Weekly Observations: What signs of collapse do you see in your region? [in-depth]

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vistula89@reddit

Location: Indonesia

Topic: SOCIAL & POLITICS

At this point you all probably have known regarding conflict between Israel & Palestine, especially since last October. In Indonesia, an overwhelming majority supports Palestine & that is understandable since Indonesia has the largest muslim population so most people care about their brothers & sisters in faith, as well as Indonesia's colonialism past history with the Dutch so most can also relate with Palestine. But what is striking to me is not with the Israel-Palestine itself, but with Rohingyas, the so-called Palestinians of Southeast Asia.

The Rohingya crisis has been raging on for almost a decade, but probably little known outside of Asia. For starters, basically Rohingyas are a minority group in Myanmar facing persecution from the military junta & they fled the country becoming refugees in neighboring country, including Indonesia. At first they are somewhat welcomed because they share the same faith, Islam, with the majority. But just recently in the past month, there are wild rumors circulating in social media especially TikTok that the Rohingyas are flooding Indonesia conspiring to steal the land & somehow Israel is behind this. Like WTF? And those hoaxes spread like wildfire leading to this, persecution of Rohingya women & children refugees by university students in Aceh province: https://www.reddit.com/r/indonesia/comments/18sd8o1/mahasiswa_banda_aceh_menyerbu_wanita_dan_anakanak/

But the most bizzarre thing is the comments on social media especially TikTok, FB & IG, is that most people approve this thing, even to the point that some commented that those refugees can be utilized as slaves, or have their organs harvested. WTF? Even social media influencers that show support for Rohingyas are attacked violently in the comments. Supporting Palestine is one thing, but going from that to planning to persecute or even genociding Rohingyas is a complete 180 degree mental gymnastics.

Previously I sympathize with what's happening in Europe, the far-right & nationalism rising leading to xenophobia & rejection of refugees. Now I see that's happening in my own country, even though Rohingyas & most Indonesians (especially Acehnese) are similar in faith, but that will not guarantee much. And if you don't know, this year we will have a 2024 presidential election & there are some rumor that the reason the Rohingya issue suddenly got pretty hot this year, is because one of the candidates is capitalizing on this issue to gain support... sounds like a familiar playbook.

And with the coming collapse, I will expect the refugee crisis will worsen in the future. To the point that somehow I think Indonesians themselves will be refugees also in the future due to rising seas & wild weather, but next time it will be 200 millions of us taking refugee to God knows where...

There is polarization in the society regarding political candidates, but at least it is nowhere as bad as in the US. (for now?) Also at least most of Indonesians agree that climate change is real, not hoax, but most of us still stuck doing jobs & chasing capitalism dream or climbing corporate ladder, so the biggest concern is still the economy. So that we always chant slogan of "Save the Orangutans" but are somewhat indifferent to deforestation that happens in Borneo. I guess we are all hypocrites in some way or another.

Topic: Weather & Climate

El Nino is in full swing this year & even though it is officially rainy season & some parts have finally got rain, I felt that it is still too dry & my city hasn't even received rain for like a week. (Normally, it should rain everyday) Looking at Windy.com, it is clear that the wind blowing from Australia is unusually strong, so that the monsoon winds bringing moisture from the Pacific is somewhat "dampened", bringing less rain. Harvests are falling down, but not to the level of crop failure yet.

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birgor@reddit

Good post! Very informative and always interesting to hear from the countries not most represented here.

Just for information, the Rohingya situation has been covered for years at least in Sweden, mostly about how they have been treated by the governments of Myanmar, and also how shitty those who fled to Bangladesh have had it. There has also been some reports about the current situation for them in Indonesia. Not sure how much people care or understand about it, but it is actually known at least.

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vistula89@reddit

Thanks! I think it's a good idea to share situation in my country too since most viewpoints here are from developed countries.

There has also been some reports about the current situation for them in Indonesia. Not sure how much people care or understand about it, but it is actually known at least.

Rohingyas has been refugee in Indonesia for several years & usually they stay under radar, not many people here know or even think about it, except since last month where some dubious news got circulated in social media & suddenly almost everyone wants them out of the country.

Just for information, the Rohingya situation has been covered for years at least in Sweden

Are you Swedish then? I'm curious what is the situation now there regarding refugees coming from Middle East?

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birgor@reddit

I will try to answer this question, however, this is not a simple situation. I think we'll have to take it from the start to get the whole situation. Some other Scandinavian here might shoot me down due to the sensitivity of this subject but here is my try to an objective description of the subject.

Sweden has traditionally had two main political blocks, like most democracies, the red one didn't like workforce immigration but didn't mind asylum immigration, and the blue one liked workforce immigration but didn't like asylum immigration and immigration levels was relatively moderate and mainly European during most of the second half of the 1900's. (very simplified)

But eventually, a right wing nationalist party with roots in the neo-nazi movement appeared. They where total paria and the two blocks used them as an argument, calling their opponents helpers of the nazis, this resulted in very liberal immigration as everyone wanted to deflect the nazi argument. In the shade of this did the extremist party of course grow exponentially.

This coincided with the increasing wars in the middle east, Somalia and Afghanistan, and a generally big immigration pressure on Europe.

This also coincided with our old very inclusive and huge social system getting ever more streamlined, less money to social services and education, and a commercializing of the education system that wasn't very good for poor people.

Eventually there was a group of immigrants that didn't got in to the society (this has always been tricky in Scandinavia due to cultural reasons) they didn't get jobs, and if they did they got very poorly paid, they didn't learn Swedish and they saw no future for themselves. Their kids are the basis of the gang violence we see here today. Because these where very young, and the traditional criminal gangs (mostly MC-gangs) didn't try to compete with these gangs did they gain a lot of power, started fight among themselves and got very violent with guns and bombs.

This is a huge problem and a pretty incompetent police force hasn't exactly helped, and the right wing extremists has constantly played on this, gaining lots of support and now rules together with parts of the traditional right wing block.

It shall however be noted that Sweden still have very low murder and crime rates over all and that these problems is very concentrated to a few areas in a few cities, but that doesn't make the problem any smaller.

On top of this has Sweden's inability to integrate our immigrants and the rising crime problems been wonderful propaganda material for right wing extremists all over the world and for Russia that is our traditional political, military and diplomatic enemy that always tries to sow discontent in Europe. (divide and conquer)

It has often been put as a problem with Islam and Muslim extremists, and this has been a component, especially during the Daesh period, but it has been widely exaggerated. My analysis is that we accepted far more people than we could handle, created an artificial under class that increasingly turns to crime, and governments that no longer trusts the social solutions that is needed to solve the problem but just increases punishments and gives the police more money.

The high influx of people has also created a housing shortage and other general cultural unrest. In some areas you almost doesn't see Swedish people, and this scares people. We have traditionally been pretty isolated in our northern fringe of te world. We are also traditionally very sceptic to very religious people, we hail ration and we keep religion private if we have one.

This is an extreme simplification and I could have said a lot more, but according to me, this is the general situation.

I should add that I live in the countryside in farmland and doesn't personally see anything about these issues more than on the news, so that is probably affecting this story.

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upthetruth1@reddit

Do you think Sweden will successfuly integrate these people?

Apparently the Swedish Social Democrats have a big integration plan and effectively want a moratorium on both work and asylum immigration to focus on integration

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birgor@reddit

If the world continues without any major interruptions that will destroy the economy, put us in war or something releases a huge immigrant wave, yes I think so.

The political reality now is that everyone has understood the situation. Both blocks (where the extreme right party now unfortunately belongs to the blue block) has reasonably good ideas how to shrink immigration.

A vast majority of immigrants from every country is integrated, so with less pressure on the system will we hopefully solve the rest too. The gang violence is actually going down as for now, we'll se if it is a trend.

It is not enough with one big party having a good idea though. I want to see them come together and create solutions that will span decades to solve the situation. But I am actually positive, things have happened politically lately. The war in Ukraine has lowered internal political tensions.

No one is trying to stop work immigration like that though, only tighten the conditions. EU and international laws regulate asylum immigration, and high end work immigrations is need in a country as small as ours to feed some industries.

But, with a bad economy and high unemployment rates will it all go down the drain, and we already have some of that. The future is as always uncertain.

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Reddit_Addict10k@reddit

But just recently in the past month, there are wild rumors circulating in social media especially TikTok that the Rohingyas are flooding Indonesia conspiring to steal the land & somehow Israel is behind this. Like WTF?

But the most bizzarre thing is the comments on social media especially TikTok, FB & IG, is that most people approve this thing, even to the point that some commented that those refugees can be utilized as slaves, or have their organs harvested. WTF? Even social media influencers that show support for Rohingyas are attacked violently in the comments.

IMO, you have become a target for disinformation warfare. The bizarre comments are probably either paid disinformation agents who have created fake profiles, or are bots. Probably the origin of the attack is China, as the US and its allies (such as Japan and South Korea) in the Indo-Pacific region are currently engaged in a rapid military build up there (the Taiwan issue is involved I suppose) and Indonesia is no doubt vital to those plans. Dividing Indonesian society against itself would obviously weaken the nation in any sort of armed conflict. Keep an eye out for similar weird things happening in neighboring countries like the Philippines, to see if there's a pattern.

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OK8e@reddit

Thanks for this very illuminating post. I had no awareness of the political situation in Indonesia, and I feel like you explained it very well.

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vistula89@reddit

Thanks! Indonesia is often regarded as a sleeping giant, 4th most populous country in the world, but very little news coming out there, especially outside Southeast Asia

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OK8e@reddit

4th! Wow, I feel pretty ignorant for not knowing about that. I will be paying more attention now, for sure.

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spacetimeandme@reddit

Location: London, UK

This is my 7th week of being ill (3rd illness) - I did have about 5 days of being healthy-ish so let's be generous and say it's only my 6th week.

I don't have a particularly weak immune system and I'm not one to complain. I eat healthy, I look after myself and my immune system for the most part is pretty robust.

It's not just me. It's everybody. Everybody. Everybody is sick. Whether it's covid or the flu or God knows what.

And it's not just your usual cold. The thing I had in December destroyed me. It was like my body was invaded every hour by a new symptom.

The illness I have now is one of the weirdest I ever had - I get mucus congested so far deep in my body I can't even feel it. It comes out so weird and solid like it's been there for days.

Also total brain fog and lack of motor skills. Everytime I make food or tea I spill something. I forget what I'm doing. Time goes by so fast.

I've been scrolling through this sub and I can see it's not just my observation. Seems like there's strange illnesses going round all over the world.

Let me clarify: these are not normal illnesses. And others are going through it as well. Call me a conspiracy theorist but these feel lab made. Idgaf if I sound crazy.

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Horror-Impression411@reddit

I have had major issues with memory recently. Forgetting names of literally everyone I know. Having to be reminded. I’ve gotten sick so often since starting school in august (6-8 times as of today) and I just don’t feel the same. I get ~9hrs of sleep, eat okay ish, and mask. I still get sick

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Adventurous-Salt321@reddit

I caught Covid from a hospital endoscopy where there was an outbreak happening in March 2020.

It was the weirdest disease I have ever experienced, and my already weakened body from a prior health issue meant it was even harder to fight off. I can’t take normal medications so I don’t remember a few days from fever (the hospital closed from outbreak and was only accepting people who could not breathe). I sounded like an accordion but I could breathe. My skin felt sunburnt. I shook like a leaf for two weeks straight.

I haven’t been sick a single time from anything since then. I life a normal life and everyone around me has been sick as fuck. I don’t know what that disease did to me but it did something.

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vvenomsnake@reddit

i’ve only had covid once but it made me feel like an utter furnace. like i was a fire breathing dragon putting out disease in huge fucking clouds (i isolated ofc but if i’d had doubts before i certainly felt it then). it’s different for sure

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Adventurous-Salt321@reddit

I thought I was having a stroke and it felt like something was being installed on my hard drive. And I totally recognize how absolutely insane that sounds

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FantasticNeoplastic@reddit

I'm a doctor and I know what you mean. I got the OG version of it back in early 2020 and it gave me a fever like I don't believe. I barely remember what happened for those 48 hours.

Bro I just had an endoscopy before my strange illnesses started. Maybe this is a piece of the puzzle.

I haven’t been sick a single time from anything since then

That's good though! I hope to be able to say the same once I'm done with this wave.

