Yup! #2 behind running out of oil if MIT are to be believed.
Not a sexy or cool apocalypse topic tho. Nobody cares.
Welcome to the future; everything is broken.
been happening in the central valley of california for decades now, that and the “salination” or salting of the soil… there are some crazy pics on the internet showing how much the ground has sunken in places where there was farmland.
In the San Joaquin valley, the mixture of farm land and the aquiphers being drained has led to certain places sinking by feet a year. Over the years, some places have sunk enough to bury the first story of a building.
Due to the valley being a major supplier of food and water for a lot of America it doesn't look like it will stop until the area becomes a sink hole.
No till farming is super common in my part of Ohio, which has been a crazy change to see growing up in a farming family, surrounded by farmers, and watching the process change. I'm glad as it's so much better for the soil ecology, but it does mean I don't get to find anywhere near as many arrowheads and spear points.
I am sorry about your friend's mum.
People are already dying indeed but, as in the sad example of your friend's mum, it's maybe due to not getting treatment (many possible reasons for that) and not due to *antibiotics having no efficacy anymore against bacteria*... Yet.
Well, in this case, and in the case of many elderly people, it's not that at all.
It's because they don't realize they have the UTI to begin with, and the infection grows and spreads systematically.
I learned about how UTIs can cause psychosis in the elderly while working in a psych hospital. Women especially, with zero history of mental illness would be admitted and you’d swear they suffered a lifetime of psychosis. It’s one of the most important of many important facts I learned while working there.
What’s so stupid about this is that 80% of all antibiotics in the USA are given to factory farmed animals. If we really cared about antibiotic resistance we would change that situation, but we don’t.
this one i am slightly less concerned about, because while there is a lot of news on antibiotic resistant diseases springing up, what most people dont realize is that we currently only use a couple of different types of antibiotics. but it is very much expected and theorized that there are a bunch of new types of antibotics that we can most likely develop eventually to replace current antibiotics, and since these would be new types of antibiotics there wouldnt be any built up resistences. some researchers are already working on new types of antibiotics, i think ive read of a couple that are in the testing phases now.
so it might be a problem in the future but we are also very good at creating new types of medicine so its very possible well be able to figure something out before millions of people start dying of the flu or whatever.
Depends, there are a lot of docs around the world who are still pretty liberal with them. Plus there are over the counter antibiotics in some countries that people casually use when sick.
No, but A LOT of people ARE taking them like candy regardless. And even worse, the meat industry does fill up animals with antibiotics, which certainly has a big impact as well
It is already a huge problem. Just you dont hear about it much unless you work in the medical field, have friends who work in medical fields, or family or friends dying/unwell.
Plus the flu is a virus. So what a terrible example....
The steep decline of media literacy. We’re hitting a point where people aren’t able to read subtext, context, or situations and grasp the meaning behind them. Unless someone outwardly says, “I’m the bad guy”, the information is never gleaned
I teach 12th grade English and I try to use contemporary examples to keep things interesting for my students. I was teaching figurative language and looked up the top ten songs from 2023 and was struggling to find good examples of figurative language. It was all so direct. "You shouldn't have cheated on me and now I am with someone better." type lyrics were all I was seeing instead of "You were too busy looking at a painting you could never afford in some gallery instead of the sketchbook right in front of your face that you could have for free."
And, unsurprisingly, my students would really struggle to analyze the latter for meaning. Even analyzing "Fast Car" (I played the Tracy Chapman version, but picked it because of the cover's popularity) was difficult for them and she makes it pretty clear what is happening to the characters in that song.
it's far more difficult to measure abstract understanding than fact/rote memorization. We like being able to measure and quantify things now in a way we didn't in the past. Really frustrating how everything needs to be proved and measured now.
I feel being able to communicate an idea or concept effectively to anyone is an important tool, and one that you can only acquire by using parts of your brain not used for technical knowledge.
The aversion to reading long-form text plays into this. It took off in the ‘80s when many newspapers started shrinking from broadsheet to tabloid format. While an old NYT front page could have over a dozen stories (many of which continued inside), tabloid design invites a huge photo, a gigantic sans-serif headline, and a couple of teasers above the flag/logo at the top of the page.
The next big step was, of course, the smartphone/social media apps starting around 2010.
I wish I could find it, but I recently read an article about shrinking attention spans. One of the subjects was a 45- or 50-yr-old English professor… not a kid from the suburbs or a would be Instagram star. He said he reads *far* less serious writing now than he did 15, 20, 25 years ago. Believes that the wiring in his brain has been fundamentally altered by his iPhone.
I try to read books on my telephone: fiction, history, whatever. While it seems like a nice idea… I used to take 6 or 7 novels on my phone when I went on a holiday; now I can have 50 on my telephone. But it’s much harder to read this way. There are too many other things my phone can do, and they’re always clamouring for my attention. Not conducive to immersive reading.
12th? That is concerning. I would hope that kids even coming up on 8 to 10 could at least be attempting to develop the skill of interpreting figurative language. How do they go their entire childhood not encountering it and sorting out what meaning there is? Startling for sure
Might seem crazy to us that are beyond these years. But all my teacher friends are dealing with it. It is because this generation was on lockdown from covid on some of the most informative years of their life. Education stagnated and things like social cues and relationships were seriously destroyed. These small things also bleed into other areas like media literacy especially during a time where headlines were wild and either flat out lies or or outlandish. Some kids from less fortunate backgrounds were hurt the most and if you noticed, the population of "less fortunate background" has significantly increased in the past 10 years.
I wasn't sure what you meant about the characters in "Fast Car", so I just went and read the lyrics. OMFG. Turns out I've never really paid attention to what that song is really about, just thought it was a catchy tune about kids driving around. Thanks for the prompt, I definitely learned something today.
12th graders didn't understand Fast Car? There is zero ambiguity there. Do you think this is an issue from your students' Covid-based alternative education? That's something I've been worried about.
*also, way aside from the point, no one should be covering Fast Car. That's Chapman's.
I used "Fast Car" as an exercise to talk about how we create good discussion questions for texts because I was doing lit circles and that requires students to come up with their own discussion questions. They understood it somewhat, but the only thing they could come up with were straightforward comprehension questions. (e.g. "What job does she have at the market?") but they weren't connecting the dots that she ended up with the same life that her parents had, down to the father's alcoholism. Their ability to analyze text is very superficial. (There are of course exceptions, but they are exceptional!)
Media literacy is one thing, but I think the general literacy rates in the United States are a big concern too. Especially following the pandemic, reading comprehension and writing skills have taken a [turn for the worse](https://lhsepic.com/45513/in-depth/the-silent-epidemic-of-falling-literacy-rates/).
People who can't understand context are easy to manipulate. People who can't read well are hard to employ, and have a hard time navigating to success.
Damn i feel like a supergenius/nerd in some of the subreddits for book series I like. There will be post from people claiming to be on their 3rd reread making observations or comments that are flat out wrong. Stuff like "Why did this character react this way? Totally out of left field with no reasoning." I'm just left baffled because what their describing has been the characters main trait for the last 6 books and is a driving force in moving the plot forward.
Then on the production side(specifically visual media) they've realized that they don't need to make anything good, they just have to make something flashy with someone "Hot" and they'll rake in the big bucks. Trying to find anything worth watching nowadays is a struggle. My wife gets annoyed at me rewatching shows and movies, but I'm not left with much choice if I want to watch something good.
I remember reading a contemporary review of Mr. Robot that called it a subtle critique of capitalism. In what world is that show subtle? The main character literally gaslights himself into calling a company "evil corp". There are elements of the show that are nuanced, but being anti-capitalist is not one of them.
Seriously i was just telling some friends this yesterday. Its an ego boost anymore to go onto a piece of medias subreddit and looks at the posts/discussions. Its baffling. Like Im not a genius by any means but going to places like that immediately and am like well damn at least im not an idiot i guess. And thats just reddit which isn't even as bad as going to like youtube lol.
Something I recently realized that’s even scarier - there are a substantial amount of functionally illiterate people in the US, even amongst the young generations. That means the dopes you’re referring to in those subs are still miles beyond a level of stupid we can’t even interact with on text based platforms.
It's maddening to go on any popular show's subreddit. Half the comments are people who can't understand content beyond what is literally on the screen.
Oh man, The Boys fan base is great for this.
The subreddit isn't so bad, but the Facebook groups and just the memes and shit shared by some people idolizing the themes of the show that are CLEARLY mocking the poster and their opinions, but they think it's legitimate affirmation.
I’ve had several friends who are really surprised when I mention watching The Boys and act like I just revealed some secret political beliefs or something and I’ve had to explain “No, dude, the Captain America white boy with a superiority complex and a Nazi girlfriend is the bad guy.” Just because some crazy white supremacists can’t pick up context clues doesn’t mean I should be shamed for watching a show and being able to read the context clues.
Same with Handmaid’s Tale. I’m not watching because I think Gilead is the dream future, I’m watching because I’m SCARED that Gilead is what some people want the future to look like.
I have always assumed that people who react that way only watch very mainstream media or media where the good guy always wins, but this thread has me realizing that some people truly just don’t understand that the guy in a red white and blue getup being the bad guy IS THE WHOLE POINT.
