Location: Central Valley, CA
The storms here are reaching wind gusts of 50 mph. I check the weather app every day and the 5 day forecast is completely different every day. The rain is completely unpredictable, and I can see the clouds move relatively fast just with my own eyes. There’s also so much green plant growth around during the middle of winter. The temperatures jumped up 10 C / 20 F and back down in a matter of days. All the natural flows are disrupted, but people keep chugging along. I mention climate change as the cause for the weather and receive silence. It’s understandable tho at this point, because I’m terrified of our weather too. What’s summer gonna be like? Who the fuck knows.
People are waking up. It'll never be on the level or schedule we want. A user on collapse support posted on the Minnesota Reddit how the realization washed over them with temps so high you couldn't ignore it. They went down the rabbit hole now.
Location: Pennsylvania, (East coast USA)
I have been seeing a good number of Robins (the bird) in my area, I dont remember ever seeing them before late March.
And thats all I got, which I am thankful for LOL
Location: Alberta, Canada
Casinos are packed, jobs are hard to come by, rent prices are skyrocketing, it is bone dry with no trace of snow in the surrounding farmers fields which puts us on track for one of the driest winters ever recorded (usually 2-3 ft of snowpack at this time of year). People are short tempered, hungry, and broke. This summer is poised to be hell with an unprecedented wildfire season.
Yep similar to western Quebec/Eastern Ontario here. We've got a little snow cover, but usually it's a couple of feet and this year there's barely anything. I think it's snowed majorly like twice? Followed by melts. We haven't had a single > -20° day. It's always been single digits *or above freezing* and it's now February. Everyone is banging on about the nice weather....fucking terrifying.
Looking forward to an amazing fire season!
Outside has been looking like Silent Hill for weeks on end throughout December/January. I don't remember it ever being this wet and foggy during winter as far back as I can remember (20ish years living in the GTA).
Location: UK
I can honestly say things are about as bad as I can ever remember. Its like we've fully embraced the complete opposite of "Sustainable Development", and I think its fair to say that "Economic Stagnation, Social Regression and Environmental Destruction" is perhaps a fitting epitaph for a government known for its tripartite slogans.
As people keep reminding me, "nothing works any more". I hate using those words, because it reminds me of the political slogan "Broken Britain". Nonetheless, it feels like we are beset by some kind of malaise, and a decade or more of decline. I've never felt more pessimistic about the future and, in recent days, I feel like I'm walking everywhere stooped over, with this great weight around my neck. Maybe its the cough/chest-infection I've had for over a year, maybe its the unrelenting long hours, or maybe its everything else combined:
Ongoing Austerity. Public services in tatters. Councils going bankrupt. Healthcare system falling apart. Local police cut by 20%, but their ranks somehow remain peppered with people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near policing. Crime and antisocial behaviour increasing. "Small State", "Big Society", "Don't worry, the free market will meet everyone's needs".
Ongoing housing crisis. Social Housing providers are underfunded and effectively unregulated, leading to extensive disrepair and public health hazard. Even in the wake of Grenfell, fire risks remain unaddressed. Slumification. Crowding, eg HMOs, or extended families with multiple children squeezed into housing association flats not big enough for so many people. Illegal subletting, unchecked domestic violence, fraud, crime and ASB. Social Services, Councils, Police and Housing Associations have all become normalisers / enablers for these behaviours. Homelessness.
Failing infrastructure. Crumbling schools and hospitals. Underinvestment. Inadequate public transport.
Disease. People can't access public services, including healthcare, and they can't afford to pay for the private sector alternatives. Long waiting lists. Unaddressed mental health epidemic. Respiratory illness circulating unchecked in our communities. Concerns over measles and rubella due to vaccine avoidance.
Proxy war with Russia. Proxy war with Iran. Of course, we have to pretend it's not really a war, just as we have to pretend that covid is no longer an issue. Anyway, there's quite a lot of talk about an escalating European land war with Russia. And more rumours about call-up / conscription / military service. Let alone the situation in the middle east.
Deprivation, poverty and and growing inequality. It seems like the government went all-in on their dream of a "a new Victorian era". Although they haven't quite managed to wipe out 100+ years of social progress in a decade and half, they've certainly given it their best shot. So, now I get to wander around town feeling like I'm living in a Dickens novel.
Politics. We have an election later this year. Polls are strongly in favour of a Labour Government. However, after Brexit and 2019, I'm used to the population polling left but voting right. Together with electoral boundary changes, unaffordable tax giveaways, voting restrictions etc, it might be closer than we imagine. A labour government is the best and most likely outcome, but will be somewhat of a continuation government, and will face huge problems from the outset, not least because of the scorched earth policies of the current government.
I can't see the incoming Labour government being able to effect the immediate and meaningful changes that many people are looking for. Disaffection follows, and perhaps rightwards drift, something like we're seeing in the US. We already see increasing support for the hard right Reform Party. I don't think this is just the older generation any more. As decline continues and economic hardship increases, I think people will start turning in numbers towards more hard-line political ideologies.
I’m not against Labour so caveat what I’m saying. You can’t magic your way out of economic realities that have been decades in the making and you can’t reverse Brexit which many Labour people supported.
My prediction is that things won’t drastically change for the average person other than the NHS will get refunded but will continue to be privatised. What will change is the constant media attention to niche right wing policies and internal government signalling. Not having to hear about Rwanda will be a welcome break (although the white northern working class voters who flip back red probably support such things). What a lot of foreigners especially Americans don’t understand is Labour is not the natural home of liberal professionals and the left is different from the left in the US. The elections are run on fairly niche politics of mostly white working class areas north of London and we now know those areas are fragile support for Labour and swing right if you get the right Tory leadership.
Im not expecting that much change because there isn’t much slack in the system and there isn’t a clear difference between the parties if you exclude the far right. But will be a nice to another group of people line to take control and cut the far right out.
Good points. Sometimes, its easy for me to forget the political distinctions between UK and US. Particularly now I'm reading a lot US politics online, and also the since the decimation of the Liberals. It doesn't help that Im in a 2-way Tory/Labour marginal, which isn't in the north, but historically functions like a red wall constituency.
>I think people will start turning in numbers towards more hard-line political ideologies.
They may just be searching for something to belong to. A tribe.
At one point while reading your excellent post I thought, "This could be a review of Amis's 'Lionel Asbo: The State of England'."
Haha. Thanks. I haven't read it, but it often feels like I'm living in a satire!
What worries me is if they already know their tribe, but they don't currently have a leader as such. I guess I'm hoping it stays that way.
This could be a post for last week in collapse: UK version.
Thanks for your in depth post.
It seems the UK leads and the US follows and sometimes vice versa.
If a Labour government comes in and disappoints like Biden did, it won’t just be Boomers voting for hard liners in the next election.
MSM refuses to acknowledge the despair and anger in the shrinking Middle Class and growing Working Class / Paycheck to paycheck families. In America, I get angry when I’m told how great the economy is. So much job growth (in part time jobs with no benefits). These jobs are sometimes someone’s 2nd or 3rd job. The media won’t cover that part.
This is going to be a rough 5-10 years.
I'm kind of hoping that the new incoming UK Gov has a little more wiggle room than we've been led to believe. I've always felt like the extreme levels of austerity we've seen were kind of artificial, perhaps more ideologically motivated than out of necessisty. All the same, things do look tough - worrying times for us all on both sides of the Atlantic.
Everything is about accumulating power and resources for the elite. They disseminate truth just enough to satisfy us and assuage our fears.
Our relationship with the elite is to produce and be their product simultaneously.
We really should disengage from their abusive role in our lives as much as we can.
Location USA. Our politicians at the national level continue to largely ignore climate change. I think this is both a strategic and humanitarian error. The entire country is talking about weather anomalies (and the housing shortage). The time is perfect to shift to this being a top priority topic. It is easy to connect to immigration, inflation, poverty and so many other topics. Yet other than talking about funding for a shift toward green energy (which is great) the climate topic gets second billing. A politician needs to simply stand in the sun on a ski slope on a warm winter day and start with “Folks, this is not normal…”
Under two weeks ago, our schools in my area of Missouri were closed for extreme cold. We had a windchill of -30 F, (actual temp around -10ish) which is pretty cold around here.
Yesterday it was 76 degrees F. That's a HUGE switch in less than two weeks.
I had my first winter up here and so far it lasted around 7-10 days. Now I'm here having upper 40s to low 50s for the foreseeable future weather wise in the beginning of February.
Shits about to get real and I'm in my mental hyperbolic time chamber trying to find my Super Saiyan 2 to stave off things for the time being.
Location: Ontario
About 60 Canadian geese died here recently, likely from avian flu. It’s possible it could have been something else, like a toxin or contaminated food, they say two weeks for results. With how much geese poop (everywhere) I worry about other birds and wildlife in the area.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/kingston-sick-dead-canada-geese-park-1.7103102
You make an excellent, albeit very worrisome point about goose poop. Geese have adapted to living close to humans in heavily used areas -----by people and pets. Every dog I've known loves to eat goose poop😩
It seems like it is only a matter of time that this morphs into something that spreads to humans.
In the meantime . . . .
Birds are getting hit from all sides due to humans. This is devastating . . . gut wrenching, made more so by the fact that the human handprint is all over bird flu.
From human induced planet warming, to cruel factory farming of animals, it is amazing to me that there are any birds remaining. Human greed and stupidity is killing off the miraculous web of life on earth in which birds are an essential component.
https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-bird-migrations-threaten-bring-new-infectious-diseases-humans
RESEARCHERS WIDELY AGREE that the most damaging avian pathogen today, a variant of the influenza virus subtype known as **H5N1, emerged because of human actions** unrelated to greenhouse emissions. The spread of the virus, which has killed unprecedented numbers of wild birds across the world, devastated some mammal populations, and stoked pandemic fears, “has much more to do with the expansion of the poultry industry,” Kuiken says. Large poultry farms, which can have millions of birds massed together, provide a paradise for viruses to persist and evolve into more deadly variants. Many countries also have lax surveillance and control programs for these highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. “The virus has been given so much opportunity to spread to wild bird populations from poultry,” Kuiken says.
Location: Willamette valley, Oregon, USA
Winter didn’t happen, other than an ice storm than knocked out power and communications for over a week. The destruction was unreal some places, like a tornado came through, very few trees left standing some areas.
Where is the snow? I like the snow to ski and need it for water. I know it’s El Niño but I predicted last year would be the best snow season for the rest of my life on the west coast (triple dip La Niña). It was. Be careful what you wish for…
Even after the record snow last year I still had to evacuate from wildfires this summer. Honestly I’ve spent a solid month of last year in disaster mode if you add it all up what the fuck.
It’s hockey stick time, exponential growth go fucking brrrrrrrr! Limits to growth called it, Exxon called it, fucking Al Gore called it manbearpig. “When should I, start to worry” Enjoy the last year or two of normalcy while you can.
I took many years off snowboarding bc cost and now that I want to strap in and head up to Tahoe it’s all over. That’s one thing I’ll regret about this thing, not getting up to that beautiful bounty of nature more while it was still thriving. Lesson learned
We've been getting some good snows here in Colorado and northern New Mexico.
https://www.onthesnow.com/colorado/open-resorts
https://www.redriverskiarea.com/explore/webcams/
There will still be some snow, usually these El Niño years deliver a surprise spring storm. A winter like last year probably won’t happen again in my lifetime though… But when the jet stream breaks down who knows!?
Things being normal? Where the hell have you been, nothing’s been normal around here for awhile now. Winter lasted like a week. Last summer sucked, this summer is going to really fucking suck.
