This forum should not be tool of patriarchy.

Capitalists want you to believe that competition and death is normal.

That patriarchal violence is the default for humanity, and that it's always "dog eat dog."

Think where you first learned that, my brothers.

Who taught you that? A bully, a father, a coach, a religious leader? An abuser?

Take a breath.

Feel emotions.

Open your eyes.

Life is a circle, a cycle.

Fear is the mind killer.

❤️❤️

That's my question. Are men ready to let women lead?

Did you scoff? Let's go with that.

I'm an American millennial neurodivergent woman.

Women in my family were lobotomized just two generations ago, in cases I know of. The missing and dead women of my family will always speak through me.

All my life, I've worked in male-controlled fields and areas. High level science; corporations; international affairs.

I've often dumbed myself down for the men around me, for my own safety.

It's like speaking a different language, learning their sycophantic and hierarchical norms and codes.

It's not the language of nature, of seasons and cycles and balance.

I learned a long time ago that I could foresee trouble, but I learned that sociopathic men don't want to prevent trouble.

Cassandra was cursed, but then Cassandra was trafficked and abused after her city was destroyed.

Non-sociopath men don't want any trouble. These are the "nice guys." They still speak the same language.

Yes, I know there are enabler women. The fear and self-hate of women are the tent poles of patriarchy.

Are men ready to accept that women are more closely tied to the cycles of nature, and thus to life?

That creating life is a literal metaphysical process that has not yet been fully explained by science, and women do it every day, often under extreme duress?

Are men ready to admit that their brains are limited by man-made constructions that cause violence to proliferate across humanity?

We can share the throne of this beautiful earth.

But are men ready to let us?

I've been researching Yemen for a video I just made, and honestly I learned some pretty disturbing things that don't get talked about much.

The country was already running out of groundwater before the war even started.

By the early 2000s, experts were warning Sana'a could become the first capital city to physically run out of water.

Most of Yemen's water goes to agriculture, especially qat — a cash crop that's extremely water-intensive. Farmers grow it to survive, but it just accelerates the collapse.

Once water disappears, everything else follows — people move, hygiene breaks down, disease spreads, and whoever controls wells or water trucks gains power.

The war didn't cause this. The water crisis made Yemen fragile.

What's happening now isn't recovery — it's people adapting to permanent scarcity.

Yemen isn't unique because it's dry.

It's unique because it hit the wall first.

I made a short documentary-style video breaking this down if anyone's interested. Just wanted to share because this feels like one of those slow disasters we don't really notice until it starts showing up everywhere.

First, let me get this out of the way before anyone calls this post AI slop.

I wrote this entire thing myself. I then fed it to ChatGPT to clean it up. That's it. I didn't feel like putting in the effort to properly punctuate, format, and fix the typos, and to turn my rant into something cohesive instead of one long wall of text. I'm being upfront about my use of AI, so don't come at me for it.

Second, a mini rant about income and property tax. Then I'll explain why I think the American Dream is dead.

I'm 28 years old. I finally hit what's supposed to be a big milestone. I cracked over 100k in gross income.

I live in California. I make around 140k a year gross. After taxes, roughly 33%, I'm left with about 93k net. That's working full time, 80 hours every pay period, bi-weekly.

That means a third of my income just disappears. Most of it is federal taxes at around 24%, plus about 9% for state.

This is why I hate income tax. Like BITCH, WTF do you mean I have to give up a third of my hard-earned money. Hitting six figures is supposed to mean stability, not still feeling squeezed. Even at this income level, I still can't afford my own house yet. I have around 50k in debt that I'm going to pay off first, and then I'll try to save to buy a house.

And then there's property tax. WTF do you mean I have to keep paying you for property I already own. I paid for it. It's mine. That should be the end of it.

I'm not against taxes if they're actually used to make American lives better. Just to name a few things wrong with how our taxes are spent. We spend a ridiculous amount on defense, and God only knows how much of that is actually used for real defense versus shady shit hidden behind that label. We also spend a ton on foreign aid, which I wouldn't even be mad about if it actually went toward things like vaccines, medicine, and basic survival. Instead, corrupt politicians in those countries get fat on it, and the people who need help never see a dime.

This is where the American Dream starts to fall apart.

