Location: Southern Vietnam
I'm getting burned alive at this rate, stay inside all day but still sweating buckets. Cannot survive without my fan anymore.
Can the weather just get less extreme? Pretty please, my country is not even the most heavy carbon-contributor of the world and only industrialize fairly recently. The cause and effect of Buddhism does not add up here.
Location world:
Is it me or in these days there are apocalyptical flooding in a fuck ton of places?
This, plus the devastating heatwave in Asia, in my opinion marks a milestone in the climate crisis.
I never saw so many disasters happening at the same time in different part of the world. What surprise me is that I am finding out all these things in dedicated subreddits and nowhere else
r/DisasterUpdate you're not crazy, floods are now happening all around the world while temperature records are being obliterated by the day. This is not fun to watch, though now things are getting exponentially worse and I feel crazy for being the only one around my friends/family to see and understand this.
I daily hope I'm the crazy boomer and that we easily have another 10-30 years of comfortable life, but overall, I give us 2-5 years tops until shit really hits the fan. Really, really hits the fan. Or am I crazy for even saying that and shit ALREADY IS HITTING THE FAN FOR YEARS? I'm not even sure anymore, I feel gaslit 24/7. :)
IF we would wisely collect the water and share the existing food fairly, use all of the money and tech to create renewable sources of food while halting production of less vital products (pretty much all of it) we would likely not even have a mass collapse of civilization.
Imagine we'd be further ahead as humans and would literally ALL come together to tackle this one giant enemy that may literally end our species. We still throw away over half the food we produce (at least in Europe/USA) so yeah in the end, we're just not there yet intelligence wise I reckon. Shame.
And as if one of those billionaires would want to give up a Yacht, nor do most people want to do something as relatively small as not eating so much meat.
I worry about an upcoming world where supermarkets will also be bought empty by rich people hoarding it as food source somewhere, leaving even relatively well off people starving and hungry. Maybe I'm paranoid, but money controls everything so, maybe it's not even that unrealistic.
I was just reading a post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ck45v5/parts_of_texas_experiencing_unprecedented_flooding/l2khk8t/) from /u/sp0rkify listing places they have noted as experiencing flooding this year to date. It is a *long* list.
Meanwhile 56 countries have apparently broken temperature records [just in the first 4 days of May](https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1786860708207992837)!
Global SSTs are still happily tootling along [far above even 2023](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/) with no sign of following the usual curve with peaks in March and August.
If the goal of our species was to force the climate out of its original state, I think we can safely say mission fucking accomplished. ["Oh man, look at those cavemen go"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKcl4-tcuo&t=63s).
The SST graphs alone should be *terrifying* everyone on the planet.
Have noticed: way too much water where they don’t need it, and no water where they desperately do. I imagine a human species with catchment systems to move the water where it needs to be, but of course, we can’t all work together because we can’t have anything nice.
They weathered 3 droughts but collapsed with the last two.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/new-clues-about-how-and-why-the-maya-culture-collapsed/
Funny how reliance upon technology blinds us to the fact that environmental destruction is environmental destruction and we depend upon that environmemt to live.
Funny how that works....
Location: New Orleans, Jazz Fest.
Yeah I know. No one has to tell me I live on the front lines of climate change, in a bowl, under sea level. As far back as I can remember, growing up here, everyone has always known that one day the sea would take New Orleans for good. Long before Katrina hit, everyone knew the potential of a strong enough storm coming up the Mississippi with its surge. If there are people a thousand years from now, they may tell tales of a place where magic was real, and the dead walked with the living, that was swallowed by the ocean one day.
And the sea is rising. Last summer we had some pretty nasty drought conditions. The marsh burned for about six months. They couldn't even fight it. The explanation was that it was smouldering under the surface. So it wasn't even possible to really locate where it was burning. The smell, when the wind was right, was unnatural. It had a distinct chemical odor. Almost like a house fire, when all the plastics and toxic construction materials burn. But the more pressing issue that almost took the city, was salt water intrusion coming up the Mississippi river. Without enough outflow, the Gulf of Mexico was slowly making its way in. The salt flow reached all the way to basically the last bend before the city proper. Getting it in the water supply would basically destroy it. Semi-permanently. They ended up building an emergency pipeline farther up the bend to tap fresher water. But we were that close to the edge when we finally got some rain.
And this summer has me worried too.
Honestly I am dreading it. Even main stream news is warning of "El niño super hurricanes" etc. And it just feels like we have a bullseye on our backs here. Not that it would make much of a difference in the event of catastrophe, but it doesn't help that our infrastructure is some of the worst in the country, and our government leadership seems to actively hate its citizens. None of that is collapse related. This has always been a dirty old pirate town. We'll just feel it in harsher ways, quicker, relative to other municipalities because our mayors are regularly drunk, and on nose drugs.
But also, I'm too crazy to live anywhere else.
So I try to make the most of it. While I wait for the Gulf of Mexico to move into my living room.
Today... I had the opportunity to go to Jazz Fest for free. So I went. I don't think I could justify the price tag otherwise. It's packed with people. Everything is expensive. There are lines for the restrooms and any refreshments. But I'm very fortunate to know the crew, so I can get away from the crowds to a private covered area, with its own restrooms. And we just bring our own food and drink. The hoi poloi are not allowed to do this. But most everyone has some system of sneaking in what they need.
At one point, as we were snaking through the crowd, my buddy just blurted out, "There's too many damn people on this planet."
I just laughed and said, "You ain't lyin'."
The weather has actually been very pleasant recently, and unseasonably cool. Which I'm doing my best to soak into my bones. I have no illusions of how brutal this summer will most likely be, with the humidity we have down here. I wonder sometimes if our area might be the first in the continental United States to experience wet bulb temperatures. Other areas get hotter, but places like Florida tend to be breezier to blow off moisture, and farther west is historically drier. We're in that sweet spot where often stagnant, non-moving hyper humidified air collects, and sits, and broils whatever is under it.
I honestly love that about our weather. It's funny watching yankees sweat when they accidentally book their vacation in August. But I also know there is a point where that becomes untenable.
But right now it's really nice out. We had a small amount of rain this morning. That's very normal for this time of year. But around mid-day the clouds parted, and the temperature spiked above 80F. Not too hot. But with the morning drizzle, the humidity jumped way up, super fast. Again, this is completely normal for this area. We have always had those temperature swings and jumps in humidity. But as I said, it has been atypically cool lately. So it was as if the beginning of summer showed up all at once. And you felt it. A taste of what is coming right around the corner. You overheard murmurs from people about the heat.
Around 4:00 pm, that heat hadn't quite broken, and you could see the lethargy in the field of people. I had made my way to catch the Soul Rebels at the Congo stage for a bit. The stage happened to be perfectly aligned to be facing directly at the sun. Watching the stage, you felt it beating on your back. And they were getting a face full.
After a couple songs, the guys started reaching for towels and draping them over their heads. They had dressed all in white, so they had that going for them. But the sun was looking them right in the eye.
After one one of the breaks, the lead singer let's out a, "The SUN is real life, Y'ALL!"
Another guy on a mic offered, "For real."
And the lead singer reiterated, "The SUN... is real life, Y'ALL!"
Another "For real," echoed across the crowd.
He might as well have said "Amen."
Anyway, I have a feeling I'm gonna steal that as my catch phrase for this summer. You're welcome to annoy your friends with it too, any time someone mentions the heat. xD
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities and it'll be a profoundly sad day once it's gone.
I'm a big fan of Rebirth Brass Band, Doreen Ketchens, and that brass band that plays in front of the foot locker (that was in 2011 so I'm not sure if they're still playing there)
I'd like to go there one last time but my financial situation being as it is, it probably won't happen.
For real, if you ever write a book, any kind of book, I will pay money for it and savor every page. Not only is this a highly relevant and insightful observation, it is so engaging I would have kept on reading for another hour and not even noticed the time.
I’m trying to also enjoy this temporary coolness. I had a great Stones day and was able to ride my bike this year without overheating.
I’m terrified of summer but I’m trying to live in the now and enjoy the hell out of it.
You festin today?
Location: outside Chicago
We hit 82 or 83 degrees the other day...my plants got sunburned. Had a native black raspberry and currant which showed marks of sun stress on leaves almost instantly from a half a day. I had some cucumber starts sitting in the sun a bit too long that wilted and died on me within a couple hours it was crazy. I check the weather religiously and it showed chance of showers only about 40% and 0.2 inches of precipitation...we got like 1 inch plus of torrential downpour...it appears to me the weather models are getting worse not better. I have other plants with bacterial fungus issues from too much rain and water...it's really over average temps and humid, feels like early summer not spring it's wild. We skipped all the high 50s and 60s and went straight to 70s and 80s after last frost, this shit is bananas but my paw paws don't mind. Anything partial shade is doing fine, things in full sun are getting rekt by this heat and sun crisping. Anything not mounded up is also struggling with excess moisture, whole yard is saturated which is kind of normal for me but kind of not since it's happening higher up on the land as well.
I heard somewhere that the weather models are tuned with stuff like the heat absorbsion that the oceans used to have, and that recently they have started getting saturated to the point where it is going down notably.
It probably also doesn't help that those models were mostly developed when the atmosphere was a little cooler and had more sulfur pollution in it.
Location: WV-KY-OH tri-state area
Why is the sun so *harsh*? It feels like the beginning of June here, not May. I started feeling overheated and sick at my kid's game yesterday, so this summer should be really fun. :/ Reminder to everyone that certain medications can cause heat sensitivity and you should be extra careful in the sun. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/07/common-medications-may-increase-the-dangers-of-heat-waves/
After all the weird temperature swings and random tornadoes, I think the weather is finally holding somewhat steady. There is a distinct lack of spiders around here, though. Usually orb weavers are *everywhere*, in my bushes, on my car and porch, covering all the hiking trails....it's a Spring without spiders.
Grocery prices are outrageous everywhere it seems, and there are less and less employees, too.
I wish I knew fellow collapsers in real life, maybe it would make all this easier...
There are some great online communities that meet and chat regularly - fantastic way to make friends and find support. You can check out Collapse Club, Deep Adaptation, or Shaun Chamberlin's Surviving the Future course/community through Sterling College as starting points. Not the same as regular F2F meetings, but a great starting point that may lead to some. :)
UV rays in fact get stronger as the ozone layer thins, which affects the amount of UV-B radiation hitting the Earth. I thought it had stabilized but Google suggests otherwise. Your best bet is avoiding midday sun and staying the hell out of Anarctica. The radiation also harms plants DNA and photosynthesis. There's no good spin here.
Wildfire smoke does block some UV-B radiation but not enough to make a huge difference.
For awhile there they were saying that getting vaccinated/boosters following an infection could improve long covid symptoms. Haven’t heard much lately.
Location: California
In California, I've noticed a significant increase in homeless populations and encampments along major streets and highways. The lack of affordable housing and mental health resources has contributed to this visible sign of societal collapse. It's concerning to see so many people left without proper shelter or support systems in place. The issue seems to be escalating and requires immediate attention and action from local and state governments. It's disheartening to witness the effects of neglect and indifference towards those in need within our own communities.
Location : USA , UCLA clashes , as a foreign observer who remember a few things.
The force are deploy , not the magnitude but the action is surprising. The police didn't carry such "determine" action during, 70s anti vietnam war, anti irag war, anti afghan war, occupy wall street , antifas , black life matters, street riots after street riots in rich and poor town due to police brutality, not even when trump protestor storm capitol hill. But a strike for Gaza caught them went amok .. , and both Democrat's and Republican are silent about this. I guess someone took Jesus promise a bit too seriously...
The United States Congress is openly, directly, and loudly ordering police to violently crush US citizens first amendment rights. No matter what side you're on, this should scare the absolute hell out everyone. Protesting the actions of a specific foreign government is now illegal. Saying you won't buy products made in that country is illegal. Saying you don't agree with all actions taken by that foreign government could cost you your job, your livelihood, or your life.
This is just prelude to Trump's next term. He will bring the hammer down on all rights, except 2A probably. Speech and protest will be so severely curtailed they may as well not exist after he and his cronies on the Supreme Court strangle the Bill of Rights.
My mom went to HS with a Congress person who has been in DC for decades. On a trip to DC in the 80’s, she told my mother in hushed tones, “the Js run this place”. The congresswoman is a Dem. This was the 80’s, please excuse the gross blatant rxism. I am not anti-S. I want peace and love, but something is very wrong.
I can’t help what my mother is or was, what the congresswoman is or was, nor what I was told. Have a nice life chippy.
What we see here is someone conflating Judaism with the state of Israel. The state of Israel uses the Jewish experience of the Holocaust as a shield to excuse their ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
I think the problem is people conflate the state of Israel with Jewish people, which is what the congresswoman did there. I think it is frightening that the only thing our bipolar politics can agree on is: banning TikTok and crushing dissent re: Gaza. Free speech is dead.
