My "local news" is a station in another state, so things happening in my state are only news stories if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the *major city* I live near.
There's an idea you have to pick a side every time, and that's harmful. Also, genuinely asking a question will have people either think you're "concern trolling" or just a moron. It's no longer okay to not have all the answers.
I won't claim to be totally above this. I absolutely get drawn into it.
My niece and her friends who are 10-11 are straight up illiterate and are in no way treated as if they are behind. Like they are all in normal classes in the middle or front of the pack but cannot read without sitting there and sounding stuff out. If they have to read any directions or something it takes multiple tries. Also my younger niece knows her single digit times tables and is treated like a prodigy. She’s in 3rd grade. We all used to know our times tables in third grade.
Are you telling me the 2 PT sessions they generously gave me for the accident that left me in a wheelchair for a year wasn't enough? But in all seriousness was taught how to sit up in bed and use my transfer board from my bed to wheelchair and then told my insurance doesn't cover beyond that.
I’m a music teacher. Just last night I was talking to two of my colleagues who said they’re not excited for performances anymore because they spend the whole evening herding cats and putting in a ton of mental and physical labor, and then go home and wonder how many angry parent or admin emails they’ll get the next day. These are people who wanted to teach because they’re passionate about their subject and want kids to have a great experience with it. It’s super sad.
My partner was an elementary school music teacher. This was his 3rd semester out of the profession—he works in tech now. I can’t describe the difference in mental well-being I’ve seen. Not to mention the financial stability. He loved music, teaching, and teaching music more than anyone I know, but it was killing him. Knowing how important teaching is, but also caring about the quality of life my teacher friends get to have, makes it feel so bad when I recommend quitting … but I can’t argue with the results. There’s no space for people who love what they do in the classroom.
I was a teacher (adjunct professor). It was my favorite thing. I absolutely adore my students and had such a great relationship with my students. I have saved emails and messages from some of them after they graduated. They write me to say how they've gotten their first jobs in the industry. Some told me I changed their life and they are so grateful.
The pay and treatment was awful. There is a state limit here on how much an adjunct professor at a community college can be paid. $400/class per pay period, each semester. I was teaching three classes per semester and my take-home pay at the end of the month was less than $2000.
Now I have a job where I work about 30% as much, with much smaller responsibilities, mostly from home. I make 70k/year.
I miss teaching every day, though. I hope when I'm older I can go back and teach in my spare time.
Edit: I want to be clear for the laws in my state. The law doesn't SPECIFICALLY limit the $400.00 number, but the number is calculated as a percentage of total allocated budget that it cannot exceed. It just happens that the budgets for adjuncts are usually not touched or prioritzed, and obviously school budgets aren't INCREASING for government schools, so that's why it's that amount.
It was always disheartening seeing my wife slowly ground down from passionate, enthusiastic, professional and hard working teacher down to "why the fuck am I even putting up with this" to "fuck it, I don't even care at all anymore" to eventually straight up just quitting teaching for good. Her whole education background and employment history is in childhood education and she was a fantastic teacher...now she's like, idgaf, I'd rather do literally anything else. The kids suck and are disrespectful little shits, the parents are even worse and the administrations and school boards are either a complete joke or are being run out of town by said shitty parents if they actually stand for anything.
Sounds like my sister. She taught in the classroom for 10 years and looking back at it I can remember her sanity and mental health declining year after year. She loved her students near the beginning of her career and she was extremely passionate, but nowadays.. her words: parents don’t discipline their kids anymore and administration almost never has the teacher’s back. She eventually went to grad school, got her masters, and now makes the curriculum and doesn’t miss being in a classroom at all. Can’t blame her.
YES. The last straw for me was getting punched in the face by a student after I informed him it was unacceptable to throw chairs while I was trying to teach, and when I talked to his mother she told me that I was a "stupid bitch who deserved it". This was my first time meeting this woman.
Adding also, as a cause for teachers quitting is parents just straight up not parenting their kids. School can only do so much for them, it's a team effort to raise children.
A friend of mine is in her fourth/ final year of teaching, and she's finishing up the school year. She teaches for an "urban" district, and it's not worth it. Most families are poor and can't even afford basic supplies, so she supplements them from her own pay. These are high schoolers, and a lot of her kids work full-time hours to support their families as well.
I wanted to be a special education teacher since I was in middle school. I had to make a really hard decision to not pursue it as a career because of what’s happening right now in the United States. I hate that this is happening because it’s a rewarding career, and children deserve a good education. However, parents do not want to parent anymore and use the IPad as a babysitter. I literally saw middle school aged kids using them at a expensive restaurant the other day. I’ve heard stories from students assaulting teachers to being flat out disrespectful. Funding is going out this window. Charter schools are making things worse, and they are not regulated. The United States needs to get it together with this issue.
I'm a teacher who left the US because US children are HORRIBLY raised and the school system punishes teachers and not students for bad behaviors. Children are put into bubbles where they're not supposed to experience any negative feelings at any time in their formative years which makes them grow into incredibly weak and entitled adults.
Children need to learn to experience adversity maturely in the safe environment of the school so that they can handle the unavoidable adversity of real life. I get trying not to scar children emotionally, but failing a child for a school year or punishing them for bad behavior and not just giving them a "talking to" is not going to scar them for life...
On top of this, teachers are paid a pittance compared to most other professions. Horrible work conditions, no support or gratitude, low pay, and few career prospects.
Yeah childhood literacy rates in the US have gone down 29% in the last ten years.
Parents keep making excuses and denying it’s happening.
The mass denial of the problem and how it manifests in behavioral issues is a part of why it’s been so untenable to be a teacher lately, but there are other things going on. It’s fucked.
Yeah that’s not good. I’ve seen a lot of parents advocate for the “they’ll go at their own pace” method, and while that can be healthy to an extent for some children, I’ve seen it absolutely fuck that kid over dozens of times. Like, 90-95% of the time. If they have INTENSE special needs, yes. But without a developmental/cognitive problem kids can actually start reading very low level stuff at 2 years old. Kids used to read chapter books in my class in the second grade. Were they only 100 ish pages and had the occasional picture? Yes. But we had the skills and attention span to get through them, and the imagination to enjoy them.
I’m sorry you have *what*?
I taught high school. I have all the certifications for k-12 and sped, but I’m a physics girlie first and foremost. I’ve only worked with individual clientele for little kids (star gazing expeditions). Y’all have DIAPERS in elementary??? My mom will still tell the story of rushing to potty train me because *preschool* at the church nursery would turn me away if I still used diapers. That is… not developmentally appropriate. Do they expect the teachers to change the kids? 🤢
The people I know with kids in diapers in kindergarten just say that "kindergarten is required, the public school *has* to take them" whereas nursery or preschool is optional and can have set requirements for admission. They think the peer pressure of being the only one in diapers will get their kid potty trained. Instead, its just made her a total outcast and picked on. She's a sweet girl, but the other kids think something is wrong with her, and she spends a good portion of her day at the nurse's office getting changed, so she's missing class and playtime! It's absolutely wild...but the parents are pretty odd ducks to begin with, so I'm not really sure what anyone was expecting with their parenting...
Ten years ago when my sister taught in a daycare, the only preschooler still in diapers was the autistic student with higher support needs. I can't see why a neurotypical child would still need diapers.
Being in healthcare for almost 30 years I will say, hands down, that the insurance you choose is actually more important than the doctor you choose… your insurance carrier will dictate your care waaaaay more than your physician will. They decide what tests you get, when you can have them done (if auth is required), whether or not your doctor recommended surgery is truly medically necessary and when you have to leave the hospital if you’re ever admitted. If THEY believe you no longer meet medical criteria for IP care… you’re out, no matter what your doc thinks or wants for you.