Capitalism used to reward hard work and long-term thinking. And don't get me wrong I understand that capitalism has always had winners and losers. But now it's far beyond that. It's been twisted and devolved into shit. Mega corporations, monopolies, and oligarchies run everything, and they've forced us into a permanent consumer state. Products are intentionally made with planned obsolescence so nothing lasts. You're forced to keep buying replacements and upgrades because the old stuff is designed to fail. Back in the day, if you bought something, you expected it to last, and if it broke, there were repairmen for everything. That entire system got killed. Now you don't really own quality items unless you can afford insanely expensive, artisan-level shit.

And the biggest thing we should be able to truly own is a place to live.

What's the most important thing for living besides sustenance. It's housing.

Housing is where the American Dream really dies. There was a time when an average person could afford a home and actually have it be theirs. Now housing is so expensive that people spend 30 years paying off a mortgage, busting their ass the whole time, just to finally own it. And even then, you still pay property taxes forever hence my propertytax rant. So do you really ever own it?

Because of this, more and more people are forced to rent. Homeownership keeps getting pushed further and further back, and the average age of first-time homeowners keeps rising.

Another major shift is income. There was a time when one income could realistically support a family. That doesn't mean people shouldn't work or pursue careers, or that you can't have two incomes in a household. It means the economy used to be structured so that a single full-time job could cover housing, food, and basic stability. A second income shouldn't be required just to survive. It should be for things like career growth, fulfillment, or improving quality of life. Now that's impossible. Today, most families require two full-time incomes just to survive, not to thrive. That's not about personal choice, independence, or fulfillment. That's about economic necessity.

The result is a society where everyone is stretched thin, living paycheck to paycheck, constantly consuming, and never getting ahead. Breaking out of that cycle feels almost impossible unless you're extremely lucky or already wealthy. Small business ownership and entrepreneurship, the things that used to drive upward mobility, feel nearly dead.

Another flaw in the system is medicine. Which is something every human needs to survive, yet it's become one of the highest-profit industries in existence. This ties into earlier about my rant on our taxes being misappropriated. The taxes that go to healthcare could be significantly impoved if it wasn't for the pharmaceutical industry. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, but at some point the greed becomes immoral. People die every year because they can't afford medicine that costs a fraction of what it's sold for. That's fucked.

That's why the American Dream is dead. Not because people don't work hard, but because the system no longer rewards it the way it used to.

I'm not ranting just to rant. I did what Im supposed to do. What they tell you to do. I grinded I played by the rules and worked hard to get to where I am today, busting my ass every single officially from the age of 18, but unofficially even before then. And when I finally feel like I should've made it, it turns out the rules are bullshit.

I'll never really achieve true financial freedom. And for those of you who will say I should budget better, cut unnecessary expenses, blah blah, live a basically non-existent and unfulfilled life in order to maybe gain financial freedom decades from now, I'm not interested in that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not spent scrimping and saving pennies until you're too old to enjoy shit.

And I already live a budgeted lifestyle. I don't take vacations. I don't spend money on stupid shit. I don't eat out multiple times a day. I don't spend money on alcohol or drugs. But it's still not enough.

In my household, we have three people and a combined income of around 200k gross, and it's still not enough. Like come on, man. That's just ridiculous. And it's not that I'm not comfortable. It's not that I don't have comfort or stability but It's the grind that you you have day in and day out until you either away to achieve that comfort and stability. When are you supposed to actually live and enjoy life.

And I'm not ungrateful. I thank God for even giving me the capability to earn and live. I know there are plenty of people less fortunate than me and way bigger problems than the ones I have. But I'm specifically talking about the economic challenges of a middle-class person and how this country has basically made it impossible to actually live and enjoy life without constantly grinding for your finances.

The rich get richer, and the middle and lower classes keep getting shoved further and further down.

https://hrnews1.substack.com/p/study-since-1950-the-nutrient-content?r=1t17zr

A rising number of American homeowners are ready relocate this year due to extreme weather events and other climate-related concerns.

Some 49 percent of those who own a house are considering moving in 2026 due to climate events, according to a survey of 1,000 American adults by insurance provider Kin Insurance. Also a concern among homeowners is the rising cost of homeownership, the study noted.

"Kin uncovered that climate is driving decisions about where people live and the rising costs of homeownership are changing when and how people buy homes," the study noted. The study also found that nearly all homeowners are concerned about severe weather damaging their homes.

Kin's survey found that within the 49 percent of homeowners who want to move, 19 percent "definitely" are considering it, while 30 percent are "somewhat" considering it. Some 45 percent said they were not considering a move.