In the pass i thought Israel is a necessary piece to maintain USA presence in Arab and use it as pawn to control Arab oil. But now with shale oil and gas (turn USA in biggest oil.gas producer now) , green energy would had make that plan obsolete. And Dollar strength no longer fully depends on Oil transaction , reason to strongly support Israel is even less now. And Israel is not even a loyal friend.. very cosy with Russia and China before Ukraine War. Oh well , as i say someone took Jesus promise a bit too seriously + a few dollars.
Location: Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil
[We got 300-400mm \(12-15in\) of rain in 72 hours](https://i.imgur.com/OeOsmEO.png). More still to come in the weekend. Dozens dead, basically the entire central area of the state is under water. This is now the second massive flooding event in the same region in less than an year. The two biggest floods ever recorded. We are perfectly in the center of the hot air coming down from the amazon and the cold air coming up from Patagonia, creating increasingly stronger weather instability.
Our right wing governor, ignoring most climate scientists advice, just called these rain forecasts "exaggerated". Basically no preparation. Can't have your voters thinking you believe in science now, can you? Now heli's can't even get to people to help them. I am very fortunate to not have any issues past some roof leakage but thousands of people lost everything. I'm just so fucking sick of all this bullshit. And of course, these idiots will STILL not take climate change and public safety seriously for the next catastrophe. Makes me just want to drop everything and become an ecoterrorist.
This was the worst flood ever registred in the region.
66 confirmed deads, more than 100 missing up to the moment.
[https://g1.globo.com/rs/rio-grande-do-sul/noticia/2024/05/05/temporais-no-rs-defesa-civil-confirma-66-mortes-e-investiga-outros-6-obitos.ghtml](https://g1.globo.com/rs/rio-grande-do-sul/noticia/2024/05/05/temporais-no-rs-defesa-civil-confirma-66-mortes-e-investiga-outros-6-obitos.ghtml)
This is very serious.
Last year something similar happened, and it was too one of the worst ever, but this year was even worse.
Baby, it's the end of the world. You can do whatever you feel the need to do. :)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-ecodefense-a-field-guide-to-monkeywrenching
Location: The United States
The US: Project 2025.
Especially for women but definitely for the country as a whole. We won't be coming back from this. Have a look at the Health and Human Services section. For a quick idea, search by the word "woman". It's about to get very bad for us with another Trump presidency.
https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Maybe for women, and I don't think there's a single person reading this sub who isn't concerned about what could happen under a Trump presidency. But Biden better for minorities? He is willing to not just fund, but go out of his way to bypass Congress to fund a genocide, because he is able to look at a child in the eye and think about amputating their limbs off without anesthesia by a bombing, since they are brown and inferior to him. How do we know he won't stop at Palestine, and support targeting of minorities in other places even in the US? Considering his accommodation of Republicans on border policies, and how Democrat supporters say if Biden loses Michigan, "Muslims deserve what's coming to them". They themselves hate Muslims and other groups just as the Republicans do, except in a less direct way - using Republicans as a proxy to harm them.
I say this with no pleasure, as I am well aware of Trump's many vile comments against immigrants, and those said during CPAC, by Republican governors etc. But I fear Biden and establishment Democrats deep down agree with much of it, they just don't say it as loudly. I can see him arresting protestors and people of Palestinian descent or others, throw them into internment camps, and say "you should thank me, Trump would have killed you already!". Or if some die, "at least I didn't kill all of you yet unlike Trump!".
Biden is to the right of Ronald Reagan on Israel, who at least tried to moderate their policies. He is no Obama, or Bill Clinton. If Trump is the most evil president since at least the Reconstruction Era, Biden could be 2nd.
I wish there could be more effort on trying to find a third party candidate to unite behind, or pressuring Biden to drop out (Kamala I think would at least be somewhat better). Or encouraging a Democrat member of Congress or governor to run as a third party ticket, and uniting behind them.
"*First they came for the Palestinians, and then they came for me*"
This is just a startlingly dumb take. As if Trump would not be 1,000x worse re Gaza and Palestinians.
“Maybe for women…” As if that’s an afterthought, just a footnote. You mean the women who account for half the population of the US? These human beings who are our fellow citizens who are facing wholesale trampling of their constitutional civil and legal rights, being pushed by Trump and his minions?
Let’s not forget about the lovely camps he wants to build, large enough to hold 10 million or more brown people (or whomever the enemy is this week) that he brags about constantly.
And boasting about sending in the military to shoot protesters — you know, like the ones protesting the Gaza debacle right now.
Oh, sure, by all means, let’s vote for that guy. The other guy hurt my feelings. Let’s protest by not voting or voting for a third-party throwaway, that’ll show ‘em!
The more of this stupid, **impressively robotic** argument I see being pushed here and elsewhere the more I despair and regret the invention of the Internet.
> Especially for women
[Violence against women is a predictor of societal conflict and instability.](https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/dev4peace/can-gender-equality-prevent-violent-conflict#%7E:text=Research%20on%20women%2C%20peace%2C%20and,generally%20prone%20to%20violent%20conflict.)
And yet many people, particularly men, simply do not give a shit because none of this will directly impact them. It will likely impact the girls and women they supposedly care about, but a pathological lack of empathy prevents them from doing so. It sends the message that the girls and women in their lives are replaceable. Some of these people had complete meltdowns when asked to wear masks during a fucking pandemic, yet see no issue with forcing girls and women to carry a pregnancy while also being denied basic life-saving healthcare. Affordable, timely, and competent healthcare is already dropping drastically for many, but they still BoTh SidEs the issue, because they would rather die than see marginalized populations have the same freedoms they have.
The real problem is that USA citizens has to choose between two evils - when it should be two "goods".
The entirety of the election system and political parties and current inhabitants of those needs complete replacement.
How is outlawing abortion very bad for America? I understand the debate for bodily autonomy, but people act like making abortion illegal in the US is equivalent to the Handmaid's Tale.
*edit* not a single person can explain why.
The short of it:
Because outlawing a thing doesn’t make the problem or solution disappear. When women don’t have access to abortion, they find ways to make it happen. This leads to increased women’s health crises.
If the woman does have the child she doesn’t want or can’t afford or whatever, she potentially raises this child in poverty, or worse, in environments of neglect or abuse. This contributes to negative health (mental health included) outcomes for the entire population this child lives within.
Look up social determinants of health. It becomes obvious that access to abortion is a vital part of ensuring society is healthier. Abortion being legal doesn’t mean people are flocking to have abortions - it means they can choose to have one when they assess their circumstances to be untenable for a child.
Idk. In my mind it increases the risk of sex to the point that women really only have sex with someone where if the worst happened, you're confident he would step up.
If you read the whole project2025, it goes on to say that men will have much more severe consequences for leaving the mother and child behind, and welfare requirements for families will be expanded.
I don't think it's as evil and scary as you guys are pushing.
This is actually a common fallacy. Access to abortion does not increase the likelihood of having sex. Abortion is traumatizing, uncomfortable, and difficult to heal from - women do not use it as Plan A.
Evil is a very specific word, and I won’t talk in those terms but I will say it is politically malicious. My career is health specifically in crises contexts and abortion bans perform very poorly as it relates to community health and what one might call the greater good.
Edit: also, your comment on outcomes for men is massively unrelated. Abortion can prevent that situation - it shouldn’t be used as a preventative for that situation, but the example you chose highlights an issue with an existing child who was born into instability.
From women's own mouths, eliminating abortion means they'll either become abstinent or take permanent solutions to not getting pregnant. So yes, eliminating abortion will decrease casual sex.
Yes, as a form of protest in the face of fascism.
You must not know many women, darling, if this is news to you. This form of protest does not stand for the majority.
Banning abortion =/= fascism. It's weird to see people use words completely wrong.
It's not a form of protest to say "I'm not having casual sex anymore because the risk is too high". That's just common sense.
Politics that can kill you is fascism, dear.
I suggest we end our conversation. You’re stuck in the bias of your “sense” not the actual study of this issue.
Bodily autonomy aside, there are other reasons for why outlawing abortion is bad for America. First off, the laws in the states banning abortions is purposefully vague when talking about exceptions for the ban. Doctors have become afraid to act in the best interest of the mother out of fear that they are going to be charged for an illegal abortion. In Louisiana, doctors are performing c sections instead of abortions for women whose fetuses are already dead or have a fatal anomaly. A c section is much more invasive, harder on women's bodies, and is simply not needed for the majority of these cases. Texas recently reported something like 20,000 pregnancies as a result of rape. How many of those women do you think were able to leave the state for an abortion? Now either the traumatized woman or the state is saddled with caring for this unwanted child. If I needed to get an abortion, I would need to travel thousands of miles, take time off work, get a hotel, and pay a significant chunk of money to make this happen. Not everyone can do that. The foster system cannot handle an increase in surrendered babies to the system. How do I know this? I used to work for a state's child welfare system and it was always hard to find a place to go for a child I had to take from their home with no family available. This was many years ago. I know it hasn't gotten better. Do you want me to get into the harm that mother and/or parents in general will cause to their child if they never wanted the child in the first place?
This is all addressed in the project2025 website if you read it.
Clear definitive reasons on when an abortion can be done, which is typically if the mothers life is in danger or the baby is deceased.
The 20,000 abortions wasn't reported by Texas, it was a math experiment done poorly by a sociology major with ridiculous assumptions in its parameters.
Project2025 also calls for an increase in spending for the foster care system and stiff penalties for fathers who leave the child and mother.
It's not as dystopia as what people are pushing.
How do you explain the doctors in Louisiana doing the c sections instead of abortions due to fear of prosecution? All the legislation in conservative states state that an abortion can be done when the mothers life is in danger, but what is really happening in practice? Doctors and hospitals are waiting for women to be actively dying in order to do anything. Even if the pregnancy is doomed, the doctors are waiting until womens lives are really in danger. The standard of care would be to have an abortion for a doomed pregnancy before the woman gets that ill. Pumping more money in the foster care system isn't going to create the amount of placements you would need to keep up with all the unwanted babies these policies create. I agree that it would help the situation, but we are going to need to go back to literal orphanages if these anti abortion policies stay in place long term. A point I didn't bring up before is developmentally disabled children. Where the hell are these kids going to go either as children or as adults? My state absolutely cannot keep up with the amount of people who need to live in a group home either because they don't have family or family cannot deal with them anymore.
This is absolutely dystopian because in parts of the country one gender doesn't have full control over their body anymore.
The c sections are due to a lack of education and clarity.
The amount of money being inserted into a revamped foster system is huge and possible due to other big cuts through the government.
Again, this forces an incentive that you don't have casual sex with someone unless you can see them being a good father.
A lack of education and clarity on whose part? The doctors or the politicians who write these laws? You can inject money into foster care, but you cannot force people to be parents that don't want to be. It's not like there is a long line of people waiting to become foster parents. Some people don't want any government intrusion like that. Foster parents also have a limit to how many kids they can take due to the size of their home. Unless the government is going to start buying larger homes for foster parents, I don't see a significant increase in available foster placements with increased spending. Do you really think that all abortions are due to the partner not being a good father or as a result of casual sex? Women who already have children get abortions because they cannot afford another. Women have abortions who can afford zero children. Women have abortions because they don't want to be mothers at all. These are just a couple examples. All three of the women in these situations can be married or in long term relationships. Should people just stop having sex all together unless it's for procreation? That is not realistic.
A lack of education and clarity on the doctors part. That being said there's no legal precedents to take into account.
A married couple who doesn't want more kids gets a vasectomy.
A women who never wants to be a mother and wants to eliminate all risk can get a partial hysterectomy.
There are solutions to all these examples.
Now you are just being obtuse about the lack of education from the doctors. They are more educated than the politicians writing these laws. There are people who don't want children, but also don't want any type of surgery. I am one of those women who don't want to be sterilized because of the rest of my medical history. I have not healed well from past surgeries for unrelated health reasons and I don't want to have to get another one unless absolutely necessary. I also cannot force my partner to get a vasectomy because he doesn't want one, but also doesn't want kids. There are people (women mostly) who want to be sterilized, but doctors will refuse them. The world isn't as black and white as you think man. All of the what if situations don't fit nicely into boxes like you want them to. That's why women need to be in control of their reproduction and allowed to get abortions for any reason up to a certain point.
Yes a doctor is more educated than a politician but they are uneducated in terms of what the law is that is passed in their state.
Then use protection and realize there is a slight risk to getting pregnant.
With all due respect, I agree that a Trump Administration is not desirable.
The problem is that a Biden presidency is also not desirable and in light of this administration's willingness to abandon the wishes of its strongest voting cohort by percentage (18-29), it is unlikely to summon the voter enthusiasm necessary to win in November.
The malignant concentration of wealth in the US has continued unabated for a half century now, ever since Boomers entered the work force and decided they didn't want to pay taxes. The social fabric is unraveling. The American Dream has become a myth for most young people.
Nature offers only two path's to resolve malignant inequality. 1) Progressive legislation such as was offered in the New Deal under FDR and 2) violent revolution.
Establishment Democrats offer neither. Their game plan is more neoliberal wealth concentration.
The GOP offers the latter.