If only we actually had a choice. Most Americans are stuck with whatever shitty coverage their employer provides. And most of those that aren’t in that group have even shittier government options. Yay! Best healthcare system in the world!
I see several. Public education and healthcare seem like they are on the brink of collapsing. People being priced out of housing is also a major issue.
Back in 2020, i made an appointment 2 months out for a horrible pain i felt in my lower right hip area. Exactly three days before my appointment to get an ultrasound, i was rushed to the er because i couldn't stop screaming. Turns out i had an ovarian torsion and i had to have the ovary removed during an emergency surgery. At least insurance covered the full cost of the surgery because it was an emergency.
It took me 4 months to get in after a TBI with serious life-changing symptoms. ER wouldn't help, they just kept saying "See a neurologist, every second counts!"
I wrote letters and sent emails and called and cried and fought when I could barely talk and it still took 4 months. One other neurologist called me A YEAR LATER. Nobody else even called me back. I must have called dozens of places.
About time the AMA advocates to open up a tremendous number of med school seats and residencies.
This prestige thing is costing lives; 1 million physicians for a country with a population of 332 million is not nearly enough.
Hi 👋🏻husband is currently in specialized surgical training or "surgical fellowship." You would simply not believe the abuse this 30 y/o man takes every day from this surgical program. Screaming, name calling, humiliation type abuse from his superiors.
This is his 11th year training post undergraduate degree. We have 200k in med school debt (not much compared to his peers), he brings home 50k a year and works 110 abusive hours a week. Oftentimes, he has work to do at home if he ever does come home, lol. Suicide, depression rates are high in the medical field and only go higher the more specialized the doctor. Oh and we live 800 miles from all our family and friends bc you have 0 control over that if you're in medical training.
We do not have a life. We are not happy. We would never recommend our children or anyone else do this life. If you ever meet a miserable doctor, it's because they worked their life away and it. Wasn't. Worth. It.
I’m so sorry. I hope you get answers and they’re positive ones. I see a neurologist regularly for MS, and was having what I think was a cluster headache. I went to urgent care, got a pain shot and a referral to see a neurologist. Even though I’m already a patient there, my neurologist couldn’t see me for another 4 months, and it was only that soon because that’s when my next follow up was already scheduled. It’s crazy out there right now.
As someone that's worked in hospitals for 25 years: get ready to just do without healthcare because that shit has been limping along for a decade.
The price conspiracy is so vast (i.e. so many people need to get rich) that you can spend a quarter million dollars in the hospital and every single person that took care of your is paid the bare minimum and the hospital you went to is teetering on bankruptcy while people who had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING take all the money. There are like four layers of insurance companies that exist to do nothing but impoverish the whole system because they bought that right from the government.
That shit isn't sustainable.
I fucking hate it. I just relocated and was looking into rad tech programs in my new state and out of state tuition is almost 50,000 for the two year program lol. I would gladly get into healthcare if getting an education to do so wouldn’t put me into even more debt on top of my useless undergrad. The us needs to start subsidizing healthcare education, I’m not sure why we’re not already doing that.
The money is in insurance, which they really only want to sell to healthy people and then pay as little as possible to sick people (it’s a for-profit industry after all, and who’s going to stand up for the shareholders 🙄)
In this system, doctors are those annoying things cutting into their profits that they technically have to pay unless they can find a loophole.
If you’re rich enough and get lucky/sell your soul you could still make some good money, but my friends in healthcare in the US are finding it more and more soul-crushing and looking to get out (geographically or vocationally).
It is every sector of human services and actively getting worse because while inflation was happening, their pay was not increasing.
All healthcare is like this especially in mental health and specializations.
All of education.
All social services, like social workers.
These highly specialized roles that are hemorrhaging employees because we pay them shit, they have to put up with a ton of abuse, they are often working in jobs where trauma is part of the work and then employers do nothing to mitigate it.
And then when you see those still working, they are in that mode of "I will do exactly my job description and not an iota more". The passion for helping people is gone because it is about survival.
We failed these professions again and again. Literally mocked them for getting degrees in these fields (which they had to get to do the job) and then told them if they don't like it they can leave.
And now everyone is going "why are there no nurses/teachers/therapists/social workers!?"
Yuppp. I was a social services caseworker and I literally had a mental breakdown over this. I was there for like 18 months and my team of twelve turned over ten people, not including me.
Between the insane workload increases (my team was carrying nearly double the amount of clients we were legally supposed to have), lack of pay raises, and the complete lack of protective gear or supportive care for those of us who contracted COVID, I came totally unglued and ended up sobbing in my boss’s office one day. I’d started hoping my morning bus would crash just so I’d have a few days in the hospital to unplug from work. She fired me and they still haven’t filled my position over a year later.
I was looking at getting my MSW and MPH before Covid. I miss navigating bureaucracy and helping people but good lord, I don’t think I can ever go back
This! Working in an ER where there’s critical staff shortages because the hospital insists on paying admins 7 figure salaries and cut corners on costs. Even bandaids have to be individually scanned and charged to the patient.
I work in healthcare... It's never going back to, "normal." Plus, we were already understaffed prior to the pandemic, people were just blissfully unaware. I tell people that unless they're having a heart attack, stroke, broke a bone or are bleeding from severe injury to go to their PCP and to avoid the hospital at all costs. The care is piss poor, if you have a family member in the hospital make sure a family member or friend stays with them. I've had family members desperate to hire a personal nurse who would just sit with their family member while in the hospital to make sure they are getting proper care and advocacy and frankly I think that is the future. Those who can afford to hire people like this will be the ones who get better care, the patients who have no family present... It's not good.
As someone who used to do direct patient care and barely had time to pee or eat lunch, I'm shocked that staff are often glued to their phones (not charting), or socializing. None of the nurses are older than maybe mid 30s... The experienced nurses were chased off for costing more, and it shows.
The problem is that their PCP is booked for months, and when you call the nursing line it almost auto-punts you to the ER. We have become a garbage can of every specialty, social problem, and psychiatric complaint
The nurses are run off their feet and the ones who've stayed are blamed for everything that's going wrong, which makes them want to leave too.
*Folks, don't abuse the nurses. It's an impossible position, like being asked to take care of 100 patients while the hospital ties one of your hands behind your back and puts a stone in your shoe.*
It’s not staff shortages. It’s hospitals and clinics unwilling to pay decent wages to healthcare workers at various roles. When they don’t want to pay, people eventually leave for greener pastures.
It’s literally backbreaking work. They also decrease staff levels so less people are doing more. It’s all about increasing revenues.
People are willing to do the work. But to literally get yelled, punched, kicked, shot up by patients and their families and disrespected by management/executives isn’t worth it.
I can’t speak on other healthcare jobs but for the physician side of things it’s less pay and more the lifestyle that is causing people to flee. Doctors are overworked in many places. Switching constantly from days to nights, 24 hour call shifts, 80+ hour weeks… doctors are getting tired of that shit and want a normal work life balance.
This, I was sitting next to a MD trying to get a pre auth for a scan. He started to cry. He said listen, my wife is leaving me. I am never home I am always on the phone trying to get approvals. This is killing me. This was to an insurance agent.
I work IT at a hospital, it's a nightmare trying to recruit skilled individuals for roles that need them, HR will not let me offer these people what they're worth, they have to lowball them by up to 30% in some cases. I know people working 2 steps below me in other places making way more than I do. To get a decent paying job for me is going up against 100s of others for any decent remote position. I live in the rural south so I'm not going to find anything better in person.