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Freakthetiny@reddit

I'm so glad you said something regarding the mucus being so "deep" in the body. My son's had covid twice (despite masking and other common sense protections). I've been the caretaker both times. One instance was around Christmas when covid was first discovered, and 2 Halloweens after that. Since that Xmas "covid" (this was before the tests, so it's my best guess because it aligned with the second infection), my son and I both get this rubbery, solid mucus issue. I almost want to say it's like dried glue that has become kind of plastic-y? Every cold, infection, whatever have you this one symptom comes back. It's agitating.

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rainydays052020@reddit

It’s covid. Multiple infections are destroying your immune system. Mask up, clean the air and most importantly- REST.

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Sapph_Daddy@reddit

Location: PA, USA

To no surprise after the holidays, people are sick. I managed to get through the holidays without getting covid or the flu or pneumonia/white lung or noro virus or whooping cough...whatd I miss? I couldn't escape a sinus cold but Im prone to those. The length of time people are sick/staying sick/lingering symptom or two is becoming more obvious around me.

It's costing more effort to research what it worth buying nowadays as quality doesn't matter to so many businesses now. Even with restaurants, I check the latest reviews so I know if their portions became smaller despite their price hikes or if inferior ingredients are used or their taste isn't great. I want to eat GREAT food at these prices otherwise I'll eat my spouse's great cooking.

AI generated models in ads not only creep me out but tell me the company can't even be bothered to pay for a human to wear their clothing. Thus, I won't buy from them as I doubt they're putting money towards quality clothing.

Healthcare collapse creeps forward and now I've found that one place we applied to for financial assistance is taking 8 weeks to process applications!! Their usual timeline was 2 weeks. My medical debt accumulates and I signed up for their lowest payment plan using a card I know has no money. I've never had to do such a thing before :(

I am counting down the days until I am in Ireland and can sleep without medical bankruptcy on my mind!!! :D

Darth-Sheogorath@reddit

I'm in Tennessee. My Dad had some issues with blood clots the past few years. The doctors that handled the blood clots got one out of his leg, but due to malpractice, completely missed the one right next to his heart. He had a heart attack, we went to the hospital and they tried to say he was brain dead and wanted to let him die. Except he wasn't fucking brain dead, he's alive and still mentally all there today, which is honestly a miracle with how much malpractice he went through at that hospital. My grandma also has suffered from malpractice, first they overmedicated her, and then all those medications destroyed her liver and killed her. Fuck the American medical system.

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BeansandCheeseRD@reddit

Woah that is terrifying, I am so sorry about your dad. I hope you sued that doctor...

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zioxusOne@reddit

Can you "out" the hospital in question? And have you queried local news media to gauge their interest in the story?

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prawnspinch@reddit

Not OP, so I’m not seeking damages from them, so I’m not afraid to out them:

The Cleveland Clinic.

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ctilvolover23@reddit

I never had any bad experiences with them. Can you tell me which hospital?

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BeansandCheeseRD@reddit

We may be pursuing professional services in regards to some of the issues I mentioned.

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Hyphen_Nation@reddit

I’m wondering what is happening in health care, or if costs are just egregious now, and they are understaffed/spread too thin. I had a major procedure that I flew to Cleveland from the west coast for. It was an incredible experience. Great communication. Great outcomes, Good understanding of what the whole picture was and what the journey would look like until I was home recovering. My family felt the exact opposite of what you experienced. They knew what was going on at all times during the procedure. This was 7.5 years ago.

Between that moment and this year, my parent had a few procedures at a renowned teaching hospital on the east coast. The kind of name you want your doctor associated with. Most were very good experiences. A few months ago, during a relatively routine procedure, my parent was injured, but still released. They then proceeded to almost drop dead from internal bleeding less than a day after they got home. Like EMTs and ER doctors kept asking about resuscitation orders, and no one was allowed to visit for hours until they stabilized the. The experience over the next few weeks was miserable, and similar to what you describe. I know it’s a minor detail, but the food was inedible and they often had no vegetables, and meals might not arrive for 4-5 hours after ordered…in a healthcare facility? Guessing budget cuts forced them to go with the lowest bidder for a food service provider.

All of this is to say, I think healthcare is crumbling. I suspect multiple factors hitting overhead is making it too expensive to continue to run the way it has historically, and quality has completely dropped off.

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FightingIbex@reddit

First, I am so sorry for your loss. Losing a loved one bites, no two ways about it. Your experience with the hospital system only makes that worse.

I have been in “healthcare” for over 3 decades in big and small hospitals in multiple states. I had several thoughts run through my head as I read your post. First, your description of communication in bigger hospitals, especially teaching hospitals, sounds accurate to me. Some of the issues include heavy patient load, packed hospitals without flex staff when busy, too many specialists often means too many drivers (egos), and sometimes just plain poor communication skills. Remember that when hospitals are packed, each patient, including those boarding in the hallways, is assigned one doctor or more. It doesn’t matter how many other patients they have or whether it is safe or even possible, they are required to do a certain amount of work on each patient every day. That requirement doesn’t include calling families. So when time gets tight, communication with family becomes the weak link. The hospital could hire more staff, but who will think of the poor shareholders? Corporate healthcare means many healthcare dollars go toward lobbying politicians to look the other way. Corporations also make sure their staff are taking the blows from a public who is starting to understand it’s being ripped off.

Also remember that the doctors working in your hospital are likely some of the brightest minds available. Those minds, as in other similar professions, are often great at doing the job but suck at social skills. They often communicate poorly with each other as well. Each one is in charge of their organ, without seeming to see the patient as a system.

Whenever I hear “ranked number 2,” I think “number two at what, when, and what was the criteria?” Many of those rankings turn out to be financial.

I do not intend to excuse any of your issues, only offering a look at the wizard behind the curtain. The system is broken and we in the US pay the most for rotted out healthcare. Just as other corporations axe jobs to “do more with less,” same goes for healthcare. And trust me, those profits are being siphoned up by the wealthy at the expense of patients and families.

Regarding your father’s disease process, however, I would trust the doctors when they say they don’t know. They don’t say “I don’t know” in public very often. It is difficult to describe the sheer complexity of a healthy human body. Add to that the sheer variety of disease states and presentations and it is a wonder to me that patients are diagnosed as accurately as they are. There is still an incredible amount we do not know.

My heart goes out to you. You and your family deserve better. We all do.

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CRKing77@reddit

I'm sorry for your loss

In 2002, when I was 11 years old, I lost my 50 year old grandmother. She had knee surgery in late 2001, and in early February after throwing a surprise party for her mother she banged said knee into a corner of a coffee table. She (we believe) formed a blood clot from that. Within a few weeks my grandfather came home and found her collapsed in the bathroom, took her to the local hospital (Catholic hospital, and she was a black woman). They looked at her, told her she had the flu, gave her antibiotics and sent her home. A few days later she collapses again, this time my grandfather has her taken to the hospital the next town over, they discover the clot and do their best but she passed after an aneurysm

Last year I went into the hospital after throwing up non-stop for two days. There was a rather embarrassing incident I'd rather not talk about but was very demeaning and upsetting by the nurses. Then, I was suffering from swollen tonsils and they told me there was nothing they could do until the overnight nurse was kind enough to make me a warm saltwater rinse. The other nurses legit just shrugged and told me too bad. The next morning a nurse botched giving me insulin, which led to me checking myself out

And, of course, in the past few weeks this same hospital (NorCal Kaiser) has run out of long acting insulin and can't fill my prescription for it

Having seen this hospital go through multiple nursing strikes, and also have their pharmacy be victim to an armed robbery, I absolutely feel like the medical system is collapsing

He was a boomer but was a generally healthy dude, it was almost unbelievable when they told us how bad his condition was.

It's terrifying to see how dysfunctional it is, I can't imagine how bad it will be once I'm his age and likely at my peak life expectancy along with the rest of the millennials.

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editjs@reddit

Location: New Zealand/in my heart

I just read 'on the beach' by Nevil Shute as recommended in a recent thread by someone here.

I recall a comment made by someone stating that the way the characters went about their daily lives as if the inevitable wasn't going to happen was unbelievable - planting gardens for next year, or cutting firewood that would never dry in time to be burned, worrying about acquiring a playpen for a growing child, a child who will be dead in a couple of months time along with everyone else (advancing radioactive cloud - read the book it's great).

I just want to say, that IMO, it isn't unbelievable at all. And to me seems like a totally normal and human response to death terror. We all do it, we live our lives as if they will never end, as if the the things we place huge importance on matter.

Wether we die because of climate collapse in 5 or 10 or 100 years doesn't matter. We all die in the end anyway.

So - everyone here who is terrified, mystified, paralysed or confused, I can't advise you strongly enough to live as though you will never die. You will - but at least spend your time doing what you love, whatever that is.

This is not a call to action, I'm not saying go and travel the world or build and empire or any of that stuff. I'm not suggesting you strive in the manner suggested by the capitalist machine or in any way that your cultural or societal norms urge you too. I'm just saying we should all find the stuff that we really like - regardless of origin or cultural taboo/approval and do that stuff.

I am heartily eating butter and steak, growing organic veges and taking breaks from dairy and meat. Buying my child plastic junk from china and teaching them to play with sticks and dirt and nothing. I practice lighting fires and going on long hikes, camping outside and being alone, and participating in normal community life. I act the part of a parent, a playgroup helper, a community member, a shopper and a consumer, while also choosing to spend hours and days and weeks at home in isolation acting alone and happy.

Speaking of, I made a post in this weekly thread a few weeks ago about how Kaiser in NorCal ran out of long acting insulin. Well, I made a reorder on December 28th...this time I didn't even get an email stating there was an issue, I haven't heard shit and now it's January 5th. Had to go get a substitute type from Walmart, and have no idea how long this "shortage" is going to go

But the vibe is the same. Enjoy what time we have. I said this a few days ago, I had an abnormally (for me) great Xmas and at the end of the night I felt it was going to be the last good one. Have this non-stop gut feeling something real bad is going to happen in 2024, but I'm not scared...I'm at peace. And THAT is what actually scares me, ironically, is the peace feeling. As you said, it's acceptance, and I still don't know how to fully comprehend that yet

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4score-7@reddit

Location: SE United States

While the overall US economy and our job markets keep being reported as “excellent and doing well”, my spouse and I both are currently out of work, and we know more than a few other professional, experienced level people in our business and finance fields going through the same thing. Job listings in online places seem to abound, but the criteria for such jobs seem to be far from what is realistic for the comp being offered. More, with the cost to just live having risen as much as it has the last few years, there simply seems to be willful ignorance by employers to disregard that cost of living increase, reflecting in their salary offers.

I have to think that many other people like me are noticing this. The phrase that comes to mind is something about recession being when your neighbor loses his job; depression being when you also lose your own. Our household has very high excess savings and essentially no personal debt, so we are positioned for a very long period of unemployment. After the economic surge of 2021-2022, I expected that some kind of economic head check would occur in 2023 or thereafter. I just didn’t expect that it would come first to my household, while all reported indicators are painting a better than rosy picture.

I rent a home at this time. My lease ends May 31. If the picture in my own home with two high earners of 25 years experience, homeowners ourselves for 20 years, doesn’t change by then, we will request to move back in with my elderly mother by summer. I will remain there until who knows when.

nonofec@reddit

You can also google 'covid doesn't damage immune system' and get just as many results.

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LuveeEarth74@reddit

Yup, an entire season down the east coast. Being able to remember the winters of the eighties and nineties it is frightening.

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Haveyounodecorum@reddit

I’m in New York and it was supposed to snow today. There was a dusting and then it started raining. It’s just too warm.

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FoundandSearching@reddit

We live “North of 84” and got a good foot of snow. At least it felt like it as I shoveled out our driveway and sidewalk. Not complaining.

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See_You_Space_Coyote@reddit

Location: USA, lower 48 states, East of the Rocky Mountains

So tomorrow, my area's supposed to get snow. We haven't had snow in so long that I don't even remember the last time it snowed. I don't like snow, but at the same time, I understand how important it is from an ecological perspective so I'll just grit my teeth and hopefully find something good on Netflix to watch. The plants in my area have been acting like they don't know what season it is but since the weather where I am has had such wild temperature/atmospheric swings lately, frankly I feel like I understand them. Climate wise, nothing makes any fucking sense anymore and though I don't have nearly enough scientific knowledge/training to understand just what the consequences of all this will be, I can tell things just don't feel right and I'm sure that whatever the consequences will be, it's not gonna be anything good.