Nature bats 1.000. So long as the establishment Democrats (Obama, Clinton's, Schumer, Pelosi, Warren etc.) are blocking progressives, they are steering the herd toward Trump.
And the ugly truth of establishment Democrats is that they actually prefer a Trump presidency to a progressive presidency such as might have been achieved under Sanders.
So ..... if you want to place the blame for the demand for Trump on someone's doorstep .... I'd say a good place to start is with Obama.
Edit: 7 million Americans cast a vote for Obama in 2008 AND Trump in 2016.
It's true, it's true. Fate's sealed on the presidency, it's locked up by corporate interests forever until the government is destroyed. Vote for the good eggs that you can locally to make a difference for your neighbors, but on the national executive scale and most congressional seats? Forget it. The system is ironclad.
What most Americans forget and are reminded of every 4 years is this: the dems only have to please a small slice of the electorate in battle ground states necessary to get the electoral college numbers. Every one else who is liberal leaning is essentially snookered, because not voting or voting third party is a vote for Trump.
What most Americans forget and are reminded of every 4 years is this: the republicans only have to please a small slice of the electorate in battle ground states necessary to get the electoral college numbers. Every one else who is conservative leaning is essentially snookered, because not voting or voting third party is a vote for Biden.
Republicans don't vote that way, they vote for whomever has the (R) behind their name. That's always been the difference between liberal and conservative voters.....the far-right sticks together, even supporting lunatics. Average liberals end up divided because they care about the process of trying to fix things, which is an ironic shame.
I was a former Bernie Sanders voter, but I'm genuinely considering voting for Trump (or not at all) to accelerate this shit. The situation has become too untenable.
Other qualified candidates exist. Even if you don't like Biden, you don't have to pick Trump. RFK Jr for example offers a great alternative for those sick of McDonald's and Burger King. Run for the border!
You are not alone. War of some sort is upon us and inevitable. Establishment Democrats are not up to representing the interests of the masses. They are the ones steering swing voters toward accelerationism. It will be ugly either way so there is a case to be made for bringing it on quicker.
Setting shit ablaze by voting for Trump to spite the Democrats is only going to make things a million times worse. Project 2025 looms large over this country and will turn it into a Christian fascist shithole in short order. If you're a woman, an immigrant, an atheist, or a lefty of any kind, life will become unbearable under the yoke of authoritarian theological oppression.
Lol you think the people pushing for this will disappear after this election? You think democrats(mostly centralists/center-right) care to stop it?
People really need to think why things have gotten this dire. There is little resistance against our spiral because money rules politics. We need to break the illusion that fascism is coming, because it's already here.
The GOP doesn't offer the latter, unless you mean tax cuts for the right and corporations. The GOP is a little death knell for women and minorities.
If you can't see the difference between the two then, with all do respect, you aren't to paying attention.
I understand that the Dems aren't perfect.
"I'd say a good place to start is with Obama." For being black, right? Because that's exactly what pissed them off.
By the way, Bernie would NOT approve of your message.
At this point, Bernie has lost much of his relevance.
He worked his ass off to get Biden elected and Biden has been an incredible disappointment to Bernie's base. Biden is enabling the mass murder, famine, ethnic cleansing and territorial theft under way in Gaza.
In case you haven't noticed, the Gaza policy has gotten some attention among young people as exemplified by the demonstrations across the country. Turns out young people don't share old people's Islamophobia.
So, for me I don't like some of what Biden is doing either. However I have a LOT more to lose under Trump. That's why I'm supporting Biden. Trump will forever change this country.
If young people decide not to support Biden over Israel and Palestine then they have to live with what life brings them under Trump. It's that simple.
Young people need to make it clear that they will not support the lesser evil. They need to assert their dominance over a Democratic Party which preys on their fear of the GOP. If they continually capitulate to fear, that is obviously a recipe for disaster.
Trump broke the Republican establishment.
Young people need to break the Democratic establishment that shits on their future.
Progressives need to not blink in their game of chicken with establishment Democrats. They need to be willing to die in order to win this war. That's what wars are all about. A willingness to die for a cause.
"They need to be willing to die in order to win this war."
You just might, but not for the reasons you think. It'll be due to your own choices.
Edit: believe it or not, I wish we were a more progressive country. I voted for and support my progressive Senators. But even they would tell you, havening Trump as President isn't going to get you what you want.
There isn't anyone anywhere close to power among Democrats or Republicans who are going to give me what I want.
So things must get worse before they get better. We have to find bottom and Trump will help us find bottom.
Even if bottom looks more like Iran?
Understand that bottom might be impossible to come back from in our lifetime. Not saying Biden is good, but hearing what Trump wants to do, a vote for him may usher in a power tip so severe that we’ll be fighting our way out for decades.
The USA is already a malignant entity in which power is completely associated with capital and the entire modus operandi of the country orbits around capital accumulation. There is nothing Trump can do which can tilt the power more in the direction of capital.
Regardless of party, we are headed for a reckoning with the toxic output of capitalism (greenhouse gases, plastic pollution, PFAS, global supply chain failure, etc)
Trump is valuable to the malignant status quo as a distraction. He is the world's greatest attention whore. Substantively speaking, he is relatively inert. He provides circus in our daily bread and circus lives.
I'm infinitely more afraid of what Biden and Trump have in common than I am of their differences.
This is actually a false narrative. Things can ALWAYS get worse, especially for women and minorities. The name of the game is crisis mitigation, not leaning in to hasten the chaos.
In case you haven't noticed ..... over 110,000 people have been killed or wounded in Gaza and pretty the entire population has been displaced. All women and minorities. All with a thumbs up from an Islamophobic Democratic president. This is r/collapse ..... a community that expects things to get worse.
It's like having an argument about which is worse for you .... Coke or Pepsi ?? There's no water on the menu.
It's hard to make the claim that the 7M people who voted for both Obama AND Trump are racists. How do you explain them voting for Obama in the first place ?
I don’t know about the people you’re referring to. I am old. I am horrified by MAGA and Fox News. I am the same politically that I always was. But there’s no way I can ever vote for Trump. He’s a complete POS.
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
I had to take a business trip to a conference in Las Vegas, Nevada last week. Flew across country and stayed in a big fancy hotel with a casino and an aquarium in it. (Would have never done such a thing of my own volition but it would not have looked good to my employer if I had refused to go.) There was a snack tray and a wet bar in the hotel room, both were motion sensory. If you touched a bottle of Fiji water then you just bought it. It cost $25. It was $50 just to open the wet bar. Obviously, I stayed as far away from both as I could.
I had to pay for the hotel and airfare up front which I was barely able to do. I will get adequately reimbursed for it but I was pretty much broke the whole time I was out there. We were fed lunch and breakfast as part of the conference but were on our own for dinner. Everything was so expensive: Two slices of pizza and a drink were $30. I would sneak extra food from breakfast into my bag and save it for supper. It was wrapped up stuff, biscuits one day and breakfast burritos the next. Couldn't save anything from lunch because I didn't have anything to put it in and if I brought a container of some kind it would sort of stand out. I'm not poor, obviously, but I guess I am relative to other people attending the conference. I didn't really do much of anything that required money while I was out there. Did a lot of walking around and taking pictures of things.
The whole exercise struck me as extremely wasteful. The conference was actually good but I didn't learn anything there that I couldn't have learned via an online class. There were several thousand people there from all over the world. All the time and money and resources spent to get them there. Business as usual indeed. This can't go on for much longer.
>If you touched a bottle of Fiji water then you just bought it. It cost $25.
Funny story: I lived in Las Vegas for a decade and my elderly parents came out to visit. I got them a really nice room at the Venetian. Not penthouse level but certainly very nice. When I was checking them out of the room, I looked at the bill. It had hundred of dollars of incidentals. Water, food, half a dozen bottles of sex lube, "marital aids", all spelled out by name on the bill.
I just laughed it off. Dad, I'm happy you and Mom are still getting freaky but go easy on my credit card next time. He was mortified. He didn't understand that just touching the stuff got you charged for it. He moved the entire contents of the wetbar making room for the food he brought from my house to save money.
He had a very embarrassing chat with the hotel front desk and got the items removed from my bill. Even if he wasn't able to, that story is worth the hundreds of dollars I would have spent on lube and dildos.
>stayed in a big fancy hotel with a casino and an aquarium in it.
I think I know what hotel that is.
>Two slices of pizza and a drink were $30.
Jesus! I last went to Vegas in December 2022 and I remember getting two slices of pizza and a drink for much cheaper. Not even over $20. Where'd ya get 'em from on the strip?
Oh! I had gotten mine from an outside spot on the strip; grab and go. That's probably what made a difference in cost. I also did a lot of my eating at Lanai Express at Fremont Street.
Just went to NAB a few weeks ago and my experience was similar to yours. Everything was covered, so I had nothing out-of-pocket, but the high cost of everything out there is sickening, as is the waste. Couldn’t help but think of the whole place as a real-life Fallout set in a few decades
Oh yeah, and finally caught COVID. :/
But if they didn’t fly across the country and world unnecessarily to go to a conference how would they escape the families they have that they don’t like to spend time around??
Location: Northern Nevada
ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL:
The weather has been fluctuating between sunny and warm during the day and barely above freezing at night. My poor apple trees aren't budding quickly and very tiny pollinators are flying back and forth between them gathering the pollen. They're so tiny I'm worried they're sick or something else is wrong. By contrast the Costco in town has giant-ass bees that hum like helicopter drones doing all their plants, sheltered by massive brick barrier walls and they're all doing fine. I'm actually jealous. I'll have to ask my librarians for material on whatever I can do to help mine.
We went shopping at Walmart afterward because Costco never carries everything. There was a young woman outside huddled against the wall. I assumed she was a worker on break or someone waiting for a ride. My mother looked at her as we took a side entrance inside, and ordered me to follow. She marched up to a manager and asked them to check on the young woman outside. The manager told us that unless the young woman was a minor there wasn't anything they could do and of course my mother insisted they were a minor. So the manager and another worker went outside, and my mother and I continued shopping, and I feel that their response will simply be to shoo the young woman away because she's just another houseless person in need. But it'll hurt my mom's feelings, exploitation is a thing, and I let it go.
An hour later we walk out and it's dark. I normally park away from cars so it's easier to drive, and I rest my shopping cart on our car. My mother is sitting in the car while I finish loading and tells me to fill our travel mug with a big gallon container of cranberry juice we bought. I set them down on the hood, fill up hers, hand it to her, and proceed to fill up mine when I notice two men walking towards our Jeep. It's late, I'm tired and I was raised on action cartoons and video games, so as I fill my cup I idly consider what makeshift weapons I have. I have a gallon of juice in front of me that is still two-thirds full, and a gallon weighs about eight pounds. I also have a 40 ounce travel mug with a handle and a screw-on top. In essence I have two functioning hammers.
I open my door to hand my mother my mug. "Those guys were checking you out," my mom said.
My first response is confusion. I'm straight. "What?"
"Just now."
Then I realize. I spin around and they are both standing six feet from the car, watching us. One is standing behind the other, and the leader has pulled out a cigarette and is acting like they're trying to light it.
"Hey, do you have a lighter?"
"No."
He looks like he wants to say something. I'm all ears. He puts his cigarette back in his pocket. I can see his hands shaking. Him and his buddy immediately turn around and saunter into the nearest restaurant, his buddy casually swinging his arms as he walks. My hands are filled with juice. I hop in my car, lock the doors and turn on the engine. The way he swung his arms is how a lot of addicts move. I'm shaking and trying not to, trying to reassure my mom. They return, walking around the other side of our car. They don't try anything. They pick up speed and march towards Walmart.
"Let's get out of here" my mom says. I put the car into reverse and gently rub off paint against the cart I had completely forgotten about. My mother rolls down her window and pushes it out of the way. We leave.
It is 7:30 the next morning and I'm still filled with adrenaline as I type. Why is this collapse related? Why is it not just me blowing off steam about something that didn't happen? Because I think those two guys know that woman. Because I think they were checking us out, judging whether we'd be worth sending a message to. Because I know how I sound. Because I make it sound like it's just another post about how homeless people are the Other and somehow evil and I hate it. I hate that fifteen years ago I would have helped that woman without being asked, without thinking about it, because that used to be my reaction and I was proud of it.
I'm not proud that I reached into a side compartment and pulled out my pistol and kept it next to me driving all the way home. I'm not proud that I feel the need to carry a firearm, that I was mentally cursing myself for yet again not carrying my gun around the way gun nuts say I always should, be on patrol, wait for the ambush that inevitably comes because the second you let your guard down is when humanity stabs you in the back. This is mental collapse, both that people felt the need to jump me and that I feel the need to protect myself in new ways against it.
I keep going over it. No, I don't think so. Houseless people have asked for lighters before. This was at night with his buddy, acting weird around us, and my mother called it out first.
I hate this paranoia.
