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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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. And of course, don’t forget about Sinclair broadcast.
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
Not feeling optimistic, but trying to stay positive and do good in the world regardless.
Remember to use these hard times to focus on the things that really matter. Enjoy nature, have empathy for others, be kind and supportive, stand up for what’s right.
We’ll all endure, some how some way. Peace and love to y’all.
This! ❤️ Sending good vibes and love
This is true. If our days are really numbered, why spend them indoors doomscrolling and musing over what-could-be scenarios when we could just be living our lives the best we can while we have the chance?
(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.History oft repeats itself. By reading a lot about the past, I feel more relaxed about the future.
A book I read recently was a history about a moral panic starting, how people became marginalized, how there were times of extreme terror, how a social movement started, and eventually entered the mainstream. Laws were reversed, the group of people became normal, and became part of greater society.
The goverment had gone from decade+ of progressivism with a opposition party in decline, to the accidental discovery of a powerful social tool to tap into the hate built into humans. They leveraged that tool to bring their party back to relevance in the face of declining power.
It’s victories were temporary though, and their very tapping into that hate was what undermined them. The boy that cried wolf couldn’t keep crying about it when people realized it was just a ruse.
Almost the exact same things are happening today. A similar moral panic kicked off. Someone is crying wolf and is trying to be the constant victim. Most people will be exposed to the alleged “wolf” (who turns out to be floofy and nice!) And America calms down again for another 20-40 years.
That sounds really hopeful. Where and when did the events covered in the book take place? Also, what was the name of the book?
It’s the Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson. See if your library has it! It’s kinda expensive on Amazon.
I read the hell out of that book and it’s one of the ones I continually have thought about since then. I had to keep checking the copyright page and years to make sure what was happening in 1954 and not a handful of decades later, lol.
https://www.amazon.com/Lavender-Scare-Persecution-Lesbians-Government/dp/0226401901
Thank you for this - these days it’s really hard for me not to be pessimistic about the future, and this reminder helps put me at ease. Nonetheless, things are absolutely scary right now - does that book go into detail about the damage done during said moral panic? Also, what book was it?
Yeah, it does go into the damage done. But it also sets up well for Stonewall and how everything was on the road to change. It’s the Lavender scare by David K Johnson! More about it in the comment above. :) https://www.amazon.com/Lavender-Scare-Persecution-Lesbians-Government/dp/0226401901
I believe trans rights are currently in 1954 ish. But unlike 1954, it’s much, mucher harder to fully slam the door on this one because being queer has been normal for so long, hateful people have a much more difficult time siloing people this go around. And this time, people aren’t ashamed, they’re fiercely protesting this, which is a healthy sign that we aren’t as authoritarian as places that have recently fallen, like Hong Kong.
The idea that it’s likely to repeat again even if it dies down is terrifying, I don’t get how people are finding that to be hopeful. Am I missing something here? ~Cherri
We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the worlds been turning
🎵Schools close, Tom Hanks, trouble in the big banks,
no vaccine, quarantine, no more toilet paper seen.
Travel ban, Weinstein, panic COVID-19,
NBA, gone away, what else do I have to sayyyyyy🎵
This was my reaction. There has always been a revolution brewing among the discontents. Everyone alive realizing they need to be part of it is late to the party, because the party started long before any of us were born.
Yup, but on the other hand as technology progresses the consequences for screwing everything up get more and more severe. If we don’t put out this fire soon, we’re gonna burn the whole house down.
Sometimes I feel like things are just moments away from falling apart. I worry that the leaders are doing their best to cover it up, but one day it will fall apart and it will fall apart suddenly.
I often think about how, if there was a planet-killer asteroid on a collision course with Earth, it’s very likely it would be kept secret. At least if we had no way of stopping it.
I truly believe that if global warming is already past the point of no return, there would be a lot of powerful people out there with vested interests in keeping it under wraps. They’d definitely want to at the very least maintain their lifestyle while the boat sinks…
It would be so difficult to silence that news nowadays though, all it would take is 1 leak for scientists around the globe to start shouting about it, they couldn’t even stop snowden back in the 2000s from revealing the goverments attempt to spy on Americans and now we have youtube, the fediverse, more independent news sites then you could shake a stick at. Its crazy how fast info can travel now.
I’m sorry, I agree with you.
I didn’t need this in my head at 2 am. lol
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It think we have cycles because people remember things that happen in their lifetime but fail to adequately instil that knowledge in the next and subsequent generations. The wealth inequality of the 1920s was the catylist for much of the economic turmoil of the great depression and laid some of the context for the New Deal era. The strong rules for antitrust and managing monopolies were put in place to prevent a repeat and while the generations who lived through the great depression were dominant they survived. As those older generations died out and as the following generations grew in influence those protections were weakened and eventually mostly dismantled, resulting in massive changes from the 70s onwards. Those protections were eroded and wealth and income inequality grew until we reached and surpassed the levels of the 1920s.