I've noticed more than a few times when I turn on the news, someone or other is claiming that the economy has improved and that inflation is easing, but everything in my area just seems to get more and more expensive all the time. The cost of my health insurance doubled even though absolutely nothing about my health insurance has changed since last year and frankly, it never really covered much of anything to begin with-it's hardly worth going to the doctor or getting medical help unless I'm dying because everything has such ridiculous co-pays and other expenses/fees/whatever that sometimes I get the feeling that health insurance is designed to keep people from seeking medical care rather than encouraging them to seek it, otherwise I don't know how else to explain how something that costs so fucking much hardly covers anything you actually need.

I struggle with chronic stomach problems but going to the doctor usually either means sitting in a Dr's office with no mask requirements and having to risk exposure to covid and other crap, getting told it's all in your head after someone looks at your for 2 seconds and maybe touches your stomach once or twice and being given a prescription for some foul antidepressants that will make you feel even worse than you did before (no need to ask me how I know unless you're actually interested in the answer, I just use these weekly posts as a place to ramble,) or both. I mostly cope with the help of protein shakes, smoothies, homemade soup, heating pads, and burying my face in a pillow when it hurts bad enough that I want to scream.

Covid, flu, etc, you name it, it's out there. Covid wastewater levels are horrendous right now and I know plenty of people who are also sick with other stuff right now too. Someone in my family's been sick with a respiratory virus for the second time in less than a month, though they don't take any precautions to avoid covid so it doesn't surprise me so much as confuse and disappoint me. A lot of people have a shockingly low or non-existent sense of self-preservation, whether it's due to peer pressure, falsely thinking it'll make them seem tough or macho, or just being an idiot, I have no idea. https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-nationaltrend.html

Covid in particular is one of those things that, just when you think it can't get any worse, somehow it always manages to get worse. If you go looking for scientific studies detailing what covid can do to the human body, you'll never run out of stuff to read. The most depressing part of it all is that no matter how much information is discovered, most people are too selfish, stupid, mean, or apathetic to give a fuck, something that depresses me beyond words. Sure, it's not considered cool or trendy or normal to care about covid anymore but fuck it, I've never been cool or popular and statistically, a lot of the things I do and a lot of the personality/mental/emotional traits I have veer pretty damn far from normal, I'm not about to start pretending otherwise now.

I have no incentive not to give a shit about covid despite how caring about it makes you look to other people because I'm not the sort of person who ever had a rat's chance in hell of fitting in or being statistically average or normal in the first place so there's no point in sacrificing my health in an attempt to impress other people (who wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire, by the way.) And besides, there's all sorts of weirdos out there, and if caring about covid makes you a weirdo, well, there are weirdos out there who care about all sorts of things, I might as well be a weirdo who cares about covid-so in other words, somebody's gotta do it, it might as well be me. Maybe history will vindicate me later, maybe I'll be beaten to death in an insane asylum like Dr. Semmelweis (link to an article for those who are interested) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ignaz-Semmelweis was for trying to tell doctors to wash their hands, or maybe both. Who knows? (I think I mentioned it before but you can probably tell I majored in history in college, and, well, you know how that old saying goes about history repeating itself (or rhyming, depending on which version of the saying you prefer,) and all that.

700 days if your on the East Coast. Sorry, Philadelphia news can’t stop pointing out this fact.

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FillThisEmptyCup@reddit

I struggle with chronic stomach problems… I mostly cope with the help of protein shakes,

Yeah, well, update us on how ingesting a literal waste product pushed by industry does wonders for the stomach in the future, sometime. I’m sure it will work miracles.

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kitteh100@reddit

Location: Seattle, WA

Where are all these jobs the political operatives in their DC bubble talk about, never in my life have I've been unemployed for this long, below I share the candidate application numbers on some of the MCjobs in my city that I've applied to this past week

Dishwasher: Around 61-65 people have applied on Indeed

Mail sorter: Around 111-115 people have applied on Indeed

What else is the economy if not “how people are feeling”.

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on_the_rocks_95@reddit

Over the winter holidays in Minnesota it warmed up to 50F, then froze everything that thawed the next day. I found a caterpillar frozen solid on my apartment door step ☹️

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la_vague@reddit

Could you share the video? Thanks!

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vol404@reddit

Hete you go : https://streamable.com/vtedmj

Unrelated: Talked to a coworker about vacay days. She has to take off the last 3 weeks of summer vacay because the kindergarten is closed. Reinforced my child free status, add that to the neverending list.

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CRKing77@reddit

She has to take off the last 3 weeks of summer vacay because the kindergarten is closed.

How much vacation do you guys get? Asking as a jealous American lol (not towards you guys as citizens, I just wish my government cared about us)

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a_collapse_map@reddit

I believe Germany has 20ish days per year, minimum by law (if I'm not mistaking).

what about maternal leave ? What about free universities, Public health insurance including basic dental care etc pp.

yeah . Venus by Tuesday

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Muckymuh@reddit

Our company gives everyone 27 days off. Federal minimum is - I believe - 20 days? Maybe a bit more.

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BeardedGlass@reddit

Same here in Japan.

Wife and I are government employees as part-timer and we get 20 days (up to a max of 40 days) paid leaves each year. Plus 8 days of mental refreshment paid leaves.

So minimum of 28 days as well.

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meanderingdecline@reddit

Location: New Jersey, USA

Yesterday my workplace was locked down due a bomb threat. Apparently there have been a large number of bomb threats and swatting calls to state governments throughout the United States over the past few days (https://www.axios.com/2024/01/03/state-capitols-bomb-threats)

Then after work I went to a certain national pet supply store to buy some dog food and at the register I was told that the store was experiencing nationwide credit card processing issues. So I was unable to purchase that. This was after the day previous where I went to another of their locations which no longer even carried the brand of dog food I wanted.

Walked over to the grocery store because they finally were having a sale on some staple products; after months of high prices that they blame on inflation. Low and behold the sale items were cleaned off the shelves. So I wasn't the only one waiting for a sale to get the items at their 2022 prices. Then leaving the parking lot I watched a person obliviously driving on the wrong side of the road.

Standard day in the end of times.

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vvenomsnake@reddit

reminds me of the opening scene of children of men, with theo just getting a cup of coffee and then..

https://youtu.be/pSdL1zeOfdk?si=eJn-a_u2g4nG4bII

2027… too easy to see this as our world every day

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precise-upvoter@reddit

weird, a movie that barely made a splash when it came out is the truest depiction of the future.

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Right-Cause9951@reddit

Clive Owen has been part of some interesting movies ideologically speaking. Some of our best received movies were lukewarm late bloomers.

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CRKing77@reddit

for me Contagion is the perfect example of this. I don't even remember it coming out (I do kind of remember seeing Matt Damon's "can I talk to her? What happened to her?!" in a trailer on TV but just wasn't paying attention)

A movie 9 years ahead of when it would actually be relevant. Watched it during the worst of the pandemic and it just hit all the right emotional spots.

Hoping Don't Look Up, Leave the World Behind, and the upcoming Civil War movie don't have the same "resurgence" later

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precise-upvoter@reddit

he’s also in a lot of really bad movies.

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Realistic_Can4122@reddit

I just watch that YouTube and I have to see the full movie now. I can’t believe I never saw it! I know it’s mentioned here quite often.

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Haveyounodecorum@reddit

Wait for the scene with (at the time) the longest continuous shot. Incredible.

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caapi14@reddit

Location- Cairns, Australia

Was just reading an X thread about Covid-19 wastewater and other samples showing up in Italy in Sept (?) 2019.

link to this? i did see reports of nov/dec in 2019 but dunno if recall as ealrly as sept oct

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DisingenuousGuy@reddit

I vaguely remember there was a cancer screening program in Italy from Pre-2020 that did detect the virus around September 2019. So I did some digging, and I found this research paper from the National Library of Medicine:

We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 Receptor-Binding Domain (RBD)-specific antibodies in blood samples of 959 asymptomatic individuals enrolled in the SMILE prospective lung cancer screening trial [...] between September 2019 and March 2020 and across all the Italian regions. SARS-CoV-2 IgM/IgG RBD-specific antibodies were detected in 111 of 959 (11.6%) subjects, starting from September 2019 (14%), with a cluster of positive cases (>30%) on the 2nd week of February 2020 and the highest number (53.2%) in Lombardy. The publication of our report generated a lively debate on the possibility that the virus circulated months earlier in Italy without surveillance programs that were able to identify any signs of its presence. To validate these findings, we were encouraged to blindly retest a selection of our samples and paired controls in an external WHO-affiliated laboratory (Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam) by using different serological assays. Here, we report the results of this cross-validation study. [...] SECTION 3: Results 3.1 Retesting of Lung Cancer Screening Participants Table 1: Serological results of the SMILE series 2019–2020. Simplified Table Below 23 July 2019 - All Negative 24 July 2019 - All Negative 3 September 2019 - Positive 5 September 2019 - Borderline 10 September 2019 - All Negative 12 September 2019 - All Negative 2 October 2019 - Positive 7 October 2019 - Positive 8 October 2019 - Positive 10 October 2019 - All Negative 15 October 2019 - Positive 21 October 2019 - Positive 22 October 2019 - All Negative 7 November 2019 - Borderline 11 November 2019 - Positive (Table Truncated, all dates to Feb 2020 Positive) [...] Section 4: Discussion These findings do not at all suggest that the virus originated in Italy, but they endorse the idea that the virus was likely spreading in China [months before] the first known cases and that could have been circulated by travelers given direct the connections between China and European and US countries, particularly the Northern West and East Italian regions, which are among the most industrialized and connected areas of Italy.

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factunchecker2020@reddit

The results of this study might suggest that SARS-CoV-2 circulated unrecognized until it mutated and gained the capacity to cause severe disease and pandemic capacity.

Yes i have read this theory before, that covid was a existing flu virus that circulated among humans for some time before it mutated into a more lethal variant. But it is very hard to prove definitively. Other research suggested covid jumped to humans multiple times in separate locations before becoming more lethal.

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mrblarg64@reddit

Was just reading an X thread about Covid-19 wastewater and other samples showing up in Italy in Sept (?) 2019.

link to this? i did see reports of nov/dec in 2019 but dunno if recall as ealrly as sept oct

Not the guy you replied to, but this is not anything new, even for this sub.

I personally first saw this claim here about a year ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/zkftbe/queues_form_at_fever_clinics_as_china_wrestles/j00mahx/

And from my browser history (what I visited immediatly after) from that time I found these:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/07/fact-check-coronavirus-found-march-2019-wastewater-sample/5350878002/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v1

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candleflame3@reddit

Thanks for that. Maybe I should delete my comment. I don't want to add to misinformation. I'm just pissed about the whole thing.

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mrblarg64@reddit

You shouldn't delete the comment. I don't think that having a few infected people in September is that crazy of a claim.

Saying the pandemic was going full tilt (showing up in wastewater) and nobody noticed is a completely different claim.

I have seen claims of earlier covid get "game of telephoned"/combined with conspiracies to grow in magnitude (like those claiming the "vape disease" was actually covid (see the link in my previous comment).

You should see /u/DisingenuousGuy s comment

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/18vuj90/weekly_observations_what_signs_of_collapse_do_you/kg2kd1t/

There is a paper in Viruses that used blood sample data I skimmed it and it seemed interesting.

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candleflame3@reddit

Eh, I don't want to subject the account to the reddit hug.

But it's not really the point. My point we still don't have straight answers because our governments and public health organizations are shitshows, and that is very bad news.

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ch0mpipe@reddit

I had Covid in May 2019. It had to have been Covid. Respiratory illness with extreme lethargy and strong cold symptoms. I was on an IV for a few days.

I only know because 2 years later I got it again and it was badddd. Same symptoms

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Xapollina@reddit

Italy imports a lot of people from China to work in their factories, leather industries etc

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zioxusOne@reddit

Correct, particularly in the garment, shoe, and handbag industries, in factories owned mainly by Chinese, so they can carry a "Made In Italy" label without all that expense of hiring expensive European labor. It's insidious.

And it's a bi-product of globalization. Known for their craftsmanship, Italian leather and textile workers come from generations of craftsmen who follow a strict apprenticeship. Until recently, that is. Ditch the expensive Italian labor, bring in Chinese laborers (mainly women), house them in squalid conditions, and pay them 1/10th of what Italian laborers earned.