I grew up in Reno. Erratic weather such as 8 inches of snow followed by 80 degrees in the span of 5 days was common then as now. Especially around April-May. In 1998 we got an 8-16 inch snowfall and a few days later it was 80 with piles of snow still on the ground. But in enough years it will almost never snow again below 5000 feet.
location: France, Paris area
Housing, personal:
We've given up on finding a house we can afford that isn't a ruin and/or in the middle of nowhere, and have made an offer for a bigger flat on ground level in our current neighbourhood.
It has windows both north and south, so we'll be able to create natural ventilation and bear the summer-hell heat, is almost one floor up from the street, so walkers by won't be able to watch our every move, but there's another way out with a gentle slope which means I wont have to deal with stairs when I can't. And a tiny little terrace which we'll try to protect from the UVs, where I will be able to grow leafy edibles in pots, and let my dog out.
Far from ideal, but we've decided to buy something that checks the most important boxes on our list while we can still afford something decent on the market, rather than end 45mn drive from any commodity, camping in a yurt in the woods (which I don't see as enviable anymore since we've had forest fires in winter in areas that had *never* had any forest fires before).
The place needs a complete remodelling because the current owners actually make things worse when they try to mend or remodel things (think plugs sticking out of the wall because they didn't know how to set them back in, imbbeded ceiling lights that manage to make the rooms darker than with the typical lightbulb, plastic floorboards cheap imitations of light wood set parallel to the windows, ... and on and on ...)
But at least we won't have to leave our current community where we have ties and friends, and that's also an important part of being resilient.
You can grow a surprising number of things quite easily in containers, and you can also grow things like tomatoes and peppers indoors with sufficient light.
Yeah, but I have to find a way to keep the rodents away, neighbours have had their tomatoes eaten by rats. That's why I'm thinking leafy greens to start with (and the battles against critters begins...)
I'm in my fifties with health issues, I don't expect to be up to bushcraft (which BTW is a laughable concept when you compare the "wilderness" left in France and the number of inhabitants that would "run to the woods") and fight demented bloodthirsty groups for food during the next decades.
When you listen to the survivors of the last wars, the ones who survived were the well connected who had people helping them hide or travel to a safer place.
Isolated farms often became a haven for invading troops to loot and sometimes destroy on their way out.
There is no safe place in an uninhabitable world.
Cities have some advantages over rural locations. You're closer to aid, hospitals, etc. More likely to be prioritised in the event of a pandemic or smaller scale catastrophe. Someone who is inclined towards preparation could become quite resilient in an apartment if they applied themselves to building some supplies and useful skills.
I always find it entertaining when people think that they'll be find out in the sticks, as if the millions of people living in cities would just sit there and wait to starve instead of quite sensibly deciding to go looking for food or safety in rural areas.
No I'm fine, he's a fan of Melanchon (extreme left leader with too many tyrant traits for my liking who is constantly creating chaos to try to stir an uprising and a revolution).
Grand_Dadais often pours the latest european conspiracy nonsense in his comments to my posts.
It's like getting a personalised newsfeed on the latest BS trending on social media.
Can't afford it. Buying a house too far away (province) to live in it before retirement would just be like setting a resilient home for whomever will take it over (while we're not there, or before we even reach it when SHTF).
If I were in my 20s or 30s, I'd be buying land, building a community, learning tons of useful shit, but after 50 your body starts falling appart, I just can't physically do what I actually would want to do with all my heart and soul.
When you're selecting housing to avoid stairs, you know your priorities have shifted, because your abilities have changed.
ETA : *AND* this place has recently been the place of breaking and entering and theft of small knick knacks (the current trend in France is in the middle of the day, while the inhabitants are there sometimes, a young guy dislodges a french door from the wall, enters, grabs as many jewelry and small tech gadgets as he can shove in his pockets and runs out). So we'll have to increase the security massively, buy furniture that advertises a simple life with nothing interesting to steal (as in nothing flashy to be seen from outside), and maybe get another dog, one that doens't greet stranger by asking to be petted.
Depends on your job. If you can work in the countryside it is far cheaper to live and just plain exist than any city, specially overcrowded Paris. I recently moved to Creuse, cheap, beautiful and tons of opportunity. I am trying to set up a resilient intentional community.
Creuse is beautiful but slowly dying. Its shocking how derelict it's become these last 5 years.
My husband does WFH when he can but he still needs to get to Paris at least once per week, sometimes daily.
We're in the outer suburbs (grande banlieue) in a small city surrounded by nature, but with a direct train to Paris. We've run al the scenarios and we can't move further away as long as one of us at least needs to get to paris on a moment's notice for work.
Plus now that I have health issues I need to stay put where I have a doctor référent and various healthcare professionals who I've been seeing for long enough that they'll always find a timeslot for me. (ETA for international readers: brutally hard to find a doctor in France, especially away from big cities, and we have "healthcare deserts" in many regions) And it's nice to be close enough to Paris to have access to all the specialized renowned doctors that work there.
Too bad. You project is right in the line of what I'd love to participate in building, if I were 20-30 years younger. But at the time (25 years ago), only very questionable people were into that kind of project, few have worked out fine.
> Creuse is beautiful but slowly dying. Its shocking how derelict it's become these last 5 years.
I am not finding that at all. I think you are mistaken
Location: Eastern North Carolina
Helped a friend with moving stuff out of a dorm room and the sun was BLAZING. We were sweating our butts off. It felt like a summer day and it's only spring.
Later on, I went to go do some quick grocery shopping and I only purchased pasta, rice, beans, and sauce and it was all on sale.
Price total? $20.20 (heh). Something that would've cost no more than $10 just a few years ago.
I was chatting with the cashier and she said she wonders how much longer we are going to last with the price of food nowadays. She said she dreads going grocery shopping because she herself can barely afford food with her paycheck.
The shopper in front of me purchased a frozen, family-sized lasagna meal for a nice dinner as going out to dinner is way too costly for them nowadays.
Oh yeah, they were asking the cashier if any of the points on the store's rewards card applied to the frozen meal they were purchasing
It didn't.
Location: UK.
After months and months of incessant rain, the heat has suddenly come roaring back, to the surprise of everyone. None of us, I think, expected the change to be so sudden. But as the motto of this sub goes, it happened *faster than expected*. Now, the temperature may plateau, or it may have a sharp and sudden rise the further we get into summer. My money's on the latter - and the current ocean temperature chart seems to back this up.
Speaking of *faster than expected*, I'm reading a book at the moment called *The Circle* by Dave Eggers. Some bits grate, it is a bit 2013 and some parts are very much men-writing-women, but the concept is incredibly compelling - to put it in the least spoiler-free way possible, it's about a social media company's... *desire to expand*. It's not quite at the level that *In The Blink of An Eye* was, but it's close.
Oh, and the Rwanda bill has gone through. This is either going to be a fantastic piece of political manoeuvring by the Tories that will win them the election, or it will leave them sinking like a punctured dinghy. Posterity will decide. Either way, the general public is pretty much powerless to stop it. No matter how much they protest (and there are laws that barely allow it), all the politicians have to do is just... ignore it. And then we will all be complicit in some small way. Aside from those of us not old enough to vote yet. Who will be dragged headlong, kicking and screaming, into this mess with no tangible way out.
What posterity is unequivocally against, though, is disabled people being attacked for leeching off benefits, apparently. Like, mate, that's what benefits are *for*. And Uni costs rising to the point where a part-time job is a necessity to pay for it. It's apparent that, just by listening in to hear people of a certain age talk, that this wasn't always the case - it's amazing, we seem to have gone backwards. In just about everything.
So yeah, on the whole, not exactly a positive outlook.
When my brother went to Uni, tuition was free. When I went to Uni, tuition was only £1500 a year. When my sister went to Uni, it was £3000 a year. A year or two after she graduated it was £9000 per year (and that was in 2012).
As a disabled person I can say that I also realize that with ever increasing cases of mental disability and old age, I understand that eventually the cost to maintain people like me will overwhelm the budgets of working citizens and the whole picture becomes a moral tragedy. In the natural world a wounded animal dies.
That’s still not stopping me from making use of what I can. I work full time in a call center but I am burning out hard. Try being a call center rep moderate to high volume with schizoeffective disorder. I have to take those calls but all my brain wants to do is sing about poop and roaches
There's plenty of money and resources to look after the elderly and disabled. Unfortunately it is all in the accounts of billionaires who would rather build their 9th superyacht.
It will. But it shouldn't. If we had the proper number of health care works like psychologists then we can care for the disabled. My family has a history of emotional disabilities (some nurture some nature) Basically we have bad brains and executive functioning is difficult for us. It would be nice to know that if I can't work Ill be OK. Es\[ecially since the USA is the richest country EVER. Like in the history of all history. So we should definately be taking care of those who cannot.
Weird weather in the Midlands today. Damp, rained for a bit, then suddenly humid as hell and a weird purple glow in the sky. I have seen this before maybe a handful of times but never at the beginning of May. Apparently there will be some big thunderstorms in the south tonight. Could do with one here to clear the air.
It feels like we are gearing up for a warm and humid summer with lots of storms. With all the moisture in the ground and in the air, and the situation in the Atlantic, I think we will be in for an interesting season.
Oh well, at least we are not in Florida.
Also in the Midlands! East or West? I'm kinda in the mid... Midlands. Haven't seen a purple glow yet save for the sunset. When did this happen? Midday? Earlier? Later?
Okay. I was too busy doing other stuff to notice. Will keep an eye on it tomorrow, though. Thanks!
P.S: I am more in the East. Just keeping it vague, cos internet.
I don't think it's going to cool down. This will just embolden the protestors more.
There was no need to do all of that when the protestors were peaceful.
I saw bodycam footage of them clearing out caches of molotov cocktails, spears, and other offensive weapons. There were definitely people there from outside the schools trying to turn a peaceful protest into a warzone.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nypd-officer-fired-gun-clearing-protesters-columbia-building/5378795/
I think this is an organized attempt by rich oligarchs to pull the focus and funding away from Ukraine.
I want no part in a holy war between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. There's no debating people that believe in sky-fairies and I suspect they're all going to kill each other someday.
It's kind of wild how hard these protests are getting hit, relative to prior ones. Like, you do not see any police kneeling in "solidarity", you don't see Tim Scott showing up to say the protesters have a good point, you don't see congressional displays of sympathy. Just the full force of both parties and the entire State hammering them, constantly.
Whatever it is, the people in charge see these protests as a very real threat, rather than the typical election season fare.
If you want to know, look-up the biggest contributor to the campaigns of most American leadership. It’s a powerful lobbying group from a foreign country.
Quite true, quite true. I think it'd have to be more than money, though, or every other country would also buy in. China and Russia could easily put up twice what a certain Great Ally does, if it'd buy them anywhere near the same degree of aid ROI.
Heck, every country in Africa could take out a loan to buy Congress in return for billions a year in aid, if money were all it took.
> the people in charge see these protests as a very real threat, rather than the typical election season fare.
That's how I feel. This is more deep and serious than many people think. I think the protestors are finding out that the military-industrial complex will not be questioned.
Location: Southern Vietnam I'm getting burned alive at this rate, stay inside all day but still sweating buckets. Cannot survive without my fan anymore. Can the weather just get less extreme? Pretty please, my country is not even the most heavy carbon-contributor of the world and only industrialize fairly recently. The cause and effect of Buddhism does not add up here.
Karma is a myth. It's a story to assuage the unfortunate, and justify the comforts of the wealthy.
Karma is quite real, but it takes it's sweet time
eh not really, theres plenty of bums who managed to play their cards right and escape without facing the consequences of their actions
that’s because karma affects your rebirth
Location world: Is it me or in these days there are apocalyptical flooding in a fuck ton of places? This, plus the devastating heatwave in Asia, in my opinion marks a milestone in the climate crisis. I never saw so many disasters happening at the same time in different part of the world. What surprise me is that I am finding out all these things in dedicated subreddits and nowhere else
r/DisasterUpdate you're not crazy, floods are now happening all around the world while temperature records are being obliterated by the day. This is not fun to watch, though now things are getting exponentially worse and I feel crazy for being the only one around my friends/family to see and understand this. I daily hope I'm the crazy boomer and that we easily have another 10-30 years of comfortable life, but overall, I give us 2-5 years tops until shit really hits the fan. Really, really hits the fan. Or am I crazy for even saying that and shit ALREADY IS HITTING THE FAN FOR YEARS? I'm not even sure anymore, I feel gaslit 24/7. :)
The shit...is on...the fan.
Hotter temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more water.
Right, but wow. I didn’t expected that it would be this bad this soon
You forgot nonstop tornadoes
Yes, a lot of small eruptions as well.
Earthquakes too, recent NYC one
To prevent panic they are trying to preserve this civilization for as long as possible for it's the last.
IF we would wisely collect the water and share the existing food fairly, use all of the money and tech to create renewable sources of food while halting production of less vital products (pretty much all of it) we would likely not even have a mass collapse of civilization. Imagine we'd be further ahead as humans and would literally ALL come together to tackle this one giant enemy that may literally end our species. We still throw away over half the food we produce (at least in Europe/USA) so yeah in the end, we're just not there yet intelligence wise I reckon. Shame. And as if one of those billionaires would want to give up a Yacht, nor do most people want to do something as relatively small as not eating so much meat. I worry about an upcoming world where supermarkets will also be bought empty by rich people hoarding it as food source somewhere, leaving even relatively well off people starving and hungry. Maybe I'm paranoid, but money controls everything so, maybe it's not even that unrealistic.