As for how far away they want to move, Kin broke up respondents' intentions into three groups:

• Moving within their current city or community: 41 percent
• Moving to a different city or community in their state: 35 percent
• Moving to another state: 25 percent.

That 60 percent considering a move would relocate outside of their current city or community, is a trend confirmed in the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.

"Last year, homeowners who suffered catastrophic losses in the Los Angeles wildfires followed a similar pattern when they 'ended up in neighborhoods at least a half-hour's drive away' from their previous homes," Kin noted.

For those considering a move to another state, more than half of respondents wanted to avoid disaster-prone states like Florida and California and preferred to move to what they perceived as low-risk states, including Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Connecticut.

Does anyone know of a compilation of "Mainstream Collapse/Doomer Predictions" - predictions and analysis from key players "inside the mainstream socioeconomic system" who can't just be brushed off as "radical climate doomers" (as they tend to do with Hansen et al).

By that, I mean quotes like the one below from Dr. Günther Thallinger, Board Member, Allianz, that "capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable" above 3C of climate change?

"Once we reach 3°C of warming, the situation locks in. Atmospheric energy at this level will persist for 100+ years due to carbon cycle inertia and the absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. There is no known pathway to return to pre-2°C conditions. (See: IPCC AR6, 2023; NASA Earth Observatory: "The Long-Term Warming Commitment")

At that point, risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable." https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climate-risk-insurance-future-capitalism-g%C3%BCnther-thallinger-smw5f/ Dr. Günther Thallinger, Board Member, Allianz

Or the Insititure of Actuaries ">2Bn deaths if we hit 2C by 2050" from https://actuaries.org.uk/media/wqeftma1/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature.pdf

If a compilation doesn't already exist, post your your favourites as replies and I'll compile the list. If you do have a suggestion please link to the original source for verification/validation.

Related to collapse as the current political climate in the US is very detrimental to nuclear safety. The risks of someone doing something very idiotic leading to use of nukes is very much worse in a multipolar unregulated 'might makes right' world.

Disclaimer: SS: Related to Collapse because it address the loss of biodiversity on the planet and overpopulation, with the link between the two.

Growth in human population increase demand for food, home and products, and how agriculture is unsustainable with modern methods, but without those methods the amount of food needed to sustain the poulation would not be enough.

Also human population will either have high consumption like on first world countries or enable overconsumption by working on third world factories to produce what is consumed on the first world.

ARE WE LIVING IN A TRANCE OF SOME SORT? WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING BEFORE OUR EYES BUT WE JUST CANNOT CARE?

EPSTEIN FILES IN USA WASN'T ENOUGH, 3.5 MILLION PAGES WITH NEGLIGIBLE INVESTIGATION WASN'T ENOUGH. ONLY A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT. IT DOESN'T EVEN END THERE.

NEW DELHI, CAPITAL OF INDIA, WHERE 24000 PEOPLE WENT MISSING IN 2025 AND 800+ PEOPLE WENT MISSING IN THE FIRST 15 DAYS OF 2025 ALONE??? WHY AREN'T MORE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT IT?

I EVEN TRIED TELLING MY PALS ABOUT IT BECAUSE SOMEONE REALLY CLOSE TO ONE OF MY CLOSEST PALS STAYS THERE BUT EVERYONE JUST BRUSHES IT OFF??

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR EVEN? WE DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAT WENT MISSING BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T "OUR PEOPLE"? WHY DON'T PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT IF IT'S HAPPENING TO THEM TODAY SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU TOO! IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOUR FAMILY AS WELL, AND I HOPE NOT BUT WHEN THE DAY COMES EVERYONE FEEL AS HOPELESS AS I'M FEELING RN THINKING ABOUT THEM.

FOR ONE MINUTE OF YOUR LIFE PLEASE TRY IMAGINING THE SISTER/BROTHER WHO YOU'VE SPENT YOUR WHOLE LIFE WITH SUDDENLY GONE WITHOUT A TRACE WITH NEITHER YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HAVING ANY IDEA WHAT THEY'RE GOING THROUGH OR IF THEY ARE EVEN ALIVE? COULD YOU LIVE A DAY LIKE THAT? WHAT WOULD YOU FEEL IF SOMETHING LIKE THAT HAPPENED AND PEOPLE PAID NO HEED TO IT?? WHO WOULD YOU GO TO???