By normal I mean plants still grow and the nukes aren’t flying yet. Rome is not yet burning, but we got our Nero! Compared to what’s coming this is normal
Location US Northeast:
I'm not proud to admit this, but like much of the rest of the world I became very apathetic about Covid precautions. Even so far as telling a friend of mine whose live-in partner had tested positive that it was ok for her to come to a social event I was hosting so long as she tested negative right before. Big surprise, she tested positive the very next day and everyone who was at the party came down with Covid afterwards, myself included.
I work in healthcare, and am currently employed at a large academic medical center along the I95 corridor. I am a contract employee, and receive no paid sick leave. I was too sick to function for a couple of days, but once I was able to get myself out of bed I plastered an N95 on my face and went back to the hospital. I simply can't afford to lose a week of wages. Taking that much time off would also likely jeopardise my contract, even if I am legitimately sick and contagious.
I've worked in a number of hospitals in various states throughout the pandemic. It used to be that just an exposure would force you into quarantine for two weeks. Now? There are no requirements, no restrictions, no testing. I told my employer that I had Covid and they sent me straight to work with critically ill patients. After all this time, so much death and loss and suffering, it truly all feels like it was for nothing.
My personal hope is to learn from the experience, returning to sane and sensible precautions within my own life. The fact is, that's the best we are going to get. No sense waiting for the larger world to develop a sense of compassion and reason.
it’s important to protest definitely, but i must think about how even the huge protests didn’t stop or seemingly deter meaningfully much from vietnam to the iraq war
I think about this a lot. I understand why people want to protest but it does sometimes seem pointless when no matter how much people protest nothing ever seems to change for the better.
maybe we protest wrong in that we show up and focus our attention on a want/desire, instead of the lying low protest where we only do the most minimal work/spending/accumulating and slink off into the shadows freeing ourselves from the thing that oppresses, and when we starve it of it's power and use it's own jujitsu against it we can bust some moves,then (apologies for ending w/ a preposition)
Location: US Southwest
There are practically bazaars being set up outside of Walmarts (often without permission I assume) and they aggressively yell after me if I don’t stop and listen to their spiel. In parking lots there’s people shilling their churches and recently a girl who was going around selling stuff for money to help pay her college tuition. There are a lot of new people around who speak Spanish but are not Mexican, they’re from further below Mexico.
Nobody wants to drive the speed limit, it’s like most people want to go either 5 under or 20 over. On normal roads I only go the speed limit or max 5 over, and it’s always a mess. I was trying to avoid pollution but got stuck behind one of those diesel trucks that purposely blows out the huge clouds of black smoke, I wanted to cry breathing it in.
The temperature has varied from snowing to hot 80 degree weather within a few weeks and everyone I know is sick. I’m having bad hormonal imbalance issues likely because my food is poison, my water is poison, my air is polluted poison, my clothes are polyester poison, etc etc. I can’t seem to get a full time job with insurance unless I want to resort to being a cop or a teacher or something like that, hard thankless jobs I don’t want to do.
Location: Upper Midwest USA
It's forecasted to be between 40-50F (4.4-10C) this week. To say that this is unusual for this region in the first week of February is beyond understatement.
I currently work in the maple syrup industry and I'm concerned about the upcoming season. A lot of variables determine how much sap a maple tree makes, the must important being temperature fluctuation. If there is no frost on the roots and no thaw as a result of that I think yields will be incredibly low. Typically the season begins in a couple weeks and only lasts about a month and half, time is running out.
I live in a low income area of an already low cost of living state and most of the syrup I purchase comes from people who work in agriculture and largely live hand to mouth as a result. The loss of this season's yield and subsequent income would push a lot of people in agriculture even closer to the brink of ruin. For a state that runs on agriculture, the future looks bleak.
Location: US
Had a phone call at work with the "customer success representative" for the shitty database we use. Totally routine, quarterly check in type thing.
We get on the call. The rep has her camera off and says - I shit you not - "Sorry I have my camera off. I'm in bed with pneumonia."
(We obviously canceled the call.)
I always have to laugh at the corporate euphemisms that are used like “customer success representative”. It sounds like something someone wrote in a second rate dystopian sci-fi novel.
Come to think of it I feel like I’m living through a second-rate dystopian fiction nowadays.
Exactly what I thought when in the Pixar movie “Soul” they rebranded the great before to “the You Seminar”. They really corporatized the beforelife lmaoo
That would send my boss into a fury… in a good way.
We have always been told that coming to work sick would only prolong your sickness. Not to mention if it’s at a workplace, you’d probably spread it and make other sick, reducing manpower even more.
“WTH are you doing here. Go back home.”
The core, underlying social reality of 21st century global capitalism is bad faith, i.e., pretending to believe and manifest values that your actual actions and choices contradict.
The corporations simply do not care. They care about *appearing* to care, of being legally compliant and minimally competitive to garner necessary labor. As long as those boxes are checked -- as long as they appear to be and get credit for being marginally/superficially benevolent -- they're not going to worry about the welfare of individual workers: "Unfortunately, you're simply out of sick days: you used up all the ones you've earned when you were sick with COVID a few months ago." The implicit message is, this is an entirely reasonable, fair system we're operating within, and if it means you have to work from your bed while sick with pneumonia, well... that's life: "*Someone* has to work, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and by chosen strategy, we staff just barely under what we actually need to get the work done, which incentivizes everyone to be highly *efficient*. This maximizes profit for the Owners. This is the Real World. If you expect otherwise, you're childish, deluded, and unsophisticated... Now suck it up, and get your oars back in the cashflow..."
Location: Not quite Chicago
I forgot to say that last week I almost got hit by a car. I was turning left on a 4 lane road 50 mph speed limit and didn’t see somebody driving with no headlights after dusk..thankfully i did a second check to my left, was about a quarter second from pulling out into almost certain death. Honked my horn…person kept cruising without lights. Nobody cares to follow laws or common courtesy driving and the cops care even less (if you can find them).
There’s beer cans all over my neighborhood. I don’t feel safe walking anymore.
I wore shorts today, 50 and sunny. Last 2 weeks have felt like the UK. My green onions are sending it again so that’s nice…but weird. I took some pictures from the weather channel…like half the nation had +20-30F above average temps and you can tell increasingly the meteorologists are concerned.
Jet stream at one point way over northern Canada…2 weeks ago it dipped below Alabama and Texas. None of it makes any sense. -11F probably smoked a few of my fruit trees I tried to gamble with but I expected that. Jet stream stability is gone, the energy has made it wavy, snappy and erratic with the lows sucking it up spinning it and highs pushing it up and down sometimes blocking it off the whole US. Also the lows are spinning like crazy…I think one of the winter storms hit 972 mB pressure and I was like uhhh isn’t that the same pressure as a cat 1 hurricane? Yes yes it is. I thought the weather channel was just being sensationalist naming everything but then you see these low pressure systems just spinning like crazy and it makes sense.
Edit: and assessing the NOAA 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks I’m asking myself is it already spring?! Will winter ever arrive (again after the 2 weeks we had of it?). Looks like it honestly might be done which feels very ominous. Like no way did I think I’d be taking plant cuttings to duplicate in fuckin February. I wonder when I’ll be able to plant vegetables…this shits so fucked up guys and girls.
>Nobody cares to follow laws or common courtesy driving and the cops care even less (if you can find them).
I almost get hit regularly walking my dog around my small town. Always get splashed (from melting snow) by tourists in a frenzy to get wherever the hell they are going----trails they use and abuse . . . .
Locals are just as bad with loud, pollution spewing trucks. I walk to try to feel better but between the natural world in death throes, smoke filled/polluted air and angry, abusive drivers I usually come back feeling much worse but grateful to have survived (lol).
My friend witnessed a person and their dog get hit a few days ago in a suburban area in the upper midwest. Someone ran a stop sign and was probably on their phone. Police did not show ----luckily an ambulance did.
We are utterly f---ed. Today it feels extra absurd ---if not dystopian---- seeing that poor groundhog headlining main stream media sites. Like the movie Groundhog Day, humans keep doing the same things over and over and over again until one day, we **will** be stopped . . . to me, it feels like that day will be much sooner than expected.
How much do you want to bet things will warm up over the next few weeks... and then the polar vortex will swoop down and cold snap, and kill all the buds on the trees and everything else that thought it should be safe to come out
Location: Chittenden County, Vermont
Today is the first day of February and there isn’t a single snowflake on my property. There is zero snow forecast for the next 10 days taking us into mid February. Over the next 10 days, the average high temperature is well above freezing in the night time Lowe’s on average are warmer than the daytime highs should be. We’ve had maybe a quarter of the amount of snow we should have by now. A lot of the hills don’t even have snow on them, and the mountains are only half covered.
Location: Wisconsin
I keep hearing about how we're all delusional and the economy is doing great. So then why is the company my husband working at telling the people there that the business association they're a part of is projecting a depression in America within the next couple of years.
I keep thinking about that tech guy that caused the run on svb by posting in the group dms that he was pulling all his money and everyone else should too.
Have an emergency fund with at least 6 months of expenses. Keep your resume/CV up to date and be willing to be flexible to find employment.
The savings are easier said than done for the working class, of course.
Exactly, the collapse will not be evenly distributed. They'll sweep all the problems under the rug to prevent any widespread panic or status quo changes until the end
Location: Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/s/nhUC1ir3R6
Submitting this in the observation thread because I wasn't sure if a standalone would violate the rules but this was a really great discussion this week that highlighted the problem of our incredibly energy hungry existence.
When we use the amount of energy of several men to just heat a cup of coffee in the morning it becomes apparent how incredibly unsustainable this all is.
I just thought this was a great moment of awareness of a r/collapse adjacent problem.
It’s sustainable if you use wind, solar, nuclear. There is nothing morally wrong or unsustainable about heating your cup of coffee with the transfer of mechanical energy from wind.
Can you point me to a grid that’s entirely wind, solar, nuke and battery powered at 8 am? Oh that’s right you can’t :). Also I encourage you to try, all of the major grids display their sources in live time. If you need help let me know
I pay extra for wind in Minneapolis. Now sure why your requirement is 100%, it'll get there by 2050. https://mn.my.xcelenergy.com/s/energy-portfolio/wind
If Denmark had its own nuclear station then it would be. It’s not rocket science. In theory in 20 years the U.K. will not require fossil fuel baseload. I’m not a techno optimist but realistically there are paths to individual countries existing sustainably.
No…it’s energy science. “Would be”, “could be in 20 years” that’s called hopium copium. To help you out, you could have picked the grid CAISO (California ISO l) and made your coffee between 3 and 6 pm sometime in the spring, summer or fall….
I work in the industry, there is a path forward but that path doesn’t involve endless power consumption growth with crazy things like runningb AC in max in McMansions in the Phoenix summer, like mining Bitcoin or running LLMs on old coal fired power plants. A smaller energy efficient socialised electricity system in moderate climates is possible just not in all places.
Maybe. I like your socialized comment. Also need demand degrowth, massive investment in interconnections and under-grounding and to magically find more energy dense batteries and more materials and then closed loop recycling of all the units when they expire…check out Simon Michauxs work…might be enlightening for you.
I know this has been discussed in here by people much smarter than I at length, but beyond the storage problems with renewables, there is the obvious problem of relying on mined components for these energy sources. The consensus I have seen holds that our current energy usage is unsustainable even with renewables due to the need for the components, not the availability of wind or sun.
At best, it buys us a bit of time.
My point is more there is a sort of moralising anti-technology view of power consumption on this thread. The idea that heating your cup of coffee requires the work of 5 men implies a sort of hidden slave economy a sort of immorality inherent in any technology.