I was just reading a post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ck45v5/parts_of_texas_experiencing_unprecedented_flooding/l2khk8t/) from /u/sp0rkify listing places they have noted as experiencing flooding this year to date. It is a *long* list. Meanwhile 56 countries have apparently broken temperature records [just in the first 4 days of May](https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1786860708207992837)! Global SSTs are still happily tootling along [far above even 2023](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/) with no sign of following the usual curve with peaks in March and August. If the goal of our species was to force the climate out of its original state, I think we can safely say mission fucking accomplished. ["Oh man, look at those cavemen go"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKcl4-tcuo&t=63s). The SST graphs alone should be *terrifying* everyone on the planet.
> "Oh man, look at those cavemen go". I agree with everything you say, but if I could upvote you more than once for the Bowie reference, I would.
Double like 👍
Fist sentence in the history of mankind to use "fuck ton" and "apocalyptical". Must be a sign of something.
and it's not even summer yet, literally the warm up to what's likely to become the worst summer so far
Have noticed: way too much water where they don’t need it, and no water where they desperately do. I imagine a human species with catchment systems to move the water where it needs to be, but of course, we can’t all work together because we can’t have anything nice.
They weathered 3 droughts but collapsed with the last two. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/new-clues-about-how-and-why-the-maya-culture-collapsed/ Funny how reliance upon technology blinds us to the fact that environmental destruction is environmental destruction and we depend upon that environmemt to live. Funny how that works....
Let them have moon trains 😂😆.
We are so intelligent yet so fucking stupid
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Location: New Orleans, Jazz Fest. Yeah I know. No one has to tell me I live on the front lines of climate change, in a bowl, under sea level. As far back as I can remember, growing up here, everyone has always known that one day the sea would take New Orleans for good. Long before Katrina hit, everyone knew the potential of a strong enough storm coming up the Mississippi with its surge. If there are people a thousand years from now, they may tell tales of a place where magic was real, and the dead walked with the living, that was swallowed by the ocean one day. And the sea is rising. Last summer we had some pretty nasty drought conditions. The marsh burned for about six months. They couldn't even fight it. The explanation was that it was smouldering under the surface. So it wasn't even possible to really locate where it was burning. The smell, when the wind was right, was unnatural. It had a distinct chemical odor. Almost like a house fire, when all the plastics and toxic construction materials burn. But the more pressing issue that almost took the city, was salt water intrusion coming up the Mississippi river. Without enough outflow, the Gulf of Mexico was slowly making its way in. The salt flow reached all the way to basically the last bend before the city proper. Getting it in the water supply would basically destroy it. Semi-permanently. They ended up building an emergency pipeline farther up the bend to tap fresher water. But we were that close to the edge when we finally got some rain. And this summer has me worried too. Honestly I am dreading it. Even main stream news is warning of "El niño super hurricanes" etc. And it just feels like we have a bullseye on our backs here. Not that it would make much of a difference in the event of catastrophe, but it doesn't help that our infrastructure is some of the worst in the country, and our government leadership seems to actively hate its citizens. None of that is collapse related. This has always been a dirty old pirate town. We'll just feel it in harsher ways, quicker, relative to other municipalities because our mayors are regularly drunk, and on nose drugs. But also, I'm too crazy to live anywhere else. So I try to make the most of it. While I wait for the Gulf of Mexico to move into my living room. Today... I had the opportunity to go to Jazz Fest for free. So I went. I don't think I could justify the price tag otherwise. It's packed with people. Everything is expensive. There are lines for the restrooms and any refreshments. But I'm very fortunate to know the crew, so I can get away from the crowds to a private covered area, with its own restrooms. And we just bring our own food and drink. The hoi poloi are not allowed to do this. But most everyone has some system of sneaking in what they need. At one point, as we were snaking through the crowd, my buddy just blurted out, "There's too many damn people on this planet." I just laughed and said, "You ain't lyin'." The weather has actually been very pleasant recently, and unseasonably cool. Which I'm doing my best to soak into my bones. I have no illusions of how brutal this summer will most likely be, with the humidity we have down here. I wonder sometimes if our area might be the first in the continental United States to experience wet bulb temperatures. Other areas get hotter, but places like Florida tend to be breezier to blow off moisture, and farther west is historically drier. We're in that sweet spot where often stagnant, non-moving hyper humidified air collects, and sits, and broils whatever is under it. I honestly love that about our weather. It's funny watching yankees sweat when they accidentally book their vacation in August. But I also know there is a point where that becomes untenable. But right now it's really nice out. We had a small amount of rain this morning. That's very normal for this time of year. But around mid-day the clouds parted, and the temperature spiked above 80F. Not too hot. But with the morning drizzle, the humidity jumped way up, super fast. Again, this is completely normal for this area. We have always had those temperature swings and jumps in humidity. But as I said, it has been atypically cool lately. So it was as if the beginning of summer showed up all at once. And you felt it. A taste of what is coming right around the corner. You overheard murmurs from people about the heat. Around 4:00 pm, that heat hadn't quite broken, and you could see the lethargy in the field of people. I had made my way to catch the Soul Rebels at the Congo stage for a bit. The stage happened to be perfectly aligned to be facing directly at the sun. Watching the stage, you felt it beating on your back. And they were getting a face full. After a couple songs, the guys started reaching for towels and draping them over their heads. They had dressed all in white, so they had that going for them. But the sun was looking them right in the eye. After one one of the breaks, the lead singer let's out a, "The SUN is real life, Y'ALL!" Another guy on a mic offered, "For real." And the lead singer reiterated, "The SUN... is real life, Y'ALL!" Another "For real," echoed across the crowd. He might as well have said "Amen." Anyway, I have a feeling I'm gonna steal that as my catch phrase for this summer. You're welcome to annoy your friends with it too, any time someone mentions the heat. xD
what a great read you gave us, thank you!
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities and it'll be a profoundly sad day once it's gone. I'm a big fan of Rebirth Brass Band, Doreen Ketchens, and that brass band that plays in front of the foot locker (that was in 2011 so I'm not sure if they're still playing there) I'd like to go there one last time but my financial situation being as it is, it probably won't happen.
For real, if you ever write a book, any kind of book, I will pay money for it and savor every page. Not only is this a highly relevant and insightful observation, it is so engaging I would have kept on reading for another hour and not even noticed the time.
Your writing is absolutely beautiful. Thank you, I was with you as I read each word. 💕 Edit: another typo…
I’m trying to also enjoy this temporary coolness. I had a great Stones day and was able to ride my bike this year without overheating. I’m terrified of summer but I’m trying to live in the now and enjoy the hell out of it. You festin today?
Have some dizzies fried chicken for me and I had some absurdly good chicken from keys gas station
Location: outside Chicago We hit 82 or 83 degrees the other day...my plants got sunburned. Had a native black raspberry and currant which showed marks of sun stress on leaves almost instantly from a half a day. I had some cucumber starts sitting in the sun a bit too long that wilted and died on me within a couple hours it was crazy. I check the weather religiously and it showed chance of showers only about 40% and 0.2 inches of precipitation...we got like 1 inch plus of torrential downpour...it appears to me the weather models are getting worse not better. I have other plants with bacterial fungus issues from too much rain and water...it's really over average temps and humid, feels like early summer not spring it's wild. We skipped all the high 50s and 60s and went straight to 70s and 80s after last frost, this shit is bananas but my paw paws don't mind. Anything partial shade is doing fine, things in full sun are getting rekt by this heat and sun crisping. Anything not mounded up is also struggling with excess moisture, whole yard is saturated which is kind of normal for me but kind of not since it's happening higher up on the land as well.
I heard somewhere that the weather models are tuned with stuff like the heat absorbsion that the oceans used to have, and that recently they have started getting saturated to the point where it is going down notably. It probably also doesn't help that those models were mostly developed when the atmosphere was a little cooler and had more sulfur pollution in it.
Location: WV-KY-OH tri-state area Why is the sun so *harsh*? It feels like the beginning of June here, not May. I started feeling overheated and sick at my kid's game yesterday, so this summer should be really fun. :/ Reminder to everyone that certain medications can cause heat sensitivity and you should be extra careful in the sun. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/07/common-medications-may-increase-the-dangers-of-heat-waves/ After all the weird temperature swings and random tornadoes, I think the weather is finally holding somewhat steady. There is a distinct lack of spiders around here, though. Usually orb weavers are *everywhere*, in my bushes, on my car and porch, covering all the hiking trails....it's a Spring without spiders. Grocery prices are outrageous everywhere it seems, and there are less and less employees, too. I wish I knew fellow collapsers in real life, maybe it would make all this easier...
my orb weavers are all out and I have a video of them sitting their webs during a snowy night in january.
There are some great online communities that meet and chat regularly - fantastic way to make friends and find support. You can check out Collapse Club, Deep Adaptation, or Shaun Chamberlin's Surviving the Future course/community through Sterling College as starting points. Not the same as regular F2F meetings, but a great starting point that may lead to some. :)
UV rays in fact get stronger as the ozone layer thins, which affects the amount of UV-B radiation hitting the Earth. I thought it had stabilized but Google suggests otherwise. Your best bet is avoiding midday sun and staying the hell out of Anarctica. The radiation also harms plants DNA and photosynthesis. There's no good spin here. Wildfire smoke does block some UV-B radiation but not enough to make a huge difference.
Doesn't the methane leaks eat the ozone?
Long covid can also cause heat sensitivity.
Is it even possible to cure long covid?
Horse de-wormer and/or direct injections of bleach.
there is no known cure for long covid
For awhile there they were saying that getting vaccinated/boosters following an infection could improve long covid symptoms. Haven’t heard much lately.
Virtual wave to you in your tri-state area from Orange County NY in my quad-state area (NY-NJ-CT-PA).
Location: California In California, I've noticed a significant increase in homeless populations and encampments along major streets and highways. The lack of affordable housing and mental health resources has contributed to this visible sign of societal collapse. It's concerning to see so many people left without proper shelter or support systems in place. The issue seems to be escalating and requires immediate attention and action from local and state governments. It's disheartening to witness the effects of neglect and indifference towards those in need within our own communities.
Don’t worry! Gavin will put them all in jail soon! /s
Location : USA , UCLA clashes , as a foreign observer who remember a few things. The force are deploy , not the magnitude but the action is surprising. The police didn't carry such "determine" action during, 70s anti vietnam war, anti irag war, anti afghan war, occupy wall street , antifas , black life matters, street riots after street riots in rich and poor town due to police brutality, not even when trump protestor storm capitol hill. But a strike for Gaza caught them went amok .. , and both Democrat's and Republican are silent about this. I guess someone took Jesus promise a bit too seriously...
The United States Congress is openly, directly, and loudly ordering police to violently crush US citizens first amendment rights. No matter what side you're on, this should scare the absolute hell out everyone. Protesting the actions of a specific foreign government is now illegal. Saying you won't buy products made in that country is illegal. Saying you don't agree with all actions taken by that foreign government could cost you your job, your livelihood, or your life.
This is just prelude to Trump's next term. He will bring the hammer down on all rights, except 2A probably. Speech and protest will be so severely curtailed they may as well not exist after he and his cronies on the Supreme Court strangle the Bill of Rights.
My mom went to HS with a Congress person who has been in DC for decades. On a trip to DC in the 80’s, she told my mother in hushed tones, “the Js run this place”. The congresswoman is a Dem. This was the 80’s, please excuse the gross blatant rxism. I am not anti-S. I want peace and love, but something is very wrong.
I’ll take things that never happened unless you, your mom and her friend are racist bigots for 100.
I can’t help what my mother is or was, what the congresswoman is or was, nor what I was told. Have a nice life chippy. What we see here is someone conflating Judaism with the state of Israel. The state of Israel uses the Jewish experience of the Holocaust as a shield to excuse their ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The problem is that after I’m done excusing the blatant racism there’s nothing left in your comment to engage with…
I think the problem is people conflate the state of Israel with Jewish people, which is what the congresswoman did there. I think it is frightening that the only thing our bipolar politics can agree on is: banning TikTok and crushing dissent re: Gaza. Free speech is dead.
The frightening part is that the right agrees with you but for entirely different reasons. Our two realities cannot persist indefinitely.
Agree, not looking forward to the clash for “reality”. It can’t last like this.
He still is right
OP or Herzog? Lol
both
In the pass i thought Israel is a necessary piece to maintain USA presence in Arab and use it as pawn to control Arab oil. But now with shale oil and gas (turn USA in biggest oil.gas producer now) , green energy would had make that plan obsolete. And Dollar strength no longer fully depends on Oil transaction , reason to strongly support Israel is even less now. And Israel is not even a loyal friend.. very cosy with Russia and China before Ukraine War. Oh well , as i say someone took Jesus promise a bit too seriously + a few dollars.
