The US army is very good at logistics, which doesn’t make them cool. It does make them awesome in the literal sense, and unfortunately makes them a very effective tool of global imperialism.
The only rated R movie we were allowed to watch was Demolition Man, which we had a tape of, so we watched it enough times for me to have fond feelings for Stallone.
Or Wheel of Time, where people started being able to do magic at the end of the 1st age because an AI figured out how to genetically engineer humans to be able to do magic. (And then we didn’t need computers any more!)
A novel just came out by Debbie Urbanski called After World that is about this; I’m reading it now. If you’re interested in the possible consequences of human extinction, I recommend checking it out.
Some examples of short-term consequences that the book explores: who is the last human on Earth? How do they feel? How do humans come to terms with the extinction as it’s happening? How does society prepare, and how do we avoid sabotage and violence on the way out?
Longer-term consequences that the book explores: what lasts longest of what we leave behind? If the extinction happens after we develop more autonomous computers, what do those computers do once the humans are gone? What have they been directed to do?
It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did....
I’ve been struggling with this too, but doing ok mostly. Here’s what works for me:
Spend time with people who make me feel hope instead of despair. It sounds like you know some entitled assholes; don’t spend time with them if they don’t improve you.
Focus on local. What is happening right around me? What can I do to make it better? How am I interacting with my immediate environment?
Focus on what is improving. In many, many ways it’s better now that it has been at any time in human history. Women have more freedom and power now than they ever have. I can learn anything I want to, find out anything I want to, almost instantly. More people are aware of systemic oppression now than ever before, and more people are willing to resist it than ever before.
Pick what to be mad about. There are too many things to be angry about, so I try to pick the ones that I think are the most worth it. For me, they are: wealth accumulation (we’ve come so far, and built such a great civilization, and we let a few rich fuckers loot it. It was a mistake! We tricked ourselves into thinking it was a good idea! But we’re realizing it’s not, and it’s fixable) and systemic racism in the US (Black infants in America being twice as likely to die before they reach a year old than white infants is UNACCEPTABLE). Yeah, there’s an infinite amount of other shitty stuff, but I’m only one person.
Picking and choosing social media/other news sources that don’t send me into a doom spiral. I don’t go on Twitter. I don’t go on Reddit any more. I don’t have Lemmy on my phone (sorry Lemmy, nothing personal, but it’s a bad doomscrolling hole for me). I go on Discord and I read blogs I subscribe to.
I believe that a person can only handle three big things at a time, and everything else needs to take a back seat to those three. You have your business, your family, and your medical debt. Those are your three burdens. When one of them gets light enough, you can take on something else. Gender equality and entitled rich people and identity politics are not your burdens right now. They can take a back burner until other stuff gets better for you.
People never want to confront how close they are to hardship, so if they hear about someone struggling they want it to be the result of that person’s actions, not just that the world is unfair. Just ignore them; they aren’t dealing with their own shit as healthily as you are.
Weapons of Gas Production (lemmy.today)
Back in my day (lemmy.zip)
Fun (i.imgflip.com)
anti meme (mander.xyz)
The Circle of AI Life (lemmy.world)
Source: Monkeyuser.com
If humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later? (theconversation.com)
I liked this article. It was a weird feeling to read it because I felt like it would be quite nice if humans disappeared from the planet…...
How to cope with existing right now?
It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did....