Today I Learned

My brother-in-law killed himself years ago. The effect on his family will never go away, like he threw a stone in a pond and the ripples never end.

Everyone is isolated watching corporate propaganda on magic boxes. No safety net, no community. Move from wage slavery location to propaganda consumption location in an enclosed box.

Human beings aren’t built for this lifestyle.

I have looked at my own life, and if I could choose one realistic change that would improve my quality of life, it would be more genuine (read: non-transactional) social connection. More friends, and more time with my friends. More sense of community.

The hospitals don't really help, either. I was made to feel almost worse than i did just being depressed.

It also goes the other way. I was watching a documentary on youtube on some ugly historical subject and I'd get these happy go lucky ads in the middle of it. "Uhhh, you want to associate your product with this?"

Agree, but I don't think it's limited to ads or PSAs, I think everyone with empathy is having a real hard time, because the news and the internet is constantly making them aware of, just, awful things. War and famine abroad and at home, all while like, 800 people in the world sit atop mountains of gold, doing absolutely everything in their power to destroy the planet and subvert democracy. We've been past the climate change "tipping point" for YEARS, and we're still growing our oil and gas consumption. Anybody that cares about peoples suffering, is going to suffer, because we can't empathise with everyone, everywhere, all at once. And yet, that's what we're asked to do, everytime we see the news. We're still trying to play todays game by yesterdays rules.

The reality of the situation is that in the lifetime of your child, they will see complete economic and agricultural collapse. Why do you think that syphilitic pedo rapist wants Greenland so bad? Because projections show that giant iceball is going to be our best farmland in 60 years. Meanwhile any nations near the equator will be absolutely fucked. Chemical manufacturers in the US have so captured the government, that they've been poisoning all your water and food for decades without as much as a peep from regulators. Gotta get that new glyphosate weed and bug killer! nevermind it's been banned by almost every country except our dumbasses.

if this were minecraft, I'd say that all we really need to do to save our species, is kill about 3-400 billionaires, redistribute their wealth, put a blanket moratorium on oil and gas usage, transitioning the worlds fleet of cars to electric (or just abandoning them all together in favor of trains), and establishing a one world government. Just think of the amount of artistic and scientific endeavors we could achieve if man were allowed the freedom to breathe and live. Imagine if you had universal healthcare, universal pre-k and daycare, imagine if you were given a 4 year college education just as a matter of course. Imagine if rent control existed, and a universal basic income to allow you a basic standard of living. Imagine how much happier you would be.

Hey, we're only like 3-400 billionaires deaths away from achieving it.

...in minecraft

That's part of it. Never earning enough to live is the other. The economic disparity in the US is greater than it was before the French Revolution. No matter how hard younger generations work, they can't earn money at a rate that exceeds price inflation and experience. 60% of this country is doomed to never get ahead and the other 40% just don't realize it's so bad for everyone else they're killing themselves.

Blame social media. We have studies that show direct correlation between suicide rate and instagram, for example. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444819850106

Frankly, I'm just glad that there may be a tax on advertisin (and other things) to try and shore up health care costs in Michigan.

Source: https://www.mlive.com/politics/2026/02/whitmer-wants-new-taxes-on-tobacco-sports-betting-to-keep-health-spending-stable.html

You mean it’s not like that everywhere? Seriously, are there still countries where you can feel safe in your day-to-day life?

the most thing i noticed that both parties are afraid of is giving free or extremely cheap healthcare to everyone, mainly because keeping it private helps keep the parties into gop/dem.

Having Trump as President is how I imagine it's like living with an abuser. A constant state of anxiety — never knowing when or where the next blow will come, but knowing it's coming. You stop planning for the future or enjoying the now and just focus on keeping your head above water one more day. The constant stress actually creates knots in my back that sometimes put me down for days.

And when he's finally out of office you didn't notice you've been holding your breath for four years and you just want to weep with relief at surviving and escaping.

My teenage daughter and her friends were planning a walk out at school to protest ICE. She texted me that the school administrators and "resource officers" (aka cops in schools) physically blocked all the exits so nobody could leave.

This take from adults always perplexed me. I’m surprised I made it out alive