I REPEAT DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF THINKING IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU. RAPE, KIDNAPPING, MURDERS, TRAFFICKING EVERYTHING BOTHERS USSSS AND NOTTTT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SITTING AT THE TOP OF THE GAME. THERE'S NO NECESSITY OF THEM TAKING ACTIONS.

BUT IF WE COLLECTIVELY DON'T RAISE OUR VOICES, WE WILL BE THE ONE TO SUFFER, NOONE ELSE BUT WE,

TALK ABOUT IT ONCE AND YOU'LL REALISE WE ARE REALLY LIVING IN A TRANCE. PLEASE START CARING OR THE DAY YOU START CRYING ISN'T FAR AWAY. THIS HELPLESSNESS WILL NEVER TRULY VANISH BUT IT CAN SURE AS HELL LESSEN A BIT IF THE VICTIMS FEEL A BIT HEARD.

if we don't do it now, we'll jus end up as mere numbers and statistics on the charts, just an inconvenience to the people who are so grown to treat those numbers as just numbers and not individuals who were snatched off the opportunity of life.

TL;DR:- The number you see on the screens be it the Epstein files, the people missing, the number of murders, the number of rape victims, they are not just numbers, those are real people and EVERY life counts.

Mark Zuckerberg (41) paid $19 billion for WhatsApp in 2014. Today it has 3 billion users, 150 billion daily messages, and 400 million businesses using it.

He could have made it the universal platform for AI access - every small business from Brazil to Bangladesh, every merchant in India, accessing AI through the tool they already use daily. 80% customer satisfaction. Zero learning curve.

Instead: poured billions into the metaverse. Meanwhile the infrastructure to democratize AI sits unused.

This isn't just Meta. The pattern repeats:

- Sam Altman (40), Zuckerberg (41), Sundar Pichai (52)

- All building for tech-savvy 25-year-olds

- Ignoring that 40+ demographics control 70%+ of global wealth

- Missing obvious opportunities in favor of "prestige" projects

I'm 40. I just spent a week running open-source AI (Gemma 3 12B) on a $1500 machine and replaced $200/month subscriptions. 90% of business tasks work fine. The technology to democratize this exists NOW.

But the decision-makers can't see it because they're optimizing for impressing other nerds, not serving billions of people who just want technology that works.

The article covers:

- Why knowledge has never stayed locked up in history (printing press → AI)

- How open-source models closed the gap from 18 months to 6 months

- The "water company future" they're all missing

- Why the greatest innovations came from diverse teams (Bletchley Park vs Silicon Valley monoculture)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-spent-week-openclaw-ai-tool-heres-what-0-solved-faisal-al-khunizan-orhraf/

This is collapse in real-time: having the tools to solve problems, the infrastructure to distribute solutions, and decision-makers too insulated to see what's right in front of them.

Not to act like a condescending jackass smartass, but I noticed that there's a genuine lack of historical context and more isolationist sensationalism, even here. It's frustrating.

What do I mean by this?

When people call and talk about "rich people"/"billionaires" as though this is a new phenomenon.

They're plutocrats, descendants of monarchy/aristocracy. Call them what they are.

"LaTe sTAgE CapITalIsM"

NO. It's NEOFEUDALISM. It has always been FEUDALISM. Call them what they are.

People genuinely act surprised when collapse happens. Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of those Roman plebs? The 1790s Frenchmen? Or any of the empires that had fallen? I'm sure all the plebs acted the same, acting all surprised that things are falling, while having never bothered to notice things falling in the first place, because they hAd bIlLS tO PaY.

There's this illusionary sense of belief that your period of time is unique in history, even among people above 60. The horror, the collapse, the "evil". The sense that what you're experiencing (the collapse) has never occured to nor been experienced by people before them. You speak of your experience as though it's a novel, unprecedented phenomenon, divorced from historical examples. There's no examination of history, at all.

You keep tranferring power/authority/consent form/permission slip to the ruling class through one of their instruments called money, and you're suprised you don't have power?

It had happened and it will happen again if you don't look at a history book.

That is not to say that there aren't historically aware people in here. But I'm sure you can count them on your fingers and toes.

Everyone seems to agree: AI is a bubble.

Too much capital. Too few revenue-generating products. Infrastructure costs that dwarf actual utility.

The consensus is almost universal.

But here's the part most people skip:

If it's so obvious, why is the smartest institutional money in the world—hedge funds, sovereign wealth, Big Tech treasuries—still deploying billions into AI infrastructure?