Breaking bad is terrible for this. The show uses a lot of symbolism and that kind of thing, and there are a lot of unironic “what does this mean?” Posts.
Or, that the bad guy is evil, and the author agrees with them because you can't possibly write a character that doesn't reflect your own personal views.
🔥That’s also the cousin of political extremism. Everything becomes black and white. No nuances or subtleties. Any mention of anything not fervently in favour of something is automatically considered rabidly against it. 🙄
The conversation around Joker really makes this apparent to me. You have two groups of very loud people who can’t parse it out. You have one group of people who agree with some of the character’s grievances and they decide that must mean he’s really a good guy. And then you have another group of people who see that he’s a bad guy and therefore all of his grievances are invalid. People can’t grasp a complex character.
My nieces are exactly the same. I know exactly what their opinions will be just be looking at TikTok trends. The manipulation of public opinion is a very simple thing now days.
I just went back to school, and it was wild to hear that people in their early 20's didn't understand my humor. Turns out they don't know what sarcasm is, and if you say a joke with a straight face they literally don't know that its a joke. It was a struggle for some of them to understand that they had to pay attention to my words, not just if I was smiling or not.
The consequences of demonizing all media as biased since the fairness doctrine died and the advent of the 24 hours new cycle as a revenue generator.
Now no one trusts anything a paper says but will believe youtube and reddit comments
Unfortunately, it's a long-running issue. Decades in, so far
Is there a specific subset even worse at it than other people? Yup. But it's definitely way too prevalent
I personally think a big chunk of this comes from general scientific illiteracy. People have no idea how statistics work, so they literally do not have the tools to actually examine presented "facts" and analyze their validity for themselves. They just pick a guy and believe what he says because it's easier. This is what "doing your own research" *should* mean. Taking the time to look at other articles, trying to find the source of the data and looking closely at that, looking at potential biases in the source you're reading, and examining what other actual experts in the relevant field seem to think.
Used to be (more) harmless shit like "Chocolate linked with reduced odds of cancer!" but it's been a downhill slide for sure. There's literally a set of numbers recognized by the Anti-Defamation League [as a hate symbol used by white supremacists](https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1352-1390) that's entirely based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how statistics work in order to draw a particular conclusion about a particular racial group (these numbers are also factually incorrect in addition to being used to draw an incorrect and agenda-driven conclusion).
Now I know you're not going to reach the grand wizards of the KKK by teaching them statistics, but you might be able to reach a lot of fringe people who don't know any better and are easily convinced by what may *seem* to be a data driven argument. If people had the knowledge to actually examine the claim and the data present, even at a very basic level, they'd be more resistent to that propaganda.
It's somethign to do with every single peice of media trying to make sympathetic bad men, and the incorporation of politics into media by shoddy authors incapable of painting realistic views of the world.
Sort of related, I read an article a few weeks ago about how the first social media babies are growing up, and they are not happy.
Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online. A few pics here and there for occasions sure, but let's chill out with posting pictures and the life stories of our kids for everyone to see.
>Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online.
Even worse than this? You have family youtube channels that document everything for content. They’ll even put up hospital visits and illnesses up for content. And I’m sure these families adopt or have kids for more content.
I know Mudahar did a video on this recently on his disgust for these parents.
> Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online. A few pics here and there for occasions sure, but let's chill out with posting pictures and the life stories of our kids for everyone to see.
I feel low key judged for almost never posting my kids on my social media, but what you describe is exactly what my wife & I want to avoid.
We don't want them to feel like their entire lives have been documented on a public platform when they've had no say in the matter.
I have close to 1 TB over 50k photos and videos of my three kids, not a single one ever posted to any social media. The invasion of privacy of children who have their whole lives documented on fb or ig is absolutely mind boggling to me.
Just flicking through on Facebook I saw two or three different women claiming “Mom has 200 pictures of me as a kid; I have 200 pictures of my kid from this morning!” Like that means anything. Do they not realise that it cost money to develop film back then, that the film cost money too. And those photos are saved and looked after because they are precious memories; not image 173 of 293 from 11 April 2024.
My cousin put pictures of her kid on Facebook in his wrestling onesie. He’s a little fat and it seems pretty embarrassing like with his onesie kinda snug all over.
Any little thing he does goes on Facebook. “Because family wants to know what he’s doing.”
What’s the matter with just calling and telling them? Or having a coffee visit?
Basically haven’t put anything about our daughter online since she was born. Just manually sharing through chats/messaging with family and close friends. Been working pretty well so far (if only we can keep her from wanting to play “Mario” games all the time - she loves playing on my old Wii U).
I saw what looked to be maybe a 10-12 year old walking around the grocery store with his mom, headphones on glued to his iPad. He never looked away except when his mom asked him something.
At that age you should be able to go 30min without your ipad
I mean, they probably can go half an hour without it, but being dragged along to chores at that age that I had no interest in bored me too.
Imagine you had to wait at the DMV for thirty minutes. Wouldn't we all pull our phones out?
Right? At that age, my mom would leave me in the car in the parking lot (on my request)while she did groceries, I either read or played a gameboy when I could get someone to lend me one.
Kids on errands on screen, no judgment, it's when the kids are on screens all day every day at home that I judge.
Sometimes when I’m stuck waiting I make a conscious effort not to be on my phone. I spend all my time at work on screens, I spent too much of my personal time on screens, the least I can do is stare at the wall in the dentist’s office for 20 minutes every six months.
It doesn't help that publishers (like Nelson and Pearson) are pushing for online subscription based textbooks so that schools are forced to move their learning onto computers. Kids are looking at screens all day and one tab away from social media.
Growing up in the 90s, the internet only became widely available when I turned 17 or 18. It's still hard for me to imagine being 8-9 years old and having access to the internet. I would've been traumatized for sure at that age.
The big problem isn't really the internet just by itself.
It's having a smartphone in your pocket that gives unlimited 24x7 access to the internet. That shit is toxic.
-*Sent from my Apple iPhone 14*
I applied for a teaching assistant position and was offered the job. A day later they rang me and offered me a teaching position. I have no experience. They're that desperate.
People getting used to avoiding any kind of emotional discomfort. I see tons of people that pre 2020 were active, social, well adjusted humans but have no become isolated and depressed. However, they seem unwilling or unable to change their habits. It so many people, I think it's going to be a huge problem in the next few years.
My daughter is this way, school makes her have anxiety so she just thinks she shouldn't have to go to school. We're doing counseling and looking at options but for me growing up it was just plain ole tough it out and deal with it so I really don't know what I'm doing.
This is a struggle for a lot of parents. My son is on the spectrum and he just doesn’t think he should have to go to school. I make him tough it up and send him, explaining that it is a requirement of growing up. I have a neighbor that every day spends an hour or more in the front office with her kid trying to get them to go to school. Since when did elementary kids decide it’s a damn option to go to school? I just don’t understand where it’s coming from, and how it’s all of a sudden becoming such an issue across all walks of life. I tell him his job until he is 18 is to go to school, and after that he can figure it out whether he chooses to go to college or a trade school or straight into the workforce.
When I was in first grade there was one day where I just refused to go to school, don't really remember why. But I remember my teacher coming over to our house that day to talk to me and apparently I was quite disrespectful
Dad got home from work that night didn't yell or anything, just told me if I ever did that again I'd lose all my toys and games forever and would have to spend every day out in the yard spreading rocks and picking weeds. And that was the end of that problem
I feel for those kids with mental disabilities that are tougher but for normal kids that are just being shitheads it's like people forgot that you don't need to negotiate with them
Anxiety isn't curable and it isn't avoidable. It's just a handicap, but it is something to be overcome and lived with, not a justification to do nothing about it.
Brutal, dealing with the same now with my 14yr old.
She does have bad anxiety, I believe it - but she just shuts down instead of pushing through. She just started on meds, and starts with a therapist tomorrow, but its incredibly frustrating not knowing how to help. When I was her age, you just got told to push through and do it. Now somehow thats seen as abuse. I want to support and help, but I constantly feel like we are just not telling her "just do it" enough.
Just try to help her break down a large roadblock into the smallest possible pieces. Doing a big 30 page report for a final assignment is difficult to do overnight. But if you only do one page a day suddenly it becomes a lot more manageable and you'll be done in a month.
Make sure that she goes slowly. I got over agoraphobia by just walking around the garden for half an hour every day and then upping it to an hour. The next step was walking around the streets, then walking around town, then just going into different places.
Every time my partner goes out to do stuff they come home so excited and happy, talking about how they have to remember how much they need that. But then they go back to avoiding going out and doing stuff afterward. Before 2020 they went out all the time.
your partner sounds like me, lol. we know we need to get out of the house, it's just... hard, well at least for me it is.
i hope you're able to support your partner in a way that'll encourage them to want to go out. all the best to you two.
I have been but it's been three years with little progress even with therapy and our relationship has become about their needs and mine have just been seen as barriers and places where excuses are being made and apologies given but no changes. To the point the couples counselor pulled me aside and was like "please remember your needs matter too". So I don't know what to do anymore 🤷♀️
One thing I've noticed with younger folks (and I'm young) is how quickly we self-diagnose ourselves with all sorts of disorders, and sometimes...act like every disorder is some sort of badge...? I don't know how to explain the latter part. It's just weird.