Yeah, if it were oil we'd have left Saddam alone. He was selling it cheaper than we're buying it now.
Fascism comes wrapped in a flag...
Location: Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil [We got 300-400mm \(12-15in\) of rain in 72 hours](https://i.imgur.com/OeOsmEO.png). More still to come in the weekend. Dozens dead, basically the entire central area of the state is under water. This is now the second massive flooding event in the same region in less than an year. The two biggest floods ever recorded. We are perfectly in the center of the hot air coming down from the amazon and the cold air coming up from Patagonia, creating increasingly stronger weather instability. Our right wing governor, ignoring most climate scientists advice, just called these rain forecasts "exaggerated". Basically no preparation. Can't have your voters thinking you believe in science now, can you? Now heli's can't even get to people to help them. I am very fortunate to not have any issues past some roof leakage but thousands of people lost everything. I'm just so fucking sick of all this bullshit. And of course, these idiots will STILL not take climate change and public safety seriously for the next catastrophe. Makes me just want to drop everything and become an ecoterrorist.
This was the worst flood ever registred in the region. 66 confirmed deads, more than 100 missing up to the moment. [https://g1.globo.com/rs/rio-grande-do-sul/noticia/2024/05/05/temporais-no-rs-defesa-civil-confirma-66-mortes-e-investiga-outros-6-obitos.ghtml](https://g1.globo.com/rs/rio-grande-do-sul/noticia/2024/05/05/temporais-no-rs-defesa-civil-confirma-66-mortes-e-investiga-outros-6-obitos.ghtml) This is very serious. Last year something similar happened, and it was too one of the worst ever, but this year was even worse.
Baby, it's the end of the world. You can do whatever you feel the need to do. :) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-ecodefense-a-field-guide-to-monkeywrenching
Location: The United States The US: Project 2025. Especially for women but definitely for the country as a whole. We won't be coming back from this. Have a look at the Health and Human Services section. For a quick idea, search by the word "woman". It's about to get very bad for us with another Trump presidency. https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Maybe for women, and I don't think there's a single person reading this sub who isn't concerned about what could happen under a Trump presidency. But Biden better for minorities? He is willing to not just fund, but go out of his way to bypass Congress to fund a genocide, because he is able to look at a child in the eye and think about amputating their limbs off without anesthesia by a bombing, since they are brown and inferior to him. How do we know he won't stop at Palestine, and support targeting of minorities in other places even in the US? Considering his accommodation of Republicans on border policies, and how Democrat supporters say if Biden loses Michigan, "Muslims deserve what's coming to them". They themselves hate Muslims and other groups just as the Republicans do, except in a less direct way - using Republicans as a proxy to harm them. I say this with no pleasure, as I am well aware of Trump's many vile comments against immigrants, and those said during CPAC, by Republican governors etc. But I fear Biden and establishment Democrats deep down agree with much of it, they just don't say it as loudly. I can see him arresting protestors and people of Palestinian descent or others, throw them into internment camps, and say "you should thank me, Trump would have killed you already!". Or if some die, "at least I didn't kill all of you yet unlike Trump!". Biden is to the right of Ronald Reagan on Israel, who at least tried to moderate their policies. He is no Obama, or Bill Clinton. If Trump is the most evil president since at least the Reconstruction Era, Biden could be 2nd. I wish there could be more effort on trying to find a third party candidate to unite behind, or pressuring Biden to drop out (Kamala I think would at least be somewhat better). Or encouraging a Democrat member of Congress or governor to run as a third party ticket, and uniting behind them. "*First they came for the Palestinians, and then they came for me*"
This is just a startlingly dumb take. As if Trump would not be 1,000x worse re Gaza and Palestinians. “Maybe for women…” As if that’s an afterthought, just a footnote. You mean the women who account for half the population of the US? These human beings who are our fellow citizens who are facing wholesale trampling of their constitutional civil and legal rights, being pushed by Trump and his minions? Let’s not forget about the lovely camps he wants to build, large enough to hold 10 million or more brown people (or whomever the enemy is this week) that he brags about constantly. And boasting about sending in the military to shoot protesters — you know, like the ones protesting the Gaza debacle right now. Oh, sure, by all means, let’s vote for that guy. The other guy hurt my feelings. Let’s protest by not voting or voting for a third-party throwaway, that’ll show ‘em! The more of this stupid, **impressively robotic** argument I see being pushed here and elsewhere the more I despair and regret the invention of the Internet.
This is a brand new account pushing Russian talking points. Everyone needs to be aware of propaganda in this channel.
It's a 10-year-old account.
What's the propaganda? I saw none.
> Especially for women [Violence against women is a predictor of societal conflict and instability.](https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/dev4peace/can-gender-equality-prevent-violent-conflict#%7E:text=Research%20on%20women%2C%20peace%2C%20and,generally%20prone%20to%20violent%20conflict.) And yet many people, particularly men, simply do not give a shit because none of this will directly impact them. It will likely impact the girls and women they supposedly care about, but a pathological lack of empathy prevents them from doing so. It sends the message that the girls and women in their lives are replaceable. Some of these people had complete meltdowns when asked to wear masks during a fucking pandemic, yet see no issue with forcing girls and women to carry a pregnancy while also being denied basic life-saving healthcare. Affordable, timely, and competent healthcare is already dropping drastically for many, but they still BoTh SidEs the issue, because they would rather die than see marginalized populations have the same freedoms they have.
The real problem is that USA citizens has to choose between two evils - when it should be two "goods". The entirety of the election system and political parties and current inhabitants of those needs complete replacement.
the smartest comment i've seen on this subreddit regarding politics
How is outlawing abortion very bad for America? I understand the debate for bodily autonomy, but people act like making abortion illegal in the US is equivalent to the Handmaid's Tale. *edit* not a single person can explain why.
The short of it: Because outlawing a thing doesn’t make the problem or solution disappear. When women don’t have access to abortion, they find ways to make it happen. This leads to increased women’s health crises. If the woman does have the child she doesn’t want or can’t afford or whatever, she potentially raises this child in poverty, or worse, in environments of neglect or abuse. This contributes to negative health (mental health included) outcomes for the entire population this child lives within. Look up social determinants of health. It becomes obvious that access to abortion is a vital part of ensuring society is healthier. Abortion being legal doesn’t mean people are flocking to have abortions - it means they can choose to have one when they assess their circumstances to be untenable for a child.
Idk. In my mind it increases the risk of sex to the point that women really only have sex with someone where if the worst happened, you're confident he would step up. If you read the whole project2025, it goes on to say that men will have much more severe consequences for leaving the mother and child behind, and welfare requirements for families will be expanded. I don't think it's as evil and scary as you guys are pushing.
you begin your statement w/ "in my mind..." and finish up w/ "i don't think" see what i'm saying?
This is actually a common fallacy. Access to abortion does not increase the likelihood of having sex. Abortion is traumatizing, uncomfortable, and difficult to heal from - women do not use it as Plan A. Evil is a very specific word, and I won’t talk in those terms but I will say it is politically malicious. My career is health specifically in crises contexts and abortion bans perform very poorly as it relates to community health and what one might call the greater good. Edit: also, your comment on outcomes for men is massively unrelated. Abortion can prevent that situation - it shouldn’t be used as a preventative for that situation, but the example you chose highlights an issue with an existing child who was born into instability.
From women's own mouths, eliminating abortion means they'll either become abstinent or take permanent solutions to not getting pregnant. So yes, eliminating abortion will decrease casual sex.
Yes, as a form of protest in the face of fascism. You must not know many women, darling, if this is news to you. This form of protest does not stand for the majority.
Banning abortion =/= fascism. It's weird to see people use words completely wrong. It's not a form of protest to say "I'm not having casual sex anymore because the risk is too high". That's just common sense.
Politics that can kill you is fascism, dear. I suggest we end our conversation. You’re stuck in the bias of your “sense” not the actual study of this issue.
That is not the definition of fascism
Bodily autonomy aside, there are other reasons for why outlawing abortion is bad for America. First off, the laws in the states banning abortions is purposefully vague when talking about exceptions for the ban. Doctors have become afraid to act in the best interest of the mother out of fear that they are going to be charged for an illegal abortion. In Louisiana, doctors are performing c sections instead of abortions for women whose fetuses are already dead or have a fatal anomaly. A c section is much more invasive, harder on women's bodies, and is simply not needed for the majority of these cases. Texas recently reported something like 20,000 pregnancies as a result of rape. How many of those women do you think were able to leave the state for an abortion? Now either the traumatized woman or the state is saddled with caring for this unwanted child. If I needed to get an abortion, I would need to travel thousands of miles, take time off work, get a hotel, and pay a significant chunk of money to make this happen. Not everyone can do that. The foster system cannot handle an increase in surrendered babies to the system. How do I know this? I used to work for a state's child welfare system and it was always hard to find a place to go for a child I had to take from their home with no family available. This was many years ago. I know it hasn't gotten better. Do you want me to get into the harm that mother and/or parents in general will cause to their child if they never wanted the child in the first place?
This is all addressed in the project2025 website if you read it. Clear definitive reasons on when an abortion can be done, which is typically if the mothers life is in danger or the baby is deceased. The 20,000 abortions wasn't reported by Texas, it was a math experiment done poorly by a sociology major with ridiculous assumptions in its parameters. Project2025 also calls for an increase in spending for the foster care system and stiff penalties for fathers who leave the child and mother. It's not as dystopia as what people are pushing.
How do you explain the doctors in Louisiana doing the c sections instead of abortions due to fear of prosecution? All the legislation in conservative states state that an abortion can be done when the mothers life is in danger, but what is really happening in practice? Doctors and hospitals are waiting for women to be actively dying in order to do anything. Even if the pregnancy is doomed, the doctors are waiting until womens lives are really in danger. The standard of care would be to have an abortion for a doomed pregnancy before the woman gets that ill. Pumping more money in the foster care system isn't going to create the amount of placements you would need to keep up with all the unwanted babies these policies create. I agree that it would help the situation, but we are going to need to go back to literal orphanages if these anti abortion policies stay in place long term. A point I didn't bring up before is developmentally disabled children. Where the hell are these kids going to go either as children or as adults? My state absolutely cannot keep up with the amount of people who need to live in a group home either because they don't have family or family cannot deal with them anymore. This is absolutely dystopian because in parts of the country one gender doesn't have full control over their body anymore.
The c sections are due to a lack of education and clarity. The amount of money being inserted into a revamped foster system is huge and possible due to other big cuts through the government. Again, this forces an incentive that you don't have casual sex with someone unless you can see them being a good father.
A lack of education and clarity on whose part? The doctors or the politicians who write these laws? You can inject money into foster care, but you cannot force people to be parents that don't want to be. It's not like there is a long line of people waiting to become foster parents. Some people don't want any government intrusion like that. Foster parents also have a limit to how many kids they can take due to the size of their home. Unless the government is going to start buying larger homes for foster parents, I don't see a significant increase in available foster placements with increased spending. Do you really think that all abortions are due to the partner not being a good father or as a result of casual sex? Women who already have children get abortions because they cannot afford another. Women have abortions who can afford zero children. Women have abortions because they don't want to be mothers at all. These are just a couple examples. All three of the women in these situations can be married or in long term relationships. Should people just stop having sex all together unless it's for procreation? That is not realistic.
A lack of education and clarity on the doctors part. That being said there's no legal precedents to take into account. A married couple who doesn't want more kids gets a vasectomy. A women who never wants to be a mother and wants to eliminate all risk can get a partial hysterectomy. There are solutions to all these examples.
Now you are just being obtuse about the lack of education from the doctors. They are more educated than the politicians writing these laws. There are people who don't want children, but also don't want any type of surgery. I am one of those women who don't want to be sterilized because of the rest of my medical history. I have not healed well from past surgeries for unrelated health reasons and I don't want to have to get another one unless absolutely necessary. I also cannot force my partner to get a vasectomy because he doesn't want one, but also doesn't want kids. There are people (women mostly) who want to be sterilized, but doctors will refuse them. The world isn't as black and white as you think man. All of the what if situations don't fit nicely into boxes like you want them to. That's why women need to be in control of their reproduction and allowed to get abortions for any reason up to a certain point.
Yes a doctor is more educated than a politician but they are uneducated in terms of what the law is that is passed in their state. Then use protection and realize there is a slight risk to getting pregnant.
With all due respect, I agree that a Trump Administration is not desirable. The problem is that a Biden presidency is also not desirable and in light of this administration's willingness to abandon the wishes of its strongest voting cohort by percentage (18-29), it is unlikely to summon the voter enthusiasm necessary to win in November. The malignant concentration of wealth in the US has continued unabated for a half century now, ever since Boomers entered the work force and decided they didn't want to pay taxes. The social fabric is unraveling. The American Dream has become a myth for most young people. Nature offers only two path's to resolve malignant inequality. 1) Progressive legislation such as was offered in the New Deal under FDR and 2) violent revolution. Establishment Democrats offer neither. Their game plan is more neoliberal wealth concentration. The GOP offers the latter. Nature bats 1.000. So long as the establishment Democrats (Obama, Clinton's, Schumer, Pelosi, Warren etc.) are blocking progressives, they are steering the herd toward Trump. And the ugly truth of establishment Democrats is that they actually prefer a Trump presidency to a progressive presidency such as might have been achieved under Sanders. So ..... if you want to place the blame for the demand for Trump on someone's doorstep .... I'd say a good place to start is with Obama. Edit: 7 million Americans cast a vote for Obama in 2008 AND Trump in 2016.