I think the same happens for other things like the idea that Nazis are bad or must be resisted, or that religious ideologies should ve kept seperate from the government, or healthcare is something we can help each other to gain, or that workers can have power by working together. What I find hopeful is hearing discussion of all of these ideas in fairly accessible places and people do seem to be studying history in order to avoid repeating it.
We could indeed be on the brink of something. The conditions are there but for what? Will we end capitalism, make a new system and try for a better world? Or will we fall into fascism once more?
Even if it’s finally the day we move on from this system that keeps threatening to collapse on itself every 6 months… it’s gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better…
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AI is going to usher in an age of workerless utopia for corporations, or at least significantly less workers. AI is computationally expensive and capital intensive, so only those with capital are going to be able to deploy it and benefit from it on a large scale. Hiring people is the bane of capitalists. Once business figures out how to use AI beyond customer support chatbots and data analysis, we’re going to see a lot of unemployed and/or unemployable people.
This argument applied to computers back when they took up entire rooms. Now we have much better ones in our pockets.
AI will get cheaper and more accessible. In other words, it will be democratized.
Now, if we are able to mix AI with robots to automate more manual tasks previously done by humans? Yeah that will cause some unemployment.
Yeah, it is kind of scary. We’re at that cusp of development which could be as big as that shift in globalization and technology was in the late 1970s…we have made so much technological progress, but little social progress, and that means we are very ill equipped to deal with the awesome power of the technology in front of us…
Honestly, we are potentially on the cusp of the next great societal shift not only in how countries are ran, but probably also where the sphere of global influence resides. I don’t know how it will all end it, whether it will end with China superseding the US as a global influencer and power, or if we will go the way the Nazis have been trying to direct us since the 30s and the entire world takes a dramatic shift to the far right.
Quite frankly, it’s terrifying. Being in the United States and watching our political climate dissolve into a party who is afraid of embracing the young and go further left, and a party whose only interest is owning the libs and helping the 1% become even wealthier while the rest of us have to suffer through greedflation is really frustrating. My wife and I have talked about leaving, but we have JDs, and American JDs are basically useless outside of the U.S. unless you went to Harvard/Stanford/Yale and can land a job in Big Law, which we did not.
I’ve thought about going back to school and getting a degree in programming, or trying to find another way to learn and get the experience/certifications I would need, but I have absolutely no idea where to start with that or how to look for those kinds of jobs.
I do not advise going to college for programming degree, it could easily be the worst financial decision especially now that the jobs and pays are not guaranteed anymore, programming positions are getting flooded and wage are tanking. More often than not, college does not teach you standard practices in the industry, the tech stacks that we use, and so forth.
My advice instead is to get some certifications for programming or system administration and save up for like a $7000 classroom course for some of those certifications, it’s expensive, but helluva a lot cheaper than college at least. Once you have the certification and some basic understanding, do some projects like:
If you’re system admin, try and set up a whole new office network by configuring the routers, firewall, group policies, ADAP, RADIUS, and so go on and so forth. Get comfortable doing it in a virtual setup.
if you’re programmer, try and develop some common web applications since that is easily 90% of the job in programming nowaday, it almost always going to be web application everywhere you go.
A WGU computer science degree costs about 3800 per six month period, btw, which is a decent option. I’m with you on avoiding a typical expensive college degree, though. I would personally recommend considering WGU after getting some experience so you can get through it faster (since it’s self paced).
Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks for the advice!
Won’t most countries require you to have a degree in order to immigrate there? I generally agree with what you said otherwise, but as a tech worker with lots of experience and no degree, I think it’s limited my options for leaving the US, while otherwise being a good move overall.
I suppose the law degrees could potentially cover this situation, however. Haven’t considered that the degree may not need to be in the field you pursue. It may depend on the country.
In that case, you would likely need a bachelor degree anyway, and I would suggest getting a degree in “backup” career that have a solid forecast for wages and employ-ability, the programming industry are getting flooded now that everyone is trying to get good money in IT.
I’d skip the programming. The tales comong out of Silicon Valley on Blimd have convinced me the gold rush is basically over. If you have something you like doing that exists as a trade; Things like woodworking, electrical, plumbing, I’d look into that. The rules around them as a profeasional might change but the fundamentals are great for anywhere you go. Programmers are useful but we are about to fall off a tradesperson cliff. You’d be able to command 100 an hour at least if you are competent and polite.
I’d be wary of the trades as well. I am now an engineer, previously a welder. Unless you operate your own business, a trade is super unlikely to match the standard of living that a couple JDs would be used to. Also, most EU countries have very regimented training and qualification systems for tradespeople that start when you’re pretty young.