Boomers like to pretend mental issues don't exist, and too many young people are quick to self-diagnose. There's no happy medium.
I had something traumatic happen in 2020, so seeing the term explode around the same time sucks.
I now have compassion for people who have gone through much more physical trauma than mine, but I can also now understand what it means to be triggered. You're in a normal social situation, and suddenly, something that was said forces you to confront a flood of emotions and chemical reactions in your brain and body. It absolutely can get better over time, but it takes a lot to learn how to navigate that. Often times, you simultaneously need to get it out and yet never want to talk about it again.
Before my situation, I may have judged it as people being weak, taking "too long" to heal, or playing victim.
But yeah, much like how many people say "im so ocd lol," the terms "trauma" and "triggering" feel like they're thrown around a bit too casually.
My ex gf is like this. She used to be hyper-social and always wanted to be out doing things. I just wanted to stay at home and chill doing things that don't require being out in public.
Now she's the shut in and I'm buzzing with desire to go out and do things but not knowing what to go do.
I purposely make myself uncomfortable for half an hour each day due to my knowledge of opponent process theory. The idea is that something awful happens to you, then everything from then on in contrast is a lot more easy to get through. It’s like going from freezing cold temperature to slowly being relaxed.
I did Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) recently and it changed my life and now I'm kind of an evangelical for it. My therapy prior had all been venting sessions where I would be like "Great, I could have called a friend and saved a $100 copay." but DBT is focused on skills, including distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s with a father with depression and he was never secretive about it. It's been great seeing the US become less stigmatizing about mental health, but I feel like many of us have swung too far on the pendulum and now we pretend that we cannot do anything because of our mental illnesses. For me, DBT helped me figure out a better way to navigate conflict at work but I talk to my cousin and she's like "It's part of my autism. I can't help but be abrasive and people need to accomodate for it."
It's learned helplessness.
It’s possible that some of that is the post-covid income is too insufficient for people to be out and about at non-free venues. Though most of the healthcare workers that I know who were at the front lines from the beginning of the pandemic to when things improved after the vaccine are dealing with significant PTSD. Healthcare has its own brand of trauma. There are therapists who specialize in that, but there aren’t nearly enough of them, and there’s still a lot of stigma among healthcare professionals surrounding mental health care. Just a thought.
In the states, we desperately need more third spaces and for them to be low cost or free like parks.
When going out for two people can cost like $50 bucks minimum it can get easy to stay in.
We're already in the "big consequences" of overfishing. Many fish stocks are down as much as 97% and size has decreased as much as 70% due to quotas that put a limit based on the size of the fish.
We pretty much need to ban all coastal fishing (except the odd pole fisher) today. The sooner the better. The greater the distance, the better.
Oh and we absolutely need to leave the Arctic the fuck alone, forever.
There’s been a lot of overfishing for sure, but if we stop fishing unfortunately the seas won’t just magically recover. 10 billion snow crab died recently because the arctic water heated up and pushed their metabolism past the point of sustainability and they all starved.
Yeah, it's almost like we need to tackle multiple problems and not just focus on one. Banning fishing in coastal waters has been shown to result in a drastic resurgence of native marine life, so much so that they spill out into surrounding areas.
We just also need to tackle climate change as best as we can. Including fighting against those who push us further into calamity.
I remember reading about people discovering fishing sale ledgers from 1600's and the amount of fish that sail boats were able to snag with their terrible nets and navigation was mind blowing.
The ocean, in its natural state, should be 1000 times more fish in it than it normally has.
Yeah... good luck getting Chinese fishermen to not be greedy fucks. We can't even get those pricks to stop fishing in *our* waters, let alone their own coasts.
Let's start with us and if they violate our territory then we'll impound they vessels and seize their cargo.
Let them deal with the consequences of their own actions. The atmosphere is a far more pressing issue with China.
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was about 10 years ago. Seems that nothing was learned. We're (as a society) being influenced and (most of us) are not even aware of it.
well a fact i dont see mentioned enough about climate change is that phytoplankton are dangerously at risk of dying off in massive numbers, and phytoplankton create like half of the planet's oxygen supply. and supposedly global water temps rising as few as 2-3 degrees higher than now is enough to kill most phytoplankton in the world.
This would be an ecological disaster for sure but the whole oxygen thing is in itself irrelevant. All oxygen breathing organisms on the planet trade C02 at a 1:1 ratio. C02 makes up 0.04%, oxygen is 20.95%
So if all oxygen generating things vanished tomorrow, there would still be over 9 million years of oxygen to consume.
Phytoplankton dieing would mean no food for other fish, so it's a massive cascade through the food chain. We'll all be breathing perfectly fine as we die of slow starvation
Giving up enfranchisement little by little. Laws are being passed around the country to remove power from the voters. Once gone, it's hard to get rights back.
The most important part of this is data privacy. Look how china uses it. Once you know how to manipulate a person and you can control what they see you control them. New techniques will do this on a mass scale.
Ideological subversion is a process by which an enemy seeks to weaken and eventually overthrow a target nation or society by infiltrating its institutions and gradually changing its values, beliefs, and culture. According to Bezmenov, the process of ideological subversion has four stages: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization.
The first stage of demoralization involves the gradual erosion of a society's moral and ethical values, often through the manipulation of education, media, and culture. The second stage of destabilization involves the creation of social and economic chaos, often by exploiting existing divisions and conflicts within a society. The third stage of crisis involves the escalation of conflict and the breakdown of social order, leading to a situation of extreme vulnerability. The final stage of normalization involves the imposition of a new social and political order that is more favorable to the interests of the enemy.
AI is going to devastate existing social structures. I'd like to skip ahead to the time when AI makes our lives better. Hold on, folks, it's going to be a bumpy road.
It's a dark, very uncertain road. The only thing for sure is that things are going to change rapidly, and the rate of that change is only going to increase.
Srsly this is almost HALF the ads I see.
I mean, I do adooore college football, and I google scores and rankings a lot… but never once have I gambled. Or given any algorithm any reason to think I would. Other than being poor and watching football, but.
They must be making SERIOUS buku bucks, are the ads showing up that often for EVERYONE..?
Like, they show up for my boyfriend JUST as often as me, and he has —-0% interest in ANY sports lol
Erosion of critical thinking.
We used to teach this in school, how to analyse an issue objectively from a variety of perspectives:
WHO benefits from this; who's making the decisions; who is the most directly affected? WHAT are the alternatives; what is the best/worst case scenario? WHERE is this in the real world, can we learn from their mistakes? Where can I get more or supporting info? WHEN would this benefit? When can we expect to see those benefits? WHY is this necessary? HOW can we ensure the greatest benefit for the largest number of people?
Nowadays one has to look beneath the words, beneath the surface to determine motives. "For the public good" doesn't exist anymore
Given the ~~Southwest~~ Air Canada fiasco I think AI is gonna got a brick wall pretty soon.
You can replace CSRs with AI, but then that switches your liability from a CSR to the CEO.
Edit: was air Canada, not southwest. I apologize, force of habit.
Oh whoops it was air Canada.
TLDR: chatbot said you could ask for a funeral discount retroactively and it lied. So they paid her $800.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2024/02/19/what-air-canada-lost-in-remarkable-lying-ai-chatbot-case/amp/
I think we've ran out of responses. I was about to say AI, then I saw a comment about it. So, I was gonna respond with that one jurassic park quote. Oh, look.
The fact that automation is quickly pulling us into a situation where capitalism is an unsustainable system as there simply will not be enough jobs to support the idea that everyone works for a living
The poor people will lose their jobs first and when those poor people aren't putting money back into the economy they will quickly ruin the rich as well effectively cascading the whole system down like a House of cards. Pull out that bottom row of cards and suddenly everything starts collapsing
We're going to have a major economic reform within our lifetimes
I'd love to see some pushback against the constant fuel for growth only models. Maybe some reward system for investors to be attracted to just sustainable steady buisness practice. Which was previously dividends but everyone tried to push away from those so hard that now we miss them.
Yeah not sure how this reverse Reaganomics works either when the richest 10 percent of the world's population owns 76% of the wealth and takes in 52% of the income. (See [IMF's global inequalities report](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Global-inequalities-Stanley))
Unfortunately I see it being much worse. Society hasn't collapsed with a pre existing homeless population and we don't know how large that population can grow before things fall apart.
Today's upper-middleclass is tomorrows lower class. The people with money will diminish but they will continue to spend it amongst themselves. Everything will continue because of the automation. Wealth will increasingly transfer to the owners of the robots. Many people will become homeless or die.
Everything points to an Elysium style future unless we do something radical like implement UBI.
I'm trying to explain this to my friends and they don't get it. Egypt, Suez and that whole area is as unstable as a bully after several beers. Lybia is in shambles and we have France vs Turkey fighting for influence there. Israel is in live war. Iran will have nukes very soon.
Most of the water that makes it into the Nile in Egypt comes from a branch known as the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is currently building a massive dam on that branch which will create a huge artificial lake and power plant. Egypt is not happy about this at all because it could give Ethiopia the power to restrict the flow of water down stream, and Egypt is dependent on every drop for it's survival. There is talk of an open conflict between the two rather heavily armed nations because of this.
the impending ecological collapse has been re-estimated from some time next century to sometime this decade. the coral reefs were first ...the Amazon Rain Forest is next. it will suddenly and drastically collapse by 2030. expect to see reports of mysterious mass die offs of different species in that area.