And we're talking about famous brands, the kind influencers love to peddle.

Toss it on the pile of stuff related to our coming doom (collapse):

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9BS04D/

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Sour-Scribe@reddit

Thanks for that info… I’m fascinated by the movie GOMORRAH and that filled in some of the background. I should read the book it’s based on.

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jiayux@reddit

Location: China

I am Chinese and currently live in the U.S.; haven’t been back to China since COVID hit. I sometimes browse some Chinese social media as a way to feel some connection with my home country.

One of the sites I semi-frequent is Zhihu (知乎), which has a format similar to Quora (Q&A) but has been “Redditized” in recent years, i.e., the format is more or less a disguise of a discussion thread on a certain topic — similar to those “askX” subs. Chinese social media is, by and large, a shithole; the feeling is basically “there are only two countries in the world, China and USA, if you think USA is good then that implies China is bad, if you think USA is bad then that implies China is good”. However, there are occasionally some deep thoughts and/or more nuanced analyses on Zhihu.

Several days ago I saw a question:

Last year the number of newly married couples was the lowest in the past 37 years, and dropped 49.3% from 9 years ago. What does this imply?

A lot of answers below pointed out that the hideous housing market — arguable the worst in the entire world — is a primary driving force behind it. (In China the couple is supposed to have purchased a house when getting married.) While this is undoubtedly part of the truth, the answer I like most says:

“I always think it’s foolish to connect everything with the housing market.

“The house prices are just a tiny dot in the whole picture. If you broaden your view and take a look at the entire society, you’ll find out that what has collapsed is an idea:

“Hard work will result in success.

“Why is the age at first wedding increasing like crazy? Why does the cost of marriage stay so high? Why are people not willing to give birth to a child — who will likely suffer in the future?

“Because as time passes, one thing has become certain:

“Things that you don’t have at birth, will never be yours in your whole life.

“In the past people were able to marry early and have kids early, because we had a poor understanding of social stratification. We believed that the distance between ourselves and ‘those who have made it’ is 10 years of hard work.

“Because we thought hard work brings success, people put more emphasis on one’s traits. We believed that capability and competency are the most important, and as long as your other half has the same mindset as yours, social status and wealth can be obtained via hard work.

“But now people have realized that the so-called hard work cannot bridge the gap caused by the natural appreciation of assets. If you are behind others at the beginning, you will always remain behind.

“In our time, there’s no point whatsoever to forecast one’s future career path. If they are a ‘have-not’ now, they will not become a ‘have’ in the future.

“So it’s impossible for a rational person to choose someone with potentials while looking for a partner. They can only choose those who are already ‘have’.

“The problem is that, one in their 20s is, with high probability, in their stage of having nothing but full of potentials.

“When the entire society consciously think that this type of people are not a good option as a partner, it is natural that the age of marriage becomes older than 30.

“When your potential has brought in cash — that’s when people dare to get married.

“So the housing market is just a superficial reason; even if the house price crashes now, people would still have no intention to get married and have kids.

“Because at that time there will be some other kind of assets to label people and assign a price to them.

“Everything is doomed as long as we live in a world where people are labeled with prices.

The final sentence hit me HARD:

EVERYTHING IS DOOMED AS LONG AS WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE PEOPLE ARE LABELED WITH PRICES

This is, arguably, a fundamental tenet of capitalism, and you can say everything is doomed as long as our society is dominated by capitalism. But the Chinese brand of capitalism is particularly toxic (long work hours, endless competition, social Darwinism, people assigning each other a “score” based on income, wealth, look, etc. on the dating market, and so on), and the young generation is quietly revolting with their inaction. This kind of connects the dots and explains everything from the “lying flat” movement to low marriage and birth rate, as well as the sense of despair that permeates the Chinese society — as the answer points out, what has actually collapsed is the idea that hard work brings success. With this fundamental collapse, it is not too much a stretch that the future of China is bleak.

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Minimum_Bullfrog_366@reddit

Well, here in Finland people are also labeled with prices. Either you're netpayer or you're a burden. Children are seen as future taxpayers and workers, not something that could bring joy in itself. I believe this is fundamentally different in Latin America where children are still being made. They answer first to their family and not to the system like we do. The system has pretty much replaced families, but it never can fully replace the comfort of a loved one. I think that is the main source of the loneliness and depression. The system is more important than family. The system is needed for order, order is needed for high education, high education is needed for competition. Unabomber was mad but he did write some very well based critique or rather brought it to light. About the socialization and the system and it's side effects in society.

Kids have also become a burden. I am a woman myself and I think it is rather troublesome and overhelming to somehow manage career and have kids at the same time. I never had the 'calling' so the decision is left for rational part of the brain, which tends to think it might be too hard to manage family and career. Being dependent on a man is not really that good of a idea, but would make the family part easier. But I don't believe in eternal love so I want the career and then I won't be in trouble by myself. The life of a single parent is something I wouldn't want to risk. It is incredibly hard and I'm too much of a coward to ever be one.

The time window for establishing your career and then having right kind of a relationship while you're still fertile is rather short. The working class has also stopped having kids and there are tons of singles. I guess years of tightening the screw around people has resulted in many of us coming home from work and feeling just exhausted. My friend would want a baby and she says she is too exhausted after work to even try to have one.

All of this seems to result in low birthrates despite Finland being still a good place to have kids. Also ut does not help that media is constantly spouting about crisis after crisis. People say there were crisis in the past too, but back then they didn't have birth control, so....Just saying the Chinese problem might not be that unique to China, but the same problem can be found elsewhere also but just with the nation specific charachteristics.

kolissina@reddit

I wonder to what degree a significant mismatch between the population of women vs. men (gender ratio) has to do with difficulty in finding a partner and settling down.

The huge number of selective abortions of female fetuses due to the one-child policy has caused a very large imbalance.

According to Newsweek, there are 17.52 million excess men in the 20-40 year old age range alone.

I don’t understand why there are still $5 million apartments in Miami to be bought! They are going to be underwater

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quadralien@reddit

I just flew from Copenhagen to Amsterdam and I haven't seen the fields of Noord-Holland so wet. The farm canals were overflowing, plenty of huge puddles in the fields.

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LuciferianInk@reddit

I wonder how many people would leave the city after seeing the flooding

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zioxusOne@reddit

can someone explain the phenomenon in the back of the high income workers moving to these places and to invest in lux apartments that are clearly gonna be gone in 30 years?

It can only be due to denialism, stupidity, and privileged insanity mated to greed. Banks will gladly finance your mortgage, knowing it will only sit on their books until it's bundled and sold to investor groups.

I used to live in Ft. Lauderdale. At high tide the canals fill within a few feet of the top of breakwalls (and this was years ago). I'm sure it's gotten worse. Within thirty years many Fort Lauderdale's neighborhoods will become uninhabitable, but in the meantime, there's money to be made.

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LemonVulture@reddit

Location: Eastern North Carolina, USA

It rained all day and was quite cool. The rain passed on a couple of hours ago and it has been quite warm, but the temps have been bouncing back and forth between cool and warm for the past several weeks.

The oceans continue to be hot and it has me gravely concerned for hurricane season this northern hemisphere summer.

I don't even want to think about the summer temps we are going to have this year.

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zioxusOne@reddit

Just anecdotally, my relatives in NC report last summer wasn't bad.

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Right-Cause9951@reddit

Let 2024 be the litmus test. I really want to see how much we will dig in with our ignorance especially on a personal level.

We continue to have 30+ lows mostly everyday where I am. At least 90F is bearable in the north with less humidity.

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eatingscaresme@reddit

Location: Southern BC, Canada. We should have 2 feet of snow covering the ground. The mountains should have at least 6 to 8 feet by now.

Theres nothing. It's raining in the mountains, if we get precipitation at all. The lakes and rivers are still super low. Like ridiculously low. Hundreds of feet of beach showing. Dead fish. No fish. It's terrifying. And I keep looking at the weather forecast and it's just... dry. Forever. I know El Nino is having a significant effect but the fire season is going to start so early and burn hot all summer. There won't be any forest left for long if this keeps up.

Thats just the climate. There's still the regular housing problems etc. Healthcare is pretty bad, waiting months and months to see specialists etc. But honestly to me, it's the climate. I've never had a green Christmas before in my life. How can we grow food if we are on fire? We won't be able to breathe. The smoke is bad every year now. It wasn't like that when I was a kid.

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Am closer to central BC, and it’s the same thing here. I miss the snow. I’m scared what summer will bring, and hope it’ll be a “crappy” summer with cooler temps and rain.

Many people have been commenting on the lack of snow and that the weather’s warm enough to feel like spring, but there are still some who come up with dismissive statements (like it’s El Niño, or there’s been lack of snow before, etc).

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Rodeocowboy123abc@reddit

I noticed the weather map on NBC during Christmas. They were doing forecast but put up a map of all the plane flights currently in the skies across the Country. It looked like a Friday traffic jam after work hours.

I wonder sometimes if all this jet travel, rockets fired up into space, has changed the ozone in some way. Back when I was a kid growing up, we always had snow during the winter. Sometimes, it would be a surprise snow they called for rain for us to wake up to snow.

In those days though, we had far less traveling by air. It was trains, buses and automobiles. I know something is happening and maybe scientists know it but keeping the doom a secret.

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alamohero@reddit

scientists keeping it a secret.

Indeed there is little left. Becauase preserving the wild and the trees was always someone elses job. Because you and i needed housing and those trees were on land for our housing and their wood was needed for our floors and the frame of the house.

Because it is never us.

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nosesinroses@reddit

Yes, but it’s so much more than that.

Vast majority of old-growth was logged to fuel the world wars. These days, through the grapevine I have heard a lot is used for guitars and beams in ornamental buildings overseas. Maybe someone can ask westcoastfallershit on Instagram where their precious kills go.

More than all of these reasons, I believe a big reason why old-growth has been ravaged is because some humans get off on falling these giants. Just like killing a lion. It’s a trophy for them. I have spent so much time in our forests, and there is an incredible amount of giants that have been fallen and then left to rot. They are not even used as a resource. I always wondered why. I am sure there may be practical reasons, but ultimately I think the loggers just wanted to see them fall.

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baconraygun@reddit

I had to leave an area where I previously camped because of this. First of all because htat was my cover, can't stay there, and second, they came in with a bulldozer and killed 1000s of trees, and all they did with them was push them up to the sides of the hills. They didn't use them for lumber, or firewood, or woodworking or anything. Just killed and pushed aside. Then they installed a road lickety-split as though they were going to build. Came back 18months later, it's just an empty road, and a water soaked mud pit. Trees are dead and rotting, still in their piles.

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sirkatoris@reddit

Humanity in a nutshell.

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PrairieFire_withwind@reddit

Aaccckkk, my comment did not get the right tone if you are off into details.

I was aiming for the essense of human nature is to consume and yet we want to blame someone else for our consumption.

Yet, it is us. It always has been us and it always will be us. Until we grab ahold of that we will repeat the mistakes we are making now.

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nosesinroses@reddit

Hmm. I would argue consumption is of course in our nature, it’s required to survive - the problem is excessive consumption beyond what is essential. This is a choice for some of us, but for many of us, we try our best to balance the resources we use.

One of the reasons for our predicament is that excessive consumption led to exponential profit, leading those without good conscience to have led the reins for decades, draining all of the planet’s resources. I think there are many people, who if the reins were handed to us, we would have harvested much less. I believe there are many humans who understand and can abide by balance.

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PrairieFire_withwind@reddit

Abide by balance needs to be the one thing taught. Balance that leaves space for other life to flourish.

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Hyphen_Nation@reddit

Next time you are in Oregon, hit salmon huckleberry wilderness. Accessible old growth. Coast has been logged for ages. Tiny pockets are still lovely, like ecola state park, and short sands, but much of the state has had repeated logging. It’s going to take a lot to restore it.

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trivetsandcolanders@reddit

It’s staggering what we’ve lost in this part of the world. Well, what’s been destroyed.

Sad anecdote time: In Seattle, Ravenna Park used to have 400 foot-tall old growth trees. An official from the city of Seattle cut the largest tree down for firewood around 1910. Today the tallest trees in the park are maybe 90 feet and the forest is choked with English ivy and Himalayan blackberry.

