- public libraries are still there.
- Book (physical) can still be purchased and fully owned, without any risk of them being remotely edited or deleted and without nay tracking of our reading habits.
- Walking is still free, without any subscription required.
- It is still legal to turn off one's phone.
- I love my spouse at least as much as I loved her when we first met almost 30 years ago. And, yep, she seems to kinda like me too ;)
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
Source: My epub library growing day by day, synced between multiple devices by syncthing.
Why go through the trouble of purchasing them with DRM and supporting that garbage and doing all the work to make them your own?
Piracy is infinitely superior.
Fascism doesn't actually last that long. At some point, policies have to have some kind of attachment to reality, and fascists are incapable of grappling with reality.
Franco stuck around for quite awhile, but yeah its track record is usually short.
Franco was the first one I thought of. However, his fascism didn't outlive him, and President Pedophile doesn't have 36 years to go.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco really was. In fact, Orwell wasn't even that sure when he wrote Homage to Catalonia, and he was quite clear that he went to Spain expressly to kill a fascist.
We're actually doing pretty well, globally, at shifting to renewables. We're making more, more quickly and more cheaply than ever before.
And the best part is that this is driven by economics, not even policy at this point. Renewables are cheaper.
Wallets are twice as likely to be returned as people expect. And the interesting thing is this holds true more or less globally.
I dream of finding the wallet stuffed with enough cash to dig me out of this mess, but in reality, if there's any way at all to get it back to who dropped it, I will. Found a wallet a few months ago on a day trip, laying in the road. Ending up using the names on the credit cards to Facebook stalk a dude, found his company website, called him, and met him a half hour later to return it. Had like 800 dollars in cash it. I just... Can't be an asshole, even when it would benefit me
You're good people, don't regret it. Incidentally, I'd probably grab a handful of the cash and just hand it to whoever returned the wallet to me like that. It was lost anyway.
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
Canada geese and white-tailed deer nearly went extinct. Now they're considered pests in some areas. It's possible for nature to bounce back, it just needs to be given a chance.
Pests? If you got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
Here's one I like: despite the efforts of Big Oil and their orange-painted lackey, the amount of renewable energy generated in the first half of 2025 has surpassed energy generated by fossil means.
Renewables surpassed coal, not all fossil fuels. Renewables were 34%. The good news is they are faster growing.
There's a promising treatment for Huntington's disease in the works, and we might have vaccines for allergies and/or asthma at some point!
Renewable energy and battery storage are seeing an absolute collapse in prices such that it is inevitable in the near to mid term future that we will move away from fossil fuel extraction leaving much of it in the ground. This will happen no matter who is in charge politically or who tries to subsidize fossil fuels because money is king and a lot of free energy hits the earth every day.
This, combined with falling birthrates, means we will hit peak carbon emissions and begin to drop back to a new normal, a new economy built around labor rather than capital because of the shift in balance between resources and workers similar to what happened during the black death. It is my opinion that this will begin to happen in my lifetime and will fully come to pass in our children's lifetime.
Having worked in energy for 10 years (particularly battery storage and solar) you are correct about the prices falling, and in my opinion you are also correct about this dooming fossils.
However, I do not agree with your second point around a new economy arising built around labor rather than capital. The mechanics of value creation can change (eg renewables vs fossils) but what the ruling class will not allow to change without intense prolonged struggle is their own position as the rulers.
Trump is pretty old, and I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone. Nor are there any viable successors that are likely to dodge any infighting. JD Vance as a successor? Yeah, ain't happening.
To summarize, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. And the worse the MAGA crowd pulls it in their direction now, the harder it will swing.
It's my HRT birthday today, two years now and it's really sunny and warm. It's a nice day :3
Happy HRT-birthday! 🎉
In the grand scheme this is all fleeting. Humanity is fleeting. The earth will continue, it will heal, trees will eventually take over. The earth has patience, more than we can comprehend. Long after we're gone it will still be here, it will be green and lush and vibrant, life will be abundant again, and we will be little more than a few ancient scars on it.
That personally brings me peace. No matter how dark things get it's nothing on the immense scale that is out planets lifetime. 5 years? 10? 20? 100? 1000? It's nothing to the earth. Humanity's <10,000 years means nothing to the planet in the scale of millions of years. Even climate change, the effects to us will be horrendous, but to the earth it will keep happily spinning, and it will get over it and correct itself.
Humanity’s <10,000 years
Not to nitpick over much, but humans are ~2M years old or more, with H. sapiens being about 300K years old.