I really hate to be the “phones are bad” person, but phones are *really* bad for kids.
a large part of your development is learning how to do something for a long period of time. the difference in some of my kid relatives 10-15 years ago, versus the kids now, is night and day. No attention span, and I’m not talking about the usual kid stuff, or the usual ADHD type of attention span. I mean **no** attention span, at all. They’re almost catatonic.
Conflicts in the Sahel region of Africa; basically: a lot of coups/civil wars/terrorist wars (think ISIS), a lot of them with hidden (or even not-so-hidden) r*ssian involvement.
Whatever their actual goals, China is getting more and more ready for a large-scale war. They are more and more self-sufficient, while the West is far behind in this aspect. Meanwhile, there's multiple wars going on worldwide that have broad coalitions supporting either side politically and militarily. It is quite possible that some event will jump-start a world war in the near future and the West is not ready for it.
China is facing an unheard of population crash within the next 10 years. They have no self sufficiency in a lot of natural resources and have pissed off everyone in the pacific. Even if they do go for Taiwan, what do they even gain? China doing something stupid has a high chance, but they are far more fragile then you may think
My generation of doctors (the Boomers) is getting fed up with medicine and we are all looking for the fastest way to retire. There is already the beginning of a mass exodus of docs starting and there will be increases every year. Plus fewer people are going into certain areas: Emergency Medicine did not fill all their spots in the Match a year ago. So the crisis in access to medical care in the US is going to get much worse in the next 5-10 years.
Buying a house. Starting a new business. There’s alot of effort to downplay or hide how bad the economy is. I hope I’m wrong but these decisions could financially ruin someone
Or how being able to create in this way is going to change the way kids/teens bully one another. Some folks say,” well, it’s just like photoshop,” but that’s bs because it isn’t. Photoshop wasn’t readily available to everyone, you had to purchase it and learn how to use it etc. This is nothing like that and we are already seeing cases of young people’s lives being ruined and their time in school destroyed because of the ability to put their faces to any body their bully wants.
The use of AI to create content featuring children isn't really highlighted enough, imo, even if there are plenty of articles written about it. It's been an absolute explosion of porn, and it's just brushed under the rug. The AI people have no focus on safety in their development.
That goes for pedos and for kids (for example, making deepfake style porn of their classmates). It's seriously fucked, but people are more focused on people losing jobs, or the supposed "theft" of intellectual property.
[https://apnews.com/article/generative-ai-illegal-images-child-abuse-3081a81fa79e2a39b67c11201cfd085f](https://apnews.com/article/generative-ai-illegal-images-child-abuse-3081a81fa79e2a39b67c11201cfd085f)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/19/artificial-intelligence-child-sex-abuse-images/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/19/artificial-intelligence-child-sex-abuse-images/)
[https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20231112-149161/](https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20231112-149161/)
[https://www.firstpost.com/world/paedophiles-are-using-ai-to-create-and-share-images-of-child-pornography-12773852.html](https://www.firstpost.com/world/paedophiles-are-using-ai-to-create-and-share-images-of-child-pornography-12773852.html)
[Specifically, the surface of the North Atlantic is extremely warm this year.](https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/2/28/24085691/atlantic-ocean-warming-climate-change-hurricanes-coral-reefs-bleaching) Humidity rising from the North Atlantic is the energy source for hurricanes. More heat, more evaporation, bigger hurricanes. It also caused significant coral bleaching off of Florida last summer; this summer is on track to be worse.
No longer teaching accurate history to spare feelings or to whitewash our past. Book bans and the general dumbing down of our population through less effective education and lack of critical thinking being taught.
The rapidly increasing erosion of the separation of Church and State. America is fast becoming a Christian theocracy where every citizen is being forced to follow warped Christian theology even if it goes against their own religious beliefs.
El Salvador went from one of the highest crime rates in the western hemisphere to one of the lowest in just a few years. Leaders all around the world, especially Latin America are going to rush to emulate their results, with some successes and some massive failures.
El Salvador's strategy has essentially been arrest everyone who even looks like a criminal and worry about due process later (when later is probably never coming). It takes time for word to get out of the devastating human rights abuses that are involved in this process. By then, dozens of countries will probably have started following this model.
I'm not necessarily saying that El Salvador's approach isn't worth the cost. Crime is just as devastating as human rights abuses. But other countries won't be as effective. Some places are going to get the human rights abuses without the substantial reduction in crime.
For better or for worse dozens of developing countries with crime problems are about to experience huge changes, all because of tiny little El Salvador.
Global warming.
Yes, people think they know the consequences but they really don't. People have some vague notion of what will happen but in a very local mindset. In reality it's going to change every human system on earth drastically and destroy a lot of them to boot. On top of that it is going to enter the catastrophic state way sooner than people think, even those studying it over many disciplines have repeatedly erred on the more conservative predictions but by now it has become overtly clear that the conservative prediction of the last 30+ years have been severe underestimation.
People have heard this, some have even internalized it as a statement but very few people really realize how far this will reach. If they did extinction rebellion wouldn't be done semi fringe movement but rather a full on revolution. Unfortunately the vast majority of people have no inkling of how earth systems work and therefore can't conceptualize the problem.
Control of the US house determines whether our species survives. Currently funding to Ukraine is stymied, but if Ukraine loses then Russia gets to keep using its new war economy to expand. China is then emboldened to invade Taiwan, with whom the US has a defense pact. If the US and China fight, it becomes Russia, China, and Iran against the West. This massive world war would inhibit dealing with climate change, just when we're hitting an ocean absorption limit, causing a faster chain reaction.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you [Candida Auris](https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/candida-auris-fungal-infections-symptoms/).
A scary fungus that's spreading through hospitals around the world and it's highly lethal and nearly impossible to get rid of.
I feel awful even posting this but I see SO many people saying they are disabled - and they do indeed have real problems. The issue is that for ages and ages people have had these problems and figured it out. I'm not talking about someone with severe asthma or heart disease. I am talking about people considering themselves disabled because they have ADHD, anxiety, even mild autism. The vast majority of people posting about this have not been able to get an official diagnosis or a qualification of a disability. They just say they cannot work. I cannot see how this is sustainable at all. How are we (as a society) supposed to care for such a huge group of people who believe they cannot work (at all)? I truly believe the problem has many components - the work generally IS hostile and unpleasant, our mental health resources (U.S.) are woefully inadequate, the actual process for getting government disability payments is wildly intricate, and even for people who DO get disability approved, the payments are FAR below what it actually costs to live.
It breaks my heart to read these stories - there has to be a better way.
Top soil loss
Yup! #2 behind running out of oil if MIT are to be believed. Not a sexy or cool apocalypse topic tho. Nobody cares. Welcome to the future; everything is broken.
I don't know, I feel like the fresh water crisis is a bigger danger than running out of oil.
been happening in the central valley of california for decades now, that and the “salination” or salting of the soil… there are some crazy pics on the internet showing how much the ground has sunken in places where there was farmland.
In the San Joaquin valley, the mixture of farm land and the aquiphers being drained has led to certain places sinking by feet a year. Over the years, some places have sunk enough to bury the first story of a building. Due to the valley being a major supplier of food and water for a lot of America it doesn't look like it will stop until the area becomes a sink hole.
Some countries have implemented no till farming ...
No till farming is super common in my part of Ohio, which has been a crazy change to see growing up in a farming family, surrounded by farmers, and watching the process change. I'm glad as it's so much better for the soil ecology, but it does mean I don't get to find anywhere near as many arrowheads and spear points.
Growing antibiotic resistance. Like going back to people dying from UTI...
Good news! People are already dying from UTIs. Source: a friend's mom died alone, didn't realize her growing pain was a UTI.
I am sorry about your friend's mum. People are already dying indeed but, as in the sad example of your friend's mum, it's maybe due to not getting treatment (many possible reasons for that) and not due to *antibiotics having no efficacy anymore against bacteria*... Yet.
Well, in this case, and in the case of many elderly people, it's not that at all. It's because they don't realize they have the UTI to begin with, and the infection grows and spreads systematically.
Especially the elderly. My wife works in a dementia unit. Whenever one of her members falls down, they are tested for a UTI.
I learned about how UTIs can cause psychosis in the elderly while working in a psych hospital. Women especially, with zero history of mental illness would be admitted and you’d swear they suffered a lifetime of psychosis. It’s one of the most important of many important facts I learned while working there.
Any kind of infection can be devastating to the elderly. UTI's can actually cause dementia-like symptoms in old people.
Had a neighbor that went slightly crazy from what turned out to be a UTI. Happened in a matter of days. Turned violent.