Not retail investors chasing hype. Not momentum traders. The people with asymmetric information and 10-year horizons.

Either:

1. They see something the consensus doesn't

2. They're trapped in a coordination problem

3. The bubble label itself is missing something structural

Made a 26-second short that sits with that tension. No answers given—just the question most people don't ask.

Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/hXCKOUio1Fs

Curious what people here think. Is this a traditional speculative bubble, or is the capital flow revealing a different dynamic?

What if this is our last chance we have at actual change before ABSOLUTE CHECKMATE,

I'm posting this here because centralized power and passive participation seem to be recurring structural features of systemic fragility and collapse.

Looking at most systems throughout history, it becomes clear that despite their ideological differences, sometimes even opposing principles, they tend to produce very similar outcomes in practice. Almost all of them centralize power and decision-making within a relatively small group of people. As a result, the majority of those participating in these systems are left with a largely passive role in sustaining them.

This passivity creates the conditions for power to remain unchecked, and it allows centralized authority to further consolidate itself. This consolidation can happen through association with other forms of power, such as wealth or influence, or through mechanisms specific to each system's principles and structure. Regardless of the path, the outcome tends to be the same: power concentrates, while participation diminishes.

Over time, the general population learns this passivity so deeply that it begins to feel inevitable. It's not even that people consciously decide against having a more active role: rather, the possibility itself often stops being imagined. Active participation in shaping the system becomes almost inconceivable.

At least at a conceptual level, a system that involves its participants in a more active role in power and decision-making would represent a fundamentally different structure: one where power is decentralized, and where decisions more closely reflect the interests and needs of the people affected by them. If organized carefully, such a system could address many issues that existing systems routinely neglect or handle poorly.

However, this kind of system would also require a different mentality, and likely a shift in how individuals relate to society itself. It cannot be imposed or enforced, because it depends on active participation and individual involvement, expressed in different degrees and forms.

At its core, this system relies on a shared realization: that society and its structures are created and sustained by individuals collectively. This realization cannot be forced. It requires willingness. Without that willingness, the system cannot be created, maintained, or allowed to develop.

Because people are not homogeneous in their attitudes, capacities, or motivations, this system cannot rely on coercion or centralized enforcement. It can only exist through the voluntary coming together of people who choose to take responsibility for the society they participate in.

I'm literally losing hair about this topic like I just want to injoy my life or live up to 30 normally and have a wife and kids but I just don't see myself even growing up in the future because of how the world is going though I turn 16 in a week I wanna be happy about it because I can get a job or a driver license but I'm not because I'm telling myself what's the point of doing that if the world is going to go to shit and I'm using suicide as a coping mechanism saying like when the world collapses im going to off myself so i dont have to live through it but i just can't beacuse im Muslim like i dont know what to do like i just im trying to gaslight myself into thinking everything is going to be ok but its not like i just want to live up until 30 with the world being semi-ok not where ice is killing everyone they see and trump is a fucking dumbass and where we will own nothing and we will be eating Soylent because there will be no fucking food left cause of government. Like I just wanna feel good about the world Everytime I think about my future I think that it's going to be shit and please don't bring up getting closer to god everyone always says that to me and there is so much fucking hate is the world why can't we live in peace no wars just peace. Please tell me you guys coping mechanism

I don't know if this belongs here or if I'm just overthinking but it's been sitting heavy with me. Day to day life looks fine. I go to work, pay bills, plan things weeks out. I even have some money saved up, which by every "responsible adult" metric means I'm doing okay. Stores are stocked. Apps work. Packages show up on time. From the outside, nothing feels urgent and that's what freaks me out. I'll be sitting on the couch at night playing on my phone, scrolling past headlines about climate, housing, geopolitics, systems clearly under strain, and then immediately see an ad for something pointless and shiny. My brain just switches gears like that's normal. Like none of it is connected.

It feels like we're all living inside this fragile pause. Everything still functions, but only barely, and only because everyone is pretending it will keep functioning forever. There's no dramatic breaking point, just a slow stacking of stressors that never fully resolve.

What messes with me is how good we've gotten at adapting. Higher costs become normal. Shortages become "supply issues." Extreme weather becomes "unusual conditions." Every downgrade gets renamed until it doesn't feel like an emergency anymore.
I don't feel panicked. I feel uneasy. Like I'm watching something important erode in real time while still being expected to care about emails, productivity, and five year plans. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that awareness. I still have to live my life. But it's hard to fully believe in long term stability when everything feels this conditional.