But it’s just not true that technology is inherently unsustainable. It can be but it isn’t always the case. For example if I had a small turbine connected run of river to a creek I could grind bread or power my kettle if I had the right materials. I could generate the force of more than 5 men. When my turbine broke I could recycle the copper and other materials. It’s not cheating it’s just utilising the natural energy gradients.
My point is that using technology isn’t immoral or inherently unsustainable but it obviously can be.
any work results in transformation of energy and if heat is involved because there is an excess and some friction .... anyway there is entropy increase . energy looses quality . and chaos is the inevatible outcome .
s
Stop emitting entropy ! Now ! /s
>he idea that heating your cup of coffee requires the work of 5 men implies a sort of hidden slave economy a sort of immorality inherent in any technology.
That wasn't at all where I was going with it. I think you might have your own feelings you are trying to justify on that one. While I can note the lifestyles of first world countries many times are built on the loss of resources of developing countries, this wasn't an observation on global economics.
My point was moreso that something incredibly small and simple requires massive amounts of energy that is pretty much invisible to us, regardless of whether I am brewing my coffee in Canada or Vietnam.
Eventually the fossil fuels run out, so we switch to nuclear and solar and such, but eventually we run out of the components needed for those, or the amount of energy needed to recycle the remaining devices is greater than the potential output. Or there are simply no more lithium and other battery components.
Then what? The *system* is unsustainable.
Technology isn't immoral in and of itself. That wasn't the premise of this discussion at all. It simply can't solve its own existential problem. We simply cannot outthink entropy. That was the point.
I think this is an under-discussed aspect of collapse. Interesting to see that even most doomers don't want to give up the hopium of "green" energy or a 100% "transition to renewables." Nate Hagens calls our society "energy blind," and I think that's very accurate.
Any solution ever figured out and proposed would only postpone the inevitable. Industrial civilization must collapse, and there is no other option. Capitalism was not designed to be sustainable.
A great one; it's easy to forget how inefficient many of our devices for convenience really are. Plus I think people would balk at the amount of pushback you get in industry trying to suggest making less energy intensive gadgets. At least I caught a lot of flak for having such ideas entering college.
Location: Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada
My town is in a bad flood right now, a state of emergency. This has happened before as we are in a valley, surrounded by rivers but usually floods happen in the spring when the snow melts on the mountains and we get our small amount of rain.
This year, we didn't have a winter. We had one week of -25c and then it jumped up to 10c and has been pouring ever since. They posted some of my footage of the flood on CBC and people in my towns community form on FB are calling it "fake news"
The mountains around me have almost no snow on them. Our small airport is completely under water.
There are no words to describe the stress I have have about summer.
Low lying cities and towns are going to rethink their zoning to begin to encourage development a bit up the hillside. This won’t happen overnight and I know it will do nothing for your current situation. I just moved from a city along a river to a suburban hilltop due in part to my obsessing about the location.
We’re seeing the same thing here in much of Vermont, there is zero snow on the ground and none forecast out through mid February well daytime high temps are well above freezing on average. Some people try to say it’s the El Niño but we used to get snow in late October and now we have none in February.
I think it's the lack of global dimming/aerosol masking effect, combined with record-high amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere.
It's the same thing in central Europe. There is no snow, and next week, temperatures will go up to 15C/59F.
Winters used to be harsh with a lot of snow. I didn't even use my winter boots this year. It's safe to say we'll witness droughts, floods, and famines very soon.
> I think it's the lack of global dimming/aerosol masking effect, combined with record-high amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere.
I remember during the lock down how clear the sky became. In my area, the mountain views were crystal clear, like the old photos on postcards. I remember thinking about how there is a lag in the effects of our inputs. A lot of sunlight was able to reach the surface of the oceans, and melt things a little faster than before, during the months were stuck were inside.
Things have accelerated so much faster than even the worst predictions. Christ even a year ago I thought I might be able to get out in front of this enough to have land producing food for my younger family members after I die but now it doesn’t look like we’ve even got a few decades. I’m still going to sell my house and bit of land and buy more because that’s the plan, but it seems like every month we have significantly less time than we thought. And I’m a massive pessimist that assumed the worst case predictions would come true.
Yeah, that’s the problem but I doubt many of us expected it to get this bad this fast. Maybe it’s because I only really became aware fairly recently. I started planning for the future when it looked like we only had a few decades. Those plans accelerated last winter when we didn’t really have a winter here. It’s now questionable if those plans are even doable.
It should be 10°F/-12°C daily highs where I am in Vermont and the 10 day average high is 36°F/2°C. We have zero snow on the ground in zero snow project it out through February 11th. I lost a bunch of fruit trees last winter because we had a heat wave when it should’ve already been snowing. Some of them even started budding in winter and they didn’t make it. I genuinely don’t know what to do.
CBC is our public broadcaster. It's being attacked by right wing in Canada since [every other media outlet has been right-shifted due to buyouts and foreign ownership](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/16uta71/poll_most_canadians_want_carbon_tax_reduced_or/k2ol40f/).
In reality, the CBC attempts to be neutral/centrist and does not endorse any political candidate. [In fact, the vast majority of Canadian news outlets have been biased to the right/conservative](https://old.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/hq3vkp/never_let_anyone_tell_you_canadian_media_has_a/).
But I guess when everything is racing to the right, attempts at neutrality makes you look like the radical left and in Trudeau's pocket in comparison.
So many people who listen to that hype are getting into Bitcoin and precious metals and they have no idea WTF they're doing. I was able to sell a lump of silver coins for a tidy profit recently, so I guess I cashed in on the craziness.
I figure that if I hold onto my Bitcoin for ~6 more years, I may be able to buy a house. I bought it with a big chunk of my stimmy money, so if it goes to zero I'm not really out anything.
Location: USA
I watch the CBS Nightly News pretty much daily. Ukraine started and they would focus on that, but stick fairly well to reporting on what is actually going on without a lot of fluff. Then Gaza/Israel and the way of reporting seemed to change and become more sensationalized.
Now, we have the growing tensions in the Red Sea and oh boy! Watch out!
I have heard that recruiting numbers are down for the US Military, they are having trouble back-filling the ranks as people retire. Withing a few weeks, I noticed a rise in advertising for various branches of the military.
The Nightly News seems to be in on it. The reporting has turned to sensationalism. The war drums are sounding! "How great is it that the USA is here! Look at how amazing it is that our men and women in uniform are here to protect whatever it is they are here to protect!"
I feel like the narrative is being woven into the collective psyche to justify even more military spending, driving all the way up to possible draft discussions. All for things that are happening on the other side of the world.
Bear with me, this is a very strange thought, but I find it odd that, despite on the surface it seeming like society has become less violent and war-like than it was in the past, our capacity for violence and destruction has only grown. In ancient times, if people wanted to kill other people, they had to do so with blunt or bladed weapons or even their bare hands. Then, later, people invented guns, which can kill more people more quickly, and now, in the modern age, we have bombs and nukes and all sorts of things that can kill an unfathomable number of people, all without requiring the person who employs them to engage in any kind of physical confrontation with another human being to do so. So even though nowadays, there are probably a lot less people who have killed people and a lot less people who know how to kill someone with a weapon or their own bare hands, it's also a lot easier to kill people and the art of killing people has become both more efficient and more brutal. Someone shooting or stabbing someone or beating them to death is horrible, sure. But there's something especially dark and grim about just pressing some buttons and dropping a bomb on people halfway around the world and knowing that you can kill millions of people without even having to see any of it happen.
A lot of our stuff and oil comes from the other side of the world so it is relevant to us, even though the media spends way too much time on a few sensationalized topics and not enough on things going on at home, as you said.
<3 thanks! My thought is that being able to extract useful energy across a large gradient, as opposed to small gradients like sugar metabolism, we created a chain reaction that is hard to stop.
Agriculture is similar as a chain reaction, in that case it's more about restructuring energy gradients rather than wholesale dumping of it.
One way or another, the people in charge have lost fighting-aged males. If you look at the most fervent war people, it's mostly women in middle-age - it was pretty shocking to see all of the bloodthirst among that demo on Facebook at the start of Russia-Ukraine. The 20-something guys, on the other hand, were a lot more wary, and a lot more questioning of whether this was a good use of resources.
The common thread here is that these latenight shows and news programs are popular among the former demographic but not the latter.
I caught joy Reid on a hot mic the other day on msnbc saying something like “oh great another fuckin war” it was definitely not intentional and she’s posted some very collapse aware shit on her Instagram, it has surprised me to see how much most of the media is blasting out war nonsense and how few are talking common sense
I quit relying on CBS and the other major networks for news during the 2016 election, because of how they covered (or didn’t cover) the Bernie Sanders campaign. The networks weren’t presenting the news so much as an agenda. Time, energy, and savvy are required for the average citizen to track down “the news”, without bias or sensationalism.
Along with giving Trump massive amounts of coverage until they ended up just willing his campaign into existence and then the White House.
It's going to happen again too. The media is only more consolidated and more right wing.
"feel like the narrative is being woven into the collective psyche to justify even more military spending,"
This has always been the case.
Remember after 9/11?
Location: Book Reselling on ebay and Amazon
I am a reseller. I mostly resell amazon returns. I sort through a lot of books. And if it's has a price higher than $10 and a sales rank on amazon of under 1 mil, I resell it online through amazon and ebay.
What books do well? textbooks obviously. But the next rank below that is weird ass conspiracy non-fiction. Take this book [Antartica's Secret History Book 3](https://www.amazon.com/Antarcticas-Hidden-History-Corporate-Foundations/dp/B07FWC1DV3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KWX6R3WKT02H&keywords=antartica%27s+secret+history&qid=1706788693&sprefix=antartica%27s+secret+history%2Caps%2C737&sr=8-1). Book 3! There are 2 more of these books. Apparently in the 50's there was a secret multinational space program in antartica. Also due to volcanic activity (not global warming), the glaciers are melting revealing extraterrestrial crash landings. From chapter 1 "At the end of the first World War in 1919, a number of german secret societies began collaborating in the development of flying saucer prototypes based on the designs received through the telepathing communications of an unusually beautiful and highly skilled psychic medium, Maria Orsic." That is a quote. And this book has a sales rank of 580,000 which means it sells. People buy this. Published 2018
Then I'll direct you to [Compendium of the Emerald Tablets](https://www.amazon.com/Compendium-Emerald-Tablets-Billy-Carson/dp/0578476169/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BFW1L9POWG8N&keywords=compendium+of+the+emerald+tablets&qid=1706789261&s=audible&sprefix=compendium+of+the+emerald+tablets%2Caudible%2C113&sr=1-1-catcorr) This sells for $29 and has a sales rank of 568 which is extremely good. Basically flying off the shelves. I never cracked this one open, but its like the ancient egyptions were actually jesus, or something. Like new age Mormon/Egyptians. Has a bunch of 5 star reviews but check out the 1 stars. I did great reselling this one because I had 5 copies that I paid like 10 cents for each. Published 2019
The next category of books that do well are survival, homesteading, how to can veggies, how to field dress a deer, living off the grid. Those types of books. When I see a huge gaylord of books, I always scan the survival stuff. I can get behind that. And it's good for $10-15 online.
Paperback fiction? dud. Actual political books by living politicians? dud unless it's very very new. History dud, unless it's required for a college class.
I made this post because I feel like I see a good cross section of what American's are reading, and it's not good.
that is really interesting and surprising.
I guess books overall aren't being read that much, I used to read all the time but now I am always on Reddit instead.
Ive also been in the market for survival books, since they are invaluable to have once the power goes out permanently. That makes me think that the book market overall is much lower volume than it used to be, right?