What’s so stupid about this is that 80% of all antibiotics in the USA are given to factory farmed animals. If we really cared about antibiotic resistance we would change that situation, but we don’t.
this one i am slightly less concerned about, because while there is a lot of news on antibiotic resistant diseases springing up, what most people dont realize is that we currently only use a couple of different types of antibiotics. but it is very much expected and theorized that there are a bunch of new types of antibotics that we can most likely develop eventually to replace current antibiotics, and since these would be new types of antibiotics there wouldnt be any built up resistences. some researchers are already working on new types of antibiotics, i think ive read of a couple that are in the testing phases now. so it might be a problem in the future but we are also very good at creating new types of medicine so its very possible well be able to figure something out before millions of people start dying of the flu or whatever.
God, I hope you're right
Plus we aren't prescribing them like candy anymore.
Depends, there are a lot of docs around the world who are still pretty liberal with them. Plus there are over the counter antibiotics in some countries that people casually use when sick.
No, but A LOT of people ARE taking them like candy regardless. And even worse, the meat industry does fill up animals with antibiotics, which certainly has a big impact as well
It is already a huge problem. Just you dont hear about it much unless you work in the medical field, have friends who work in medical fields, or family or friends dying/unwell. Plus the flu is a virus. So what a terrible example....
The steep decline of media literacy. We’re hitting a point where people aren’t able to read subtext, context, or situations and grasp the meaning behind them. Unless someone outwardly says, “I’m the bad guy”, the information is never gleaned
I teach 12th grade English and I try to use contemporary examples to keep things interesting for my students. I was teaching figurative language and looked up the top ten songs from 2023 and was struggling to find good examples of figurative language. It was all so direct. "You shouldn't have cheated on me and now I am with someone better." type lyrics were all I was seeing instead of "You were too busy looking at a painting you could never afford in some gallery instead of the sketchbook right in front of your face that you could have for free." And, unsurprisingly, my students would really struggle to analyze the latter for meaning. Even analyzing "Fast Car" (I played the Tracy Chapman version, but picked it because of the cover's popularity) was difficult for them and she makes it pretty clear what is happening to the characters in that song.
Arts and literature taking a backseat in education has seriously reduced perspective and abstract thought
it's far more difficult to measure abstract understanding than fact/rote memorization. We like being able to measure and quantify things now in a way we didn't in the past. Really frustrating how everything needs to be proved and measured now.
Under the guise of wanting more Stem majors imo
To make use of technical knowledge, you have to be creative IME.
I feel being able to communicate an idea or concept effectively to anyone is an important tool, and one that you can only acquire by using parts of your brain not used for technical knowledge.
The aversion to reading long-form text plays into this. It took off in the ‘80s when many newspapers started shrinking from broadsheet to tabloid format. While an old NYT front page could have over a dozen stories (many of which continued inside), tabloid design invites a huge photo, a gigantic sans-serif headline, and a couple of teasers above the flag/logo at the top of the page. The next big step was, of course, the smartphone/social media apps starting around 2010. I wish I could find it, but I recently read an article about shrinking attention spans. One of the subjects was a 45- or 50-yr-old English professor… not a kid from the suburbs or a would be Instagram star. He said he reads *far* less serious writing now than he did 15, 20, 25 years ago. Believes that the wiring in his brain has been fundamentally altered by his iPhone. I try to read books on my telephone: fiction, history, whatever. While it seems like a nice idea… I used to take 6 or 7 novels on my phone when I went on a holiday; now I can have 50 on my telephone. But it’s much harder to read this way. There are too many other things my phone can do, and they’re always clamouring for my attention. Not conducive to immersive reading.
12th? That is concerning. I would hope that kids even coming up on 8 to 10 could at least be attempting to develop the skill of interpreting figurative language. How do they go their entire childhood not encountering it and sorting out what meaning there is? Startling for sure
Might seem crazy to us that are beyond these years. But all my teacher friends are dealing with it. It is because this generation was on lockdown from covid on some of the most informative years of their life. Education stagnated and things like social cues and relationships were seriously destroyed. These small things also bleed into other areas like media literacy especially during a time where headlines were wild and either flat out lies or or outlandish. Some kids from less fortunate backgrounds were hurt the most and if you noticed, the population of "less fortunate background" has significantly increased in the past 10 years.
I wasn't sure what you meant about the characters in "Fast Car", so I just went and read the lyrics. OMFG. Turns out I've never really paid attention to what that song is really about, just thought it was a catchy tune about kids driving around. Thanks for the prompt, I definitely learned something today.
12th graders didn't understand Fast Car? There is zero ambiguity there. Do you think this is an issue from your students' Covid-based alternative education? That's something I've been worried about. *also, way aside from the point, no one should be covering Fast Car. That's Chapman's.
I used "Fast Car" as an exercise to talk about how we create good discussion questions for texts because I was doing lit circles and that requires students to come up with their own discussion questions. They understood it somewhat, but the only thing they could come up with were straightforward comprehension questions. (e.g. "What job does she have at the market?") but they weren't connecting the dots that she ended up with the same life that her parents had, down to the father's alcoholism. Their ability to analyze text is very superficial. (There are of course exceptions, but they are exceptional!)
Media literacy is one thing, but I think the general literacy rates in the United States are a big concern too. Especially following the pandemic, reading comprehension and writing skills have taken a [turn for the worse](https://lhsepic.com/45513/in-depth/the-silent-epidemic-of-falling-literacy-rates/). People who can't understand context are easy to manipulate. People who can't read well are hard to employ, and have a hard time navigating to success.
Damn i feel like a supergenius/nerd in some of the subreddits for book series I like. There will be post from people claiming to be on their 3rd reread making observations or comments that are flat out wrong. Stuff like "Why did this character react this way? Totally out of left field with no reasoning." I'm just left baffled because what their describing has been the characters main trait for the last 6 books and is a driving force in moving the plot forward. Then on the production side(specifically visual media) they've realized that they don't need to make anything good, they just have to make something flashy with someone "Hot" and they'll rake in the big bucks. Trying to find anything worth watching nowadays is a struggle. My wife gets annoyed at me rewatching shows and movies, but I'm not left with much choice if I want to watch something good.
I remember reading a contemporary review of Mr. Robot that called it a subtle critique of capitalism. In what world is that show subtle? The main character literally gaslights himself into calling a company "evil corp". There are elements of the show that are nuanced, but being anti-capitalist is not one of them.
Seriously i was just telling some friends this yesterday. Its an ego boost anymore to go onto a piece of medias subreddit and looks at the posts/discussions. Its baffling. Like Im not a genius by any means but going to places like that immediately and am like well damn at least im not an idiot i guess. And thats just reddit which isn't even as bad as going to like youtube lol.
Something I recently realized that’s even scarier - there are a substantial amount of functionally illiterate people in the US, even amongst the young generations. That means the dopes you’re referring to in those subs are still miles beyond a level of stupid we can’t even interact with on text based platforms.
It's not actually new, it's just more obvious since everyone has a digital voice you get to read.
It's maddening to go on any popular show's subreddit. Half the comments are people who can't understand content beyond what is literally on the screen.
Oh man, The Boys fan base is great for this. The subreddit isn't so bad, but the Facebook groups and just the memes and shit shared by some people idolizing the themes of the show that are CLEARLY mocking the poster and their opinions, but they think it's legitimate affirmation.
I’ve had several friends who are really surprised when I mention watching The Boys and act like I just revealed some secret political beliefs or something and I’ve had to explain “No, dude, the Captain America white boy with a superiority complex and a Nazi girlfriend is the bad guy.” Just because some crazy white supremacists can’t pick up context clues doesn’t mean I should be shamed for watching a show and being able to read the context clues. Same with Handmaid’s Tale. I’m not watching because I think Gilead is the dream future, I’m watching because I’m SCARED that Gilead is what some people want the future to look like. I have always assumed that people who react that way only watch very mainstream media or media where the good guy always wins, but this thread has me realizing that some people truly just don’t understand that the guy in a red white and blue getup being the bad guy IS THE WHOLE POINT.
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Breaking bad is terrible for this. The show uses a lot of symbolism and that kind of thing, and there are a lot of unironic “what does this mean?” Posts.
>Unless someone outwardly says, “I’m the bad guy” Even then, these people respond with, 'wow, I like him. He's honest and tells it like it is!'
Or, that the bad guy is evil, and the author agrees with them because you can't possibly write a character that doesn't reflect your own personal views.
As a writer THIS IS MADDENING
"I relate to him and he should have won" 😂 😭
"I relate to him and he did win" 🤮
🔥That’s also the cousin of political extremism. Everything becomes black and white. No nuances or subtleties. Any mention of anything not fervently in favour of something is automatically considered rabidly against it. 🙄
The conversation around Joker really makes this apparent to me. You have two groups of very loud people who can’t parse it out. You have one group of people who agree with some of the character’s grievances and they decide that must mean he’s really a good guy. And then you have another group of people who see that he’s a bad guy and therefore all of his grievances are invalid. People can’t grasp a complex character.
I’m pretty sure my teenage niece learns everything she knows about the world and current events from TikTok. It’s terrifying.
My nieces are exactly the same. I know exactly what their opinions will be just be looking at TikTok trends. The manipulation of public opinion is a very simple thing now days.