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nosesinroses@reddit

Similar tale here in Vancouver with Stanley Park. It was logged a bit, but then a decent chunk of the old-growth in it was preserved as a park. There were a couple of major windstorms that blew down most of the remaining forest, then it got obliterated by the heat dome/looper moths a couple years ago and they are cutting down a bunch more trees now. Only a handful of the old-growth trees remain. And this was old-growth they tried to preserve… seems like a bad omen if I’ve ever seen one.

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WernerHerzogWasRight@reddit

Your post made me very sad. Am thinking about the next 50 years and the end of human history, I imagine the survival of invasive species, pests, urchins, Himalayan blackberries… humans will be eating rats, cockroaches, these invasive berries, urchins, and other invasive species as we suck what last little life there is out of this planet before we are extinct.

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Ugh, yeah that's awful. Definitely agree with you on this, it's so upsetting to see

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Demonicmeadow@reddit

Man looking at the Vancouver sub it makes me sick people are celebrating the weather and it also makes me confused some people say its normal. I get frustrated because so many new comers with money have moved there and go “oh it’s so pretty, glad I can walk outside with no rain!”. For an avid hiker like myself this is a nightmare. Last spring I remember seeing creeks on The North Shore completely gone that I have known to be there my whole life. I feel alone in this pain sometimes, particularly when I frequent a forest Ive been familiar with my whole life.

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nosesinroses@reddit

People saying it’s normal are just trying to delude themselves and others. I know one of these people is the owner of a local ski hill, of course they need to pretend everything is okay. I believe the people 50+ years old who say they’ve lived here their whole lives and are adamant they’ve never experienced this. This is beyond a “typical” El Niño.

You’re not alone in your pain though. The sub has a lot of people feeling fairly panicked as well. I feel the pain every time I am out in our forests too. It’s struggling hard, and it’s clear for those lying attention. I mean, even for those who aren’t.. Stanley Park and the west side of Capilano Lake got absolutely annihilated with the combo of looper moths and heat dome, and it’s very obvious just by looking at them even from afar.

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TrainingPassenger8@reddit

throwawaylr94@reddit

Oh thank you, I'll try anything that might help!

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IntrepidHermit@reddit

Yer I live just a bit away from the location of the tornado.

They absolutely should not be happening here. Also, we are simply not designed or prepared deal with it. If a serious tornado happens, our ability to recover from the damage is minimal.

I’d say I’m glad I left except things are bad everywhere. At least not freezing my a** off now.

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birgor@reddit

Swede in the lower half here, same for us. -20C this morning, +5C last week. And much windier than usual.

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Collapse2038@reddit

Ohhh you just wait for 2024 and beyond, these are the good times!

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Tweedledownt@reddit

location Wisconsin

It seems that indeed my usual grocery store's cold chain has gone to hell recently. it's fun to walk through the freezer aisles and see them 30% full 100% of the time somehow. I took yalls advice and bought some milk from a different store(different chain) and that milk was fine, but also the container was less... cheap feeling? idk. like the cap fit better and the gallon was sturdier.

We got snow. It's very exciting. Granted all the poor plants that decided it was spring are all dead now BUT WHATEVER.

Yo is anyone kind of seeing people be more... delusional lately? Like they expect you to be plugged into whatever bubble they're in, or have the same media feed that they do? My brother seems to be completely disconnected from reality when it comes to crypto stocks and 'investment opportunities'. His girlfriend has fully made it her personality to talk about pedophiles? I think she's referencing something specific, but in such a round about way that when I ask her what she's talking about she can't actually describe it? It's not epstein. Some older people in my life are fully talking as if the world works the way it did when they were thirty, but just in casual conversation. I find myself needing to reality check with my partner just to make sure I'm not the insane one. It's exhausting.

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JHandey2021@reddit

It's not epstein.

Speaking of Jeffrey Epstein, yesterday's unsealing of more Epstein docs adds to the mounting evidence that two living US ex-presidents were close Epstein associates - Bill Clinton almost certainly was a repeat customer with full awareness ("he likes them young", a quote attributed to Epstein by one of his former sex slaves) and Donald Trump, unless he has the IQ of a goldfish, had to know what Epstein was all about. Not to mention allusions to more staffers, billionaires, and a Stephen Hawking orgy (!). So the upper levels of power in the US are almost certainly full of pedophiles and predators, and these are the people we assume will "figure something out". Sigh.

Some older people in my life are fully talking as if the world works the way it did when they were thirty, but just in casual conversation. I find myself needing to reality check with my partner just to make sure I'm not the insane one. It's exhausting.

I've noticed that too. There are older people in my life whose religion is the Democratic Party (still with Obama paraphenalia in their house, New Yorker subscriptions, you know the type) who don't seem to be capable of grasping the idea that things have changed and will continue to change. They truly believe Trump was just an aberration that goes away when you don't think about him, and that electric cars and windmills will do the same for climate change. The *real* problem, other than those dastardly Republicans, is those annoying activists who just don't realize how gosh-darn good they have it.

And it does sometimes feel like I'm the crazy one. I'm eternally grateful for my wife confirming that no, I'm not crazy.

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Minimum_Bullfrog_366@reddit

Trump is a symptom of deep distrust in the establishment. That's why he gets more support everytime the people in power give him new charges. They don't believe he did anything different than anybody else and find it suspicious that Trump is the one getting the charges and not people prior to him that could have been charged with more serious charges. I also find it strange that Hillary was not charged when they found the illegal email server at her home, nor was Biden charged about the papers in his carage which he acquired when he was a VP. There is definitely corruption in the system and the Epstein case is propably just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not going to say Trump is innocent, the court will decide that, but the questions and suspicions of his supporters must be answered or things might fall apart even further.

The real question will be what is even true. I've watched The weaponization of goverment hearings and the Twitter file hearings and if indeed the things the witnesses say are true...omg...The hearings have been video taped. Do not watch them from CNN, Fox or any of the like. Watch them first raw and then watch what the media had to say about them. Atleast Forbes used to have these hearings on their channel raw. If you do this I believe you get to the core of Trumpism and what you're dealing with. The cases of Assange and Snowden must not be forgotten either. One must assume that atleast Assange, reporter and a publisher is a political prisoner, because Manning is out and he has not even had his trial and the goverment got caught on spying the visitors he had which were reporters themselves. In free world reporters should be able to report freely without anybody going after them.

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Tweedledownt@reddit

I can't help but wonder if there's some new strain of Qanon or something going around that she latched onto that is trying to downplay Epstein in favor of whatever their secret knowledge is supposed to be.

it’s not a derangement unfortunately

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pornhub-hit-tenth-sex-trafficking-lawsuit

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsDoPorn

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Tweedledownt@reddit

oh eyup

I bet she's in a corner where all short women need to be in hijabs and wearing bows is a sex crime.

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vvenomsnake@reddit

huh

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vvenomsnake@reddit

it’s not a derangement unfortunately

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Charming_Rule4674@reddit

This is a consequence of internet and tech addiction and happens constantly in this sub, too.

“2024 will be the last good year in human history.” 50 upvotes.

I mean just take a step back and contemplate your own bubble

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ShuuyiW@reddit

Why 2024? Do you have more info on this?

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kolissina@reddit

they expect you to be plugged into whatever bubble they're in, or have the same media feed that they do?

I wonder if part of this is people's minds suffering from post-covid issues, in such a way that their ability to have an accurate (to whatever approximate degree) Theory Of Mind of other people they encounter is breaking down. Assuming that everyone else sees the same media is quite foolish. I hate it when people make references that there is no reason to assume are common or broadly-shared across the population, especially when they know that the listener is not likely to be in the same media bubble, or *should* know, rather.

Or maybe people have always been this shortsighted/self-centered and stupid about this.

Mass shared culture has definitely splintered since say, the 80's, before cable tv was widespread and there were three major nationwide TV networks in the US. Even in the early days of cable, most people in a given country, at least the US, had access to the same few dozen channels or so, so you could reference commonly-known stuff rather easily and trust that your audience was likely to know what you were talking about.

But now media fragmentation has divided the audience into so many different segments, and political media bubbles have little overlap on some axes, along with demonizing the "other" with polarization having gotten so severe. People don't even subscribe to the same common facts anymore on certain topics, to a great degree.

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Sectionight@reddit

Yo is anyone kind of seeing people be more... delusional lately? Like they expect you to be plugged into whatever bubble they're in, or have the same media feed that they do?

Things are getting so bad that people cannot handle it anymore and deliberately distract themselves from reality or have already lost it and just go on random tirades as their minds are rotted and can't do much else.

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Mountain-Ad3702@reddit

Location: Makati City, Philippines

The weather has been quite abnormal lately. The months of December, January and February are supposedly the coldest and driest months but its rather hot, muggy and a bit rainy lately. People are still on the buzz as chinese new year is coming soon which we also celebrate annually so malls here are never empty. I spent my christmas hiking in the mountains and they seem to have a great harvest of vegetables there. I bought a huge bundle of bell peppers for only 200php which is around 4USD in estimate. Produce is really cheap if you buy them directly from the farmers. Here in the city, a single wrinkled bell pepper costs 80 php, roughly 2USD. Crazy how capitalism works lol.

There seem to be nothing much going on here. Our country doesn’t seem to give a damn about everthing as other countries are boycotting Starbucks and other brands that supports the war but here Starbucks are always crowded and people die to get the yearly limited edition planner that I’m sure they’ll never use at most. Climate wise, its pretty cloudy here and windy so the weather is pretty pleasant. The air is still noticably hot though, compared to the previous years where it would feel cool.

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Ancient_Function_261@reddit

Location:- Mumbai,India

I am 20 years old, gonna get my bachelor's in 1 year, but there are no jobs, also, just alone this days, when I was younger could talk with anybody freely, but now I have to be always cautious, as each and every person I have met till now have just treated me as means to an end and most of them just have doomer mentality. Just how sad and disappointing everything is, all the people who are really into praying God are just being manipulated in a sense by people who are just evil and want to fill their bottomless need for power. I study history very much, was reading about indigenous people like Lakotas and Hopi, what great sense of community they have and their culture, really inspirational. Here, we are supposed to be really calm people and focus on medition and finding our inner selves while being respectful to each other. But, exactly opposite is happening, most young adults get angry on small things and totally unconcerned about future, like how would they wanna live their life 10 to 20 years from now. They want everything now immediately. ONLY GOD CAN SAVE US NOW ! I would just pray God to show humanity the path forward, as this is the time we need him the most. Sometimes it feels like, God has abandoned us.

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precise-upvoter@reddit

early 20s are very hard under regular conditions but must be even harder now. I hope your family is close to you.

Making friends is a skill, when I started putting effort into it, it paid off more than even my degree.

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nosesinroses@reddit

“God” is still around. Same as it has always been. It’s just that whatever you view “God” as has never cared. We were designed to fail, by coincidence, mistake, deliberate choice… who knows. But there is no path forward that will save us. There never was.

If you haven’t, look into the simulation theory. It makes more and more sense as time goes on. Life on earth just feels like an experiment.

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evhan55@reddit

🤍🤍

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Americasycho@reddit

Location: Deep South, USA

Financial begging is in full swing. Seeing lots of local FB posts here about people not affording their electric/water/grocery bills. Some are so cavalier that they post their bills. Idk where or how some people that ascribe to be lower class, live. But families of four racking up $800 electric bills and $300 water bills for December sounds a bit much. I'd had to see what the January bill brings especially since it's pretty cold here right now with no signs of stopping.

Speaking of FB posts. I've seen plenty of former classmates throwing in the towel to 2024 already. Finances and personal relationships dominate the posts, but I wonder if they don't try to do something to break the cycle, ya know?

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WernerHerzogWasRight@reddit

Second post this week of blaming the victims of capitalist system. When I speak up I’m downvoted. I don’t care. I will repeat, don’t sit in judgment of these people because tomorrow you could be in their shoes.

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evhan55@reddit

agreed!

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Fair-Lingonberry-268@reddit

That was the ultimate goal of capitalism, making people believe in individual success while everyone else made it out of money they did not earn or by being purely lucky(even if you worked your ass off and studied all your life you still needed to be lucky to be able to have x work or y money).

Now we have to deal with tons of individualistic people who thinks they can do everything by themselves while in realty, when everything will go down, would not be able to even cook food by themselves.

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What’s more insane is that people are in these situations and still getting pregnant.