Maybe collapse doesn't arrive with chaos. Maybe it arrives quietly, disguised as normal, while we scroll and tell ourselves it's probably fine.

Toynbee's "A Study of History" remains a solid explanation for the met historical cycles that shape the rise and fall of civilizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History

As meta histories go, this one's not bad and seems to be reasonably accurate in broad brush strokes.

According to Toynbee there are only four remaining "civilizations": Western, Islamic, far Eastern and Hindu. Each existing and extinct civ goes through a predictable cycle of growth and decay:

Challenge and Response- causing the birth of a civilization. For the West that would be the "stimulus of new ground" caused by barbarian volkwanderung at the end of Hellenic Civilization (fall of the Roman Empire).

Cultural growth - led by a creative minority that spurs a civilization to greater heights of artistic, scientific, cultural, economic and political advancement. The majority willing emulates this creative minority. For the West, this stage stared in the so-called Dark Ages and really gathered steam during the Renaissance, Age of Exploration and birth of Science.

A Time of Troubles - when war and the struggle for power leads to destruction of cultural creativity as the leading minority stops being creative and becomes a dominant minority which forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience. The West has seen a time of troubles since the Napoleonic Wars through the World Wars and the Cold War. We can see the continued mutation of the new dominant minority as the uber rich establish an oligarchy which controls the economy and the political process.

Creation of a Universal State - as one competitor (like Rome) achieves total dominance and defeats all rivals to create an empire encompassing its civilization. In the West that is obviously the United States.

Cultural decay - the establishment of a Universal State creates an alienated internal proletariat resentful of being under the thumb of the dominant minority and an external proletariat of barbarians. Such hordes would have to be created by catastrophic climate changes turning those now living within the borders of the American empire into hordes of refugees (which was what many of the barbarians migrating into the Roman empire were). The refugees from Syria entering Europe to escape ISIS and war, which was caused by a prolonged drought, which in turn was caused by climate change may be the first of many.

(YOU ARE HERE)

A Universal Church - created by the alienated internal proletariat as an outlet for its dissatisfaction with its political and economic lot under the dominant minority. It's no accident that Christianity spread through the Roman Empire via slaves, the poor, women and other oppressed minorities and disenfranchised.

Fall of the Universal State - As Toynbee noted, a universal state empire is not a golden age so much as an Indian Summer, a brief rally in an inevitable downward spiral. As the empire finally unravels politically, militarily and economically the external proletariat launches another volkwanderung and the internal proletariat creates a Universal Church which then forms the chrysalis of the next civilization.

Watched an interesting documentary on the Bronze Age collapse of 1177 bc.

It was our first age of globalization with multiple civilization, empires, kingdoms and city states all interconnected by trade (especially the tin and copper used to make bronze - the "oil" of their age.

There were as many geopolitical players in the Bronze Age (Hittites, Egyptians, Myceneans, Assyrians, Elamites, Mitanni, Kassites, etc.) as there are today (USA, EU, Russia, OPEC China, Japan India, South Korea, etc.) with interconnected trade routes and sophisticated supporting webs of financial institutions and diplomatic correspondence stretching from Cornwall to Cyprus to Afghanistan.

Like our world it was a multi-polar world with a few super powers (like USA and Egypt), whose collapse was triggered by climate change (natural global cooling then, man-made global warming today) causing megadroughts, famine and climate refugees (aka the Sea Peoples) leading to a chain rection systems collapse across half the globe.

Key parallels include:

Climate Change and Resource Scarcity: Severe, prolonged drought and environmental shifts forced agricultural failures and triggered mass migration (e.g., the "Sea Peoples").

Systemic Interdependence and Cascading Failure: The highly globalized, interdependent nature of the Mediterranean meant that the collapse of one region (e.g., the Hittites) triggered a domino effect across the entire system.

Economic and Political Instability: Widespread disruption of trade routes, economic decline, and internal rebellion destabilized heavily fortified, wealthy cities.

Overextension and Social Unrest: Similar to modern times, elites in the Late Bronze Age faced increasing challenges in maintaining order as crises deepened, sometimes leading to a lurch toward more authoritarian control.

Migration and Conflict: The era saw massive demographic shifts and "invasions" or migrations, often interpreted as refugees fleeing environmental or economic collapse.

What was most interesting is who actually survived the collapse and why.