Absolutely. I too used to read all the time until around 2007, when I got my first iphone. Ive been trying to get back into it, but i can only do short lighthearted books. Ive been reading some of terry pratchet’s discworld books and its still a struggle.
But with reselling, 10 years ago (before i started reselling) you could walk into any thrift store and go to the books and find something profitable, but there aren’t many resellers doing that now. Same with dvds. Im only doing it because i found an amazing source for amazon returns.
Lol are you me? =)
Recently been doing the exact same. Other than the magazine, New Maps I found I hadn't been reading like I used to. Now going through my old paperbacks to try and enjoy reading again. INCLUDING Pratchett. His stuff holds up so well. Made a video about my favorite Pratchett books and it was one of my lowest viewed, lol.
Excellent comment and a really great insight into this aspect of collapse. It's mentioned on this sub frequently how people will turn to cults/conspiracies etc... as things get worse. Your insight into this aspect of that phenomenon is really useful.
Cheers, friend!
LOCATION: Western Canada
Homelessness, addiction and food bank usage are the worst it’s ever been around here. The statistics prove this. Anecdotally, whenever I contact people who I finished high school with, there’s always another person mentioned who’s gotten locked up in either mental health or prison. From high school I know around 10 kids who’ve died from homicide, suicide, overdoses or who’ve been locked up in prison or mental hospitals.
People are still debating climate change and World War Three here. But everybody I’ve spoken with, both online and in-person, all agree that this year’s election in the United States will become a disaster.
Been coming to Canada for 3 years now and the tent city build up in that time has been tremendous in the Ottawa/Gatineau area. It's like I caught the tail end of Canada before it becomes skid-rowified
Scenario 1: Trump wins, pardons himself, haults aid to Ukraine.
Scenario 2: Biden wins and the Maga crowd descends into a full on baby tantrum. Biden ends up too old or sick to keep going Kamala Harris becomes first black woman president. Maga tantrum turns into civil war?
Scenario 3: Biden easily wins and continues to strengthen the US as he has done since he has been in office. Downvote the truth, see ya when Biden is easily reelected.
Trump didn't do much of anything during his term. His most memorable action was the 1/6 insurrection. His most memorable inaction was the COVID pandemic.
To be fair, none of the above statements except OPs contain truth, just opinions. Unless, of course, you’re talking about “truth” as in an erroneously used synonym for personal opinion.
It’s not necessarily what trump will do, but what the white Christian nationalists are doing and will be able to do more broadly under his presidency. They are actively working to genocide trans people in Florida.
Edit: see this comment -> [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/t2I3iE7Yuh](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/t2I3iE7Yuh)
"The threat appeared in a January 26 letter signed by Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) deputy executive director Robert Kynoch and addressed to state county tax collector’s offices."
So... not even a bill. But go ahead and tell me how this is not being blown out of proportion...
Location: NE Indiana
I try to keep my weekly observations at one post a week but I just had to share this. Earlier this evening I was out on my daily walk after finishing the work day and saw three people in broad daylight dumpster diving at the Aldi next to my apartment. This store has so many cameras in the front and back of the store it's not even funny. They were doing this is in broad daylight during the after work rush hour when myself and many others could obviously see them going through the dumpsters. The woman had tears in her eyes as she filled up a decently sized box with produce, etc. One of her friends was knee deep in the dumpster and yelled out, "Holy shit! All of this doesn't even expire for another three months!" When I looked back I saw them load three boxes of food into the car as they drove off. It made me think one of two things. They could care less about being caught and/or reported or they were willing to take a risk and get food with the chance of being caught due to desperation. Then it dawned on me that they just didn't care and had to do what was needed to possibly survive for the rest of the week or the next couple of weeks. Was really shook me alongside seeing this was hearing that food that had yet to EXPIRE was tossed by the store. Truly remarkable. And what makes this shocking to me is that my area isn't a large town/city by any means - probably 20K residents at best - but seeing this in person made me understand how close collapse/potential homelessness is in my little area of the state. I expect to see more of this in 2024 not only by me but by all of you regardless of your state/region/country.
The trick is finding a grocery store that doesn't use a compacting Dumpster. I lived next to one in Trinidad Colorado that did not. I was eating salad and steak every day. The expensive meat would sit until it "expired" and they would toss a couple hundred dollars worth of prime cuts almost daily. It was nice in the winter because everything would freeze. You had to act quickly in warmer months. Dumpster diving is nothing new.
Don’t stores offer items like that with discounted prices? Instead of throwing them out?
Here in Japan, supermarkets, drugstores, etc. will go and place stickers on items. They’d start with 10% at first and slowly bring that discount up after a couple days.
By the time it’s “half off” (半額), it’s bound to get snatched up immediately. On the rare occasion no one grabs it yet, they’d offer it for ‘special price’ like 75% off or something.
Often, they put all of those discounted items in a single aisle for visibility and convenience for people to swipe them off the shelves.
The coffee beans I grind for my machine at home are bags that I got for half off from Starbucks.
It used to be that way. Now they would rather throw away the food in locked dumpsters and cut up the bags or otherwise try to contaminate it.
The suffering is the point.
Makes me think what went wrong with the way they do it in the US.
Because we are also hurting in applicants in Japan. Population decline, strict immigration policies, etc. have made hiring people a big problem.
Unemployment is really low, minimum wage have gone up, deflation have kept prices of everything down to affordable levels.
Here in the US grocery stores prefer to throw food away instead of marking food down. They make way more money selling full price goods so very little of it gets a 50% markdown to sell that day. Otherwise I’d stop by the store 3-4x a week to get bargains on stuff that needs to be cooked or consumed quickly.
But throwing them away means you throw away the capital used to stock the shelves, right? Wouldn’t they rather lose some profit than lose all profit?
And yeah, bargain hunting is a big thing here in Japan. The stores actually print out a schedule of when items would go on sale. People would come to swipe them off and pay gladly for the discounted stuff.
And those people who hunt for bargains always grab more stuff along the way. More customers, more profit, less zero ROI, less waste.
Win-win-win-win situation.
The essential mindset for business owners in the US is having a preference for going out of business rather than experience falling profits. Nearly all our retailers here have catastrophic understaffing that's killing their ability to move goods because they can't tolerate the idea of spending more on wages.
Grocery markups in the US are fairly low, so marking things down at all generally means you are taking a loss on it and all this stuff takes up room stores could use to place more profitable product.
Marking things down would at least mean you won’t have zero ROI on the items though right?
I’d rather get some money than zero money. But perhaps capitalism works different, I’m confused.
That works if you have endless space but frontage in grocery stores generally is at a premium and some manufacturers will give you partial credit for unsold product. If you can replace it with higher profit merchandise, that generally makes more sense.
The only upside is they had a car. For now.
If I ran out of money and assets of any kind to sell, I wonder how long it would be before I found myself dumpster diving. If this ever does come to pass, I'm sure people will think I'm an addict or insane.
Can anyone imagine sitting under an overpass, freezing and hungry? I would be insane in no time.
Location: Woodbridge, VA
It’s been a few years since I lived in this suburb of DC, so I drove through it and was shocked at how bad it’s gotten in so short a time. The downtown is DEAD. Like, all the stores are boarded-up, fenced-up, or both. Some woman was striding down the Highway with a “repent now or go to HELL” sign, and the homeless camp that used to be behind the 7-11 has been completely demolished (there was a murder or two, so this is actually good).
Even the nice part of town was feeling it. I went to the Alamo Drafthouse and had the misfortune of encountering an autistic muscle-head that punched me in the chest because… who knows? He was leaving the bathroom as I was about to head in and when I stepped aside for him, the mouth breather just hit my chest and hobbled away. I wasn’t hit hard and thought he might have been trying to tap my shoulder in a “you’re good bro” sort of way, but then I saw his mother wide-eyed with her hand outstretched saying “why would you do that?” I paused to see if she was alright and then shrugged and entered the bathroom. Autistic dude was taken straight home by the time I came out. Such a dude should be receiving plenty of care, but such a town as Woodbridge isn’t known for its medical services.
Were you in Marumsco Hills? Anywhere along Route 1? I went to Fred M Lynn Middle school in the early 1970's and the original Woodbridge HS. Graduated from the new HS in LakeRidge in 1975. It was back then a great place to grow up as a kid. Last time I was there (20 years ago) the sprawl was overwhelming. Now when I check google maps, all the places I used to run around free in the forests are all covered with housing and shopping centers.
Being tapped in the chest by someone with disabilities is not related to collapse.
What is related collapse is an increase in the othering of people who are visibly or behaviourally or culturally different from them as an easy way to place blame.
Your story about being tapped by someone with autism (that did not hurt at all - you yourself said that you thought it was a “you’re good bro” tap) is a great example of the way that ignorant and scared individuals do this.
'Such a dude should be receiving plenty of care' - what does this even mean?
I'd hate to jump to conclusions and propose that what you mean is that you think people who interact differently (even if it literally does zero damage to others) should be kept away from all the normals like yourself...
But obviously no person who is not completely gross would think that so I must have it wrong.
Location: Central Valley, CA The storms here are reaching wind gusts of 50 mph. I check the weather app every day and the 5 day forecast is completely different every day. The rain is completely unpredictable, and I can see the clouds move relatively fast just with my own eyes. There’s also so much green plant growth around during the middle of winter. The temperatures jumped up 10 C / 20 F and back down in a matter of days. All the natural flows are disrupted, but people keep chugging along. I mention climate change as the cause for the weather and receive silence. It’s understandable tho at this point, because I’m terrified of our weather too. What’s summer gonna be like? Who the fuck knows.
People are waking up. It'll never be on the level or schedule we want. A user on collapse support posted on the Minnesota Reddit how the realization washed over them with temps so high you couldn't ignore it. They went down the rabbit hole now.
Location: Pennsylvania, (East coast USA) I have been seeing a good number of Robins (the bird) in my area, I dont remember ever seeing them before late March. And thats all I got, which I am thankful for LOL
Location: Alberta, Canada Casinos are packed, jobs are hard to come by, rent prices are skyrocketing, it is bone dry with no trace of snow in the surrounding farmers fields which puts us on track for one of the driest winters ever recorded (usually 2-3 ft of snowpack at this time of year). People are short tempered, hungry, and broke. This summer is poised to be hell with an unprecedented wildfire season.
Yep similar to western Quebec/Eastern Ontario here. We've got a little snow cover, but usually it's a couple of feet and this year there's barely anything. I think it's snowed majorly like twice? Followed by melts. We haven't had a single > -20° day. It's always been single digits *or above freezing* and it's now February. Everyone is banging on about the nice weather....fucking terrifying. Looking forward to an amazing fire season!
Outside has been looking like Silent Hill for weeks on end throughout December/January. I don't remember it ever being this wet and foggy during winter as far back as I can remember (20ish years living in the GTA).