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Americasycho@reddit

There was one, and idk how to feel sometimes. It was another local FB post and this chick is living in a RV camper in a trailer park with 3 little toddlers. She had no money for diapers, no food, etc. She posts regularly on there and some folks donate. But not long ago she was on the news for shoplifting from the local Walmart. She was taking diapers.

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nagel27@reddit

no sympathy from me. I pay for their education as a childfree person. That's all I'm willing to do. Choices. Makes intelligent ones.

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zioxusOne@reddit

Those are obscene bills. I wonder what percentage goes to paying executive bonuses and perks and stockholder dividends. My guess is 30%.

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Americasycho@reddit

I'm fortunate enough to have a Google Thermostat. But even as cold as winter has been here, the heat setting is at 68 degrees. I might turn it to 69 if it's just blistering cold. During the day it's 63. I don't mind wearing a hoodie around the house and tbh my wife wears a fur coat so she's set and we're not bothered.

But some of these people racking up bills like that, it has to be on purpose. No way a window or door seal is letting out nearly $900 a month in electricity.

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Particular-Jello-401@reddit

Dude I live in a house and the water by my bedside is often frozen in the mornings. My electric is usually below 35per month. The electric company thinks I'm stealing power two people live here. Yall need to conserve more put on a sweater.

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Americasycho@reddit

While not near a frozen lake, I'd say right now in the dead of winter, my electric is $40. However, the natural gas is another matter entirely.

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screech_owl_kachina@reddit

Yeah, I don't know what their rate is, but for context, my parents electric bills will go to merely 600 in the summer, for air conditioning.

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Last_Jury5098@reddit

Location:Europe.

Excess mortality this year has been around 10% again. Marginally lower then 2022 and 2021 but marginally higher then 2020. Was hoping it would lower by now but the impact of the pandemic on public health apears to be permanent.

Shoddy-Opportunity55@reddit

Just remember that things weren’t so great for everyone back then. Non binaries, trans, and women were attacked even more than now.

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whatareyoudoingdood@reddit

Totally agree. We’ve come a long long ways in terms of social inclusion and acceptance. I’m not pining for the days of old where a white male patriarch is the king of his own fiefdom or anything like that. We left a lot of bad behind with some of the good for sure.

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CRKing77@reddit

recently got my grandmother to gather all photos of my grandfather for me, he died when I was 3 in early 1994

Man worked in a paint shop for 20 years (which likely killed him, he got leukemia and I assume exposure to paint, especially lead paint may have been the cause) and she held basic jobs as well

Yet all the pics show one thing: they travelled, A LOT. Not like lavish vacations to paradise locations, but up and down California, Arizona, Nevada, always travelling, visiting places. Lots of family gatherings, sometimes not even for holidays, just took a trip to a relatives house for a weekend. They both were members of their local Elks Lodge for over a decade, and I have memories of going their as a small child before he died, sometimes just a simple potluck dinner

They were big on community, and it immediately struck me how his death dealt a blow to my upbringing because instead of being around that type of community growing up, he died, she moved away to be close to his burial place, and I grew up isolated in a home with mentally ill parents

You mentioned bowling leagues and yep they were a part of that too. That is what we lost, and it's one of my frustrations as a millennial, because I got the briefest of tastes of that kind of life before circumstances changed and all that opportunity for me was lost

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I'm a gen x-er and I've never experienced the a takes a village to raise a kid mentality. Imo people group together when times are tough plus a bigger societal construct like church or political engagement around communities.

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CRKing77@reddit

This is what struck me. My grandparents had jobs similar to my fiancée and I, yet they never seemed to struggle. They had stable schedules, they lived within their means, and were afforded the time to travel

Yet my fiancée and I don't have that. The cost of everything has skyrocketed, rent is crippling, jobs have unpredictable schedules and time off? We just laugh. Best we could ever do was a weekend trip.

And as I said, this isn't something I just heard about, I witnessed it, for my grandparents and for a while my own parents. Where on earth did it go so wrong for our generation? Even if I wanted to live like them, I just can't, and its frustrating. My grandmother is 80 now, she's literally my neighbor so we talk about it, she simply says she couldn't dream of living the way people do now :(

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WernerHerzogWasRight@reddit

The conquered nation on desolate land appreciates your feedback.

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whatareyoudoingdood@reddit

The Muskogee Creek Nation aren’t the Navajo, this isn’t desolate land. The eastern side of the state definitely is poor though, and the lack of industry affects the majority white and black residents as well. Due to federal and tribal help, many of the tribal members have a better social safety net than the non-enrolled.

We had an anomalous winter last season with over 900” of snow in the Cottonwoods, then have been very dry and warm this season in comparison.

Basically the kind of weather whiplash you’d expect from a changing climate.

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Also something I’ve never seen before.. there was a dead swan on the side of the highway yesterday on my way back from the city.

I’m scared but I’m alone in this I think.

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Unable-Collection179@reddit

Dude it’s your fault there’s no snow get it together

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MotherofLuke@reddit

This to me indicates people ditching their dogs and or strays aren't neutered anymore.

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screech_owl_kachina@reddit

Was the cat in the pack with the dogs?

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WanderingHorizon1899@reddit

Yeah it was weird.. like a real life Homeward Bound

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throwawaylurker012@reddit

I’m scared but I’m alone in this I think.

your not friend

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ch0mpipe@reddit

Yeah we’re literally all in this together for better or worse

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evhan55@reddit

poor swan 😫

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Iloveshrekbeemovie@reddit

Location - New Zealand

Collapse in communication. In the way that civilisations collapse when they get too complex, I feel like the same thing is happening to the English language. No one understands eachother. I'm seeing it more in politics, comment sections online, at work, with friends. Words mean different things to everyone depending on what context they're used in. I struggle to communicate with people outside of my industry because they have a poor understanding of human psychology for example and the more time I spend around colleagues the more I lose sense of what are layman terms.

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Fuzzy_Garry@reddit

Location: Netherlands

Aside from the climate being absolutely bonkers, I noticed the following:

I work at a small IT company. None of my colleagues below 40 have children or are planning to have them (both men and women here). People either are fully collapse aware or they are in full blown denial (believing global warming is a hoax). A colleague who just left the company told me completely out of the blue he's expecting the world to end within two years and said he's going to enjoy his life while it still lasts.

Although I can be edgy on Reddit I have a big friend group IRL: It seems that pretty much everybody in my life is pretty much living like the world is ending tomorrow. No one seems to be starting a family except for some of my relatives who are extremely well off, and even those who are have at most one child.

Dunno if this can be related to collapse, but everything in my environment seems extremely off. My gut feeling tells me something big is about to happen in the world.

Aside from that the housing situation is a mess. Unless you manage to get a mortgage you end up spending half your income on rent.

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CRKing77@reddit

My gut feeling tells me something big is about to happen in the world.

at this point is there anyone who doesn't feel this? Even the deniers I think must feel something?

Hard to talk about because it's hard to pinpoint exactly why I feel this way or what it means, but...

as a guy who usually doesn't care for Xmas, this past one was really good for me. Like, abnormally so. I ended the night with this feeling that this the "last Xmas" we'll have. I don't mean 12/25 won't come around next year, but more like it felt like the last normal one we'll have.

Although ChatGPT can shine in some edge cases, it generally performs worse than the shittiest intern you can imagine.

But ChatGPT works for less, and that's all that matters in capitalism.

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MotherofLuke@reddit

Absolutely! Your capitalism remark. Every invention becoming mainstream since the introduction of money is based on higher profits. Money is condensed buying power; bartering has way lower condensing power.

And Chatgpt is just part of the beginning. Imagine an Android running on quantum AI in his body. Not being dependant on internet and being autonomous.

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zioxusOne@reddit

My biggest AI concern is deepfakes

Agree. In the US, where "gullibility" is nearly a religion, we should expect misinformation via deception to go into hyperdrive.

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screech_owl_kachina@reddit

We have J6 deniers even though we have full HD video with audio of every minute of the event from multiple sources and angles. The conspiracy theories and lies started before the sun went down on January 6, let alone up to now.

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Radioactdave@reddit

How I leaned to stop worrying and embrace the #YOLO

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Darth-Sheogorath@reddit

Location: SE Tennessee.

The Spring weather went away, it feels like Winter again, so that's good. Stats for our rainfall for 2023 just came in, it was 7+ inches below average, the driest year in 7 years. It's still pretty dry, although not as bad as it was a month ago. Everyone is sick. My entire family, and almost everyone we know. Went to the grocery store last night, brand new store mind you, and they were low on everything, lowest I've seen probably ever, although they weren't completely out of anything. They were especially low on chicken and produce, those were both stocked at like, 20-30% of fully stocked.

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MotherofLuke@reddit

Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The economical homeless iin The Netherlands. Used to be an American issue.

I agree on all your points. I think the one you replied to thought I meant a sky net scenario. But I don't. I'm very interested in what people like Emad Mostaque have to say. And people like Peter Diamandis.

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throwawaylurker012@reddit

The rippling effects of AGI are going to be crazy.

Location: California, Sierra Nevada foothills

After several weeks of unseasonably warm temps and rain it was looking as green as spring in my neighborhood. Plants that normally don't sprout until March or April were cropping up. I even had some blooms pop in my yard. Well now the el niño snow storms are rolling in and all these plants will die without ever going to seed. I worry the spring will be bare. Timehop reminded me that last year this time we were without power and buried under unprecedented amounts of snow. The seasons are getting less and less predictable.

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Playongo@reddit

Location: Vermont, USA

VT now has the second highest rate of homelessness in the country behind New York State, and “the greatest percentage increase in homelessness in the country between 2007 and 2023… Vermont also experienced the largest percentage increase in experiences of family homelessness since the pandemic began, increasing by 213% (794 more people) since 2020.” https://www.vhfa.org/news/blog/rate-homelessness-vermont-remains-2nd-highest-us-2023#:~:text=The%20rate%20of%20homelessness%20in,time%20count%20in%20January%202023.

Within the past two weeks Vermont had rain that swelled several of its rivers to within their top five highest recorded levels. https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2023/12/19/vermont-rain-river-crest-totals-december-storm-winooski/71970180007/

2023 was Burlington VT’s warmest year on record. Also “Burlington has only received 3 inches of snow so far in December, making it the eighth least snowy December on record.” https://vtdigger.org/2023/12/29/2023-was-burlingtons-warmest-year-on-record-capping-a-year-of-wild-weather/

Much of the past week we skipped running the wood stove because the temperature was above 40°F. Folks are wondering what's going to happen with sugaring season this year, myself included.

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RedStrugatsky@reddit

I went to college in Indiana and that sounds about on brand. What an awful state.

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Plzdontkillmeforthis@reddit

Keeping their heads in the sand will not work much longer. Either they will start to drown, or their asses will be on fire.

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LykosDarksilver@reddit

Location: Massachusetts

The neighbors in my apartment are arguing more frequently, and more violently. It used to be only every couple months there was a loud drunken argument. Now it happens every couple weeks, and sometimes involves physical fights.

Last night a guy was trying to kick down another guy's door, screaming about how he was going to kill him. After police came and took his ass away, I opened my door, and the smell of cheap booze was strong enough to be noticable all the way down the hallway.

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SettingGreen@reddit

Just normal urban north east things

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When I got out of the Navy I tried looking for medical assistant jobs to stay in the field and everything was under $15/hour. Now I work on base fast food for $20

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atlasblue81@reddit

Location: JAPAN

So yesterday was New Years, everyone goes to shrines to pray for a good year on the first day, travels home to be with family, auspicious beliefs and all that. First day of the year and we had THREE successive earthquakes in a row, which caused over a 1 meter tsunami along Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa, a smaller tsunamis along the west coast. An entire apartment building just fell over, there are multiple fires, the roads are backed up, the trains have been shut down for hours and the shinkansen service out to other major cities like Tokyo arent expected to be up for 24hrs and people are stranded on them.

During the whole thing, the reddit subs and SNS are filled with people asking about their tourist plans if they should still go to their hotel, people having to go to work despite the power outages, randos still asking if the tsunami water might have carried contaminated Fukushima ocean water back (so many problems with that question being loaded but also fukushima is on the other side of the country and a different ocean- Sea of Japan (west side) vs Pacific Ocean (east side)).

It feels like just a heavy sign from the universe since how your New Year's Day goes is supposed to signal how the rest of the year is supposed to go. That's why you start with a clean house, a prayer and respect to the gods and deities to not get off on the wrong foot, even eating things like soba as the very first food of the year to live a long life and black beans and stuff for prosperity.