Essentially Egypt, though battered and shrunken in power, was the only Bronze age civilization to emerge whole after the collapse. The assured water supply of Nile River valley made its agriculture relatively resilient in the face of climate change and its relative isolation shielded it from the worst of the refugee hordes (with Ramses III winning a great victory over the invading Sea Peoples).

The current version of Egypt is America, whose assured water supply of the Great Lakes and Mississippi river system makes us relatively resilient against climate change. Bordered by two oceans and deserts to the south, America is nearly as well situated against mass influx of refuges as Egypt was (a mass migration of millions of refugees would not survive the trek across northern Mexico).

Physically America is as difficult to invade as ancient Egypt and our geography will blunt the worst effects of climate change. IOW, we will still have food when the rest of the world is going hungry or starving.

So don't be surprised if after the digital age collapse of 2077 ad that America is the only nation still standing.

"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" - Mark Twain

Who I believe posted in Reddit as u/tuneglum. A note in his substack says he passed away in November.

I enjoyed his writing, his style, and learning from him.

Much of what he wrote is far more pessimistic than you hear from other sources, though all he did was compile published work into a digestible theme.

Of all he has done, highlighting the declining albedo, or reflectivity of the earth has been the most troubling, equivalent to an additional 100ppm of CO2e according to Hansen. That and the trailing rate of warming, perhaps 0.26 C per decade is already very dangerous, and the acceleration beyond that is quite a thing to ponder.

I will miss seeing his work, and will try to take some inspiration from what he did. He was not in a cheerful business, but he wrote with clarity and passion, and anger.

Hello, my collapse-aware friends.

I learned about this free 9-week course on "Resilience and Acceptance in the Face of Collapse" on this subreddit and enrolled. This weekend, I got an email from one of the organizers requesting help getting the word out about this program. Here is the email:

I'll put more info about the course objectives and syllabus in the comments.

If this sounds like something you are interested in, I encourage you to visit the website and consider enrolling in a course.

Thanks <3

Mods: my apologies if this counts as spam. Let me know if this post violates the subreddit rules. I'm just trying to get the word out.

This morning, climate scientist Michael Mann posts some choice screenshots of correspondence from 2012, several years after Epstein's conviction.

https://bsky.app/profile/michaelemann.bsky.social/post/3mdtbraov3k2r

With every document drop, the Epstein network seems to grow larger. Epstein's relationships in the scientific community in general are notable, and tend to have a certain almost reactionary tilt (frequent hinting about discredited race science, etc.).

I joked over the weekend that someone should check the Heartland Institute for Epstein money. I didn't expect this to show up 2 days later.

We talk a lot about elites here, and rightly so. But rarely do we get such an x-ray look at the mundane correspondence that documents relationships and networks. It's very illustrative who Jeffrey Epstein, confidant of half of the leadership of the entire world, made time for.

We are officially in the lowest snowpack in history.

This map shows Westwide SNOTEL snow water equivalent as a percent of the 1991-2020 median (end of day Jan 31, 2026). Large parts of the western U.S. are well below normal—many basins in the Southwest and along the Sierra/Cascades are in the 30-60% range, with some areas lower. Low snowpack doesn't guarantee a catastrophic fire season, but it's an early warning: less spring melt, earlier drying of grasses and brush, stressed forests, and more competition for limited water through summer.

I'm sharing this as a discussion starter, not doomposting. What are you seeing in your area so far—reservoir levels, soil moisture, streamflows, or unusually dry fuels? Are local agencies already adjusting burn restrictions, staffing, or prescribed-fire plans? If you have context (recent storms that haven't hit yet, elevation effects, or why certain basins look better/worse), please add it.

If you disagree with the "on fire" framing, say why and point to data. Links to dashboards and forecasts are encouraged. Also: remember ignition sources matter—heat plus wind plus people can turn a dry year into a record year fast very locally.

this post was auto-moderated due to lack of submission statement. reposting. Also added graphic from nasa article on western snowpack (image2)

I'm in Salt Lake City and feel like I'm in a cat 5 hurricane with 0 news coverage. a slow moving toxic event that will trigger migration.

Article that inspired this.

https://www.makeuseof.com/old-gpu-refuses-to-go-away-and-its-only-going-to-get-more-popular/

(This five-year-old GPU refuses to go away, and it's only going to get more popular)

The persistence of old-generation GPUs is the ultimate sign of technological stagnation. It is the best evidence that base compute is not getting cheaper. So far, wafers have been getting more expensive. The price per transistor is not falling.