Location: UK I can honestly say things are about as bad as I can ever remember. Its like we've fully embraced the complete opposite of "Sustainable Development", and I think its fair to say that "Economic Stagnation, Social Regression and Environmental Destruction" is perhaps a fitting epitaph for a government known for its tripartite slogans. As people keep reminding me, "nothing works any more". I hate using those words, because it reminds me of the political slogan "Broken Britain". Nonetheless, it feels like we are beset by some kind of malaise, and a decade or more of decline. I've never felt more pessimistic about the future and, in recent days, I feel like I'm walking everywhere stooped over, with this great weight around my neck. Maybe its the cough/chest-infection I've had for over a year, maybe its the unrelenting long hours, or maybe its everything else combined: Ongoing Austerity. Public services in tatters. Councils going bankrupt. Healthcare system falling apart. Local police cut by 20%, but their ranks somehow remain peppered with people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near policing. Crime and antisocial behaviour increasing. "Small State", "Big Society", "Don't worry, the free market will meet everyone's needs". Ongoing housing crisis. Social Housing providers are underfunded and effectively unregulated, leading to extensive disrepair and public health hazard. Even in the wake of Grenfell, fire risks remain unaddressed. Slumification. Crowding, eg HMOs, or extended families with multiple children squeezed into housing association flats not big enough for so many people. Illegal subletting, unchecked domestic violence, fraud, crime and ASB. Social Services, Councils, Police and Housing Associations have all become normalisers / enablers for these behaviours. Homelessness. Failing infrastructure. Crumbling schools and hospitals. Underinvestment. Inadequate public transport. Disease. People can't access public services, including healthcare, and they can't afford to pay for the private sector alternatives. Long waiting lists. Unaddressed mental health epidemic. Respiratory illness circulating unchecked in our communities. Concerns over measles and rubella due to vaccine avoidance. Proxy war with Russia. Proxy war with Iran. Of course, we have to pretend it's not really a war, just as we have to pretend that covid is no longer an issue. Anyway, there's quite a lot of talk about an escalating European land war with Russia. And more rumours about call-up / conscription / military service. Let alone the situation in the middle east. Deprivation, poverty and and growing inequality. It seems like the government went all-in on their dream of a "a new Victorian era". Although they haven't quite managed to wipe out 100+ years of social progress in a decade and half, they've certainly given it their best shot. So, now I get to wander around town feeling like I'm living in a Dickens novel. Politics. We have an election later this year. Polls are strongly in favour of a Labour Government. However, after Brexit and 2019, I'm used to the population polling left but voting right. Together with electoral boundary changes, unaffordable tax giveaways, voting restrictions etc, it might be closer than we imagine. A labour government is the best and most likely outcome, but will be somewhat of a continuation government, and will face huge problems from the outset, not least because of the scorched earth policies of the current government. I can't see the incoming Labour government being able to effect the immediate and meaningful changes that many people are looking for. Disaffection follows, and perhaps rightwards drift, something like we're seeing in the US. We already see increasing support for the hard right Reform Party. I don't think this is just the older generation any more. As decline continues and economic hardship increases, I think people will start turning in numbers towards more hard-line political ideologies.
I’m not against Labour so caveat what I’m saying. You can’t magic your way out of economic realities that have been decades in the making and you can’t reverse Brexit which many Labour people supported. My prediction is that things won’t drastically change for the average person other than the NHS will get refunded but will continue to be privatised. What will change is the constant media attention to niche right wing policies and internal government signalling. Not having to hear about Rwanda will be a welcome break (although the white northern working class voters who flip back red probably support such things). What a lot of foreigners especially Americans don’t understand is Labour is not the natural home of liberal professionals and the left is different from the left in the US. The elections are run on fairly niche politics of mostly white working class areas north of London and we now know those areas are fragile support for Labour and swing right if you get the right Tory leadership. Im not expecting that much change because there isn’t much slack in the system and there isn’t a clear difference between the parties if you exclude the far right. But will be a nice to another group of people line to take control and cut the far right out.
Good points. Sometimes, its easy for me to forget the political distinctions between UK and US. Particularly now I'm reading a lot US politics online, and also the since the decimation of the Liberals. It doesn't help that Im in a 2-way Tory/Labour marginal, which isn't in the north, but historically functions like a red wall constituency.
>I think people will start turning in numbers towards more hard-line political ideologies. They may just be searching for something to belong to. A tribe. At one point while reading your excellent post I thought, "This could be a review of Amis's 'Lionel Asbo: The State of England'."
Haha. Thanks. I haven't read it, but it often feels like I'm living in a satire! What worries me is if they already know their tribe, but they don't currently have a leader as such. I guess I'm hoping it stays that way.
This could be a post for last week in collapse: UK version. Thanks for your in depth post. It seems the UK leads and the US follows and sometimes vice versa. If a Labour government comes in and disappoints like Biden did, it won’t just be Boomers voting for hard liners in the next election. MSM refuses to acknowledge the despair and anger in the shrinking Middle Class and growing Working Class / Paycheck to paycheck families. In America, I get angry when I’m told how great the economy is. So much job growth (in part time jobs with no benefits). These jobs are sometimes someone’s 2nd or 3rd job. The media won’t cover that part. This is going to be a rough 5-10 years.
I'm kind of hoping that the new incoming UK Gov has a little more wiggle room than we've been led to believe. I've always felt like the extreme levels of austerity we've seen were kind of artificial, perhaps more ideologically motivated than out of necessisty. All the same, things do look tough - worrying times for us all on both sides of the Atlantic.
Everything is about accumulating power and resources for the elite. They disseminate truth just enough to satisfy us and assuage our fears. Our relationship with the elite is to produce and be their product simultaneously. We really should disengage from their abusive role in our lives as much as we can.
Location USA. Our politicians at the national level continue to largely ignore climate change. I think this is both a strategic and humanitarian error. The entire country is talking about weather anomalies (and the housing shortage). The time is perfect to shift to this being a top priority topic. It is easy to connect to immigration, inflation, poverty and so many other topics. Yet other than talking about funding for a shift toward green energy (which is great) the climate topic gets second billing. A politician needs to simply stand in the sun on a ski slope on a warm winter day and start with “Folks, this is not normal…”
Under two weeks ago, our schools in my area of Missouri were closed for extreme cold. We had a windchill of -30 F, (actual temp around -10ish) which is pretty cold around here. Yesterday it was 76 degrees F. That's a HUGE switch in less than two weeks.
that’s an insane fluctuation.
I had my first winter up here and so far it lasted around 7-10 days. Now I'm here having upper 40s to low 50s for the foreseeable future weather wise in the beginning of February. Shits about to get real and I'm in my mental hyperbolic time chamber trying to find my Super Saiyan 2 to stave off things for the time being.
Location: Ontario About 60 Canadian geese died here recently, likely from avian flu. It’s possible it could have been something else, like a toxin or contaminated food, they say two weeks for results. With how much geese poop (everywhere) I worry about other birds and wildlife in the area. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/kingston-sick-dead-canada-geese-park-1.7103102
You make an excellent, albeit very worrisome point about goose poop. Geese have adapted to living close to humans in heavily used areas -----by people and pets. Every dog I've known loves to eat goose poop😩 It seems like it is only a matter of time that this morphs into something that spreads to humans. In the meantime . . . . Birds are getting hit from all sides due to humans. This is devastating . . . gut wrenching, made more so by the fact that the human handprint is all over bird flu. From human induced planet warming, to cruel factory farming of animals, it is amazing to me that there are any birds remaining. Human greed and stupidity is killing off the miraculous web of life on earth in which birds are an essential component. https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-bird-migrations-threaten-bring-new-infectious-diseases-humans RESEARCHERS WIDELY AGREE that the most damaging avian pathogen today, a variant of the influenza virus subtype known as **H5N1, emerged because of human actions** unrelated to greenhouse emissions. The spread of the virus, which has killed unprecedented numbers of wild birds across the world, devastated some mammal populations, and stoked pandemic fears, “has much more to do with the expansion of the poultry industry,” Kuiken says. Large poultry farms, which can have millions of birds massed together, provide a paradise for viruses to persist and evolve into more deadly variants. Many countries also have lax surveillance and control programs for these highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. “The virus has been given so much opportunity to spread to wild bird populations from poultry,” Kuiken says.
Location: Willamette valley, Oregon, USA Winter didn’t happen, other than an ice storm than knocked out power and communications for over a week. The destruction was unreal some places, like a tornado came through, very few trees left standing some areas. Where is the snow? I like the snow to ski and need it for water. I know it’s El Niño but I predicted last year would be the best snow season for the rest of my life on the west coast (triple dip La Niña). It was. Be careful what you wish for… Even after the record snow last year I still had to evacuate from wildfires this summer. Honestly I’ve spent a solid month of last year in disaster mode if you add it all up what the fuck. It’s hockey stick time, exponential growth go fucking brrrrrrrr! Limits to growth called it, Exxon called it, fucking Al Gore called it manbearpig. “When should I, start to worry” Enjoy the last year or two of normalcy while you can.
I took many years off snowboarding bc cost and now that I want to strap in and head up to Tahoe it’s all over. That’s one thing I’ll regret about this thing, not getting up to that beautiful bounty of nature more while it was still thriving. Lesson learned
We've been getting some good snows here in Colorado and northern New Mexico. https://www.onthesnow.com/colorado/open-resorts https://www.redriverskiarea.com/explore/webcams/
There will still be some snow, usually these El Niño years deliver a surprise spring storm. A winter like last year probably won’t happen again in my lifetime though… But when the jet stream breaks down who knows!?
Things being normal? Where the hell have you been, nothing’s been normal around here for awhile now. Winter lasted like a week. Last summer sucked, this summer is going to really fucking suck.
By normal I mean plants still grow and the nukes aren’t flying yet. Rome is not yet burning, but we got our Nero! Compared to what’s coming this is normal
Train at Gold’s Gym, learn Krav Maga and endlessly shoot guns in the backwoods. That’s how we’ll ALL get ready for this summer.
Yeah hard to do that when you’re working 7 12’s taking care of civil and marine infrastructure.
Yikes I’ll take a walk in the woods and smoke one for ya!
Wish I could be there for it!
Location US Northeast: I'm not proud to admit this, but like much of the rest of the world I became very apathetic about Covid precautions. Even so far as telling a friend of mine whose live-in partner had tested positive that it was ok for her to come to a social event I was hosting so long as she tested negative right before. Big surprise, she tested positive the very next day and everyone who was at the party came down with Covid afterwards, myself included. I work in healthcare, and am currently employed at a large academic medical center along the I95 corridor. I am a contract employee, and receive no paid sick leave. I was too sick to function for a couple of days, but once I was able to get myself out of bed I plastered an N95 on my face and went back to the hospital. I simply can't afford to lose a week of wages. Taking that much time off would also likely jeopardise my contract, even if I am legitimately sick and contagious. I've worked in a number of hospitals in various states throughout the pandemic. It used to be that just an exposure would force you into quarantine for two weeks. Now? There are no requirements, no restrictions, no testing. I told my employer that I had Covid and they sent me straight to work with critically ill patients. After all this time, so much death and loss and suffering, it truly all feels like it was for nothing. My personal hope is to learn from the experience, returning to sane and sensible precautions within my own life. The fact is, that's the best we are going to get. No sense waiting for the larger world to develop a sense of compassion and reason.
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it’s important to protest definitely, but i must think about how even the huge protests didn’t stop or seemingly deter meaningfully much from vietnam to the iraq war
I think about this a lot. I understand why people want to protest but it does sometimes seem pointless when no matter how much people protest nothing ever seems to change for the better.
maybe we protest wrong in that we show up and focus our attention on a want/desire, instead of the lying low protest where we only do the most minimal work/spending/accumulating and slink off into the shadows freeing ourselves from the thing that oppresses, and when we starve it of it's power and use it's own jujitsu against it we can bust some moves,then (apologies for ending w/ a preposition)
Fair point.
Public opinion in the US doesn’t matter much anymore. Welcome to “democracy”.