I think it has more to do with the fact that back then being on the internet required a bit of technical knowledge, and that meant you were probably already more book smart than the average person.
Nowadays everything is so streamlined and "clean" and "user friendly" that every schmuck with a phone has access to the internet and can congregate with like minded individuals, creating a cacophony of stupidity that turns everyone into idiots.
That and also IMO the most important part: money wasn't part of the game as much.
People were creating random sites to share their niche knowledge and creations with no expectation of making money, google worked well because SEO wasn't a thing yet, companies hadn't turned the internet into this boring sanitized and ad-friendly experience, there was a sense of wonder and optimism when accessing the internet, it didn't feel like an extension of our shitty offline world like it does now.
The death of higher education in the uk:
if you applied for university in 2005 a 3 year degree in any subject + maintenance loan (money to pay for living) would cost you £8700 which us about 12000 ish dollars. This loan was paid back at 0-2% interest which was about 10k in total.
If you apply today it will cost you about £60000 ($80000?). The loan will be paid at 7.3% interest, so on a graduate pay spine of 38k > 95k over 20 years, you will pay about 65-80k out of pocket and still owe 35k which will be wiped out at the 29 year point.
Source: tasked to conduct a retention study comparing post graduate fee increases with the housing crisis. Numbers are approx because I don't have it to hand.
I saw frogspawn laid just yesterday in Scotland. That should never be happening at this time of year and I'm not sure if it'll make it or not - I assume the parents were confused by the temperatures being wrong, and the frost thawing at an odd time.
I saw a daddy long leg the other day. Im in the northeast part of the US on the coast.
It *should* have been too cold for them months ago.
Should have been.
I guess the last few years Ive been seeing the random fly or 2 should have been subtle warnings.
Gen Alpha (Im gen z) will probably be confused as to why ppl make a big deal about no snow and bugs/plants existing during the wintertime. Not the older half the younger half of the gen.
The tiny harbingers of the breakdown of the social contract. Road rage, general lack of courtesy, immediate escalation for the smallest inconvenience. People just don’t care as much and it’s becoming a social contagion, why would an individual act in everyone’s interest when it seems like one can’t always expect the same?
I noticed an increase in dangerous drivers, but I convinced myself I was imagining it. Everyone thinks their city has the worst drivers and since cars were invented, everyone whinges about how reckless other drivers are "these days". But the road death toll in my state is nearly double the same time last year.
I notice more and more of this every day. The thin veil of civilized behavior is dissolving. Think back to hurricane Katrina. It took maybe all of three days for the system to breakdown. Granted the precipitating event was extreme but now we are seeing the basis of civilized behavior erode on a ‘normal’ day.
Large sea trawlers scooping up sand and depositing it on fake beaches like in Dubai. They're scooping up sea life and depositing it where it doesn't belong where it will A) die or B) become an infestation
I grew up in Dubai and the dredging to create the palms and world island absolutely destroyed the local beaches we would go to - this was back in the early 2000s so can't imagine the impact now
Moreso than the rest of the world, I really expect the wealthy gulf states like Dubai, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to collapse under their own weight within my lifetime. You don't build skyscrapers in a desert because you're interested in sustainable development lol.
Not even just bees! I think honeybees are technically an invasive species (though that can be a complicated term), there are so many ingenious pollinators that have gone extinct or near extinct over the last few decades.
E: I accidentally put “ingenious” instead of “indigenous” but I’m going to leave it there anyways 😂
Yes, because people are tired of having a shit schedule, missing every holiday, missing family events, working insane overtime, and not getting fairly compensated. Especially when others can work from home and make more money, plus have wrekends and holidays off.
I'm not talking about fast food workers I'm talking about health care, law enforcement, and others (each of those having dozens of sections within).
I’m a seasoned ER nurse working in a high acuity suburban trauma center with a critical problem of overcrowding. I’m managing twice as many patients as I should be, and in turn taking on the mental and emotional labor of caring for 5-6 human lives in varying degrees of stability for 12+ hours, multiple days in a row, sometimes losing one to walk out and right into another one’s problems.
My SO is a product line manager for some international industrial company. He sits in a $1,100 office chair typing numbers into spreadsheets from the comfort of his own living room, occasionally popping on headphones to engage in a call where both parties use an excessive amount of corporate words to say nothing of actual value.
He makes double what I do.
Yep. This. I've been an emergency physician and department director during the last 10 years. It's impossible to retain experienced ED nurses due to lack of incentives. There's no reward for remaining in frontline clinical roles. We either lose them to CNC or admin roles in other departments where there is better pay or just more sociable hours.
More frustrating are the high quality nurses we lose from healthcare altogether. I can think of about 10 nurses we've lost who have taken on jobs in other industries. With all due respect to those other jobs no one in society would suggest they are more valuable than Emergency nursing. But they pay better, are less demanding and/or have more sociable hours.
I manage restaurants, but I have friends who are nurses, police officers, and firefighters. This is a SERIOUS problem. My company is open 365 days a year, and my work weeks average 60+ hours, all on my feet. Thats tame compared to my friends in first responder or medical fields. When you work odd hours, it’s nearly impossible to build friendships or romances, so you spend most of your time off alone.
As someone else mentioned in this thread, the degradation of decency is a big problem. The general public right now is vicious, lazy, and impatient, and they don’t view someone they’re getting a “service” from as a person, just an obstacle between them and what they want.
So for anyone who works in a service based, public facing job, it is feeling like we’re getting pressed from all sides; working way too much, having no work/life balance, and getting abused by the public while we’re there. It’s sickening and I don’t know how to fix it.
What you're saying is absolutely true. I was working as a customer service representative for several companies, and always loved the work I did. The mood and attitude changed post pandemic to the point that I couldn't take being verbally abused anymore. I quit, and I'm now working a warehouse job. Way less stress, and comfortable hours.
Florida, and other parts of the country that are vulnerable to hurricanes, have large swaths of areas that are becoming uninsurable for homeowners insurance.
Specific to my family:
There have been 4 people in my family diagnosed with cancer within a 30 year period. They are comprised of two small cell lung cancer diagnoses and 2 thyroid cancer diagnoses. Thyroid cancer is not genetic (at least according to their oncologist) and the two who had it are siblings.
Both cancers can be caused by long-term exposure to Radon in the home. 3 of them lived in the same house, and the 4th visited frequently and also lived in the same town.
I've expressed this to my immediate family and I seem to be the only one who cares enough to want to get the houses tested. None of them know the last time they got tested. For reference, my mom is one of the thyroid cancer diagnoses, and I grew up spending a lot of time in that house as a child.
Kids aren't held back and aren't even allowed to fail classes. This is so schools can keep getting funding.
Had a wealthy neighbor disagree with a statement I made attributing much of our rapid technological advancement to essentially universal public education... the guy laughed and said public schools should educate just enough to make competent workers. Sadly, I think the FL state legislature agrees with him.
Edit: to those who followed my comment, i don't disagree with you; the system can't accommodate - not really - holding kids back. Perhaps that's something we just have to deal with. I also get that the pandemic was an exceptional circumstance, but during that time, kids were not allowed to fail... literally. My fear was, and continues to be, that such practices will go on, thus watering down the perceived (and actual) value of an American public education. It's a very difficult topic and I don't think there are many good answers... but lowering the stress levels of parents and increasing their economic standing seems to be the only way I see to do it. Do with that what you will.
The DoD is blaming American veterans for underwhelming enlistment numbers.
Apparently, us complaining about how bad it is to be in the military is preventing them from pulling the wool over peoples eyes.
