isnt causing chaos anymore, WFH is optional (thankfully, i don’t like it), I don’t really care about Twitter or Netflix, reddit is a shame but there are alternatives, my mortgage rate is fixed at 1.8% for 30 years, Trump is on the other side of the ocean…
Most of the sh*t going on the in the world doesn’t have very big impact on my life. Some do, but when I can’t influence it (on my own) I try to not let it affect my mood.
30 years fixed at 1.8%?! Damn you you lucky bastard, that was never even at option over here lol
Rates were ridiculously low in 2020. 10 years would have been 1.3%. The mortgage rules and requirements are quite strict, so banks can keep the rates low.