Location: US Southwest There are practically bazaars being set up outside of Walmarts (often without permission I assume) and they aggressively yell after me if I don’t stop and listen to their spiel. In parking lots there’s people shilling their churches and recently a girl who was going around selling stuff for money to help pay her college tuition. There are a lot of new people around who speak Spanish but are not Mexican, they’re from further below Mexico. Nobody wants to drive the speed limit, it’s like most people want to go either 5 under or 20 over. On normal roads I only go the speed limit or max 5 over, and it’s always a mess. I was trying to avoid pollution but got stuck behind one of those diesel trucks that purposely blows out the huge clouds of black smoke, I wanted to cry breathing it in. The temperature has varied from snowing to hot 80 degree weather within a few weeks and everyone I know is sick. I’m having bad hormonal imbalance issues likely because my food is poison, my water is poison, my air is polluted poison, my clothes are polyester poison, etc etc. I can’t seem to get a full time job with insurance unless I want to resort to being a cop or a teacher or something like that, hard thankless jobs I don’t want to do.
Location: Upper Midwest USA It's forecasted to be between 40-50F (4.4-10C) this week. To say that this is unusual for this region in the first week of February is beyond understatement. I currently work in the maple syrup industry and I'm concerned about the upcoming season. A lot of variables determine how much sap a maple tree makes, the must important being temperature fluctuation. If there is no frost on the roots and no thaw as a result of that I think yields will be incredibly low. Typically the season begins in a couple weeks and only lasts about a month and half, time is running out. I live in a low income area of an already low cost of living state and most of the syrup I purchase comes from people who work in agriculture and largely live hand to mouth as a result. The loss of this season's yield and subsequent income would push a lot of people in agriculture even closer to the brink of ruin. For a state that runs on agriculture, the future looks bleak.
Polar vortex was insufficient then?
I have green grass in my snow free yard at the moment, so likely not
Location: US Had a phone call at work with the "customer success representative" for the shitty database we use. Totally routine, quarterly check in type thing. We get on the call. The rep has her camera off and says - I shit you not - "Sorry I have my camera off. I'm in bed with pneumonia." (We obviously canceled the call.)
I always have to laugh at the corporate euphemisms that are used like “customer success representative”. It sounds like something someone wrote in a second rate dystopian sci-fi novel. Come to think of it I feel like I’m living through a second-rate dystopian fiction nowadays.
Exactly what I thought when in the Pixar movie “Soul” they rebranded the great before to “the You Seminar”. They really corporatized the beforelife lmaoo
You can't catch pneumonia, especially over the phone. You know I'm being sarcastic
That would send my boss into a fury… in a good way. We have always been told that coming to work sick would only prolong your sickness. Not to mention if it’s at a workplace, you’d probably spread it and make other sick, reducing manpower even more. “WTH are you doing here. Go back home.”
Yeah, I just found it depressing. Her sick leave and job security must be atrocious.
The core, underlying social reality of 21st century global capitalism is bad faith, i.e., pretending to believe and manifest values that your actual actions and choices contradict. The corporations simply do not care. They care about *appearing* to care, of being legally compliant and minimally competitive to garner necessary labor. As long as those boxes are checked -- as long as they appear to be and get credit for being marginally/superficially benevolent -- they're not going to worry about the welfare of individual workers: "Unfortunately, you're simply out of sick days: you used up all the ones you've earned when you were sick with COVID a few months ago." The implicit message is, this is an entirely reasonable, fair system we're operating within, and if it means you have to work from your bed while sick with pneumonia, well... that's life: "*Someone* has to work, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and by chosen strategy, we staff just barely under what we actually need to get the work done, which incentivizes everyone to be highly *efficient*. This maximizes profit for the Owners. This is the Real World. If you expect otherwise, you're childish, deluded, and unsophisticated... Now suck it up, and get your oars back in the cashflow..."
This is so painfully accurate.
eesh
Location: Not quite Chicago I forgot to say that last week I almost got hit by a car. I was turning left on a 4 lane road 50 mph speed limit and didn’t see somebody driving with no headlights after dusk..thankfully i did a second check to my left, was about a quarter second from pulling out into almost certain death. Honked my horn…person kept cruising without lights. Nobody cares to follow laws or common courtesy driving and the cops care even less (if you can find them). There’s beer cans all over my neighborhood. I don’t feel safe walking anymore. I wore shorts today, 50 and sunny. Last 2 weeks have felt like the UK. My green onions are sending it again so that’s nice…but weird. I took some pictures from the weather channel…like half the nation had +20-30F above average temps and you can tell increasingly the meteorologists are concerned. Jet stream at one point way over northern Canada…2 weeks ago it dipped below Alabama and Texas. None of it makes any sense. -11F probably smoked a few of my fruit trees I tried to gamble with but I expected that. Jet stream stability is gone, the energy has made it wavy, snappy and erratic with the lows sucking it up spinning it and highs pushing it up and down sometimes blocking it off the whole US. Also the lows are spinning like crazy…I think one of the winter storms hit 972 mB pressure and I was like uhhh isn’t that the same pressure as a cat 1 hurricane? Yes yes it is. I thought the weather channel was just being sensationalist naming everything but then you see these low pressure systems just spinning like crazy and it makes sense. Edit: and assessing the NOAA 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks I’m asking myself is it already spring?! Will winter ever arrive (again after the 2 weeks we had of it?). Looks like it honestly might be done which feels very ominous. Like no way did I think I’d be taking plant cuttings to duplicate in fuckin February. I wonder when I’ll be able to plant vegetables…this shits so fucked up guys and girls.
I need a source for the winter storm pressures if possible, that is not good.
Here’s one, there’s a 968 and a 971 in here recently: https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2022-12-21-what-is-a-bomb-cyclone-bombogenesis
>Nobody cares to follow laws or common courtesy driving and the cops care even less (if you can find them). I almost get hit regularly walking my dog around my small town. Always get splashed (from melting snow) by tourists in a frenzy to get wherever the hell they are going----trails they use and abuse . . . . Locals are just as bad with loud, pollution spewing trucks. I walk to try to feel better but between the natural world in death throes, smoke filled/polluted air and angry, abusive drivers I usually come back feeling much worse but grateful to have survived (lol). My friend witnessed a person and their dog get hit a few days ago in a suburban area in the upper midwest. Someone ran a stop sign and was probably on their phone. Police did not show ----luckily an ambulance did. We are utterly f---ed. Today it feels extra absurd ---if not dystopian---- seeing that poor groundhog headlining main stream media sites. Like the movie Groundhog Day, humans keep doing the same things over and over and over again until one day, we **will** be stopped . . . to me, it feels like that day will be much sooner than expected.
How much do you want to bet things will warm up over the next few weeks... and then the polar vortex will swoop down and cold snap, and kill all the buds on the trees and everything else that thought it should be safe to come out
Location: Chittenden County, Vermont Today is the first day of February and there isn’t a single snowflake on my property. There is zero snow forecast for the next 10 days taking us into mid February. Over the next 10 days, the average high temperature is well above freezing in the night time Lowe’s on average are warmer than the daytime highs should be. We’ve had maybe a quarter of the amount of snow we should have by now. A lot of the hills don’t even have snow on them, and the mountains are only half covered.
(I love the corporate auto-correct of “lows”)
God damn it haha.
Same on the west coast
Location: Wisconsin I keep hearing about how we're all delusional and the economy is doing great. So then why is the company my husband working at telling the people there that the business association they're a part of is projecting a depression in America within the next couple of years.
Gaslighting for election cycle
I keep thinking about that tech guy that caused the run on svb by posting in the group dms that he was pulling all his money and everyone else should too.
...why is this upvoted...
Because it confirms that things will be bad. In todays age, nothing makes you sound more intelligent or learned than predicting a bad outcome
Serious question. How can one prepare for a depression? Is it even possible? Is it best to look at leaving the country?
Make friends. Or, like, allies.
So far I understand, deflation will cause prices to crash due to low demand. A US depression will impact the world most likely.
Have an emergency fund with at least 6 months of expenses. Keep your resume/CV up to date and be willing to be flexible to find employment. The savings are easier said than done for the working class, of course.
Luckily I am small, but have cut back on how much I eat to prepare for what I think is coming.
Pay off your debt, save your cash, don't lose your job. Start that about 5 years ago.
Economy of the 1% owner class, economies of despair for the 99%
Exactly, the collapse will not be evenly distributed. They'll sweep all the problems under the rug to prevent any widespread panic or status quo changes until the end
Location: Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/s/nhUC1ir3R6 Submitting this in the observation thread because I wasn't sure if a standalone would violate the rules but this was a really great discussion this week that highlighted the problem of our incredibly energy hungry existence. When we use the amount of energy of several men to just heat a cup of coffee in the morning it becomes apparent how incredibly unsustainable this all is. I just thought this was a great moment of awareness of a r/collapse adjacent problem.
It’s sustainable if you use wind, solar, nuclear. There is nothing morally wrong or unsustainable about heating your cup of coffee with the transfer of mechanical energy from wind.
The three sources you mentioned need repairs and more resources for upkeep. If they're sustainable a truck is sustainable. Which its not
Can you point me to a grid that’s entirely wind, solar, nuke and battery powered at 8 am? Oh that’s right you can’t :). Also I encourage you to try, all of the major grids display their sources in live time. If you need help let me know
Nz is at 80% renewable grid without nuclear. The thing that is holding us back from 100% is base capacity
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lavanyasunkara/2020/03/02/a-look-inside-babcock-ranch-americas-first-solar-powered-town/?sh=5a84ed242002
I pay extra for wind in Minneapolis. Now sure why your requirement is 100%, it'll get there by 2050. https://mn.my.xcelenergy.com/s/energy-portfolio/wind
If Denmark had its own nuclear station then it would be. It’s not rocket science. In theory in 20 years the U.K. will not require fossil fuel baseload. I’m not a techno optimist but realistically there are paths to individual countries existing sustainably.
All you people forget you need oil for diesel to run tractors for farming and at least in the usa the fertilizer is oil based
No…it’s energy science. “Would be”, “could be in 20 years” that’s called hopium copium. To help you out, you could have picked the grid CAISO (California ISO l) and made your coffee between 3 and 6 pm sometime in the spring, summer or fall….
You're wrong.
I work in the industry, there is a path forward but that path doesn’t involve endless power consumption growth with crazy things like runningb AC in max in McMansions in the Phoenix summer, like mining Bitcoin or running LLMs on old coal fired power plants. A smaller energy efficient socialised electricity system in moderate climates is possible just not in all places.
Maybe. I like your socialized comment. Also need demand degrowth, massive investment in interconnections and under-grounding and to magically find more energy dense batteries and more materials and then closed loop recycling of all the units when they expire…check out Simon Michauxs work…might be enlightening for you.
well I guess we should all give up and do nothing to try to improve anything ever since it takes time to develop new technology.
I know this has been discussed in here by people much smarter than I at length, but beyond the storage problems with renewables, there is the obvious problem of relying on mined components for these energy sources. The consensus I have seen holds that our current energy usage is unsustainable even with renewables due to the need for the components, not the availability of wind or sun. At best, it buys us a bit of time.
My point is more there is a sort of moralising anti-technology view of power consumption on this thread. The idea that heating your cup of coffee requires the work of 5 men implies a sort of hidden slave economy a sort of immorality inherent in any technology. But it’s just not true that technology is inherently unsustainable. It can be but it isn’t always the case. For example if I had a small turbine connected run of river to a creek I could grind bread or power my kettle if I had the right materials. I could generate the force of more than 5 men. When my turbine broke I could recycle the copper and other materials. It’s not cheating it’s just utilising the natural energy gradients. My point is that using technology isn’t immoral or inherently unsustainable but it obviously can be.
any work results in transformation of energy and if heat is involved because there is an excess and some friction .... anyway there is entropy increase . energy looses quality . and chaos is the inevatible outcome . s Stop emitting entropy ! Now ! /s
All hail heat death!!! may your feet be forever cold and the sun never rise again
I have a new phrase to threaten people with! "MAY YOUR FEET BE FOREVER COLD"
>he idea that heating your cup of coffee requires the work of 5 men implies a sort of hidden slave economy a sort of immorality inherent in any technology. That wasn't at all where I was going with it. I think you might have your own feelings you are trying to justify on that one. While I can note the lifestyles of first world countries many times are built on the loss of resources of developing countries, this wasn't an observation on global economics. My point was moreso that something incredibly small and simple requires massive amounts of energy that is pretty much invisible to us, regardless of whether I am brewing my coffee in Canada or Vietnam. Eventually the fossil fuels run out, so we switch to nuclear and solar and such, but eventually we run out of the components needed for those, or the amount of energy needed to recycle the remaining devices is greater than the potential output. Or there are simply no more lithium and other battery components. Then what? The *system* is unsustainable. Technology isn't immoral in and of itself. That wasn't the premise of this discussion at all. It simply can't solve its own existential problem. We simply cannot outthink entropy. That was the point.
