In my experience tech changed the way it is displayed in this article. Tech products really degraded in the past year.
YouTube is now unwatchable because of ads every 4-5 minutes, google search is similarly un-usable (I switched to Bing and it is ok for now, but if it gets worse I already know its replacement).
I used to love using Excel-it is now unusable as well (I switched to libreOffice on my work computer where I get Excel for free).
I am typing this on my iPad and how I regret inadvertently “upgrading” to Liquid Glass.
My family still watches Netflix but I stopped and the alternative is, well, you can probably guess what it is.
My next project is installing Linux on my Windows desktop.
All of this in 2025/2026. For me 2025 was the end of an era.
I think we are seeing a crop of the old companies going through the Large Corporation Lifecycles. They're well past founder-run stage, and it's a hard transition. If profitability declines, they spiral fast when they are traded as Growth companies- even their talent pool requires stocks going up otherwise how many good, smart people stick around when they're getting an effective demotion quarter after quarter, year after year. I look at companies like GE and Sears and see how hard it is to survive one or two "generations" of leadership change.
I still think these megacorps you reference aren't going full on Evil, but are just struggling to keep momentum (and trying everything they can to keep it). Youtube allows anyone to upload the most data and compute media forms in massive quantities for FREE. That's insane to me. On top of that, there are thousands of new companies being formed with people still trying to make the world a better place.
I haven't used any of the things you mentioned (except for an iPad) for a decade or so, but I can assure you they were all awful then compared to my experience years earlier with them.
In 2026, after Trump started the war in Iran, when he is doing all he can to cover Einstein’s accomplices, after providing legal cover for the ICE agents who killed two Americans, when he called the pope weak and said he is not a fan, Evangelicals still approve of his actions 69% [0].
Sorry pal, it is the white christians who are hypocritical. Their idol is a walking version of the all 7 deadly sins.
Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is almost literally a millennium old at this point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_quaerens_intellectum (and much older if you take it back to Saint John's response to the resurrection John 20:8-9)
Also: Jesus' response to Apostle Thomas after his resurrection from the dead is recited during every Easter mass: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Yes, on the surface the religion is the textbook antithesis of free thought. And yet I think my friend was getting at something deeper I can't quite pin down easily. Maybe it was just a lucky combination of aristocrat philosophers justifying their pursuits? Then there was the Enlightenment thing...
On the surface the religion is the antithesis of free thought? Where does persecution of scientists during the Medieval Age belong to? Is it below the surface? Above the surface?
Enlightenment runs contrary to Christian Dogma - Enlightenment advocates for the separation of Church and State.
Sorry pal, but Christianity is firmly against free thought....
Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life". And to Thomas He says _first_ (two verses earlier), "Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing".
And to add another famous example: Galileo Galilei 500 years ago was persecuted by the Christian Church because he (Galileo) defended helio-centrism. [0]
I think if Russia drops a nuke on Ukraine then even China will desert them.
India for sure will stop trading with Russia, lest it be seen to condone such insanity (India has a nuclear armed rival next door-India will not want Pakistan get any ideas).
I think this is the only reason Russia did not nuke Ukraine.
The first paragraph in the GP comment makes a lot of sense. Just today I was listening to a program on NPR about birth control in Uganda - women were complaining about their husbands want more and more children. These women in Uganda were getting their contraceptives discreetly without their husbands knowledge.
When women are empowered they choose to have less kids.
(Another example of this is closer to home. Project 2025 wants to curtail contraceptives distribution and usage with the same goal: more kids. It is the same logic - diminish women’s power have re: pregnancy in order to increase birth rate)
Average North Korean is now about 3 inches shorter than the average South Korean [0]. 70 years ago they were the same people with the same height... Both nations have very little in the way of immigration so this difference is all due to the environment (i.e. in this case nutrition).
Medieval people were a lot shorter too. When I was in Saint Basil Cathedral in Moscow I was amazed how narrow and low were the corridors inside those side towers. I hit my head multiple in that church.
(In the world graph towards the end the height seems to decrease since 1990s-this is because countries with shorter people have a higher birth rate. Within the same population the height is still increasing)
At 6' I'm unlikely to ever dunk on my 6'4" brother, which is a bummer, but ego aside I'm not really impacted much by my height since I can secure food and shelter by pressing buttons and pushing a mouse. From an evolutionary perspective I understand the preference to be bigger, but I wonder if it's still a logical aspiration for modern humans. More cells means a higher risk of cancer, after all.
YouTube is now unwatchable because of ads every 4-5 minutes, google search is similarly un-usable (I switched to Bing and it is ok for now, but if it gets worse I already know its replacement).
I used to love using Excel-it is now unusable as well (I switched to libreOffice on my work computer where I get Excel for free).
I am typing this on my iPad and how I regret inadvertently “upgrading” to Liquid Glass.
My family still watches Netflix but I stopped and the alternative is, well, you can probably guess what it is.
My next project is installing Linux on my Windows desktop.
All of this in 2025/2026. For me 2025 was the end of an era.
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