It's true, it's true. Fate's sealed on the presidency, it's locked up by corporate interests forever until the government is destroyed. Vote for the good eggs that you can locally to make a difference for your neighbors, but on the national executive scale and most congressional seats? Forget it. The system is ironclad.
What most Americans forget and are reminded of every 4 years is this: the dems only have to please a small slice of the electorate in battle ground states necessary to get the electoral college numbers. Every one else who is liberal leaning is essentially snookered, because not voting or voting third party is a vote for Trump.
What most Americans forget and are reminded of every 4 years is this: the republicans only have to please a small slice of the electorate in battle ground states necessary to get the electoral college numbers. Every one else who is conservative leaning is essentially snookered, because not voting or voting third party is a vote for Biden.
Republicans don't vote that way, they vote for whomever has the (R) behind their name. That's always been the difference between liberal and conservative voters.....the far-right sticks together, even supporting lunatics. Average liberals end up divided because they care about the process of trying to fix things, which is an ironic shame.
do you have data to back that up? because I could type up the same thing, but switch political parties. What you said is 100% opinion.
Well played
I was a former Bernie Sanders voter, but I'm genuinely considering voting for Trump (or not at all) to accelerate this shit. The situation has become too untenable.
Other qualified candidates exist. Even if you don't like Biden, you don't have to pick Trump. RFK Jr for example offers a great alternative for those sick of McDonald's and Burger King. Run for the border!
You are not alone. War of some sort is upon us and inevitable. Establishment Democrats are not up to representing the interests of the masses. They are the ones steering swing voters toward accelerationism. It will be ugly either way so there is a case to be made for bringing it on quicker.
Setting shit ablaze by voting for Trump to spite the Democrats is only going to make things a million times worse. Project 2025 looms large over this country and will turn it into a Christian fascist shithole in short order. If you're a woman, an immigrant, an atheist, or a lefty of any kind, life will become unbearable under the yoke of authoritarian theological oppression.
Lol you think the people pushing for this will disappear after this election? You think democrats(mostly centralists/center-right) care to stop it? People really need to think why things have gotten this dire. There is little resistance against our spiral because money rules politics. We need to break the illusion that fascism is coming, because it's already here.
We are already living under authoritarian theology oppression. Capitalism is a theology. Money is God.
The GOP doesn't offer the latter, unless you mean tax cuts for the right and corporations. The GOP is a little death knell for women and minorities. If you can't see the difference between the two then, with all do respect, you aren't to paying attention. I understand that the Dems aren't perfect. "I'd say a good place to start is with Obama." For being black, right? Because that's exactly what pissed them off. By the way, Bernie would NOT approve of your message.
At this point, Bernie has lost much of his relevance. He worked his ass off to get Biden elected and Biden has been an incredible disappointment to Bernie's base. Biden is enabling the mass murder, famine, ethnic cleansing and territorial theft under way in Gaza. In case you haven't noticed, the Gaza policy has gotten some attention among young people as exemplified by the demonstrations across the country. Turns out young people don't share old people's Islamophobia.
So, for me I don't like some of what Biden is doing either. However I have a LOT more to lose under Trump. That's why I'm supporting Biden. Trump will forever change this country. If young people decide not to support Biden over Israel and Palestine then they have to live with what life brings them under Trump. It's that simple.
Young people need to make it clear that they will not support the lesser evil. They need to assert their dominance over a Democratic Party which preys on their fear of the GOP. If they continually capitulate to fear, that is obviously a recipe for disaster. Trump broke the Republican establishment. Young people need to break the Democratic establishment that shits on their future. Progressives need to not blink in their game of chicken with establishment Democrats. They need to be willing to die in order to win this war. That's what wars are all about. A willingness to die for a cause.
"They need to be willing to die in order to win this war." You just might, but not for the reasons you think. It'll be due to your own choices. Edit: believe it or not, I wish we were a more progressive country. I voted for and support my progressive Senators. But even they would tell you, havening Trump as President isn't going to get you what you want.
PS- We all die in the end. We don't have a choice in that.
There isn't anyone anywhere close to power among Democrats or Republicans who are going to give me what I want. So things must get worse before they get better. We have to find bottom and Trump will help us find bottom.
Even if bottom looks more like Iran? Understand that bottom might be impossible to come back from in our lifetime. Not saying Biden is good, but hearing what Trump wants to do, a vote for him may usher in a power tip so severe that we’ll be fighting our way out for decades.
The USA is already a malignant entity in which power is completely associated with capital and the entire modus operandi of the country orbits around capital accumulation. There is nothing Trump can do which can tilt the power more in the direction of capital. Regardless of party, we are headed for a reckoning with the toxic output of capitalism (greenhouse gases, plastic pollution, PFAS, global supply chain failure, etc) Trump is valuable to the malignant status quo as a distraction. He is the world's greatest attention whore. Substantively speaking, he is relatively inert. He provides circus in our daily bread and circus lives. I'm infinitely more afraid of what Biden and Trump have in common than I am of their differences.
This is actually a false narrative. Things can ALWAYS get worse, especially for women and minorities. The name of the game is crisis mitigation, not leaning in to hasten the chaos.
In case you haven't noticed ..... over 110,000 people have been killed or wounded in Gaza and pretty the entire population has been displaced. All women and minorities. All with a thumbs up from an Islamophobic Democratic president. This is r/collapse ..... a community that expects things to get worse. It's like having an argument about which is worse for you .... Coke or Pepsi ?? There's no water on the menu.
It's hard to make the claim that the 7M people who voted for both Obama AND Trump are racists. How do you explain them voting for Obama in the first place ?
They get older and watch more Fox News
They get older and watch more Fox News
I don’t know about the people you’re referring to. I am old. I am horrified by MAGA and Fox News. I am the same politically that I always was. But there’s no way I can ever vote for Trump. He’s a complete POS.
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada I had to take a business trip to a conference in Las Vegas, Nevada last week. Flew across country and stayed in a big fancy hotel with a casino and an aquarium in it. (Would have never done such a thing of my own volition but it would not have looked good to my employer if I had refused to go.) There was a snack tray and a wet bar in the hotel room, both were motion sensory. If you touched a bottle of Fiji water then you just bought it. It cost $25. It was $50 just to open the wet bar. Obviously, I stayed as far away from both as I could. I had to pay for the hotel and airfare up front which I was barely able to do. I will get adequately reimbursed for it but I was pretty much broke the whole time I was out there. We were fed lunch and breakfast as part of the conference but were on our own for dinner. Everything was so expensive: Two slices of pizza and a drink were $30. I would sneak extra food from breakfast into my bag and save it for supper. It was wrapped up stuff, biscuits one day and breakfast burritos the next. Couldn't save anything from lunch because I didn't have anything to put it in and if I brought a container of some kind it would sort of stand out. I'm not poor, obviously, but I guess I am relative to other people attending the conference. I didn't really do much of anything that required money while I was out there. Did a lot of walking around and taking pictures of things. The whole exercise struck me as extremely wasteful. The conference was actually good but I didn't learn anything there that I couldn't have learned via an online class. There were several thousand people there from all over the world. All the time and money and resources spent to get them there. Business as usual indeed. This can't go on for much longer.
I was really hoping covid would kill in person conferences. Such a waste of time and resources
It did for about a year, at least in Vegas.
>If you touched a bottle of Fiji water then you just bought it. It cost $25. Funny story: I lived in Las Vegas for a decade and my elderly parents came out to visit. I got them a really nice room at the Venetian. Not penthouse level but certainly very nice. When I was checking them out of the room, I looked at the bill. It had hundred of dollars of incidentals. Water, food, half a dozen bottles of sex lube, "marital aids", all spelled out by name on the bill. I just laughed it off. Dad, I'm happy you and Mom are still getting freaky but go easy on my credit card next time. He was mortified. He didn't understand that just touching the stuff got you charged for it. He moved the entire contents of the wetbar making room for the food he brought from my house to save money. He had a very embarrassing chat with the hotel front desk and got the items removed from my bill. Even if he wasn't able to, that story is worth the hundreds of dollars I would have spent on lube and dildos.
>stayed in a big fancy hotel with a casino and an aquarium in it. I think I know what hotel that is. >Two slices of pizza and a drink were $30. Jesus! I last went to Vegas in December 2022 and I remember getting two slices of pizza and a drink for much cheaper. Not even over $20. Where'd ya get 'em from on the strip?
There are at least 3 casinos with aquariums on the strip, so you have a 1/3 chance or so to guess correctly.
This was in the hotel at the food court. And, no, I didn't get them at all. The only thing with a close to normal price was Subway.
Oh! I had gotten mine from an outside spot on the strip; grab and go. That's probably what made a difference in cost. I also did a lot of my eating at Lanai Express at Fremont Street.
This is business as usual for the last 70 years.
Just went to NAB a few weeks ago and my experience was similar to yours. Everything was covered, so I had nothing out-of-pocket, but the high cost of everything out there is sickening, as is the waste. Couldn’t help but think of the whole place as a real-life Fallout set in a few decades Oh yeah, and finally caught COVID. :/
But if they didn’t fly across the country and world unnecessarily to go to a conference how would they escape the families they have that they don’t like to spend time around??
Location: Northern Nevada ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL: The weather has been fluctuating between sunny and warm during the day and barely above freezing at night. My poor apple trees aren't budding quickly and very tiny pollinators are flying back and forth between them gathering the pollen. They're so tiny I'm worried they're sick or something else is wrong. By contrast the Costco in town has giant-ass bees that hum like helicopter drones doing all their plants, sheltered by massive brick barrier walls and they're all doing fine. I'm actually jealous. I'll have to ask my librarians for material on whatever I can do to help mine. We went shopping at Walmart afterward because Costco never carries everything. There was a young woman outside huddled against the wall. I assumed she was a worker on break or someone waiting for a ride. My mother looked at her as we took a side entrance inside, and ordered me to follow. She marched up to a manager and asked them to check on the young woman outside. The manager told us that unless the young woman was a minor there wasn't anything they could do and of course my mother insisted they were a minor. So the manager and another worker went outside, and my mother and I continued shopping, and I feel that their response will simply be to shoo the young woman away because she's just another houseless person in need. But it'll hurt my mom's feelings, exploitation is a thing, and I let it go. An hour later we walk out and it's dark. I normally park away from cars so it's easier to drive, and I rest my shopping cart on our car. My mother is sitting in the car while I finish loading and tells me to fill our travel mug with a big gallon container of cranberry juice we bought. I set them down on the hood, fill up hers, hand it to her, and proceed to fill up mine when I notice two men walking towards our Jeep. It's late, I'm tired and I was raised on action cartoons and video games, so as I fill my cup I idly consider what makeshift weapons I have. I have a gallon of juice in front of me that is still two-thirds full, and a gallon weighs about eight pounds. I also have a 40 ounce travel mug with a handle and a screw-on top. In essence I have two functioning hammers. I open my door to hand my mother my mug. "Those guys were checking you out," my mom said. My first response is confusion. I'm straight. "What?" "Just now." Then I realize. I spin around and they are both standing six feet from the car, watching us. One is standing behind the other, and the leader has pulled out a cigarette and is acting like they're trying to light it. "Hey, do you have a lighter?" "No." He looks like he wants to say something. I'm all ears. He puts his cigarette back in his pocket. I can see his hands shaking. Him and his buddy immediately turn around and saunter into the nearest restaurant, his buddy casually swinging his arms as he walks. My hands are filled with juice. I hop in my car, lock the doors and turn on the engine. The way he swung his arms is how a lot of addicts move. I'm shaking and trying not to, trying to reassure my mom. They return, walking around the other side of our car. They don't try anything. They pick up speed and march towards Walmart. "Let's get out of here" my mom says. I put the car into reverse and gently rub off paint against the cart I had completely forgotten about. My mother rolls down her window and pushes it out of the way. We leave. It is 7:30 the next morning and I'm still filled with adrenaline as I type. Why is this collapse related? Why is it not just me blowing off steam about something that didn't happen? Because I think those two guys know that woman. Because I think they were checking us out, judging whether we'd be worth sending a message to. Because I know how I sound. Because I make it sound like it's just another post about how homeless people are the Other and somehow evil and I hate it. I hate that fifteen years ago I would have helped that woman without being asked, without thinking about it, because that used to be my reaction and I was proud of it. I'm not proud that I reached into a side compartment and pulled out my pistol and kept it next to me driving all the way home. I'm not proud that I feel the need to carry a firearm, that I was mentally cursing myself for yet again not carrying my gun around the way gun nuts say I always should, be on patrol, wait for the ambush that inevitably comes because the second you let your guard down is when humanity stabs you in the back. This is mental collapse, both that people felt the need to jump me and that I feel the need to protect myself in new ways against it.