In the US, there is a labor shortage of skilled tradespeople and manufacturing workers, so there is a huge push to get more people into it. The nasty secret though, is that there is a labor shortage because pay has not been rising and benefits are a joke.
Corporations push high school kids and laid off tech workers towards the trades with promises of good prospects, high wages, and solid benefits. The reality though, is that most of them will end up trapped in mind numbing dead end jobs where their labor and emotional/physical health will be exploited until they aren’t useful to the company any more.
Manufacturers in particular are extremely reluctant to give their floor workers a bigger piece of the pie. So expanding the labor pool is an important long term strategy to ensure that wages stay low and that they can continue exploiting their workers as efficiently as possible.
Not trying to be a bummer, but I’ve lived both sides of this. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers, chambers of commerce, etc have a very strong and widely accepted narrative when it comes to the manufacturing labor shortage, so I think it’s extremely important to spread a counter narrative when I can.
On the positive side, there are some really simple things that can be done to help alleviate the labor shortage: increase pay and benefits. We finally started to see a tiny bit of that during covid, and I’m hopeful that the trend will continue. It’s frustrating though that it takes a near collapse of industry before manufacturers will even consider raising compensation.
Solid take. Thanks for giving that perspective. I was operating on some of that propaganda and hadn’t heard that side of it.
JDs?
Juris Doctor, it’s what you have to get to become an Attorney in the US and Canada.
Thank you! 😊👍
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.
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.
Honestly, I’m starting to think the Nazis may have won, and they just shifted their strategies to playing the longcon.
Things to add:
- war on Cash
- impending CBDCs
- government banning of decentralized currency
- possibility of UBI
- high profit medical care
- uninsureable assets in places that are fastly becoming at risk.
- retirement/death of the baby boomers and surplus of assets that no one will be able to afford
- all rain water on earth is contaminated by dangerous chemicals
- many consumer products are made with plastic/acrylic that leaks EAs
- sprinkle in some non human aircraft recoveries as a seasoning
I guess we’re transitioning from the fuck around to the find out stage
The annoying thing is that those who fucked around aren’t the ones suffering from finding out. They prospered while the rest of the world suffered from the consequences.
We gotta start paying more attention to the French way of doing things
I like the way they think
BURN THEIR HOUSE DOWN WITH THE
LEMONSFRENCH
I humbly protest as someone finding out for someone else’s fuck around.
I read a book maybe 20 years ago called the 4th Turning. This kind of feels like it and it is when the book said it was going to be.
What did it predict?
Yeah, I want to know to. Don’t leave us hanging.
It like that one book I read that predicted
The premise of the book is that US history goes through more or less periodic phases and there are common generational changes. The book I think predicted the start of the 4th turning about now. Turnings generally start with weakening goverments and some crisis and often often wars. This is all from memory… Someone else may know more.
Van Neistat just did a short on the 4th turning. Good read.
I think the Beehaw mods are on the brink of a nervous breakdown. With the influx of reddit users (like me), running the site must be like working retail on Black Friday - but it’s happening EVERY DAY.
The least we can do is donate
I’m glad to see that people have been!
The cyberpunk stuff I was reading back in the 90s is happening now. We are in cyberpunk.
Ok, so I live in a third world country but I am from America.
My wife and I moved to a new part of the city and were walking around to check out the area.
Well there is this massive condo complex. Like earlier 30-40+ floors. There have to be thousands of units and there are a few building like this in their compound.
It’s right next to the river and you walk past them when you walk over the bridge.
Well directly on the other side of the river there were a few young teenagers picking the fruit or maybe it was the leaves off of the tree for food.
It was super dystopian.
Additionally at night most of the lights in that condo complex are off. The building must be 95% empty.
Depressing walking past the newly-built housing that is out of reach for almost all of us. Family member lived in a modest apartment with their partner in 2019. They moved out, we check it now years later, it’s almost twice as expensive per month to rent.
The country where I live, prices have not really increased but there are tons of vacant units.
I still get energy bill alerts for the old property I lived in and close to a year later it is vacant.
I think property developers made all these condos and sold them to people who wanted an investment property. But they sell price was too high so the rent price is too high.
Since there are all these vacant places, rent is cheaper than buying by a significant amount.
If I purchased my current condo with 20% down, my rent would more than double.
Empty overpriced housing makes me sick honestly. It stifles the economy and social mobility of everyone so much as well (by design probably lol).
When they offered to sell the house, at first I was excited, but then then the selling price was like 3x more than I expected. I didn’t even respond to the realtor. There are also a bunch of vacant units for run and for sale.
I think the price is so high because rich people were tricked into buying an investment property which they could not rent and now they are stuck with a huge loan.
And I don’t mean rich like they can afford to lose 200k. I mean like upper middle class who really need to sell for the amount of their loan.
Wintermute is going to destroy Tassier-Ashpool, won’t it?
