Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
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@Elizafox I'd love to know why my headset can't store a charge worth for shit. I feel like micropower considerations have gotten pushed aside by the tech sector's hyper-emphasis on cheaply made and disposable merchandise.
@Elizafox (but yeah, there's no end of cool stuff!...I just wish batteries were better, but maybe it's not the fault of the actual battery.)
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@Elizafox I'd love to know why my headset can't store a charge worth for shit. I feel like micropower considerations have gotten pushed aside by the tech sector's hyper-emphasis on cheaply made and disposable merchandise.
@mxchara Cheapo batteries + wear
The batteries at grid scale are designed much more robustly
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox interesting, thoughtful post. I've noticed round here (London) a number of wildlife species have done very well over recent years. We (generally) seem more concerned about the natural world and its excellent news and is paying off.
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@mxchara Cheapo batteries + wear
The batteries at grid scale are designed much more robustly
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox lmao weather forecasting is a wild way to start off this list, ever since the defunding of NOAA the forecasts are absolutely worthless and a barrage of tornado watch notification fatigue, I agree with you on the rest of the items though
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@Elizafox lmao weather forecasting is a wild way to start off this list, ever since the defunding of NOAA the forecasts are absolutely worthless and a barrage of tornado watch notification fatigue, I agree with you on the rest of the items though
@aburka EU weather forecasting is good!
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox Yeah, I'm planning to take the Amtrak next month.
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox
Flash storage is more expensive than ever and only improving in quality because it supports the AI bubble. When the bubble pops, the storage will briefly become near-worthless and manufacturers will stop making it, which will only make the crisis worse in the long run.I straight-up do not believe you about Amtrak. You're telling me more people are riding it now than in any of its first 10 years? And the per-capita statistics have got to be very different.
The unions we have are useless. Everyone in my store is unhappy with their job, the company keeps cutting our hours and taking it as a sign to keep doing it when it doesn't immediately kill the store. Yet nobody seriously believes we have the power to stop or reverse it.
Murder rates may be falling but have you considered that people being murdered by stochastic terrorism are generally not being counted? We're caught in the middle of several genocides brought on by public figures who affect societal behaviors in such a way that it makes their targets suicidal. Not to mention, victims of bombings during wars (and "illegal military operations") are also counted separately. The crime isn't going away, it's just centralizing to those with power.
We may have to create entirely new infrastructure to escape the corporate internet, access to it today is much less useful than it was 10-15 years ago thanks to corporate meddling like ads, generated content (AI), social media algorithms (AI), and age verification (AI). So long, and thanks for all the technological progress!
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Cancer treatments are getting better. Slowly but surely. (Other areas of medicine may be improving too but circumstances pushed me to learn oncology as a layperson and I still keep up with it.)
@angelastella @Elizafox Not just treatments but we are actually discovering vaccines for some types of cancer!
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox it's even better - BYD flash charging does 10-70% in 5 minutes, or 10-97% in 9 minutes (12 minutes if operating at -30°C). And others (Zeekr, CATL, Dongfeng, ...) have similar capabilities.
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@aburka EU weather forecasting is good!
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@YinYinFalcon @Elizafox 24h is a luxury. Saturday morning the forecast was completely dry. 1pm urgent text warning of thunderstorms, flash floods, the works. It did rain for a little bit but just the usual kind. This is normal
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox And in a lot of places, things like electricity access and computing storage failure can be attributed to a failure of policy/business decisions, NOT a failure of tech.
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@YinYinFalcon @Elizafox 24h is a luxury. Saturday morning the forecast was completely dry. 1pm urgent text warning of thunderstorms, flash floods, the works. It did rain for a little bit but just the usual kind. This is normal
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@Elizafox Great book trying to focus on such positive things, worth a read for anyone who is feeling down: "Enlightenment Now", by Steven Pinker
@d1 Not trying to be a downer, but before recommending Pinker, I think its important to know who he is.
https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/steven-pinker
https://www.independent.com/2018/10/11/enlightened-denials/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast
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@angelastella @Elizafox Not just treatments but we are actually discovering vaccines for some types of cancer!
Yes, we've had immunotherapy for bladder cancer using the BCG vaccine since the 1970s, a vaccine for hepatitis B (major cause of liver cancer) since 1981, and one for papillomavirus (cervical cancer and many others) since 2006, which strangely didn't make sex-crazed fiends out of the kids who received it.
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox in the US weather forecasting got so much worse, since the NWS fired half their employees lmao -
Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
@Elizafox I want to add this to the good news: the ban on greyhound racing in New Zealand just went into effect at the beginning of the month
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Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse
Here’s some things that actually haven’t:
- Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
- Solar: cheaper than natural gas
- Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
- Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
- Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
- Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
- Union membership in the US: rising
- Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
- CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
- Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
- Electrical access: still rising worldwide
- Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
- China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
- You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster
And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.
Oh and mRNA vaccines are the quintessence of vaccine technology - barely any side effects, surprisingly effective and flexible, and can be ramped up from development to production in record time - which is great for seasonal infections like the flu, or quickly-developing ones like ebola -
@YinYinFalcon @aburka @Elizafox Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one who thought weather forecasts have become terribly unreliable (and I'm also in the EU)! Could it be that they haven't updated their models for climate change yet?