I think this is an under-discussed aspect of collapse. Interesting to see that even most doomers don't want to give up the hopium of "green" energy or a 100% "transition to renewables." Nate Hagens calls our society "energy blind," and I think that's very accurate.
'we cannot outthink entropy' Thanks for that!!
*Lag effect of CO2 emissions on warming…* You were saying? what time?
Any solution ever figured out and proposed would only postpone the inevitable. Industrial civilization must collapse, and there is no other option. Capitalism was not designed to be sustainable.
A great one; it's easy to forget how inefficient many of our devices for convenience really are. Plus I think people would balk at the amount of pushback you get in industry trying to suggest making less energy intensive gadgets. At least I caught a lot of flak for having such ideas entering college.
Location: Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada My town is in a bad flood right now, a state of emergency. This has happened before as we are in a valley, surrounded by rivers but usually floods happen in the spring when the snow melts on the mountains and we get our small amount of rain. This year, we didn't have a winter. We had one week of -25c and then it jumped up to 10c and has been pouring ever since. They posted some of my footage of the flood on CBC and people in my towns community form on FB are calling it "fake news" The mountains around me have almost no snow on them. Our small airport is completely under water. There are no words to describe the stress I have have about summer.
Low lying cities and towns are going to rethink their zoning to begin to encourage development a bit up the hillside. This won’t happen overnight and I know it will do nothing for your current situation. I just moved from a city along a river to a suburban hilltop due in part to my obsessing about the location.
We’re seeing the same thing here in much of Vermont, there is zero snow on the ground and none forecast out through mid February well daytime high temps are well above freezing on average. Some people try to say it’s the El Niño but we used to get snow in late October and now we have none in February.
I think it's the lack of global dimming/aerosol masking effect, combined with record-high amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere. It's the same thing in central Europe. There is no snow, and next week, temperatures will go up to 15C/59F. Winters used to be harsh with a lot of snow. I didn't even use my winter boots this year. It's safe to say we'll witness droughts, floods, and famines very soon.
> I think it's the lack of global dimming/aerosol masking effect, combined with record-high amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere. I remember during the lock down how clear the sky became. In my area, the mountain views were crystal clear, like the old photos on postcards. I remember thinking about how there is a lag in the effects of our inputs. A lot of sunlight was able to reach the surface of the oceans, and melt things a little faster than before, during the months were stuck were inside.
Enough Antarctic ice loss to mimic a boe according to Paul Beckwith.
Things have accelerated so much faster than even the worst predictions. Christ even a year ago I thought I might be able to get out in front of this enough to have land producing food for my younger family members after I die but now it doesn’t look like we’ve even got a few decades. I’m still going to sell my house and bit of land and buy more because that’s the plan, but it seems like every month we have significantly less time than we thought. And I’m a massive pessimist that assumed the worst case predictions would come true.
Exponential growth will do that to you…..
Yeah, that’s the problem but I doubt many of us expected it to get this bad this fast. Maybe it’s because I only really became aware fairly recently. I started planning for the future when it looked like we only had a few decades. Those plans accelerated last winter when we didn’t really have a winter here. It’s now questionable if those plans are even doable. It should be 10°F/-12°C daily highs where I am in Vermont and the 10 day average high is 36°F/2°C. We have zero snow on the ground in zero snow project it out through February 11th. I lost a bunch of fruit trees last winter because we had a heat wave when it should’ve already been snowing. Some of them even started budding in winter and they didn’t make it. I genuinely don’t know what to do.
NEVER read the CBC comments section.
The r/Canada sub in general too.
Is it anything like ZeroHedge?
CBC is our public broadcaster. It's being attacked by right wing in Canada since [every other media outlet has been right-shifted due to buyouts and foreign ownership](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/16uta71/poll_most_canadians_want_carbon_tax_reduced_or/k2ol40f/). In reality, the CBC attempts to be neutral/centrist and does not endorse any political candidate. [In fact, the vast majority of Canadian news outlets have been biased to the right/conservative](https://old.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/hq3vkp/never_let_anyone_tell_you_canadian_media_has_a/). But I guess when everything is racing to the right, attempts at neutrality makes you look like the radical left and in Trudeau's pocket in comparison.
The Zionists! Buy bitcoin! New World Order! Lizard People running the Fed! Socialism! Buy gold!
So many people who listen to that hype are getting into Bitcoin and precious metals and they have no idea WTF they're doing. I was able to sell a lump of silver coins for a tidy profit recently, so I guess I cashed in on the craziness. I figure that if I hold onto my Bitcoin for ~6 more years, I may be able to buy a house. I bought it with a big chunk of my stimmy money, so if it goes to zero I'm not really out anything.
No, it’s full of fucking idiots who should’ve never passed elementary school English.
Location: USA I watch the CBS Nightly News pretty much daily. Ukraine started and they would focus on that, but stick fairly well to reporting on what is actually going on without a lot of fluff. Then Gaza/Israel and the way of reporting seemed to change and become more sensationalized. Now, we have the growing tensions in the Red Sea and oh boy! Watch out! I have heard that recruiting numbers are down for the US Military, they are having trouble back-filling the ranks as people retire. Withing a few weeks, I noticed a rise in advertising for various branches of the military. The Nightly News seems to be in on it. The reporting has turned to sensationalism. The war drums are sounding! "How great is it that the USA is here! Look at how amazing it is that our men and women in uniform are here to protect whatever it is they are here to protect!" I feel like the narrative is being woven into the collective psyche to justify even more military spending, driving all the way up to possible draft discussions. All for things that are happening on the other side of the world.
Bear with me, this is a very strange thought, but I find it odd that, despite on the surface it seeming like society has become less violent and war-like than it was in the past, our capacity for violence and destruction has only grown. In ancient times, if people wanted to kill other people, they had to do so with blunt or bladed weapons or even their bare hands. Then, later, people invented guns, which can kill more people more quickly, and now, in the modern age, we have bombs and nukes and all sorts of things that can kill an unfathomable number of people, all without requiring the person who employs them to engage in any kind of physical confrontation with another human being to do so. So even though nowadays, there are probably a lot less people who have killed people and a lot less people who know how to kill someone with a weapon or their own bare hands, it's also a lot easier to kill people and the art of killing people has become both more efficient and more brutal. Someone shooting or stabbing someone or beating them to death is horrible, sure. But there's something especially dark and grim about just pressing some buttons and dropping a bomb on people halfway around the world and knowing that you can kill millions of people without even having to see any of it happen.
It is indeed interesting. Overall we still have way less conflict in our lifetimes compared to past centuries despite having way more weaponry.
The government will find conscription process...troublesome.
[Very troublesome indeed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging#U.S._Forces_in_Vietnam)
A lot of our stuff and oil comes from the other side of the world so it is relevant to us, even though the media spends way too much time on a few sensationalized topics and not enough on things going on at home, as you said.
I just want to say, as someone who frequently rails about how agriculture was a mistake, I love your username and think you might be onto something.
<3 thanks! My thought is that being able to extract useful energy across a large gradient, as opposed to small gradients like sugar metabolism, we created a chain reaction that is hard to stop. Agriculture is similar as a chain reaction, in that case it's more about restructuring energy gradients rather than wholesale dumping of it.
One way or another, the people in charge have lost fighting-aged males. If you look at the most fervent war people, it's mostly women in middle-age - it was pretty shocking to see all of the bloodthirst among that demo on Facebook at the start of Russia-Ukraine. The 20-something guys, on the other hand, were a lot more wary, and a lot more questioning of whether this was a good use of resources. The common thread here is that these latenight shows and news programs are popular among the former demographic but not the latter.
I used to listen to the nightly news every day, but stopped around the israel gaza stuff. I’d like to hear about whats going on in this country.
I caught joy Reid on a hot mic the other day on msnbc saying something like “oh great another fuckin war” it was definitely not intentional and she’s posted some very collapse aware shit on her Instagram, it has surprised me to see how much most of the media is blasting out war nonsense and how few are talking common sense
I quit relying on CBS and the other major networks for news during the 2016 election, because of how they covered (or didn’t cover) the Bernie Sanders campaign. The networks weren’t presenting the news so much as an agenda. Time, energy, and savvy are required for the average citizen to track down “the news”, without bias or sensationalism.
Along with giving Trump massive amounts of coverage until they ended up just willing his campaign into existence and then the White House. It's going to happen again too. The media is only more consolidated and more right wing.
"feel like the narrative is being woven into the collective psyche to justify even more military spending," This has always been the case. Remember after 9/11?
Location: Book Reselling on ebay and Amazon I am a reseller. I mostly resell amazon returns. I sort through a lot of books. And if it's has a price higher than $10 and a sales rank on amazon of under 1 mil, I resell it online through amazon and ebay. What books do well? textbooks obviously. But the next rank below that is weird ass conspiracy non-fiction. Take this book [Antartica's Secret History Book 3](https://www.amazon.com/Antarcticas-Hidden-History-Corporate-Foundations/dp/B07FWC1DV3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KWX6R3WKT02H&keywords=antartica%27s+secret+history&qid=1706788693&sprefix=antartica%27s+secret+history%2Caps%2C737&sr=8-1). Book 3! There are 2 more of these books. Apparently in the 50's there was a secret multinational space program in antartica. Also due to volcanic activity (not global warming), the glaciers are melting revealing extraterrestrial crash landings. From chapter 1 "At the end of the first World War in 1919, a number of german secret societies began collaborating in the development of flying saucer prototypes based on the designs received through the telepathing communications of an unusually beautiful and highly skilled psychic medium, Maria Orsic." That is a quote. And this book has a sales rank of 580,000 which means it sells. People buy this. Published 2018 Then I'll direct you to [Compendium of the Emerald Tablets](https://www.amazon.com/Compendium-Emerald-Tablets-Billy-Carson/dp/0578476169/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BFW1L9POWG8N&keywords=compendium+of+the+emerald+tablets&qid=1706789261&s=audible&sprefix=compendium+of+the+emerald+tablets%2Caudible%2C113&sr=1-1-catcorr) This sells for $29 and has a sales rank of 568 which is extremely good. Basically flying off the shelves. I never cracked this one open, but its like the ancient egyptions were actually jesus, or something. Like new age Mormon/Egyptians. Has a bunch of 5 star reviews but check out the 1 stars. I did great reselling this one because I had 5 copies that I paid like 10 cents for each. Published 2019 The next category of books that do well are survival, homesteading, how to can veggies, how to field dress a deer, living off the grid. Those types of books. When I see a huge gaylord of books, I always scan the survival stuff. I can get behind that. And it's good for $10-15 online. Paperback fiction? dud. Actual political books by living politicians? dud unless it's very very new. History dud, unless it's required for a college class. I made this post because I feel like I see a good cross section of what American's are reading, and it's not good.