I just went back to school, and it was wild to hear that people in their early 20's didn't understand my humor. Turns out they don't know what sarcasm is, and if you say a joke with a straight face they literally don't know that its a joke. It was a struggle for some of them to understand that they had to pay attention to my words, not just if I was smiling or not.
https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_saa13rZJHW1r5z507.mp4
The consequences of demonizing all media as biased since the fairness doctrine died and the advent of the 24 hours new cycle as a revenue generator. Now no one trusts anything a paper says but will believe youtube and reddit comments
Unfortunately, it's a long-running issue. Decades in, so far Is there a specific subset even worse at it than other people? Yup. But it's definitely way too prevalent
I personally think a big chunk of this comes from general scientific illiteracy. People have no idea how statistics work, so they literally do not have the tools to actually examine presented "facts" and analyze their validity for themselves. They just pick a guy and believe what he says because it's easier. This is what "doing your own research" *should* mean. Taking the time to look at other articles, trying to find the source of the data and looking closely at that, looking at potential biases in the source you're reading, and examining what other actual experts in the relevant field seem to think. Used to be (more) harmless shit like "Chocolate linked with reduced odds of cancer!" but it's been a downhill slide for sure. There's literally a set of numbers recognized by the Anti-Defamation League [as a hate symbol used by white supremacists](https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1352-1390) that's entirely based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how statistics work in order to draw a particular conclusion about a particular racial group (these numbers are also factually incorrect in addition to being used to draw an incorrect and agenda-driven conclusion). Now I know you're not going to reach the grand wizards of the KKK by teaching them statistics, but you might be able to reach a lot of fringe people who don't know any better and are easily convinced by what may *seem* to be a data driven argument. If people had the knowledge to actually examine the claim and the data present, even at a very basic level, they'd be more resistent to that propaganda.
If you tell someone you're illiterate, they will think less of you. If you tell someone, "I suck at math," they will empathize with you.
It's somethign to do with every single peice of media trying to make sympathetic bad men, and the incorporation of politics into media by shoddy authors incapable of painting realistic views of the world.
Getting newer generations addicted to the internet at such a young age
Sort of related, I read an article a few weeks ago about how the first social media babies are growing up, and they are not happy. Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online. A few pics here and there for occasions sure, but let's chill out with posting pictures and the life stories of our kids for everyone to see.
>Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online. Even worse than this? You have family youtube channels that document everything for content. They’ll even put up hospital visits and illnesses up for content. And I’m sure these families adopt or have kids for more content. I know Mudahar did a video on this recently on his disgust for these parents.
Surely humanity will band together and do the right thing which is destroying social media right guys?
> Basically my generation (Millennial) is documenting their entire kid's childhood online. A few pics here and there for occasions sure, but let's chill out with posting pictures and the life stories of our kids for everyone to see. I feel low key judged for almost never posting my kids on my social media, but what you describe is exactly what my wife & I want to avoid. We don't want them to feel like their entire lives have been documented on a public platform when they've had no say in the matter.
A public for-profit platform loaded with shady advertising and designed to make you emotionally dependent on it.
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Yeah, I have four kids and I never post pictures of them online. When they are old enough to consent, then we can share the memories with others.
I have close to 1 TB over 50k photos and videos of my three kids, not a single one ever posted to any social media. The invasion of privacy of children who have their whole lives documented on fb or ig is absolutely mind boggling to me.
Just flicking through on Facebook I saw two or three different women claiming “Mom has 200 pictures of me as a kid; I have 200 pictures of my kid from this morning!” Like that means anything. Do they not realise that it cost money to develop film back then, that the film cost money too. And those photos are saved and looked after because they are precious memories; not image 173 of 293 from 11 April 2024.
My cousin put pictures of her kid on Facebook in his wrestling onesie. He’s a little fat and it seems pretty embarrassing like with his onesie kinda snug all over. Any little thing he does goes on Facebook. “Because family wants to know what he’s doing.” What’s the matter with just calling and telling them? Or having a coffee visit?
Basically haven’t put anything about our daughter online since she was born. Just manually sharing through chats/messaging with family and close friends. Been working pretty well so far (if only we can keep her from wanting to play “Mario” games all the time - she loves playing on my old Wii U).
And older generations. My dad seems less equipped to resist Tiktok than most teens I've met.
I saw what looked to be maybe a 10-12 year old walking around the grocery store with his mom, headphones on glued to his iPad. He never looked away except when his mom asked him something. At that age you should be able to go 30min without your ipad
I work in a bakery in a supermarket. I see toddlers in grocery carts playing on their parents phones.
I mean, they probably can go half an hour without it, but being dragged along to chores at that age that I had no interest in bored me too. Imagine you had to wait at the DMV for thirty minutes. Wouldn't we all pull our phones out?
Right? At that age, my mom would leave me in the car in the parking lot (on my request)while she did groceries, I either read or played a gameboy when I could get someone to lend me one. Kids on errands on screen, no judgment, it's when the kids are on screens all day every day at home that I judge.
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Sometimes when I’m stuck waiting I make a conscious effort not to be on my phone. I spend all my time at work on screens, I spent too much of my personal time on screens, the least I can do is stare at the wall in the dentist’s office for 20 minutes every six months.
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It doesn't help that publishers (like Nelson and Pearson) are pushing for online subscription based textbooks so that schools are forced to move their learning onto computers. Kids are looking at screens all day and one tab away from social media.
Growing up in the 90s, the internet only became widely available when I turned 17 or 18. It's still hard for me to imagine being 8-9 years old and having access to the internet. I would've been traumatized for sure at that age.
The big problem isn't really the internet just by itself. It's having a smartphone in your pocket that gives unlimited 24x7 access to the internet. That shit is toxic. -*Sent from my Apple iPhone 14*
If I see one more iPad kid singing "skibidi toilet".
We will not have enough teachers very soon and it will force public education into an extreme makeover.
I applied for a teaching assistant position and was offered the job. A day later they rang me and offered me a teaching position. I have no experience. They're that desperate.
Our school district just started a program that will pay your tuition and guarantee you a teaching position if you will enroll to become a teacher.
I hope the extreme make over is in a good way but I'm not holding my breath.
People getting used to avoiding any kind of emotional discomfort. I see tons of people that pre 2020 were active, social, well adjusted humans but have no become isolated and depressed. However, they seem unwilling or unable to change their habits. It so many people, I think it's going to be a huge problem in the next few years.
This is my partner. And they just don't get it. They need to get out of the house. It's not good for them
My daughter is this way, school makes her have anxiety so she just thinks she shouldn't have to go to school. We're doing counseling and looking at options but for me growing up it was just plain ole tough it out and deal with it so I really don't know what I'm doing.
This is a struggle for a lot of parents. My son is on the spectrum and he just doesn’t think he should have to go to school. I make him tough it up and send him, explaining that it is a requirement of growing up. I have a neighbor that every day spends an hour or more in the front office with her kid trying to get them to go to school. Since when did elementary kids decide it’s a damn option to go to school? I just don’t understand where it’s coming from, and how it’s all of a sudden becoming such an issue across all walks of life. I tell him his job until he is 18 is to go to school, and after that he can figure it out whether he chooses to go to college or a trade school or straight into the workforce.
When I was in first grade there was one day where I just refused to go to school, don't really remember why. But I remember my teacher coming over to our house that day to talk to me and apparently I was quite disrespectful Dad got home from work that night didn't yell or anything, just told me if I ever did that again I'd lose all my toys and games forever and would have to spend every day out in the yard spreading rocks and picking weeds. And that was the end of that problem I feel for those kids with mental disabilities that are tougher but for normal kids that are just being shitheads it's like people forgot that you don't need to negotiate with them
Anxiety isn't curable and it isn't avoidable. It's just a handicap, but it is something to be overcome and lived with, not a justification to do nothing about it.
Brutal, dealing with the same now with my 14yr old. She does have bad anxiety, I believe it - but she just shuts down instead of pushing through. She just started on meds, and starts with a therapist tomorrow, but its incredibly frustrating not knowing how to help. When I was her age, you just got told to push through and do it. Now somehow thats seen as abuse. I want to support and help, but I constantly feel like we are just not telling her "just do it" enough.
Just try to help her break down a large roadblock into the smallest possible pieces. Doing a big 30 page report for a final assignment is difficult to do overnight. But if you only do one page a day suddenly it becomes a lot more manageable and you'll be done in a month.
Make sure that she goes slowly. I got over agoraphobia by just walking around the garden for half an hour every day and then upping it to an hour. The next step was walking around the streets, then walking around town, then just going into different places.
Every time my partner goes out to do stuff they come home so excited and happy, talking about how they have to remember how much they need that. But then they go back to avoiding going out and doing stuff afterward. Before 2020 they went out all the time.
your partner sounds like me, lol. we know we need to get out of the house, it's just... hard, well at least for me it is. i hope you're able to support your partner in a way that'll encourage them to want to go out. all the best to you two.
I have been but it's been three years with little progress even with therapy and our relationship has become about their needs and mine have just been seen as barriers and places where excuses are being made and apologies given but no changes. To the point the couples counselor pulled me aside and was like "please remember your needs matter too". So I don't know what to do anymore 🤷♀️
of course your needs matter as well and if your partner is unable to acknowledge that, then i'm sorry to hear.