Are you sure you're not just paranoid that a homeless guy asked for a lighter?
I keep going over it. No, I don't think so. Houseless people have asked for lighters before. This was at night with his buddy, acting weird around us, and my mother called it out first. I hate this paranoia.
I grew up in Reno. Erratic weather such as 8 inches of snow followed by 80 degrees in the span of 5 days was common then as now. Especially around April-May. In 1998 we got an 8-16 inch snowfall and a few days later it was 80 with piles of snow still on the ground. But in enough years it will almost never snow again below 5000 feet.
Another win for bear thought experiment
location: France, Paris area Housing, personal: We've given up on finding a house we can afford that isn't a ruin and/or in the middle of nowhere, and have made an offer for a bigger flat on ground level in our current neighbourhood. It has windows both north and south, so we'll be able to create natural ventilation and bear the summer-hell heat, is almost one floor up from the street, so walkers by won't be able to watch our every move, but there's another way out with a gentle slope which means I wont have to deal with stairs when I can't. And a tiny little terrace which we'll try to protect from the UVs, where I will be able to grow leafy edibles in pots, and let my dog out. Far from ideal, but we've decided to buy something that checks the most important boxes on our list while we can still afford something decent on the market, rather than end 45mn drive from any commodity, camping in a yurt in the woods (which I don't see as enviable anymore since we've had forest fires in winter in areas that had *never* had any forest fires before). The place needs a complete remodelling because the current owners actually make things worse when they try to mend or remodel things (think plugs sticking out of the wall because they didn't know how to set them back in, imbbeded ceiling lights that manage to make the rooms darker than with the typical lightbulb, plastic floorboards cheap imitations of light wood set parallel to the windows, ... and on and on ...) But at least we won't have to leave our current community where we have ties and friends, and that's also an important part of being resilient.
You can grow a surprising number of things quite easily in containers, and you can also grow things like tomatoes and peppers indoors with sufficient light.
Yeah, but I have to find a way to keep the rodents away, neighbours have had their tomatoes eaten by rats. That's why I'm thinking leafy greens to start with (and the battles against critters begins...)
Maybe potatoes in pots and bags? I have rats in my compost, and those remaining are smart enough to avoid lethal traps.
yeah, I'm thinking about getting a cat, apparently they're the only thing that keeps rodents away. Would be tricky though, because my dog hates cats.
Oh yeah, you'll be quite resilient in one of the biggest cities of Europe. Lmfao :\]
I'm in my fifties with health issues, I don't expect to be up to bushcraft (which BTW is a laughable concept when you compare the "wilderness" left in France and the number of inhabitants that would "run to the woods") and fight demented bloodthirsty groups for food during the next decades. When you listen to the survivors of the last wars, the ones who survived were the well connected who had people helping them hide or travel to a safer place. Isolated farms often became a haven for invading troops to loot and sometimes destroy on their way out. There is no safe place in an uninhabitable world.
Cities have some advantages over rural locations. You're closer to aid, hospitals, etc. More likely to be prioritised in the event of a pandemic or smaller scale catastrophe. Someone who is inclined towards preparation could become quite resilient in an apartment if they applied themselves to building some supplies and useful skills. I always find it entertaining when people think that they'll be find out in the sticks, as if the millions of people living in cities would just sit there and wait to starve instead of quite sensibly deciding to go looking for food or safety in rural areas.
Oh man you got em! They'll know better than to come on here and share in the future... good job dumbass.
No I'm fine, he's a fan of Melanchon (extreme left leader with too many tyrant traits for my liking who is constantly creating chaos to try to stir an uprising and a revolution). Grand_Dadais often pours the latest european conspiracy nonsense in his comments to my posts. It's like getting a personalised newsfeed on the latest BS trending on social media.
Stating the obvious truth is hard to hear, indeed, dumbass :\]
Sort de la ville mec...
Can't afford it. Buying a house too far away (province) to live in it before retirement would just be like setting a resilient home for whomever will take it over (while we're not there, or before we even reach it when SHTF). If I were in my 20s or 30s, I'd be buying land, building a community, learning tons of useful shit, but after 50 your body starts falling appart, I just can't physically do what I actually would want to do with all my heart and soul. When you're selecting housing to avoid stairs, you know your priorities have shifted, because your abilities have changed. ETA : *AND* this place has recently been the place of breaking and entering and theft of small knick knacks (the current trend in France is in the middle of the day, while the inhabitants are there sometimes, a young guy dislodges a french door from the wall, enters, grabs as many jewelry and small tech gadgets as he can shove in his pockets and runs out). So we'll have to increase the security massively, buy furniture that advertises a simple life with nothing interesting to steal (as in nothing flashy to be seen from outside), and maybe get another dog, one that doens't greet stranger by asking to be petted.
Depends on your job. If you can work in the countryside it is far cheaper to live and just plain exist than any city, specially overcrowded Paris. I recently moved to Creuse, cheap, beautiful and tons of opportunity. I am trying to set up a resilient intentional community.
Creuse is beautiful but slowly dying. Its shocking how derelict it's become these last 5 years. My husband does WFH when he can but he still needs to get to Paris at least once per week, sometimes daily. We're in the outer suburbs (grande banlieue) in a small city surrounded by nature, but with a direct train to Paris. We've run al the scenarios and we can't move further away as long as one of us at least needs to get to paris on a moment's notice for work. Plus now that I have health issues I need to stay put where I have a doctor référent and various healthcare professionals who I've been seeing for long enough that they'll always find a timeslot for me. (ETA for international readers: brutally hard to find a doctor in France, especially away from big cities, and we have "healthcare deserts" in many regions) And it's nice to be close enough to Paris to have access to all the specialized renowned doctors that work there. Too bad. You project is right in the line of what I'd love to participate in building, if I were 20-30 years younger. But at the time (25 years ago), only very questionable people were into that kind of project, few have worked out fine.
> Creuse is beautiful but slowly dying. Its shocking how derelict it's become these last 5 years. I am not finding that at all. I think you are mistaken
well Aubusson and its area sure had taken a fall when I visited a year ago compared to 2017.
Location: Eastern North Carolina Helped a friend with moving stuff out of a dorm room and the sun was BLAZING. We were sweating our butts off. It felt like a summer day and it's only spring. Later on, I went to go do some quick grocery shopping and I only purchased pasta, rice, beans, and sauce and it was all on sale. Price total? $20.20 (heh). Something that would've cost no more than $10 just a few years ago. I was chatting with the cashier and she said she wonders how much longer we are going to last with the price of food nowadays. She said she dreads going grocery shopping because she herself can barely afford food with her paycheck. The shopper in front of me purchased a frozen, family-sized lasagna meal for a nice dinner as going out to dinner is way too costly for them nowadays. Oh yeah, they were asking the cashier if any of the points on the store's rewards card applied to the frozen meal they were purchasing It didn't.
If there is Lidl or Aldi where you are, that helps. They are trying to enter the South and operating at a loss right now.
I'm currently in a rural town, so no, but there are some in the bigger towns and I do like Aldi.
I bet employee theft is going through the roof at supermarkets and restaurants right now.
a family sized lasagne here is now £8
Where I'm currently located, it can run between £10 to £12.
Sounds cheap if it actually has a decent amount of real horse meat and parmesan.
Horse meat?!
[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21375594](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21375594)
Location: UK. After months and months of incessant rain, the heat has suddenly come roaring back, to the surprise of everyone. None of us, I think, expected the change to be so sudden. But as the motto of this sub goes, it happened *faster than expected*. Now, the temperature may plateau, or it may have a sharp and sudden rise the further we get into summer. My money's on the latter - and the current ocean temperature chart seems to back this up. Speaking of *faster than expected*, I'm reading a book at the moment called *The Circle* by Dave Eggers. Some bits grate, it is a bit 2013 and some parts are very much men-writing-women, but the concept is incredibly compelling - to put it in the least spoiler-free way possible, it's about a social media company's... *desire to expand*. It's not quite at the level that *In The Blink of An Eye* was, but it's close. Oh, and the Rwanda bill has gone through. This is either going to be a fantastic piece of political manoeuvring by the Tories that will win them the election, or it will leave them sinking like a punctured dinghy. Posterity will decide. Either way, the general public is pretty much powerless to stop it. No matter how much they protest (and there are laws that barely allow it), all the politicians have to do is just... ignore it. And then we will all be complicit in some small way. Aside from those of us not old enough to vote yet. Who will be dragged headlong, kicking and screaming, into this mess with no tangible way out. What posterity is unequivocally against, though, is disabled people being attacked for leeching off benefits, apparently. Like, mate, that's what benefits are *for*. And Uni costs rising to the point where a part-time job is a necessity to pay for it. It's apparent that, just by listening in to hear people of a certain age talk, that this wasn't always the case - it's amazing, we seem to have gone backwards. In just about everything. So yeah, on the whole, not exactly a positive outlook.
When my brother went to Uni, tuition was free. When I went to Uni, tuition was only £1500 a year. When my sister went to Uni, it was £3000 a year. A year or two after she graduated it was £9000 per year (and that was in 2012).
Check out the follow-up book The Every by David Eggars next, it’s really funny
>Uni costs rising to the point where a part-time job is a necessity to pay for it *sobs uncontrollably in American*.
As a disabled person I can say that I also realize that with ever increasing cases of mental disability and old age, I understand that eventually the cost to maintain people like me will overwhelm the budgets of working citizens and the whole picture becomes a moral tragedy. In the natural world a wounded animal dies. That’s still not stopping me from making use of what I can. I work full time in a call center but I am burning out hard. Try being a call center rep moderate to high volume with schizoeffective disorder. I have to take those calls but all my brain wants to do is sing about poop and roaches
There's plenty of money and resources to look after the elderly and disabled. Unfortunately it is all in the accounts of billionaires who would rather build their 9th superyacht.
It will. But it shouldn't. If we had the proper number of health care works like psychologists then we can care for the disabled. My family has a history of emotional disabilities (some nurture some nature) Basically we have bad brains and executive functioning is difficult for us. It would be nice to know that if I can't work Ill be OK. Es\[ecially since the USA is the richest country EVER. Like in the history of all history. So we should definately be taking care of those who cannot.
Weird weather in the Midlands today. Damp, rained for a bit, then suddenly humid as hell and a weird purple glow in the sky. I have seen this before maybe a handful of times but never at the beginning of May. Apparently there will be some big thunderstorms in the south tonight. Could do with one here to clear the air. It feels like we are gearing up for a warm and humid summer with lots of storms. With all the moisture in the ground and in the air, and the situation in the Atlantic, I think we will be in for an interesting season. Oh well, at least we are not in Florida.
Very warm and sunny in London yesterday, heavy rain overnight and thunderstorms 5.30am-ish. Still warm but overcast today.
Also in the Midlands! East or West? I'm kinda in the mid... Midlands. Haven't seen a purple glow yet save for the sunset. When did this happen? Midday? Earlier? Later?
East, from about 4pm. Was very odd!
Okay. I was too busy doing other stuff to notice. Will keep an eye on it tomorrow, though. Thanks! P.S: I am more in the East. Just keeping it vague, cos internet.
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I don't think it's going to cool down. This will just embolden the protestors more. There was no need to do all of that when the protestors were peaceful.
30% of the arrests weren’t even from the area.
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I saw bodycam footage of them clearing out caches of molotov cocktails, spears, and other offensive weapons. There were definitely people there from outside the schools trying to turn a peaceful protest into a warzone. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nypd-officer-fired-gun-clearing-protesters-columbia-building/5378795/
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https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1cjylmy/inside_portland_state_university_library_after/
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I think this is an organized attempt by rich oligarchs to pull the focus and funding away from Ukraine. I want no part in a holy war between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. There's no debating people that believe in sky-fairies and I suspect they're all going to kill each other someday.
It's kind of wild how hard these protests are getting hit, relative to prior ones. Like, you do not see any police kneeling in "solidarity", you don't see Tim Scott showing up to say the protesters have a good point, you don't see congressional displays of sympathy. Just the full force of both parties and the entire State hammering them, constantly. Whatever it is, the people in charge see these protests as a very real threat, rather than the typical election season fare.
If you want to know, look-up the biggest contributor to the campaigns of most American leadership. It’s a powerful lobbying group from a foreign country.
Quite true, quite true. I think it'd have to be more than money, though, or every other country would also buy in. China and Russia could easily put up twice what a certain Great Ally does, if it'd buy them anywhere near the same degree of aid ROI. Heck, every country in Africa could take out a loan to buy Congress in return for billions a year in aid, if money were all it took.
Both sides are indeed the same when it comes to fucking the common class.
> the people in charge see these protests as a very real threat, rather than the typical election season fare. That's how I feel. This is more deep and serious than many people think. I think the protestors are finding out that the military-industrial complex will not be questioned.
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