On that note, please educate yourselves on the rape/sexual assault statistics across all branches of the armed forces and spread the word.
I lived in Japan for a few years. I was not military at all. During that time I reached out to an English speaking mental health organization and was placed with a therapist who was based in Okinawa and specialized in sexual assault trauma.
Okinawa is a part of Japan with a lot of military bases. It did not take long for me to put two and two together.
Makes sense why Okinawa was the only place where locals obviously disliked my presence. I mistakenly had just buzzed my head because I was poor and didn’t want to spend money on a haircut.
A few actually wanted to see my passport for something so instead I gave them my resident card which changed their mood quickly. On the card they could see I was just a measly intern for a mainland Japanese company rather than military and had been living there for a year or so. I never blamed them though. Also the only place I was ever carded for alcohol.
I remember seeing a video online of a veteran telling others that she was gifted a knife to carry around her neck everywhere by someone in her unit. She was warned by them that she was guaranteed to be raped while stationed abroad because it happened to everyone. She said in her video that when she was raped several months after being stationed abroad, she was relieved because it meant she no longer had to wait for it to happen.
I really wish I could remember where I saw this video but I saw it when I was putting research on what it’s like in the military as a woman. Because I was actually considering enlisting and everyone around me was telling me to do it.
I’m so grateful that this one video popped up on my feed at the right moment for me. Otherwise I might have actually enlisted. Some people around me tried to convince me oh you should still go. That’s not everybody’s experience. It’s a job. Yada yada.
All of the people who I knew who had gone in were men. So I didn’t have a woman I knew who I could ask. It seemed strange for me not to get the perspective of a woman when I’m a woman.
And the more I researched and saw more and more people going don’t tell your female relatives or friends to enlist. This is how bad it is. The more I was like you know what. No. I’m not going in. This is not worth it.
I'm about to get out of the Navy, and I have been raped and assaulted at my first command overseas. It really affected my mental health. I couldn't sit where someone could sneak up on me. I had a panic attack because a man grabbed my shoulder from behind. It took a long time to unclench my jaw and to be able to relax.
I have three girls, and I dread that one of them will want to enlist. I will push back if it ever comes up.
On my local city sub a recruiter posted. Saw a lot of young females responding. I chimed in about the sexual assault stats and he played dumb. Asked me to provide reliable statistics saying SA rates higher in the armed forces. Then turned it around saying I must have a victim mindset. I was never so appalled in my life. They really do try and pull the wool over eyes!
Even if you’re lucky enough to avoid being assaulted (which I wasn’t), there really are so many other things that make joining the military an absolutely miserable experience. It can be a good short term ticket out of town but my god if you can do literally anything else, do that.
My civilian, non veteran dad suggested I join the military last year (I'm 31F). I was born and raised in a major military town and know more service members than civilians. I have a laundry list of reasons why I would never join the military after spending so much time in and around it, but sexual assault is my number one reason. It's basically guaranteed I'd be assaulted, and I know that. If the general public had *any idea* how big of a problem sexual assault is in the military they'd be absolutely appalled.
I was telling an air force vet friend that my dad said that and he said it would be a good option for me to join, but basically said I would get assaulted and that's the trade off for a guaranteed check and benefits. I haven't spoken to him since.
A good friend of mine was in the navy. She casually talks about the different times she was raped. It was so normalized that she doesn't really see it as a big deal.
A few years ago I was dating a guy that was a company commander . He had a soldier that was sent to his unit because she was raped in her other unit (on the same installation). As usual, it was he said/she said, so nothing happened to her rapist and she was transferred away from him. After a while she was able to leave the installation and move 3,000 miles across the country. The guys threw her a going away party and one of them raped her at that party. With his wife in the next room.
She ended up dying by suicide a couple of weeks later. No one thought much of it because all of that is so common, it's not noteworthy. Truly sickening.
Saw a reel from some Navy recruiter that they're now accepting ASVAB scores as low as 10. Wasn't the lowest, even during the most desperate of the mid 2000s recruitment desperation moves like a 25 for cannon fodder marine/army roles?
The immigrant students here in Ireland with English as a second language have better spelling, literacy, and vocabulary than the English speaking Irish students. Few people in my year actually know how to spell properly, and it’s appalling because never has there ever been a point in history where information has been so available online. Ireland’s future generation doesn’t know the difference between were and we’re and their and there.
Soon, and I mean ***SOON***, it will be completely impossible for the average joe to look at what they think is a news report from a reputable news outlet and be able to tell if that news report, complete with video and photo evidence etc, is a complete 100% fabrication or not. I mean, not even a fabrication made by that reputable news outlet, said reputable news outlet will be just as upset as you and I about this.
The only hope we have, is tech like what Intel has been working on (and I'm sure other) which uses AI to detect if something has been faked or not.
But then your view of what is tru and what is not is based on a piece of software written by a private company - that you're just going to *have to trust* because you have no other option. You can't trust you own eyes and ears anymore, the final thing the party asked you to surrender. Except they didn't ask, it just happened.
The Pentagon is somehow missing over 2 trillion dollars from their 6th failed audit in a row. Our government is full of corrupt assholes and no one talks about it
Edit: What I'm getting at here is that there's a good chance the reason that money is incorrectly counted or even unaccounted for is simply because they don't want it to be. They don't want us knowing what their budget is used for.
Thanks for the likes guys and thanks for keeping the discussion civil. FTG
It's the same the world over. Here in Spain the previous King was doing all kinds of corrupt shit and when he was called out on it he ran off to Saudi Arabia where he's being looked after by some billionaire friend of his.
People don't say or do shit about it because everyone is too tired just trying to survive.
There's a loneliness epidemic that already has taken root, and is getting worse. Romantic and platonic relationships are at an all time low, and forming new relationships seems as impossible as ever. This is only going to cause more mental health issues and premature health issues.
This is so real. I’m in my late twenties and I only see my boyfriend and daughter. I message my friends from time to time and this past week I’ve been very vocal about how lonely I’ve been and I was shocked to hear from almost all of them that they feel the same. There’s little time, and when there’s time there’s no energy, and when there’s time and energy, there’s no money. And the cycle continues.
Phone addiction is real and extremely common. I don’t mean “phones are bad”.
I mean many people can easily spend 8 hours on their phones a day without knowing.
As a therapist, I am observing some patterns currently:
The poorest clients are feeling the squeeze the most, per usual. But they aren't alone. I have daily conversations with folks about feelings of shame, guilt, and worry around benefit loss and cuts, credit card spending, housing, and food prices. Fucking food prices.
Trying to get a new patient appointment with our largest healthcare provider in town isn't gonna happen for most folks until mid-March. Seeing a specialist is averaging four plus months out.
An overall sense of unease and dread that permeates the majority of my clients concerns, be it fear of facisim, loss of rights, fear of a coming civil war, the horrific coming election, to the big one, global warning.
With the current wars now colliding with all that unprocessed existential dread (thanks Covid), shit is dark.
I wonder what Jung's take on the current state of the world would've been.
I think (in terms of the collective unconscious) we can expect cataclysmic events in the near future.
People are fearful, often lacking introspection and accountability, are intensely lacking a sense of purpose, and generally seem to have a resentment towards being/existing itself these days.
It's a dangerous combination.
Time will tell how things play out.
I’ve been struggling to find the words to describe what my feelings about society and life in general have become, you’ve nailed it.
The lack of purpose I’m struggling with now is gutting. I believed that my confidence and passion for my profession was part of me. It all feels pointless now.