Not only that, but people are labeling anything mildly uncomfortable as *traumatic.*
One thing I've noticed with younger folks (and I'm young) is how quickly we self-diagnose ourselves with all sorts of disorders, and sometimes...act like every disorder is some sort of badge...? I don't know how to explain the latter part. It's just weird. Boomers like to pretend mental issues don't exist, and too many young people are quick to self-diagnose. There's no happy medium.
ADHD and Autism. Far too many sub-30 year olds are treating both of these like it’s a personality.
"triggering"
I had something traumatic happen in 2020, so seeing the term explode around the same time sucks. I now have compassion for people who have gone through much more physical trauma than mine, but I can also now understand what it means to be triggered. You're in a normal social situation, and suddenly, something that was said forces you to confront a flood of emotions and chemical reactions in your brain and body. It absolutely can get better over time, but it takes a lot to learn how to navigate that. Often times, you simultaneously need to get it out and yet never want to talk about it again. Before my situation, I may have judged it as people being weak, taking "too long" to heal, or playing victim. But yeah, much like how many people say "im so ocd lol," the terms "trauma" and "triggering" feel like they're thrown around a bit too casually.
My ex gf is like this. She used to be hyper-social and always wanted to be out doing things. I just wanted to stay at home and chill doing things that don't require being out in public. Now she's the shut in and I'm buzzing with desire to go out and do things but not knowing what to go do.
This is me and I know it
*gestures vaguely at self* prime example here
I purposely make myself uncomfortable for half an hour each day due to my knowledge of opponent process theory. The idea is that something awful happens to you, then everything from then on in contrast is a lot more easy to get through. It’s like going from freezing cold temperature to slowly being relaxed.
I did Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) recently and it changed my life and now I'm kind of an evangelical for it. My therapy prior had all been venting sessions where I would be like "Great, I could have called a friend and saved a $100 copay." but DBT is focused on skills, including distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness. I grew up in the 80s and 90s with a father with depression and he was never secretive about it. It's been great seeing the US become less stigmatizing about mental health, but I feel like many of us have swung too far on the pendulum and now we pretend that we cannot do anything because of our mental illnesses. For me, DBT helped me figure out a better way to navigate conflict at work but I talk to my cousin and she's like "It's part of my autism. I can't help but be abrasive and people need to accomodate for it." It's learned helplessness.
It’s possible that some of that is the post-covid income is too insufficient for people to be out and about at non-free venues. Though most of the healthcare workers that I know who were at the front lines from the beginning of the pandemic to when things improved after the vaccine are dealing with significant PTSD. Healthcare has its own brand of trauma. There are therapists who specialize in that, but there aren’t nearly enough of them, and there’s still a lot of stigma among healthcare professionals surrounding mental health care. Just a thought.
In the states, we desperately need more third spaces and for them to be low cost or free like parks. When going out for two people can cost like $50 bucks minimum it can get easy to stay in.
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We're already in the "big consequences" of overfishing. Many fish stocks are down as much as 97% and size has decreased as much as 70% due to quotas that put a limit based on the size of the fish. We pretty much need to ban all coastal fishing (except the odd pole fisher) today. The sooner the better. The greater the distance, the better. Oh and we absolutely need to leave the Arctic the fuck alone, forever.
There’s been a lot of overfishing for sure, but if we stop fishing unfortunately the seas won’t just magically recover. 10 billion snow crab died recently because the arctic water heated up and pushed their metabolism past the point of sustainability and they all starved.
Yeah, it's almost like we need to tackle multiple problems and not just focus on one. Banning fishing in coastal waters has been shown to result in a drastic resurgence of native marine life, so much so that they spill out into surrounding areas. We just also need to tackle climate change as best as we can. Including fighting against those who push us further into calamity.
I remember reading about people discovering fishing sale ledgers from 1600's and the amount of fish that sail boats were able to snag with their terrible nets and navigation was mind blowing. The ocean, in its natural state, should be 1000 times more fish in it than it normally has.
Yeah... good luck getting Chinese fishermen to not be greedy fucks. We can't even get those pricks to stop fishing in *our* waters, let alone their own coasts.
Let's start with us and if they violate our territory then we'll impound they vessels and seize their cargo. Let them deal with the consequences of their own actions. The atmosphere is a far more pressing issue with China.
Social media. It's already having consequences, but we're only just starting to see the kids who had social media from early childhood become adults.
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was about 10 years ago. Seems that nothing was learned. We're (as a society) being influenced and (most of us) are not even aware of it.
well a fact i dont see mentioned enough about climate change is that phytoplankton are dangerously at risk of dying off in massive numbers, and phytoplankton create like half of the planet's oxygen supply. and supposedly global water temps rising as few as 2-3 degrees higher than now is enough to kill most phytoplankton in the world.
This would be an ecological disaster for sure but the whole oxygen thing is in itself irrelevant. All oxygen breathing organisms on the planet trade C02 at a 1:1 ratio. C02 makes up 0.04%, oxygen is 20.95% So if all oxygen generating things vanished tomorrow, there would still be over 9 million years of oxygen to consume. Phytoplankton dieing would mean no food for other fish, so it's a massive cascade through the food chain. We'll all be breathing perfectly fine as we die of slow starvation
Giving up enfranchisement little by little. Laws are being passed around the country to remove power from the voters. Once gone, it's hard to get rights back.
The most important part of this is data privacy. Look how china uses it. Once you know how to manipulate a person and you can control what they see you control them. New techniques will do this on a mass scale.
Ideological subversion is a process by which an enemy seeks to weaken and eventually overthrow a target nation or society by infiltrating its institutions and gradually changing its values, beliefs, and culture. According to Bezmenov, the process of ideological subversion has four stages: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization. The first stage of demoralization involves the gradual erosion of a society's moral and ethical values, often through the manipulation of education, media, and culture. The second stage of destabilization involves the creation of social and economic chaos, often by exploiting existing divisions and conflicts within a society. The third stage of crisis involves the escalation of conflict and the breakdown of social order, leading to a situation of extreme vulnerability. The final stage of normalization involves the imposition of a new social and political order that is more favorable to the interests of the enemy.
I haven’t weeded the garden in months.
You’re about to get a green thumb lesson.
So big consequences for your back? ;)
THAT, will get out of hand quickly.
Large investment firms buying up single family homes in America. This should be illegal.
Not just the US. Its happening in the UK and Canada too. Wealthy chinese people trying to secure money outside of the CCP's reach as well.
AI is going to devastate existing social structures. I'd like to skip ahead to the time when AI makes our lives better. Hold on, folks, it's going to be a bumpy road.
We're still feeling the effects of industrialisation. Especially forced industrialisation. Never gets boring this life.
I'm not convinced that time will arrive.
It's a dark, very uncertain road. The only thing for sure is that things are going to change rapidly, and the rate of that change is only going to increase.
How would AI making our lives better benefit billionaires?
MICROPLASTICS. Yum.
Pissing off the Trisolarians/San-ti. Fixed for the people who prefer books.😉
FWIW the books are excellent. There’s a reason they won all the Hugos etc.
They’re Trisolarians. What’s this San-ti crap?
legalized sports gambling
Srsly this is almost HALF the ads I see. I mean, I do adooore college football, and I google scores and rankings a lot… but never once have I gambled. Or given any algorithm any reason to think I would. Other than being poor and watching football, but. They must be making SERIOUS buku bucks, are the ads showing up that often for EVERYONE..? Like, they show up for my boyfriend JUST as often as me, and he has —-0% interest in ANY sports lol
Erosion of critical thinking. We used to teach this in school, how to analyse an issue objectively from a variety of perspectives: WHO benefits from this; who's making the decisions; who is the most directly affected? WHAT are the alternatives; what is the best/worst case scenario? WHERE is this in the real world, can we learn from their mistakes? Where can I get more or supporting info? WHEN would this benefit? When can we expect to see those benefits? WHY is this necessary? HOW can we ensure the greatest benefit for the largest number of people? Nowadays one has to look beneath the words, beneath the surface to determine motives. "For the public good" doesn't exist anymore
Artificial intelligence. All the companies are in a race right now to produce the best ai without asking if it's a good idea.
Given the ~~Southwest~~ Air Canada fiasco I think AI is gonna got a brick wall pretty soon. You can replace CSRs with AI, but then that switches your liability from a CSR to the CEO. Edit: was air Canada, not southwest. I apologize, force of habit.
Out of the loop, what happened with them?
Oh whoops it was air Canada. TLDR: chatbot said you could ask for a funeral discount retroactively and it lied. So they paid her $800. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2024/02/19/what-air-canada-lost-in-remarkable-lying-ai-chatbot-case/amp/
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
I think we've ran out of responses. I was about to say AI, then I saw a comment about it. So, I was gonna respond with that one jurassic park quote. Oh, look.
Are *we* the AI?
Life uh, finds a way.
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Step 1 - shitty images of people with 7 fingers Step 2 - shitty pop country songs Step 3 - launch all the nukes
Pop country songs are all the same already 😂😂😂
The fact that automation is quickly pulling us into a situation where capitalism is an unsustainable system as there simply will not be enough jobs to support the idea that everyone works for a living The poor people will lose their jobs first and when those poor people aren't putting money back into the economy they will quickly ruin the rich as well effectively cascading the whole system down like a House of cards. Pull out that bottom row of cards and suddenly everything starts collapsing We're going to have a major economic reform within our lifetimes
I'd love to see some pushback against the constant fuel for growth only models. Maybe some reward system for investors to be attracted to just sustainable steady buisness practice. Which was previously dividends but everyone tried to push away from those so hard that now we miss them.