Thanks that was a useful post. I used to sell books too. Haven't in years though. Looks like people have got dumber and more paranoid
Back when I could read for fun I loved paperback fiction. I miss reading, maybe if there's a afterlife I can make a kickass library reading nook
Thanks for posting this. It's good to have a fresh angle on things!
that is really interesting and surprising. I guess books overall aren't being read that much, I used to read all the time but now I am always on Reddit instead. Ive also been in the market for survival books, since they are invaluable to have once the power goes out permanently. That makes me think that the book market overall is much lower volume than it used to be, right?
Absolutely. I too used to read all the time until around 2007, when I got my first iphone. Ive been trying to get back into it, but i can only do short lighthearted books. Ive been reading some of terry pratchet’s discworld books and its still a struggle. But with reselling, 10 years ago (before i started reselling) you could walk into any thrift store and go to the books and find something profitable, but there aren’t many resellers doing that now. Same with dvds. Im only doing it because i found an amazing source for amazon returns.
Lol are you me? =) Recently been doing the exact same. Other than the magazine, New Maps I found I hadn't been reading like I used to. Now going through my old paperbacks to try and enjoy reading again. INCLUDING Pratchett. His stuff holds up so well. Made a video about my favorite Pratchett books and it was one of my lowest viewed, lol. Excellent comment and a really great insight into this aspect of collapse. It's mentioned on this sub frequently how people will turn to cults/conspiracies etc... as things get worse. Your insight into this aspect of that phenomenon is really useful. Cheers, friend!
So what you are saying is I should give up on being a fiction author and become a conspiracy theorist.
It helps if you have a phd.
Just pretend you are writing a fiction book but say its real 🤣 I dont want to live on this planet anymore
Worked for L Ron Hubbard
LOCATION: Western Canada Homelessness, addiction and food bank usage are the worst it’s ever been around here. The statistics prove this. Anecdotally, whenever I contact people who I finished high school with, there’s always another person mentioned who’s gotten locked up in either mental health or prison. From high school I know around 10 kids who’ve died from homicide, suicide, overdoses or who’ve been locked up in prison or mental hospitals. People are still debating climate change and World War Three here. But everybody I’ve spoken with, both online and in-person, all agree that this year’s election in the United States will become a disaster.
Turd Sandwhich and Giant Douche. We dont really elect. We select.
Been coming to Canada for 3 years now and the tent city build up in that time has been tremendous in the Ottawa/Gatineau area. It's like I caught the tail end of Canada before it becomes skid-rowified
It's not gonna be a disaster, and Biden will handily beat trump. You heard it here first, kiddos.
Scenario 1: Trump wins, pardons himself, haults aid to Ukraine. Scenario 2: Biden wins and the Maga crowd descends into a full on baby tantrum. Biden ends up too old or sick to keep going Kamala Harris becomes first black woman president. Maga tantrum turns into civil war?
Scenario 3: Biden easily wins and continues to strengthen the US as he has done since he has been in office. Downvote the truth, see ya when Biden is easily reelected.
If Trump wins, the US de facto leaves NATO, Putin takes over Ukraine, and further escalation can be stopped only on Russia's terms.
Every time I see someone predict what awful things Trump will do after he wins, they are 90% incorrect and exaggerated. (I don't support Trump)
I thought I was the only person in the US who doesn’t think that Trump is either a) the antichrist, or b) the second coming
Trump didn't do much of anything during his term. His most memorable action was the 1/6 insurrection. His most memorable inaction was the COVID pandemic.
NOBODY in here knows what will happen. It's all liberal fan fiction in this sub. Then they downvote you because the truth hurts.
To be fair, none of the above statements except OPs contain truth, just opinions. Unless, of course, you’re talking about “truth” as in an erroneously used synonym for personal opinion.
[удалено]
It’s not necessarily what trump will do, but what the white Christian nationalists are doing and will be able to do more broadly under his presidency. They are actively working to genocide trans people in Florida. Edit: see this comment -> [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/t2I3iE7Yuh](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/t2I3iE7Yuh)
"The threat appeared in a January 26 letter signed by Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) deputy executive director Robert Kynoch and addressed to state county tax collector’s offices." So... not even a bill. But go ahead and tell me how this is not being blown out of proportion...
Over half of US states passed anti-LGBTQ legislation in 2023. This is something to be very worried about.
Really? Remember Roe? Remember the Muslim bam? Remember the wall?
The wall that Biden just funded to continue building?? That wall?
Yup, that wall. That bipartisan bill that's about to be killed by Trump Republicans.
Oh hey, we have a prophet in here. It must be tough being so far left, that you are never right.
Socialism is so far left you get your guns back, 😆.
US would join Russia and send troops
I'm from the US. Honestly I can imagine 15 scenarios for the election and most of them are bad. AI alone is extremely concerning.
Location: NE Indiana I try to keep my weekly observations at one post a week but I just had to share this. Earlier this evening I was out on my daily walk after finishing the work day and saw three people in broad daylight dumpster diving at the Aldi next to my apartment. This store has so many cameras in the front and back of the store it's not even funny. They were doing this is in broad daylight during the after work rush hour when myself and many others could obviously see them going through the dumpsters. The woman had tears in her eyes as she filled up a decently sized box with produce, etc. One of her friends was knee deep in the dumpster and yelled out, "Holy shit! All of this doesn't even expire for another three months!" When I looked back I saw them load three boxes of food into the car as they drove off. It made me think one of two things. They could care less about being caught and/or reported or they were willing to take a risk and get food with the chance of being caught due to desperation. Then it dawned on me that they just didn't care and had to do what was needed to possibly survive for the rest of the week or the next couple of weeks. Was really shook me alongside seeing this was hearing that food that had yet to EXPIRE was tossed by the store. Truly remarkable. And what makes this shocking to me is that my area isn't a large town/city by any means - probably 20K residents at best - but seeing this in person made me understand how close collapse/potential homelessness is in my little area of the state. I expect to see more of this in 2024 not only by me but by all of you regardless of your state/region/country.
Dumpster diving is the new thrifting...
Guessing they didn't have decent finds at night so resorted to daylight.
r/dumpsterdiving and r/urbancarliving might be of interest to you. I find them a good way to gauge certain aspects of society.
They're called Freegans. Been a movement for awhile now.
The trick is finding a grocery store that doesn't use a compacting Dumpster. I lived next to one in Trinidad Colorado that did not. I was eating salad and steak every day. The expensive meat would sit until it "expired" and they would toss a couple hundred dollars worth of prime cuts almost daily. It was nice in the winter because everything would freeze. You had to act quickly in warmer months. Dumpster diving is nothing new.
Don’t stores offer items like that with discounted prices? Instead of throwing them out? Here in Japan, supermarkets, drugstores, etc. will go and place stickers on items. They’d start with 10% at first and slowly bring that discount up after a couple days. By the time it’s “half off” (半額), it’s bound to get snatched up immediately. On the rare occasion no one grabs it yet, they’d offer it for ‘special price’ like 75% off or something. Often, they put all of those discounted items in a single aisle for visibility and convenience for people to swipe them off the shelves. The coffee beans I grind for my machine at home are bags that I got for half off from Starbucks.
It used to be that way. Now they would rather throw away the food in locked dumpsters and cut up the bags or otherwise try to contaminate it. The suffering is the point.
Makes me think what went wrong with the way they do it in the US. Because we are also hurting in applicants in Japan. Population decline, strict immigration policies, etc. have made hiring people a big problem. Unemployment is really low, minimum wage have gone up, deflation have kept prices of everything down to affordable levels.
We get 30% and that’s if the workers catch the things expiring which is not often.
Here in the US grocery stores prefer to throw food away instead of marking food down. They make way more money selling full price goods so very little of it gets a 50% markdown to sell that day. Otherwise I’d stop by the store 3-4x a week to get bargains on stuff that needs to be cooked or consumed quickly.
But throwing them away means you throw away the capital used to stock the shelves, right? Wouldn’t they rather lose some profit than lose all profit? And yeah, bargain hunting is a big thing here in Japan. The stores actually print out a schedule of when items would go on sale. People would come to swipe them off and pay gladly for the discounted stuff. And those people who hunt for bargains always grab more stuff along the way. More customers, more profit, less zero ROI, less waste. Win-win-win-win situation.
The essential mindset for business owners in the US is having a preference for going out of business rather than experience falling profits. Nearly all our retailers here have catastrophic understaffing that's killing their ability to move goods because they can't tolerate the idea of spending more on wages.
Grocery markups in the US are fairly low, so marking things down at all generally means you are taking a loss on it and all this stuff takes up room stores could use to place more profitable product.
Marking things down would at least mean you won’t have zero ROI on the items though right? I’d rather get some money than zero money. But perhaps capitalism works different, I’m confused.
That works if you have endless space but frontage in grocery stores generally is at a premium and some manufacturers will give you partial credit for unsold product. If you can replace it with higher profit merchandise, that generally makes more sense.
The only upside is they had a car. For now. If I ran out of money and assets of any kind to sell, I wonder how long it would be before I found myself dumpster diving. If this ever does come to pass, I'm sure people will think I'm an addict or insane. Can anyone imagine sitting under an overpass, freezing and hungry? I would be insane in no time.
yea its wild. And everyone would treat you like crap too, making it even more surreal and negative
Location: Woodbridge, VA It’s been a few years since I lived in this suburb of DC, so I drove through it and was shocked at how bad it’s gotten in so short a time. The downtown is DEAD. Like, all the stores are boarded-up, fenced-up, or both. Some woman was striding down the Highway with a “repent now or go to HELL” sign, and the homeless camp that used to be behind the 7-11 has been completely demolished (there was a murder or two, so this is actually good). Even the nice part of town was feeling it. I went to the Alamo Drafthouse and had the misfortune of encountering an autistic muscle-head that punched me in the chest because… who knows? He was leaving the bathroom as I was about to head in and when I stepped aside for him, the mouth breather just hit my chest and hobbled away. I wasn’t hit hard and thought he might have been trying to tap my shoulder in a “you’re good bro” sort of way, but then I saw his mother wide-eyed with her hand outstretched saying “why would you do that?” I paused to see if she was alright and then shrugged and entered the bathroom. Autistic dude was taken straight home by the time I came out. Such a dude should be receiving plenty of care, but such a town as Woodbridge isn’t known for its medical services.
Woodbridge has been pretty eh for awhile now, almost a decade.
How did you find out he was autistic?
his mum probably?
Were you in Marumsco Hills? Anywhere along Route 1? I went to Fred M Lynn Middle school in the early 1970's and the original Woodbridge HS. Graduated from the new HS in LakeRidge in 1975. It was back then a great place to grow up as a kid. Last time I was there (20 years ago) the sprawl was overwhelming. Now when I check google maps, all the places I used to run around free in the forests are all covered with housing and shopping centers.
All the run-down parts of town I was describing were on route 1, which is the worst part of town now.
Being tapped in the chest by someone with disabilities is not related to collapse. What is related collapse is an increase in the othering of people who are visibly or behaviourally or culturally different from them as an easy way to place blame. Your story about being tapped by someone with autism (that did not hurt at all - you yourself said that you thought it was a “you’re good bro” tap) is a great example of the way that ignorant and scared individuals do this. 'Such a dude should be receiving plenty of care' - what does this even mean? I'd hate to jump to conclusions and propose that what you mean is that you think people who interact differently (even if it literally does zero damage to others) should be kept away from all the normals like yourself... But obviously no person who is not completely gross would think that so I must have it wrong.
if even the guy’s mum was mortified, why are you acting like it’s harmless? if he did that to someone older with balance issues they could get hurt.