The industrial age, however, is not even 300yrs old, so there's your flash in the pan extinction spiral, so to speak.
In 6 billion years the sun will swole up to engulf the earth and none of this will have ever mattered.
!upliftingnews@lemmy.world and !wholesome@reddthat.com exist and I think that's beautiful.
A few somewhat recent ones of different magnitudes:
- Cancer, despite still being the leading cause of deaths worldwide, is seeing a downward trend in mortality rates across most subtypes
- The 2025 Nobel Prizes are currently being awarded
- The Greek Parthenon recently became scaffold free for the first time in 15 years, apparently restoration is using all original pieces as well
- EU has fairly recently revised the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which will require new buildings to have zero-emission
I’m having goulash this evening, and the next couple of weeks. The world could go up in flames and hell freeze over and I wouldn’t care.
SPYxFAMILY Season 3 just started. :)
It's a spy anime with this kid who is as adorable as she is dumb. And we love it. It's more of a comedy than anything, I think. Kids like it because the adorable little four-year-old saves the day, adults love it because the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old makes adorable faces. We all win.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I think that is really reassuring
What does that mean? This is one of the most logically true discussions of spirituality I am familiar with. It takes no position on what that condition might be, but addresses the issue in an almost circular reference.
Those who believe we come from nothing cannot argue that somehow, by having lived, we will go on to be something afterwards, per the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Those who believe we have a ‘soul’, something other than our physical bodies, that goes on after we die, admit that we had to have had a soul prior to birth.
And those that believe we are on a wheel, going through life again and again, understand that we are what we always have been, and will continue to be, when we’re not busy living our lives.
https://philosiblog.com/2011/12/05/after-your-death-you-will-be-what-you-were-before-your-birth/
Maybe there's only one soul. Like in The Egg. It's just one soul reincarnating into one life after the next, jumping forwards and backwards in space and time. Eventually after passing through the lifetimes of every sentient being that is, was, or ever shall be, the path of reincarnation loops back upon itself. There is only one soul, only one consciousness in the cosmos. One infinite endless circling wheel of experience, all bound in a universe finite in both space and time.
I believe historically we are still at the most peaceful time in a global scale. Doesn’t mean things aren’t bad or getting worse, but I guess we’ve got that going for us?
When you die there is nothing. You go back to where you were before you were born.
No past, no future, no memory, nothing.
You will cease to be and the memory of you will fade from this universe nearly instantly.
There's a lovely peace to that...
Im going to read through but I can't imagine anything that is uplifiting enough to counter the current weights attached to us.
what's "uplifting" depends a lot on what you want to see in the world ...
but i'd say that we live in very exceptional times in history, so what's currently happening is not the norm and will sooner or later pass...
The universe is extremely big and empty.
When I need my fix of good news I go to iea.org and look at some graphs. I'm always thinking it should be faster but then again there's hope for climate change and the world is transitioning despite how entrenched the fossil fuel industry is.
Here's one on the investments being made:

Humans die eventually.
- The world is αwful.
- The world is much better thαn it once wαs.
- The world cαn be much better than it currently is.
All three stαtements αre true αt the sαme time. It's wrong to think these stαtements contrαdict eαch other.
You sαy there is doom in our current reαlity, and it feels true, but never discount the wonderful things either. While mαny in this threαd have focused on directly αnswering question, I suspect there mαy be αn underlying dissαtisfαction in your mentαlity.
This threαd cαn shαre wonderful things, but without α shift on mentαlity, it mαy be eαsy enough to brush off. I know becαuse I wαs and still αm like this. Prαcticing grαtitude or grαtitude journαling mαy help, it did for me.
• I'm grαteful becαuse vαccines hαve such α powerful αurα of protection, thαt we αs α society have forgotten the nαmes of the diseαses they protect αgαinst. The world can be better, because one day, we may even erαdicαte these diseαses which still plαgue our species.
• I'm grαteful I hαve opposαble thumbs, becαuse it mαkes it eαsy to be α potαto on the couch and doom scroll. The mere αct that I can see informαtion on α powerful device thαt cαn tell me the stories from αround the globe is quite incredible.
• I'm grαteful becαuse I don't comment very often, but I wαnted to this time. I usuαlly lurk quietly, but I too cαn be better thαn I currently αm αnd pαrticipαte sometimes.
The only way out is through, where there's a will, there is a way.
Wow you all suck at this. Okay I'm gonna do an actual one. The amount of wars had around the world has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased from just a century ago.
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