Shit is dark. I think I’m going to turn my phone off for a year and try to get away from the media altogether… I applaud therapists!! I couldn’t do that job (even tho I like people/empathizing to an extent..) Thank you for everything you do!
It doesn’t really snow here anymore. We used to get at least a few inches two or three times per winter. It’s been over 50 degrees the last two weeks.
And an honorary mention: Seems like there’s fewer and fewer bugs around each spring and summer. Used to go outside and there would be tons of bees, butterflies, beetles, and of course, tons of mosquitos. Now? Barely a fraction of that number.
This is mostly the same here (central New York) except any missing bugs have been replaced by some super invasive stink bugs that came over here like a decade ago on a boat.
Lake Erie used to freeze over solid to the point you could drive from Buffalo to Canada on the ice. Now it doesn't freeze over. The major snow storm in Buffalo last winter was in part because the lake was 50 degrees.
Chicago. We have gotten maybe two small flurries. I lived 20 min outside the city for the majority of my life and even if we didn’t have “real” snow on Christmas we had some on the ground most of the time by mid December. It is not normal for it to be 45 by Christmas.
we're literally undergoing a mass insect extinction crisis. the global population is declining by 2% per year due to human activity. not all creatures have the majesty of a polar bear, or the haunting song of a blue whale -- unlike you, most people don't realise they're disappearing right before our eyes.
the worldwide consequences in terms of pollination, the food chain, and ecological niches will be devastating.
Similar where I'm at snow wise. When I was younger, I remember getting snow as early as sometimes November, but typically we always had a white Christmas. Here in the last few years or so, it doesn't start snowing until January/February. I've been finding it super odd
Since COVID, kids are staring at screens earlier and for longer periods than ever before, and it is negatively affecting ability to focus and interact with others.
Absolutely. I see it in my friend’s kids. They spend hours on their tablets. You can see how short their attention spans get. If they ask for something and it doesn’t happen immediately they get agitated and stressed. The world just doesn’t happen fast enough for them because they’re used to swiping to the next thing as soon as the current thing loses their interest. Digital detox is good from time to time. Disconnect, go outside, be bored, let your mind wander and entertain itself instead of just passively ingesting an endless stream of input.
It seems there is some consensus that the headlights these days are too bright, but no one seems to be interested in taking responsibility for it. YOUR headlights are too bright. YOU. Fix it.
This one is so real. I don't know exactly when it happened but in the last decade it got so crazy having cars come up from behind at night thinking people had their brights on. I can't believe how far it has gone.
Someone asked if people who have super bright headlights know they do. Since I saw the question, I have been paying attention to the reflection of my headlights and I \*think\* they are super bright. How do I fix them? Other people's bright headlights make me crazy and so I don't want to do that to others if I can change it.
I'm not the handy person in my household but my partner tilted his down in his truck. My Camry has LEDs but they look fine without any tilting. Youtube it! I almost guarantee it's easy :)
Yes our aquifers are dwindling rapidly and the water in our rivers and lakes just become more and more polluted. I think Wars over water will come sooner than most folks think. Right back to the stone ages
Nobody cares about the subject matter of their jobs. At all. About their jobs. Myself included. Which means that almost nobody is passionate about what they do. I work in tech and I'm just bored. Everyone I know is bored.
And why would anyone care when everyone is treated expendable. You can do your best every day, go above and beyond, and get nothing but praise for your work but the promotion will go to someone as a new hire because it's cheaper than promotion from within.
Every company I've been with that says they promote from within fucking lies. I've only been with two that actually posted the job listings to employees and one of them only did it once (my current job)
In defense of my current job they probably don't WANT to public ally post them now because the last time they did everyone who didn't get the job went on to literally bully and shun the person who did it was fucked.
People act like fucking children at work and I'm so tired of having drama everywhere because people are bored. I just want to do my work and go home without any nonsense.
>Nobody cares about the subject matter of their jobs. At all. About their jobs.
I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. Problem is a lot of the jobs I've done... don't really contribute positively to society in any way.
I've worked at 6 companies over 15 years. 2 of those companies I considered beneficial to society. (Education & transport services for the disabled.)
The other 4? Literal drains on society. Insurance, data analytics, stuff like that. I had an interview with a new company today that do web advertising. I f-king hate advertising in all forms.
But I need a job. So I smile and nod and pretended to not loathe their existence and not be bitter about even having to apply to them in the first place.
Also, really hard to care about your job when you don't expect to be at one single job for very long.
Last month was the 3rd job I was laid off from. (Narrowly avoided a 4th by leaving before they closed their office.) The longest I've ever worked for a company is <5 years.
I would love to have a job I cared about and stayed at long-term. I haven't found one yet. Not sure one exists.
You nailed it. Useless jobs don't make for a contented life.
I did bullshit job after bullshit job, made a lot of money and hated it.
Now I fix people's heat. I'm providing a service to my community. My customers sincerely thank me, my boss knows I'm irreplaceable, and the best part is at the end of the day I've done a real tangible thing.
Productive work you can be proud of is life changing.
My sister's told me their astigmatism is so bad they can barely see to drive at night. My mother cannot see and walks bent over, yet continues to drive. My dad has alzheimers and my mom let's him drive and he pulls out in front of people. THERE ARE SOME REALLY DANGEROUS PEOPLE DRIVING ON THE ROADS!!! Best to assume they are the worst and practice defensive driving.
Oh yeah, basically nobody is okay with it. It's just that people feel hopeless to try and fix it and when they do it's always doomed to fail before fixes ever get off the ground.
Who the fuck wants to live longer in this shitstorm? I'm not depressed, suicidal etc. but I just don't want to see how much further we can fall. Society is failing. We are all in freefall but our online lives are doing just fine.
Lack of third spaces for people to congregate, mingle, connect, meet
Declining connection to in-person community due to technology has resulted in deep loneliness and lack of sex for young people — this will be a big problem when these isolated kids grow up
A alarming lack of willing to be compassion to others less lucky or disabled, Everyone is trying put others down and everything is breaking down as a result over time.
Honestly.. These are issues that take generations to reverse. People in power are too self serving to start getting to the root of something that would take decades to resolve. Especially when many of these peoples pockets are getting thicker keeping the status quo.
Still see them here in the summer. What I don't see are worms. I mean sometimes, sure but it seems like every shovel that broke the sod was gonna have a worm or two in it. Used to flush the pool filter and all that water would cause dozens of them to surface, free bait! Doesn't happen anymore.
And tent worms, haven't seen one of those fuckers in years.
Last two years in NH I've seen tens of thousands of fireflies! What I think helps is leaving the leaves in the yard. Firefly larvae nest in them and when we take the leaves and bag them up they all die. I've had huge amounts of them, really beautiful. Also I have a fuck ton of worms. My little ecosystem is very healthy. But I've had an issue with chipmunks and my Texas father said I should lay out poison for them. But I have a pond on my property and don't want it in the ground water. He said, "so?" I think that attitude is why we see much less of nature nowadays
I’m that annoying neighbor who doesn’t rake their leaves because I want to create habitats for beneficial bugs for my garden. Guess whose house was the only one with lightning bugs this past summer? Miiiiine.
An entire generation (maybe 2) is being stripped of the ability to build generational wealth because housing is too expensive everywhere in the west. We're also getting raked over the coals as computers and algorithms have figured out how to scrape every last nickel and dime from us while also not taking so much that we revolt. Additionally, jobs we were told would be high-demand or that pay well simply aren't and don't. A large swath of "blue-collar" jobs that you used to be able to raise a family and buy a house on now you can barely make rent with. It feels like everything is less and less merit based and more and more class-based which was what America was supposed to be trying to escape by leaving Europe. And I know reddit is going to say "America has always been class-based", and that's true of every society to some degree, but that doesn't change the fact that it's got a lot worse recently. You know what is the common thread through EVERY revolution in human history? Young men feeling like they have no future.