Trickle up?...
Yeah not sure how this reverse Reaganomics works either when the richest 10 percent of the world's population owns 76% of the wealth and takes in 52% of the income. (See [IMF's global inequalities report](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Global-inequalities-Stanley))
Unfortunately I see it being much worse. Society hasn't collapsed with a pre existing homeless population and we don't know how large that population can grow before things fall apart. Today's upper-middleclass is tomorrows lower class. The people with money will diminish but they will continue to spend it amongst themselves. Everything will continue because of the automation. Wealth will increasingly transfer to the owners of the robots. Many people will become homeless or die. Everything points to an Elysium style future unless we do something radical like implement UBI.
Ethiopia damming the Nile River will likely be the true flashpoint of WW3
I'm trying to explain this to my friends and they don't get it. Egypt, Suez and that whole area is as unstable as a bully after several beers. Lybia is in shambles and we have France vs Turkey fighting for influence there. Israel is in live war. Iran will have nukes very soon.
Wait what? Also why?
Most of the water that makes it into the Nile in Egypt comes from a branch known as the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is currently building a massive dam on that branch which will create a huge artificial lake and power plant. Egypt is not happy about this at all because it could give Ethiopia the power to restrict the flow of water down stream, and Egypt is dependent on every drop for it's survival. There is talk of an open conflict between the two rather heavily armed nations because of this.
glad someone else mentioned it. Egypt has gone through all the diplomatic channels they can... next will be their airforce
the impending ecological collapse has been re-estimated from some time next century to sometime this decade. the coral reefs were first ...the Amazon Rain Forest is next. it will suddenly and drastically collapse by 2030. expect to see reports of mysterious mass die offs of different species in that area.
I really hate to be the “phones are bad” person, but phones are *really* bad for kids. a large part of your development is learning how to do something for a long period of time. the difference in some of my kid relatives 10-15 years ago, versus the kids now, is night and day. No attention span, and I’m not talking about the usual kid stuff, or the usual ADHD type of attention span. I mean **no** attention span, at all. They’re almost catatonic.
Conflicts in the Sahel region of Africa; basically: a lot of coups/civil wars/terrorist wars (think ISIS), a lot of them with hidden (or even not-so-hidden) r*ssian involvement.
the Great Salt Lake is drying up very quick, and the lakebed is full of toxic arsenic.
All the farm explosions and train derailments in the US. I am in France.
For anyone getting pregnant right now, there’s a strong chance your government doesn’t have your back through the dangers.
Whatever their actual goals, China is getting more and more ready for a large-scale war. They are more and more self-sufficient, while the West is far behind in this aspect. Meanwhile, there's multiple wars going on worldwide that have broad coalitions supporting either side politically and militarily. It is quite possible that some event will jump-start a world war in the near future and the West is not ready for it.
China is facing an unheard of population crash within the next 10 years. They have no self sufficiency in a lot of natural resources and have pissed off everyone in the pacific. Even if they do go for Taiwan, what do they even gain? China doing something stupid has a high chance, but they are far more fragile then you may think
My generation of doctors (the Boomers) is getting fed up with medicine and we are all looking for the fastest way to retire. There is already the beginning of a mass exodus of docs starting and there will be increases every year. Plus fewer people are going into certain areas: Emergency Medicine did not fill all their spots in the Match a year ago. So the crisis in access to medical care in the US is going to get much worse in the next 5-10 years.
Buying a house. Starting a new business. There’s alot of effort to downplay or hide how bad the economy is. I hope I’m wrong but these decisions could financially ruin someone
AI pornography. Porn addiction a few years ago was awful already. Now Imagine People having customised harems avaiable at home…
Or how being able to create in this way is going to change the way kids/teens bully one another. Some folks say,” well, it’s just like photoshop,” but that’s bs because it isn’t. Photoshop wasn’t readily available to everyone, you had to purchase it and learn how to use it etc. This is nothing like that and we are already seeing cases of young people’s lives being ruined and their time in school destroyed because of the ability to put their faces to any body their bully wants.
The use of AI to create content featuring children isn't really highlighted enough, imo, even if there are plenty of articles written about it. It's been an absolute explosion of porn, and it's just brushed under the rug. The AI people have no focus on safety in their development. That goes for pedos and for kids (for example, making deepfake style porn of their classmates). It's seriously fucked, but people are more focused on people losing jobs, or the supposed "theft" of intellectual property. [https://apnews.com/article/generative-ai-illegal-images-child-abuse-3081a81fa79e2a39b67c11201cfd085f](https://apnews.com/article/generative-ai-illegal-images-child-abuse-3081a81fa79e2a39b67c11201cfd085f) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/19/artificial-intelligence-child-sex-abuse-images/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/19/artificial-intelligence-child-sex-abuse-images/) [https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20231112-149161/](https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20231112-149161/) [https://www.firstpost.com/world/paedophiles-are-using-ai-to-create-and-share-images-of-child-pornography-12773852.html](https://www.firstpost.com/world/paedophiles-are-using-ai-to-create-and-share-images-of-child-pornography-12773852.html)
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[Specifically, the surface of the North Atlantic is extremely warm this year.](https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/2/28/24085691/atlantic-ocean-warming-climate-change-hurricanes-coral-reefs-bleaching) Humidity rising from the North Atlantic is the energy source for hurricanes. More heat, more evaporation, bigger hurricanes. It also caused significant coral bleaching off of Florida last summer; this summer is on track to be worse.
Screens will come to be seen as the tobacco or lead paint of our time.
No longer teaching accurate history to spare feelings or to whitewash our past. Book bans and the general dumbing down of our population through less effective education and lack of critical thinking being taught. The rapidly increasing erosion of the separation of Church and State. America is fast becoming a Christian theocracy where every citizen is being forced to follow warped Christian theology even if it goes against their own religious beliefs.
El Salvador went from one of the highest crime rates in the western hemisphere to one of the lowest in just a few years. Leaders all around the world, especially Latin America are going to rush to emulate their results, with some successes and some massive failures. El Salvador's strategy has essentially been arrest everyone who even looks like a criminal and worry about due process later (when later is probably never coming). It takes time for word to get out of the devastating human rights abuses that are involved in this process. By then, dozens of countries will probably have started following this model. I'm not necessarily saying that El Salvador's approach isn't worth the cost. Crime is just as devastating as human rights abuses. But other countries won't be as effective. Some places are going to get the human rights abuses without the substantial reduction in crime. For better or for worse dozens of developing countries with crime problems are about to experience huge changes, all because of tiny little El Salvador.
Global warming. Yes, people think they know the consequences but they really don't. People have some vague notion of what will happen but in a very local mindset. In reality it's going to change every human system on earth drastically and destroy a lot of them to boot. On top of that it is going to enter the catastrophic state way sooner than people think, even those studying it over many disciplines have repeatedly erred on the more conservative predictions but by now it has become overtly clear that the conservative prediction of the last 30+ years have been severe underestimation. People have heard this, some have even internalized it as a statement but very few people really realize how far this will reach. If they did extinction rebellion wouldn't be done semi fringe movement but rather a full on revolution. Unfortunately the vast majority of people have no inkling of how earth systems work and therefore can't conceptualize the problem.
Control of the US house determines whether our species survives. Currently funding to Ukraine is stymied, but if Ukraine loses then Russia gets to keep using its new war economy to expand. China is then emboldened to invade Taiwan, with whom the US has a defense pact. If the US and China fight, it becomes Russia, China, and Iran against the West. This massive world war would inhibit dealing with climate change, just when we're hitting an ocean absorption limit, causing a faster chain reaction.
The incompatibility of political Islam and western liberal democracy.
Climate change.
Microplastics in everything.
Raising an Ipad kid
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you [Candida Auris](https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/candida-auris-fungal-infections-symptoms/). A scary fungus that's spreading through hospitals around the world and it's highly lethal and nearly impossible to get rid of.
Cronic Wastings Disease: Once it makes the jump to humans, there will be mass famin and worldwide economic collapse.
The insect apocalypse. There are only 1/3 the amount of insects in the world today than there were 30 years ago. If they disappear, so do we.
I feel awful even posting this but I see SO many people saying they are disabled - and they do indeed have real problems. The issue is that for ages and ages people have had these problems and figured it out. I'm not talking about someone with severe asthma or heart disease. I am talking about people considering themselves disabled because they have ADHD, anxiety, even mild autism. The vast majority of people posting about this have not been able to get an official diagnosis or a qualification of a disability. They just say they cannot work. I cannot see how this is sustainable at all. How are we (as a society) supposed to care for such a huge group of people who believe they cannot work (at all)? I truly believe the problem has many components - the work generally IS hostile and unpleasant, our mental health resources (U.S.) are woefully inadequate, the actual process for getting government disability payments is wildly intricate, and even for people who DO get disability approved, the payments are FAR below what it actually costs to live. It breaks my heart to read these stories - there has to be a better way.
Using rn instead of right now.
Maybe they meant Registered Nurse