It's just so surreal.

Not completely collapse related because obviously an earthquake and tsunami could happen at any time, but the just weird weird coincidence of it happening on News Years day while praying at the shrines, and there being 3 back-to-back (things coming in 3s and heralding something worse to come?).

So to be more collapse-centered in this response: there is very little snow on the ground, if at all. It is now Jan 2 and the small ski resorts all around me arent set to open at all yet (no fake snow machines). I'm now living up north and it is raining instead of snowing and above 0 (4 degrees at 8am this morning to be exact)...it should be -10 right now and everyday of December was a good 10~15 degrees warmer than the average.

Also...I bought a carton of tea yesterday while walking to the shrine at the convenience store at it was 153 yen. Even just a few months ago it was 98~108 yen for those "dollar cartons". Domestivappy produced staple product 50% price jump in just a few months.

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Livid-Rutabaga@reddit

It feels like just a heavy sign from the universe since how your New Year's Day goes is supposed to signal how the rest of the year is supposed to go. That's why you start with a clean house, a prayer and respect to the gods and deities to not get off on the wrong foot, even eating things like soba as the very first food of the year to live a long life and black beans and stuff for prosperity.

Wouldn't that apply more to Lunar year come February? This does sound like a bad start to a New Year, I hope February is more auspicious.

I bought tea a couple of weeks ago, it like 60% higher since the last time I bought it. Unbelievable. I'm in the US so I pair $18.00 the last time $29.00 now.

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atlasblue81@reddit

Sorry about your tea too. Solidarity my fellow tea drinker!

As for your comment, No, not really actually. Lunar New Year, while also celebrated in Japan, is much more important to China/Vietnam, and Japan with its Shinto background attaches much much more meaning to the Gregorian New Year than the Lunar/Chinese New Year. In fact the New Year is hands down the biggest holiday in Japan, with businesses shutting down and people traveling back to their hometowns, and of course hours of TV specials haha.

Shinto shrine visits, hanging shogatsu-kazari pine decorations on the door to beckon the gods in, eating osechi traditional Japanese new years food sets, new year lion dances (shishimai up here in the north), and of course "fukubukuro" lucky bags. Definitely the traditional new years is much more meaningful here in Japan than the Lunar New Year.

Hyphen_Nation@reddit

I’m sorry, and I don’t want it, but he’s the current front runner. Prepare for the possibility, plus the fear right think tank for plan 25, where they gut most federal agencies and appoint "loyalists" when he does get elected. It will be a generation before the fascists are out of power. I’m shifting my thinking to what will I, and my family need to survive a failed/fascist state.

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starspangledxunzi@reddit

It is insane to me that we are now in the election year and Trump is still an eligible candidate and the favorite to win -- not behind bars, not dead, and certainly not simply out of the race, but actually the favorite to fucking win. I'll also throw out there that I am shocked that Joe Biden is still running and the Democrats have not gotten their shit together to replace him, but that's a whole other conversation.

I relate to these sentiments so much. It is borderline surreal to me that Trump remains 1) free, and 2) eligible and likely the front runner for POTUS. Personally I think the solution to the Trump problem is self-evident, but stating it will move me further up whatever watch lists I'm already on -- and, the real problem with Trump is the ~74 million people who voluntarily voted for him in 2020, ~32% of eligible (eligible, not registered) voters. As for Biden... I seem to recall his running in 2020 was supposedly, or at least at one point, with the intention of being a one-term POTUS, due to his age -- but of course, in order to win in 2020, which was Biden's white whale goal -- God, he did not seek the office selflessly, for the good of the country, as some would have it; he's been obsessed with being POTUS his entire political career, going back decades, and being VP simply wasn't enough -- he had to agree to make Kamala "Utterly Unelectable" Harris his running mate in exchange for Jim Clyburn delivering South Carolina for Biden. So now we have Harris, a typical Wall Street, 1%er, neoliberal BAU Democrat who runs on the fact she has a vagina and brown skin, as the political heir to Biden. And the complete lack of genuine leadership or vision within the ranks of the Democratic Party means we've reached this point of directionless anomie, and the only way forward is to elect yet another reanimated Baby Boomer corpse, propped up like some kind of Bernie Lomax (Cf. 1989's Weekend at Bernie's for those too young to catch the reference).

I sometimes find myself wondering if my sentiments are akin to this who lived in Weimar Germany, watching the political system spin it's wheels in the mud. The pro-Democrat media establishment scolds us for not celebrating "Bidenomics," but Jesus Christ, those of us struggling or falling down in the current economic reality do not need to justify our discontent to a bunch of inside-the-beltway cake eaters... I'll celebrate the economy when I stop being terrified of being homeless...

There are those who resent political commentator Sarah Kendzior, but for years now I've found her observations the only ones I can heartily agree with, and she remains a consistent critic of the status quo, because of the many ways it is failing regular Americans. Hard to refute the idea that if our institutions were truly working, Trump would already be ineligible for political office and behind bars.

I hate being in a such a negative state of mind; my only antidote is a kind of stoicism, what Tolkien referred to in his academic work as the virtue of "northern courage" -- i.e., stand your post even through you're clearly doomed, and prepare yourself for an honorable death. If you're pretty certain you're going down, at least go down fighting. So that's what motivates, now: not hope, but a sense of moral obligation to the younger generation of my family.

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nagel27@reddit

this is sexist.

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starspangledxunzi@reddit

What is not reality?

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gastronormical@reddit

This is such a beautiful post I could frame it.

I'll have to check out Sarah Kendzior for myself, I've been looking for people who are not afraid to just tell it like it is. I feel like a lot of my commentators that I go to have become more compromised or off target lately, so it's harder to listen to them in an already hard to listen to anybody environment.

I want to focus on you mentioning "if the system was working as intended," because I really appreciate you saying that. I have grown tired of people on the left constantly saying "why isn't Trump behind bars? Because the system is working as intended!" It's usually said by people who use it as a way to justify why, for example, rich white men get away with everything. Maybe there's a lot of truth to it, but it's such a valueless statement that gives up a lot of power by saying it. Yes, maybe the system is built in such a way that some people can take advantage of it. But you really are that cynical and devoid of reflection that you actually think the system was built for people like Trump to run rampant? No. The system should stop Trump. It would have. The problem is that men like Trump are such excellent con men, and they are just so many yes men standing before him, that he's not even really part of the system anymore. At least, I don't see it that way. He's somehow above all of it while deserving to be completely buried by it. Maybe we deserve him, I certainly felt that way in 2016. He's the perfect tumor of our design, a uniquely American form of cancer that I don't think we have a treatment for anymore.

Well well... There is one treatment, one I think you alluded to. But we don't need to discuss it here.

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zioxusOne@reddit

-- just force 6 billion people to die so the rest of us can live. I know I'm not the first person to come up with that or the last

You are not the first nor will you be the last.

If we were the true masters of Earth, why stop at 6 billion? When Jesus was born, the Earth's population was between 150 and 330 million. It hit 450 million around 1500. Imagine how the U.S. looked then (idyllic).

In 2024, Tokyo and Jakarta combined have 70 million people.

Just spitballing here. No real point.

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I'm afraid we might got knocked back even further than that to Late Medieval (1300-1400) or Renaissance/Tudor/Elizabethan Era (1450-1600s) though due to damage of carrying capacity and severe overshoot.

Resources such as the Book of Husbandry, Tudor Monastery Farm, Secrets of Castle, Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, Time Traveler Guide to Medieval England, Forme of Cury, the Light Ages by Seb Falk, Book of Huswifes Jewell, Medieval Lives by Terry Jones, etc will be very useful

That is also much preferable to Mad Max imo.

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zioxusOne@reddit

I loved The Tudors TV series and not just because I have a thing for Natalie Dormer.

I know it's not realistic, but if "collapse" was reframed as a "reset", it might be easier for some to accept.

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Xamzarqan@reddit

All of these modern comforts are a totally rare and infrequent phenomena. So beyond just mass die-offs, it's extremely likely if not guaranteed that we get knocked back to the 19th or 18th century (early 20th at best) in standard of living. It's going to happen for all of the survivors, and this little window of time that people like you are I grew up in is just going to be a blip on the radar of human history.

I'm afraid we might got knocked back even further than that to Late Medieval (1300-1400) or Renaissance/Tudor/Elizabethan Era (1450-1600s) though due to damage of carrying capacity and severe overshoot.

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nagel27@reddit

Holy shit I didn't realize it was a moe. concert! And they are investigating it as terrorism.

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Valeriejoyow@reddit

I read they were a GD cover band also. Lazy reporting.

This is just my opinion but I think they guy was trying to hit the theater and have the explosion in the lobby but didn't make it because the uber blocked him. As horrible as it was it could have been much worse.

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SettingGreen@reddit

He had a suicide note in his truck. But yeah between this and the Niagara Falls car on the bridge shits gettin weird Upstate

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Blunt_Face@reddit

Source

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Tidezen@reddit

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/deadly-new-years-crash-near-venue-being-investigated-as-possible-terrorism-source/ar-AA1mkeGB

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Time_to_perish_death@reddit

Location: Earth.

We're officially living in the end times for our health. There's multiple COVID variants circulating and re-circulating, they stack long term permanent injury to organs and brain, and vaccines do not prevent infection. I know of many who are 3X vaxxed plus 4 boosters, getting infected and getting long covid or lingering symptoms.

Society is literally just hell world now. Many people I meet are walking around with varying degrees of long term damage. I no longer see any point in saving for anything like a retirement. Just survive year to year, stay debt free, and keep a lot of money in reserve. The job economy is ABSOLUTE TRASH. Employers are assholes in the hiring process, and it's virtually impossible to find work without a direct connection.

Society is 100% fucked, it always was, but the long term, re-circulating vaccine resistant COVID we're somehow normalizing for 4 years now is fucking sad and pathetic and no one should allow themselves to be OK With what's going on right now.

We've never had a future, but I'm pretty sure that no one predicted a brain damaging airborne illness with the R0 value of smallpox would just re-circulate indefinitely in the years leading up to collapse and slowly all make us so disabled that we become homeless and die from exposure, or self inflicted reasons.

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RadioMelon@reddit

George Carlin once joked that it would probably be a virus that kills us.

At the time he thought it would be AIDS. It might just be COVID.

It's a silent killer, it's still killing, and it's going to quietly destroy the human race as it continues to spread and weaken the immune systems of millions.

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martian2070@reddit

I'm pretty sure George Carlin saw the world more clearly than the majority of us ever will. I suppose if he had been saying the things he said in seriousness rather than cloaked in comedy no one would have listened to him.

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nagel27@reddit

He was 100% wrong about climate change though.

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FillThisEmptyCup@reddit

Hope you saw his last interview.

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ApocalypseSpoon@reddit

NOPE.

Is the pandemic still with us? Yes. No question. Is it as bad as it was in January of 2022? No. Why? The cold equations. Most of us at high risk, died in that spike. So that's how the world reached a semblance of "herd immunity" at least in respect to SARS-CoV-2 competitively "fit" mutations staying within the Omicron lineage.

Latest research indicates, if you are moderately immunocompromised, as long as you are 3 shots or better (and up-to-date with well-matched vaccines to what's circulating), our immunity may be almost as good as the "hybrid immunity" the TABs have:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.23293522v1.full.pdf (final page of the preprint)

If that hasn't convinced you the pandemic is 1-2 years out (barring any more major mutation, frex, if SARS-Cov-2 recombines with MERS because of what's going on in Gaza right now) from becoming one more in the pantheon of "common cold" coronaviruses ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Infection_in_humans ) then this current Nature review makes it very clear that SARS-CoV-2 is becoming a COVID-19-causing factor only in the very severely immunocompromised now (Think: chemotherapy patients. Think: HIV patients. Think: SCID patients.): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-023-01001-1

Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization has quietly changed its COVID-19 guidance to prefer TWO XBB.1.5-matching COVID-19 vaccines, as the "new" PRIMARY SERIES of shots, for those who have never been vaccinated against COVID-19.

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/documents/services/publications/vaccines-immunization/national-advisory-committee-immunization-guidance-use-covid-19-vaccines-fall-2023/statement.pdf

Now. I, personally, am not taking any chances, despite being 7 shots in, and playing Russian roulette with "Will the plague kill me or not?" I'm still living in isolation, and I plan to, until I get my 2nd XBB.1.5-matched COVID-19 vaccination. Which I will treat as a primary series, as the Omicron mutation basically stacked a new pandemic, on top of the old one.