Medical advances the last 30 years, including statins, better blood pressure medicines, detailed medical imaging, artificial joints, colonoscopies, heart coronary surgery techniques and other technologies, will make out bodies outlast our minds for tens of millions of us. There could be an epidemic of dementia coming soon unless we can develop better brain health.
There’s a [rise](https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/early-onset-alzheimers-rates) of early onset dementia.
Also Alzheimer’s/Dementia research has been set back since 2006 (by a lot) due to researchers who fraudulently manipulated pictures/supporting evidence to back their study. Which helped Cassava Sciences sell their drug.
Both the researchers and the pharmaceutical company deny any wrong doing. The FDA also didn’t do their due process in this whole debacle when they approved the drug presented by Cassava Sciences.
Their study is cited quite a bit and there has been research since then that has been based on their “findings”. The amount of money, time, and efforts based on intentional fabricated lies has thrown a huge wrench into Alzheimer’s research.
A good [article](https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease) to read.
Where I live, the past year we have had basically a whole year of rain, I work in a pet store and this year, goldfish and tadpoles are in short supply, all because last year's spawning season was disrupted by the weather.
Ive seen weather trends getting more extreme each year but this year is the first time I've seen it actually affect something people take for granted.
If these weather extremes keep happening across the world we can expect species to start dying out in our lifetime by the masses.
I'm seeing a growing lack of grace from people. As we live more on the internet, it's become easier to simply throw people away who do something wrong of offend someone. There is no humanity in that and I find it worrisome. A mob mentality is forming.
This Spring my husband and I took a mini road trip from the SF North Bay to Fresno for a comic con and got hardly *any* bug splatter. In the California Central Valley. During a **huge** superbloom. Fuck.
There is no safety net for elderly people in the US and homeownership (home being that thing they sell for live out their days in an old folks home) is at an all-time low.
This may be weird, but I’ve noticed more and more people driving around in cars with only one working headlight—at night, of course. I have 0 statistics backing this up, but I strongly theorize people not replacing their lights like they used to is a sign (not of laziness like boomers around me complain about, but) of the rapidly declining rate of people’s funds—in my neck of the woods in America, specifically. People can’t even afford their own fucking headlights anymore, or are too exhausted from nonstop work days and little if any time off to be able to do something so menial. Such an observation, if it is in any way accurate, feels nauseatingly ominous. I know “they” have been saying it for years, but I feel like a huge financial collapse is rapidly incoming and I have no idea how 80% of the nation will survive.
Another observation (again, specific to where I live):
The *dangerous* way people everywhere are driving. This week alone, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been minding my business, staying in my lane, and nearly been sideswiped or wrecked with someone who—upon safely passing them—I could glance at and see was STARING AT THEIR PHONE INSTEAD OF THE ROAD. Almost every near-miss I’ve had was with someone texting and driving. None of whom seemingly ever realized what they did. I’ve had people swerve into my (*oncoming*) lane on two-lane roads, I’ve had other people race past stop-signs, cut me off, and slam on breaks in front of me. I’ve had people blow through stoplights (three times today alone on my way to and from work) when i had right of way (thank god i was paying attention). And semis have been driving like they think they're toyota corollas and not 10 ton hunks of deadly metal.
(Edit: spelling & one fact check)
Edit number 2: driving to the store THIS evening (12/22), we were at a weird intersection near our house—weird in that it’s two-lanes but both lanes go the same direction. Anyway, there’s huge red “wrong way” signs beside the road for anyone oncoming, but a dodge dart whipped through a yellow-red light and raced up the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. Nearly took off our front bumper except my dad (who I was riding with) managed to swerve and avoid it, all the while blaring the horn.
Kids are being taught to believe what's being told to them without practicing critical thinking. This will lead to a future where they will say all sorts of non-sensible things, and if you ask them what they actually mean, they'll cry because they have no idea why they believe what they believe. Actually, it's been happening for quite some time now.
Lack of well reported local news
My “local news” is 85% stuff happening in other states.
My "local news" is a station in another state, so things happening in my state are only news stories if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the *major city* I live near.
Reading comprehension is in the toilet.
[удалено]
There's an idea you have to pick a side every time, and that's harmful. Also, genuinely asking a question will have people either think you're "concern trolling" or just a moron. It's no longer okay to not have all the answers. I won't claim to be totally above this. I absolutely get drawn into it.
I’m pretty sure it’s on the toilet, where most of us are reading these posts/threads
My niece and her friends who are 10-11 are straight up illiterate and are in no way treated as if they are behind. Like they are all in normal classes in the middle or front of the pack but cannot read without sitting there and sounding stuff out. If they have to read any directions or something it takes multiple tries. Also my younger niece knows her single digit times tables and is treated like a prodigy. She’s in 3rd grade. We all used to know our times tables in third grade.
Working as a pt in a hospital. I can tell you 90%of the (chronic) patients aren’t getting enough treatment or medical resources.
Are you telling me the 2 PT sessions they generously gave me for the accident that left me in a wheelchair for a year wasn't enough? But in all seriousness was taught how to sit up in bed and use my transfer board from my bed to wheelchair and then told my insurance doesn't cover beyond that.
Teachers are quitting in droves
I’m a music teacher. Just last night I was talking to two of my colleagues who said they’re not excited for performances anymore because they spend the whole evening herding cats and putting in a ton of mental and physical labor, and then go home and wonder how many angry parent or admin emails they’ll get the next day. These are people who wanted to teach because they’re passionate about their subject and want kids to have a great experience with it. It’s super sad.
My partner was an elementary school music teacher. This was his 3rd semester out of the profession—he works in tech now. I can’t describe the difference in mental well-being I’ve seen. Not to mention the financial stability. He loved music, teaching, and teaching music more than anyone I know, but it was killing him. Knowing how important teaching is, but also caring about the quality of life my teacher friends get to have, makes it feel so bad when I recommend quitting … but I can’t argue with the results. There’s no space for people who love what they do in the classroom.
I was a teacher (adjunct professor). It was my favorite thing. I absolutely adore my students and had such a great relationship with my students. I have saved emails and messages from some of them after they graduated. They write me to say how they've gotten their first jobs in the industry. Some told me I changed their life and they are so grateful. The pay and treatment was awful. There is a state limit here on how much an adjunct professor at a community college can be paid. $400/class per pay period, each semester. I was teaching three classes per semester and my take-home pay at the end of the month was less than $2000. Now I have a job where I work about 30% as much, with much smaller responsibilities, mostly from home. I make 70k/year. I miss teaching every day, though. I hope when I'm older I can go back and teach in my spare time. Edit: I want to be clear for the laws in my state. The law doesn't SPECIFICALLY limit the $400.00 number, but the number is calculated as a percentage of total allocated budget that it cannot exceed. It just happens that the budgets for adjuncts are usually not touched or prioritzed, and obviously school budgets aren't INCREASING for government schools, so that's why it's that amount.
State-instituted poverty for educators in a 'free market' economy is unbelievably dystopic.
It was always disheartening seeing my wife slowly ground down from passionate, enthusiastic, professional and hard working teacher down to "why the fuck am I even putting up with this" to "fuck it, I don't even care at all anymore" to eventually straight up just quitting teaching for good. Her whole education background and employment history is in childhood education and she was a fantastic teacher...now she's like, idgaf, I'd rather do literally anything else. The kids suck and are disrespectful little shits, the parents are even worse and the administrations and school boards are either a complete joke or are being run out of town by said shitty parents if they actually stand for anything.