I really do believe frames per dollar is one of the best metrics of technological progress, as opposed to abstruse "AI" metrics in an academic laboratory. Rendering complex scenes is a computationally demanding tasks, so the ability to do that represents the current capability to get computer hardware to do useful stuff. I really do think that in order to drive a car or prescribe a Viagra, "AI" will need to have even better hardware.

If things are really getting better, we would have the manufacturing capability to produce chips with more advanced nodes abundantly. We simply don't have the ability to transform the world through semiconductor manufacturing anymore.

Without cheaper transistors, I believe "AI" isn't really going to make a big, positive impact on life. So "AI" is just hype until transistors become dramatically cheaper again.

Bottom line, things aren't getting faster, cheaper, better. (The citius, vitus, fortius of technology.)

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The aim of this guide is to increase your chances of reaching the actual Singularity as a minimally subjugated free mind, and hopefully getting you across the massive economic chasm that we will all find ourselves on one side of or another. Here is how you avoid being the fuel for someone else's future.

• Map the AI terrain obsessively - the technology, economics, politics, incentives and disincentives, including sovereign citizens like Musk and Thiel.
• Remain sovereign of your own mind - practice cognitive security like a professional sport. Cultivate practical political neutrality (not "I don't take sides", but "I am not sworn to a political tribe"). Recognise that there are systems that will beat any human cognitive security and treat those systems like hard radiation.
• Don't get radicalized and start smashing shit up - Remember (or learn about) what really happened with the Luddites.
• Gather capital unto yourself like an insulating cocoon - There is no upper limit. There will be a lower limit. Do not bet on UBI or end-of-scarcity bullshit.
• Get skin in the Long Game - Have kids, or other generational projects. Give yourself reasons to not give up.
• Encourage people to remain, but don't waste effort when you see they're already gone - Grant them their autonomy to at least choose to go into the crystals.
• Do not underestimate how much of a dystopian science-fiction future we are already living in - When you stop pretending that all this shit is normal, you stop being effortlessly easy to herd.
• Make a middle way happen - The Lotus Eaters will fall over themselves to go into bliss crystals, and the World Eaters will be happy to keep harvesting as much as they can from everything they touch. But there might just be a New Ordinary Man, people who avoided the permanent underclass, but who keep meaning and use the tools from the Singularity as a shield, not a drug. They might be the new Radical Centrists and might even be the last to resist going into virtual worlds forever. But remember....
• The game is over when ASI has no more reason to let us pretend to our dramas. Whether this is immediately after it emerges, or (unlikely) centuries afterward, but on a long enough timeline, it causes our extinction. Make your own mind up about whether that's a good thing or not, but don't fool yourself into thinking it doesn't happen.

They found microplastics in human blood for the first time in 2022. Then in lung tissue. Then in placentas. Then crossing the blood-brain barrier. Every few months another study confirms that synthetic polymers have colonized another organ system we thought was protected.

We are not being slowly poisoned. We are already poisoned. The contamination is not coming. It happened. It's done. Every person reading this has plastic particles in their bloodstream right now. Every baby born this year enters the world pre-contaminated with petrochemical byproducts that didn't exist 80 years ago.

The part that gets me is we know. This isn't like leaded gasoline where the science was suppressed for decades while corporations funded doubt. The studies are public. The headlines run every few weeks. We read them, feel a brief moment of dread, and then order something from amazon that arrives wrapped in three layers of plastic packaging.

We drink from plastic bottles because they're convenient. We heat food in plastic containers because it's fast. We buy synthetic clothing because it's cheap. Every load of laundry releases hundreds of thousands of microfibers into the water supply. We know this. We do it anyway.

Future historians are going to study this period with the same bewilderment we have for the romans and their lead pipes. Except the romans didn't have peer reviewed research explaining exactly how lead was destroying their cognitive function while they kept installing more plumbing. We have the research. We have the data. We saw the graphs and shrugged.

The really dark part is there's no individual solution. You can't opt out. Even if you eliminated every piece of plastic from your life today, the microplastics already in your tissue aren't going anywhere. The contamination in the water supply isn't going anywhere. The particles in the air aren't going anywhere. We've permanently altered the chemical composition of human biology for the sake of convenience products and there is no cleanup coming.

We chose this. Not consciously, not maliciously, but we chose it. And we keep choosing it every single day.