And look at how much life has changed in America from 2015-2025! We went from an imperfect democracy where civil discourse was still possible to an authoritarian shithole filled with millions and millions of fascist thugs who are somehow still functioning in daily life despite very clearly being psychotic beyond the help of even the best psychiatrists. Oh, and the rich pay less in taxes, facts no longer exist apparently, people are having psychotic meltdowns caused by hallucinating AIs that will eventually replace half of all entry level jobs, and science and education and environmental destruction are going back to the 1800s! Soon RFK Jr will legalize lobotomies again because his brain worm made him do it. Oh and then there's the mass suffering being inflicted on legal, law abiding migrants the likes of which the world has never seen (in the U.S), medicaid and food stamps and obamacare subsidies being ripped away, the pell grant being gutted...

And now there are flat earthers and anti vaxxers. Everything going backwards.

And yet I watched a crap film the other week where somebody went back in time 20 years, and the only difference was everyone had flip phones instead of smartphones.

So the era of progress is over.

Sorry if it's already been pointed out but they just kind of skipped over boats

~~we are creators~~ We enjoyed a short period of exponentially increasing complexity due to a massive amount of 'immediately free' energy afforded us through the burning of fossil fuels.

We had flight before airplanes! Why do people just ignore lighter than air travel lmao. Yes, planes are more impressive, but it wasn't like BAM plane BAM rockets.

It’s why a lot of sci-fi written in the 1900’s takes place in like the 90’s and 2000’s. Writers thought that we would keep on exponentially advancing and have Mars colonies and flying cars by now. They could have never predicted that interest in space exploration would have waned, like people stopped caring about the space shuttle, and that the actual technological revolution took place in the computing space.

Science!

And now everything feels stuck again

And fifty years later we still mope around in low earth orbit. Progress has slowed down a lot since the billionaires took over.

There is no individual. There is only network. System. Systems create. They output. They produce. They produce well and tremendously when the system is healthy. Make the system healthy for once. I mean again.

Still find it absolutely amazing the moon landing happened in the 1960s, back when the Boeing 707 was popular. just amazing what humanity can achieve with the right priorities

A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863.

Yup, that's far alright:

It’s easy to see why people thought we would be a lot more futuristic by now.

And since then - We have found ways to make all travel worse for comfort, more expensive, and more necessary.

Don't forget the weird rocks that, when refined and enriched, it gets a bit of... well you know...