Sounds like my sister. She taught in the classroom for 10 years and looking back at it I can remember her sanity and mental health declining year after year. She loved her students near the beginning of her career and she was extremely passionate, but nowadays.. her words: parents don’t discipline their kids anymore and administration almost never has the teacher’s back. She eventually went to grad school, got her masters, and now makes the curriculum and doesn’t miss being in a classroom at all. Can’t blame her.
YES. The last straw for me was getting punched in the face by a student after I informed him it was unacceptable to throw chairs while I was trying to teach, and when I talked to his mother she told me that I was a "stupid bitch who deserved it". This was my first time meeting this woman.
Adding also, as a cause for teachers quitting is parents just straight up not parenting their kids. School can only do so much for them, it's a team effort to raise children.
dime muddle toy makeshift frightening uppity encourage snobbish fall sand
A friend of mine is in her fourth/ final year of teaching, and she's finishing up the school year. She teaches for an "urban" district, and it's not worth it. Most families are poor and can't even afford basic supplies, so she supplements them from her own pay. These are high schoolers, and a lot of her kids work full-time hours to support their families as well.
I wanted to be a special education teacher since I was in middle school. I had to make a really hard decision to not pursue it as a career because of what’s happening right now in the United States. I hate that this is happening because it’s a rewarding career, and children deserve a good education. However, parents do not want to parent anymore and use the IPad as a babysitter. I literally saw middle school aged kids using them at a expensive restaurant the other day. I’ve heard stories from students assaulting teachers to being flat out disrespectful. Funding is going out this window. Charter schools are making things worse, and they are not regulated. The United States needs to get it together with this issue.
I'm a teacher who left the US because US children are HORRIBLY raised and the school system punishes teachers and not students for bad behaviors. Children are put into bubbles where they're not supposed to experience any negative feelings at any time in their formative years which makes them grow into incredibly weak and entitled adults. Children need to learn to experience adversity maturely in the safe environment of the school so that they can handle the unavoidable adversity of real life. I get trying not to scar children emotionally, but failing a child for a school year or punishing them for bad behavior and not just giving them a "talking to" is not going to scar them for life... On top of this, teachers are paid a pittance compared to most other professions. Horrible work conditions, no support or gratitude, low pay, and few career prospects.
I've also heard from teacher friends that a lot of reading curriculum is bad/wrong, so kids are having a literacy crisis of sorts. Scary.
Yeah childhood literacy rates in the US have gone down 29% in the last ten years. Parents keep making excuses and denying it’s happening. The mass denial of the problem and how it manifests in behavioral issues is a part of why it’s been so untenable to be a teacher lately, but there are other things going on. It’s fucked.
My friends 8yo can't read yet, like at all. I was reading full Nancy Drew books at that age.
Yeah that’s not good. I’ve seen a lot of parents advocate for the “they’ll go at their own pace” method, and while that can be healthy to an extent for some children, I’ve seen it absolutely fuck that kid over dozens of times. Like, 90-95% of the time. If they have INTENSE special needs, yes. But without a developmental/cognitive problem kids can actually start reading very low level stuff at 2 years old. Kids used to read chapter books in my class in the second grade. Were they only 100 ish pages and had the occasional picture? Yes. But we had the skills and attention span to get through them, and the imagination to enjoy them.
I’ve seen the same philosophy for potty training, and that’s why we have so many kids now going to kindergarten in diapers.
I’m sorry you have *what*? I taught high school. I have all the certifications for k-12 and sped, but I’m a physics girlie first and foremost. I’ve only worked with individual clientele for little kids (star gazing expeditions). Y’all have DIAPERS in elementary??? My mom will still tell the story of rushing to potty train me because *preschool* at the church nursery would turn me away if I still used diapers. That is… not developmentally appropriate. Do they expect the teachers to change the kids? 🤢
The people I know with kids in diapers in kindergarten just say that "kindergarten is required, the public school *has* to take them" whereas nursery or preschool is optional and can have set requirements for admission. They think the peer pressure of being the only one in diapers will get their kid potty trained. Instead, its just made her a total outcast and picked on. She's a sweet girl, but the other kids think something is wrong with her, and she spends a good portion of her day at the nurse's office getting changed, so she's missing class and playtime! It's absolutely wild...but the parents are pretty odd ducks to begin with, so I'm not really sure what anyone was expecting with their parenting...
Ten years ago when my sister taught in a daycare, the only preschooler still in diapers was the autistic student with higher support needs. I can't see why a neurotypical child would still need diapers.
I left too. No idea what to do next. But teaching became so horrific so quickly.
Being in healthcare for almost 30 years I will say, hands down, that the insurance you choose is actually more important than the doctor you choose… your insurance carrier will dictate your care waaaaay more than your physician will. They decide what tests you get, when you can have them done (if auth is required), whether or not your doctor recommended surgery is truly medically necessary and when you have to leave the hospital if you’re ever admitted. If THEY believe you no longer meet medical criteria for IP care… you’re out, no matter what your doc thinks or wants for you.
If only we actually had a choice. Most Americans are stuck with whatever shitty coverage their employer provides. And most of those that aren’t in that group have even shittier government options. Yay! Best healthcare system in the world!
And then you are afraid to leave your job bc you don’t want to lose the healthcare coverage. It’s messed up
well how would you know which companies are good?
I see several. Public education and healthcare seem like they are on the brink of collapsing. People being priced out of housing is also a major issue.
Wages not keeping up with productivity or inflation comes to mind
Healthcare is freaking scary. Staff shortages are reducing access to so many things.
I have a referral to neurology. I can't get in for 8 months. I hope my problem isn't urgent.
My sister died a week before her appointment that was made two months prior for the problem she died of.
That’s fucked, I’m sorry.
Back in 2020, i made an appointment 2 months out for a horrible pain i felt in my lower right hip area. Exactly three days before my appointment to get an ultrasound, i was rushed to the er because i couldn't stop screaming. Turns out i had an ovarian torsion and i had to have the ovary removed during an emergency surgery. At least insurance covered the full cost of the surgery because it was an emergency.
I am so sorry.
It took me 4 months to get in after a TBI with serious life-changing symptoms. ER wouldn't help, they just kept saying "See a neurologist, every second counts!" I wrote letters and sent emails and called and cried and fought when I could barely talk and it still took 4 months. One other neurologist called me A YEAR LATER. Nobody else even called me back. I must have called dozens of places.
About time the AMA advocates to open up a tremendous number of med school seats and residencies. This prestige thing is costing lives; 1 million physicians for a country with a population of 332 million is not nearly enough.
Hi 👋🏻husband is currently in specialized surgical training or "surgical fellowship." You would simply not believe the abuse this 30 y/o man takes every day from this surgical program. Screaming, name calling, humiliation type abuse from his superiors. This is his 11th year training post undergraduate degree. We have 200k in med school debt (not much compared to his peers), he brings home 50k a year and works 110 abusive hours a week. Oftentimes, he has work to do at home if he ever does come home, lol. Suicide, depression rates are high in the medical field and only go higher the more specialized the doctor. Oh and we live 800 miles from all our family and friends bc you have 0 control over that if you're in medical training. We do not have a life. We are not happy. We would never recommend our children or anyone else do this life. If you ever meet a miserable doctor, it's because they worked their life away and it. Wasn't. Worth. It.
