Feeling pretty doomy right now, lemme hear some positives! Generally positive, specific to your life, whatever you got. What’s something good going on that makes the future seem a bit brighter for you?
There are billions more people that have access to water and electricity compared to 40 years ago. Crime is down across the board worldwide and so was war until just recently.
On a personal note, after renting for thirty years I finally bought a house where my two adult daughters and their partners live. We are all currently in decent health , we all get along, and I just got my second grandchild. The first baby boy in our family which is nice because my son past away 9 months old, stillbirth.
That eventually I’m going to die.
People stop using Facebook, Google, and Amazon and people rebel against mandated car cameras. When you apply for a job you no longer need to agree to a privacy policy that allows your info to be used for robo calls and spam email. It also becomes illegal to require people to agree to those policies to see their medical labwork online.
Fines for these violations of law become meaningful, and companies start taking privacy seriously.
Renewables and EVs!
Despite humongous efforts by us politicians and their corporate owners, adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is speeding up.
Even further, the basic idea that the poster child for anti-future, Trump, may be doing irreparable harm to the US in many ways but is unintentionally key to speeding up the transition in the rest of the world.
Mango Mussolini has cemented his place in history as the worst ever President, the most corrupt, the most damaging to the country’s position, the most harm to the citizens, the worst so far in running up the debt. However history will also talk about his inadvertent role in other positive changes
Happy Cake Day!
EVs?
Yay, let’s continue with building cities for cars! Van you imagine, allowing human beings to just gasp walk around? Or *clutches pearls" drive bicycles? Ew! Worst of all: public transportation, oh noes!
I know you probably didn’t mean it like that but can we PLEASE focus on livable cities that are firstly designed for people, and lastly for cars where there isn’t another choice?
I so fucking miss the Netherlands, you can cycle everywhere, you can walk everywhere and sure, cars can get around where needed (still way too much, but at least there is some balance)
Design livable cities with goog cycling infrastructure and good public transportation and you can get rid of most cars in most cities
“Its not perfect! No improvement until it’s pefect! No harm reduction unless it’s perfect!”
This is how one ends up making no progress.
But there is no silver bullet that cures everything, or we can’t wait for utopia before we begin, or don’t let perfection be the enemy of better. I would also prefer cities designed around people: I live in Boston because it’s close to best you can get in the us. I am all for making most cars obsolete, but until then, we need to do better
The reality is the Netherlands still has cars and there always will be a need for at least some cars. The other reality is that we can switch to EVs in a handful of years, significantly reducing our impact on the environment. And the most unfortunate reality is redesigning cities is a continuous process over many decades: we can’t just do nothing until then
My point was mango Mussolini accidentally speeding up the global shift toward electrification and EVs, despite grasping for the opposite. However he has had no positive effect on transit or walkability, even accidentslly
Imperialism and neocolonialism are gradually dying, while the global south and socialist countries are rising. The old world is dying and the new is struggling to be born, but the process is moving forward.
Yea I see it too
The global population is united in revulsion at the genocide and neverending war carried out by Israel, even if the politicians are owned. That gives me hope that justice will prevail.
I can only see so much future so I guess I’d have to say I’m glad trump is so old. I just want to get this shit over with already so we can all go back to living simply again, without all the angsty bullshit always floating around everywhere, causing a rancid stink. Divisiveness is an old tool that is used against the populace, we need to recognize that for what it is.
I’ll try not to water the hope too much, but the other issue is the vast number of people who supported and still supported him. That much willful hatred of America (wrapped in wordy claims of loving America) is potentially very damaging regardless.
The good news is, a lot was developed into religious fanaticism around the man himself. The GOP has been trying to harness and weaponize it, but mostly seems to fail.
yea, Trump is just a symptom. But I’ll take the hope that he dies soon. I don’t wanna be a downer too much
When I see what wonders NASA does (with their ever shrinking budget), it gives me hope and makes me want to stay alive to be there for their new discoveries and breakthroughs.
Also another thing is this… the Fediverse and the broader FOSS community, we (self insert, lol) do things for the community bec we want to help, not because we are paid to or forced to, we try to make the world we live in a better place by fighting big tech and monopolies, it is truly fascinating to think about.
If you have hope for the future you probably aren’t reading any of the climate crisis science. Or you think you’re going to heaven.
Personally, I’m terrified that the massive, oligarch-sponsored, far-right propaganda machine that dominates US social media and television viewership, in fact, has the United States public by the balls, and is going to have unassailable influence on elections in the US from now on.
(And if the technology, borrowing techniques from marketing and industrial psychology, is not dominating the will of the lumpenproletariat already, it’s still being developed and eventually will.)
However, there are a lot of people whose opinions I respect, including historians like Heather Cox Richardson and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie (who is well studied in US history) who are optimistic about the future of the United States, and even think we can seize the country back from the oligarchy and restore free and fair elections in short order. (Albeit, for now, we’ll still be stuck with the two-party system we have. It’ll take a revolution of the people to change that.)