What does this mean? IF SARS-CoV-2 has NOT mutated away from the Omicron lineage by that point, then we (at high-risk who managed to survive without catching COVID, and/or managed to survive catching COVID) should (in theory) all be good.

Widespread deployment of the $3-per-shot Corbevax vaccine (developed by University of Texas Pediatric Medicine specialists) across developing countries, should ALSO go a long way (if there's broad uptake) towards PREVENTING another Delta event in India (millions of Corbevax shots in arms there already) or Omicron event in South Africa (despite the fact Omicron mutated in, and came from, the US).

Corbevax targets sarbecovirus, the "ancestor" spike of the betacoronaviridae. Meaning, it could be as close to a "universal COVID" shot as possible, at the present time.

https://theconversation.com/corbevax-a-new-patent-free-covid-19-vaccine-could-be-a-pandemic-game-changer-globally-174672

Meanwhile, in MY area, f#$ing FLU DEATHS ARE HIGHER THAN COVID-19 DEATHS RIGHT NOW. So what does THAT tell you? Oh, and a universal flu shot, also mRNA, may be in the works. Also, mRNA vaccinations have been found to cure melanoma. So.

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WilleMoe@reddit

Enough of the hopium. It's not about fatalities-it's about the post sequelae of SARS Cov2 churning out thousands of new disabilities weekly in this country alone. It's SARS. It's a vascular, blood vessel damaging disease attaching to the endothelial cells. It's passing the blood brain barrier and causing severe inflammation resembling the likes of TBI. It will never be like a common cold. NEVER.

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nagel27@reddit

It's only bad for some ppl not everyone.

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ApocalypseSpoon@reddit

Bold of you to call "following the science" hopium, sparky.

I still remember when, in 2021, you very same trolls were trying to convince people (and it worked, because it kept the plague going, through two more mutations, and an additional two years it shouldn't have) that "the" vaccine (which one dipspit there were and are several) "causes AIDS": https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/15/facebook-posts/no-covid-19-vaccines-do-not-cause-aids/

You've just flipped the switch on your own disinformation:

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19/does-covid-19-mess-immune-system

I follow the science. I am at still at high risk, or maybe, possibly, at moderate/decreasing risk, of hospitalization/death. I know for sure I will be at decreased risk of hospitalization/death once I get my 2nd XBB.1.5 shot onboard.

Which, yes, I do HOPE will be the last "primary series" of COVID-19 shots I will need, because after 12 months with no significant Omicron-level mutation event (XBB and all its descendants are all still Omicron lineage), IF that trend continues through 2024, Omicron may very well be SARS-CoV-2's "final form" - and it's less lethal, WITH vaccination, and WITH large amounts of population-level hybrid immunity (vaccination+surviving infection or 3x-or-greater-vaccination - again, this was in the link I posted, which you did not read), than it was, even over the closing months of 2021/opening months of 2022, in the northern hemisphere, and the following winter, in the southern hemisphere. The winters of 2022-2023 in each hemisphere were equally bad...but the winter of 2023, going into 2024 is MARKEDLY lower in hospitalizations and deaths, and multiple vaccinations reduces the chances of post-viral syndrome greatly.

Is it "hopium" to hope that Omicron and all its descendants (currently XBB.1.5 and all its descendants) will be COVID-19's "final boss" form? Fine, then I'm spewing "hopium" - I'm also still in COVID isolation because, again, I follow the science, and for me, the pandemic won't be over, until I have a full primary series (2 shots, 6 months apart) against a SARS-CoV-2 strain that does NOT mutate into complete immune escape variants every 6 months, as it did, during the first 3 years of the coronavirus pandemic.

If the plague mutates again, in another Omicron-level event (Or think: recombination with the higher-case-fatality-rate betacoronavirus MERS, with all that's going round Gaza right now.), then I will not be protected, and will have to continue living largely in isolation, and continue getting matched vaccinations to whatever immune escape variant is circulating.

Human betacoronavirus HC-OC43 (again, in the links I posted, which you refused to read) hit its "final boss" form variant after six years. After killing 1 million people (out of a total population of 1 billion at the time), without vaccines, without non-pharmaceutical interventions, without anything. At which point, it became one of the common cold variants. Which STILL KILL the severely immunocompromised, which it looks like COVID-19 has "graduated" to doing, with the robust antibody titers that multiple vaccinations and vaccination+infection has given the survivors. Again, in the links I posted, which you did not read.

But I'm not going to argue with trolls on the Internet. I know what you are, I know which government you work for, and I know what you're trying to achieve. And I will continue to pushback on you people, whenever and wherever I encounter you on the Internet. Which, let's be real with each other here, is everywhere.

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collapse-ModTeam@reddit

Hi, ApocalypseSpoon. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:

Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.

If you keep calling people "troll" and similar, you're going to be banned. It doesn't matter how good your contributions are.

Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.

You can message the mods if you feel this was in error, please include a link to the comment or post in question.

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nagel27@reddit

You are absolutely correct. But here on r/ collapse, you can only talk about how Covid is worse now than ever before and every single person is brain damaged now. And I see they already removed one of your comments. Typical. Covid reality isn't allowed here.

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throwawaylr94@reddit

My mum and I had Covid again mid way through last year and it permanently damaged my sinus. I haven't been able to breathe through my nose since I had it.

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Rodeocowboy123abc@reddit

Whatever it is, flu or biological weapon leaked, it has definitely affected the minds of many who have experienced it. Huge change in the way people act now compared to years ago.

I never took the vaccine shots. The rush to come out with a cure or prevention was suspicious to me. Never will be sold on whether the shots are safe.

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collapse-ModTeam@reddit

Hi, Rodeocowboy123abc. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:

Rule 4: Keep information quality high.

Information quality must be kept high. More detailed information regarding our approaches to specific claims can be found on the Misinformation & False Claims page.

Please refer to the COVID Claims (https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims#wiki_covid_claims) section of the guide.

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You can message the mods if you feel this was in error, please include a link to the comment or post in question.

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Time_to_perish_death@reddit

The shots make zero difference. People who are vaxxed 7 times are getting brain damage just like those who are vaccinated once or twice, or not at all.

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collapse-ModTeam@reddit

Hi, Time_to_perish_death. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:

Rule 4: Keep information quality high.

Information quality must be kept high. More detailed information regarding our approaches to specific claims can be found on the Misinformation & False Claims page.

Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.

You can message the mods if you feel this was in error, please include a link to the comment or post in question.

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Shoddy-Opportunity55@reddit

The vaccines are actually very, very good. Please don’t be anti vax

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WilleMoe@reddit

TRUTH.

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TrainingPassenger8@reddit

Location: AZ, USA

Drove from Phoenix to Payson and saw a graveyard of dead cacti. Many had arms meaning they'd been around for a long time. I don't know if they died this last summer, although it wouldn't surprise me (Phoenix did have 31 days in a row of 110F+ degree weather).

It's a warning sign when even a plant evolved to live in a hot, dry climate and not need a lot of water to survive, is dying.

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mybluerat@reddit

I just visited a friend in Payson, he said they were destroyed by fires

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TrainingPassenger8@reddit

Thank you for the additional information. I didn't know that'd been caused by a fire. I'll edit my comment above.

It was very sad to see so many dead cacti though

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mybluerat@reddit

Yeah he said they only grow 1 inch every 10 years so it’s hundreds of years of growth lost and he cried when it happened because it’s such a great loss

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nagel27@reddit

That's just when they are babies. They grow more than that as they get bigger but don't get arms till 100. https://www.nps.gov/articles/saguaro-cactus.htm

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SurvivalFloating2@reddit

I haven't had a fire in my yard, and yet the cactus in my yard seems to be dying. I live in the high desert of Southern California, where the winters have suddenly gotten rainier and the summers have gotten hotter, windier, and smokier. I have mentioned before when people tell me to grow my own food that I can't even keep potted succulents alive here. So, even though the cacti you saw may have been damaged by fire, it's possible there are others dying of climate crisis.

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_ilex_opaca@reddit

Location: Kentucky, United States

I have not seen a single snowflake since February of 2023. All the normal wildlife I typically see in the Appalachian Mountains is just…. gone. I haven’t seen a crow or squirrel or cottontail rabbit in my forested property in weeks.

$1700 a month for 2 bedrooms

I wonder what the payment would be for a fully liveable RV.

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lavenderfart@reddit

Location: Bremen, Germany

My building is roughly 70 years old, part of 4 built at the same time. This is the first year in their history that all have flooding basements.

We were told to expect to need to pump water out until the plants start growing and sucking up more water in spring.

Until then, we will have multiple extreme rain weather days just this week, that I have never seen before at this time of yesr, followed by freezing, also this week. Idk what that is going to do. I am worried.

There is a solution that can be done in the warm months, but it is very expensive, and it'll need a majority vote.

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_rihter@reddit

quadralien@reddit

What, they didn't give up the chase when it crossed state lines? Rule of TV-depicted law is breaking down!

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Efficient_Star_1336@reddit

multiple police departments

Sounds like the buck got passed a few times, with new guys showing up as the old guys got out of range.

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fd1Jeff@reddit

Location: South east Wisconsin.

Last winter, January 20th or so, I was driving around Northwest of Milwuakee outside of the suburbs. Snow cover was way less than one percent. I noticed a hillside fully covered in snow. It was a ski resort.

Last week, there was absolutely no snow cover at all in the Milwaukee area, and the daytime temperature was about 40°. I drove past the ski place again on the 27th. It was completely covered in snow. This bothered me. I went to their website that day, and they mentioned how they were the only ski resort in south east Wisconsin that was operating at that time, and they were open at night.

I grew up skiing. It was great, a great activity, good people and so on. I know that there have always been snow machines, but they usually just filled in when precipitation was low or weather was odd. They never made all of the snow.

Now The only open ski resort in SE Wisconsin on December 27 was open because they made all, all of their snow. There had been light flurries in the area maybe twice in December and the temperature rarely went below freezing.

Location: Germany/Berlin Region

For (to my knowledge) the first time in Germany, there was an act of serious property destruction (burning a concrete factory) in the name of climate activism (among other causes).

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/brandstiftung-in-betonwerk-in-berlin-gegen-a100-ausbau-19412777.html

A translation:

After a fire on the premises of a concrete manufacturer in Berlin-Kreuzberg, a letter of confession has emerged. Unknown persons wrote on the internet platform "indymedia" that they had set fire to the concrete factory on Schleusenufer.
The police initially gave no assessment of the letter on Thursday. State security has been called in and is involved in the investigation.
According to the police and fire department, several cement silos, five vehicles and the main building went up in flames early on Wednesday morning and nobody was injured. The State Office of Criminal Investigation is investigating on suspicion of arson.
A spokeswoman for Cemex Deutschland AG said on Thursday that it was not yet possible to provide information on the extent of the damage. According to its own information, the company is involved in the expansion of the Berlin A 100 city highway. This was cited in the letter of confession as one reason for the attack. The company is "one of the big profiteers of this monster". Climate activists are accused of wanting to "please bourgeois moral concepts with their mendacious commitment to renouncing violence".
Through an Israeli subsidiary, the company is also involved in the construction of military checkpoints in the West Bank and operates cement plants there. This makes it "a stooge and ally" of the Israeli government and its settlement policy. The Cemex spokeswoman did not want to comment on the link with the Middle East.

As you can read, this attack was likely executed by an antifa ragtag group that has no clear cause (citing both climate reasons and the Gaza/Israel war). However, the undercurrent is there: They accuse moderate climate activists for being peaceful.

Right now, there was a big wave of peaceful civil disobedience (the people who glue themselves onto street) in Berlin. They were ridiculed and often physically harmed without fighting back. If 2024 becomes a lot worse than 2023 (and i suspect that), I thinkt here are quite a few well connected climate activists and left activists who will stop committing to peaceful protest (much like the group who burned the factory).

My 90 year old neighbor contracted RSV and had to be hospitalized. She came home just before Christmas, and I was so happy to have her back home

It is heartwarming to read that you value and have taken the time to get close to your 90 year old neighbor. In our culture, elderly people are not valued-----just the opposite.

You MUST include Location: Region when sharing observations.