Meanwhile, Daniella Mestyanek Young aka Knitting Cult Lady is an experts on cults, including authoritarian cults of personality, and was an intelligence officer for the US Army, and according to her, cults of personality that are focused on a single person rarely survive the demise of the cult leader. They can if they create a doctrine of transition to a new leader (see North Korea) or from CoP to a cult of idea, but without preparation by the charismatic leader, they collapse.
And Young seems to know what she’s talking about.
She observes that Trump is entirely not cooperative about facilitating a transition, even to the point of publicly humiliating his natural heirs (that is J D Vance and Marco Rubio). It seems even that Trump may want MAGA and the Republican party to collapse once he is gone.
Work will still need to be done after Trump dies (or faces accountability and is imprisoned) and/or SCOTUS is banished like a demon possessing a child and free and fair elections are restored. We’ll need to confront what happened here in the United States, that we’ve been under the yoke of the ultra-wealthy, and of big conglomerate corporations, and need to ironclad our election processes and our regulatory bodies so that they cannot be subverted or captured.
Can we do this? I don’t know. Historically, the US has failed to follow through every step of the way, from quitting reconstruction to failing to try Nixon after Watergate to failing to address mistreatment of blacks, of the First Nations folk, of children, of immigrants, of every group we’ve exploited for labor and suppressed. But this time, people can get their information from the internet rather than merely through school curricula and published news. Maybe there will be enough voices to pressure change.
Any day now, Donald Trump will die.
Some day a mortician gets to glue his lips shut.
and its entirely possible Mitch Mcconnell is dead!
i mean… it’s hard to imagine to go any further down after that, but i also don’t see much potential to go up.
every time i come home, it two cats are waiting at the door.
first they try to sneak out of the flat, afterwards they brush around and roll on the floor, demanding belly scratches.
yeah, i think as well they got the wrong software ;)
Twice a week I play disc golf with some good friends. We get some good walking in, support each other when someone makes a great shot, joke around, insult as necessary. And it’s all free.
Afterward we get a bite to eat, then go to our favorite coffee shop for some dessert. Then sometimes I head to my sister’s house to go for a swim to finish things off. It’s truly wonderful.
Disc golf slaps I love that for you
Thanks, mate!
the world is not gonna end because we have renewable energy.
The world will end soon due to nuclear war
I still don’t think nuclear war is quite as likely as we picture.
You ever see the clip of two dogs barking at each other through fences? Then the fence opens and they go super-tame?
Cowardly despots like threatening action, and sending action out long-distance. But they piss their pants about any action that might come anywhere close to them, and there are no fully effective nuclear defense strategies.
I don’t understand the downvotes I’m getting.
I DON’T WANT a nuclear war, but there are crazy people in the government & in the military who think they can win a nuclear war.
I hate to burst your bubble, especially in a thread like this.
I'm really sorry.
90% of earths topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050 That’s what all the food grows in btw and without arable land, there is no way to feed 8+ billion people.
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030 and without fresh water, we can’t support 8+ billion people.
Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity.
Global carbon emissions are still rising
The arctic sea ice extent is declining rapidly and we’re likely headed into a Blue Ocean Event later this year, and potentially a double BOE depending on how the El Nino and summer in the southern hemisphere go.
The world is likely to exceed a key global warming target soon but the earths alebedo with the declining sea ice and lack of cloud cover will impact these numbers massively and isn’t being predicted for, which means that 4.5c above the baseline by 2060 is now possible.?
literally in a hope posting thread 🙄
Seeing someone stake their hopes on misinformation and doing nothing, is a worse social crime than someone politely telling them otherwise, apologising for the bad news, and spoiler tagging the truth so the thread isn’t hogged with it.
Feel free to object but I’m pretty sure that doing so makes you a bit of a shitty person.
what about their post indicates they are doing “nothing?”
What about posting doomer shit in a hope thread is “polite?”
What about me pointing that out makes me a “shitty person?”
OryxAndCake, shut the fuck up. fucking doublin’ down dumbass.
You’ve misread me. I’ll try to be clearer.
Person 1 seeing person 2 stake their hopes on misinformation, and person 1 doing nothing to rectify person 2’s understanding, is a worse social crime than person 3 politely telling person 2 they were misinformed, apologising for the bad news, and spoiler tagging the truth so the thread isn’t hogged with it.
My apology and use of the spoiler tag made this polite.
You deciding to read me in the worst possible light and/or believing that someone staking hopes on misinformation should be left in the dark, is what would make you a shitty person.
Please let me know if you need further clarifications.
You must be fun at parties. This is a post about hope not doomer thoughts.
Which is why I apologised and spoilered it.
Plus it’s considered a bit of a dick move if you know terrible things are going to happen and you don’t try to educate and warn people who believe misinformation.
I’m a joy at parties, it’s hard not to be when you bring enough mdma to share.
So in good news, we still have mdma
When you talk to people IRL outside of work, some of them are pretty cool and helpful for no other reason than because they want to be.