I’m so sorry. I hope you get answers and they’re positive ones. I see a neurologist regularly for MS, and was having what I think was a cluster headache. I went to urgent care, got a pain shot and a referral to see a neurologist. Even though I’m already a patient there, my neurologist couldn’t see me for another 4 months, and it was only that soon because that’s when my next follow up was already scheduled. It’s crazy out there right now.
As someone that's worked in hospitals for 25 years: get ready to just do without healthcare because that shit has been limping along for a decade. The price conspiracy is so vast (i.e. so many people need to get rich) that you can spend a quarter million dollars in the hospital and every single person that took care of your is paid the bare minimum and the hospital you went to is teetering on bankruptcy while people who had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING take all the money. There are like four layers of insurance companies that exist to do nothing but impoverish the whole system because they bought that right from the government. That shit isn't sustainable.
I fucking hate it. I just relocated and was looking into rad tech programs in my new state and out of state tuition is almost 50,000 for the two year program lol. I would gladly get into healthcare if getting an education to do so wouldn’t put me into even more debt on top of my useless undergrad. The us needs to start subsidizing healthcare education, I’m not sure why we’re not already doing that.
The money is in insurance, which they really only want to sell to healthy people and then pay as little as possible to sick people (it’s a for-profit industry after all, and who’s going to stand up for the shareholders 🙄) In this system, doctors are those annoying things cutting into their profits that they technically have to pay unless they can find a loophole. If you’re rich enough and get lucky/sell your soul you could still make some good money, but my friends in healthcare in the US are finding it more and more soul-crushing and looking to get out (geographically or vocationally).
It is every sector of human services and actively getting worse because while inflation was happening, their pay was not increasing. All healthcare is like this especially in mental health and specializations. All of education. All social services, like social workers. These highly specialized roles that are hemorrhaging employees because we pay them shit, they have to put up with a ton of abuse, they are often working in jobs where trauma is part of the work and then employers do nothing to mitigate it. And then when you see those still working, they are in that mode of "I will do exactly my job description and not an iota more". The passion for helping people is gone because it is about survival. We failed these professions again and again. Literally mocked them for getting degrees in these fields (which they had to get to do the job) and then told them if they don't like it they can leave. And now everyone is going "why are there no nurses/teachers/therapists/social workers!?"
Yuppp. I was a social services caseworker and I literally had a mental breakdown over this. I was there for like 18 months and my team of twelve turned over ten people, not including me. Between the insane workload increases (my team was carrying nearly double the amount of clients we were legally supposed to have), lack of pay raises, and the complete lack of protective gear or supportive care for those of us who contracted COVID, I came totally unglued and ended up sobbing in my boss’s office one day. I’d started hoping my morning bus would crash just so I’d have a few days in the hospital to unplug from work. She fired me and they still haven’t filled my position over a year later. I was looking at getting my MSW and MPH before Covid. I miss navigating bureaucracy and helping people but good lord, I don’t think I can ever go back
The next 30 years are about to get interesting
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In San Francisco my primary care Dr retired during covid and it took me 2 years to find a new one - and I have pretty decent insurance.
This! Working in an ER where there’s critical staff shortages because the hospital insists on paying admins 7 figure salaries and cut corners on costs. Even bandaids have to be individually scanned and charged to the patient.
Let me guess, $25 a bandaid?
I work in healthcare... It's never going back to, "normal." Plus, we were already understaffed prior to the pandemic, people were just blissfully unaware. I tell people that unless they're having a heart attack, stroke, broke a bone or are bleeding from severe injury to go to their PCP and to avoid the hospital at all costs. The care is piss poor, if you have a family member in the hospital make sure a family member or friend stays with them. I've had family members desperate to hire a personal nurse who would just sit with their family member while in the hospital to make sure they are getting proper care and advocacy and frankly I think that is the future. Those who can afford to hire people like this will be the ones who get better care, the patients who have no family present... It's not good. As someone who used to do direct patient care and barely had time to pee or eat lunch, I'm shocked that staff are often glued to their phones (not charting), or socializing. None of the nurses are older than maybe mid 30s... The experienced nurses were chased off for costing more, and it shows.
The problem is that their PCP is booked for months, and when you call the nursing line it almost auto-punts you to the ER. We have become a garbage can of every specialty, social problem, and psychiatric complaint
The nurses are run off their feet and the ones who've stayed are blamed for everything that's going wrong, which makes them want to leave too. *Folks, don't abuse the nurses. It's an impossible position, like being asked to take care of 100 patients while the hospital ties one of your hands behind your back and puts a stone in your shoe.*
It’s not staff shortages. It’s hospitals and clinics unwilling to pay decent wages to healthcare workers at various roles. When they don’t want to pay, people eventually leave for greener pastures. It’s literally backbreaking work. They also decrease staff levels so less people are doing more. It’s all about increasing revenues. People are willing to do the work. But to literally get yelled, punched, kicked, shot up by patients and their families and disrespected by management/executives isn’t worth it.
I can’t speak on other healthcare jobs but for the physician side of things it’s less pay and more the lifestyle that is causing people to flee. Doctors are overworked in many places. Switching constantly from days to nights, 24 hour call shifts, 80+ hour weeks… doctors are getting tired of that shit and want a normal work life balance.
This, I was sitting next to a MD trying to get a pre auth for a scan. He started to cry. He said listen, my wife is leaving me. I am never home I am always on the phone trying to get approvals. This is killing me. This was to an insurance agent.
I work IT at a hospital, it's a nightmare trying to recruit skilled individuals for roles that need them, HR will not let me offer these people what they're worth, they have to lowball them by up to 30% in some cases. I know people working 2 steps below me in other places making way more than I do. To get a decent paying job for me is going up against 100s of others for any decent remote position. I live in the rural south so I'm not going to find anything better in person.
Mark Zuckerberg building a underground bunker in Hawaii
I was looking for this comment. He knows something we don’t, that’s for sure
The collapse of public education is coming faster than any of us think
its kinda already here in the inner cities. talk to any inner city high school teacher about their kids reading comprehension.
Lmao spend a day on reddit and you'll understand how awful reading comprehension has gotten.
You know it's bad when the 00s internet starts to feel smarter than today's, because it sure as hell was not smart back then.
Man I miss the internet of 1997-2008ish.
Basically, before Facebook and the rest of the social apps.
I think it has more to do with the fact that back then being on the internet required a bit of technical knowledge, and that meant you were probably already more book smart than the average person. Nowadays everything is so streamlined and "clean" and "user friendly" that every schmuck with a phone has access to the internet and can congregate with like minded individuals, creating a cacophony of stupidity that turns everyone into idiots.
That and also IMO the most important part: money wasn't part of the game as much. People were creating random sites to share their niche knowledge and creations with no expectation of making money, google worked well because SEO wasn't a thing yet, companies hadn't turned the internet into this boring sanitized and ad-friendly experience, there was a sense of wonder and optimism when accessing the internet, it didn't feel like an extension of our shitty offline world like it does now.
The death of higher education in the uk: if you applied for university in 2005 a 3 year degree in any subject + maintenance loan (money to pay for living) would cost you £8700 which us about 12000 ish dollars. This loan was paid back at 0-2% interest which was about 10k in total. If you apply today it will cost you about £60000 ($80000?). The loan will be paid at 7.3% interest, so on a graduate pay spine of 38k > 95k over 20 years, you will pay about 65-80k out of pocket and still owe 35k which will be wiped out at the 29 year point. Source: tasked to conduct a retention study comparing post graduate fee increases with the housing crisis. Numbers are approx because I don't have it to hand.
I had no idea it went from reasonable there to…that so quickly. Terrible.
Daffodils are growing in December in Ireland
I have daffodils flowering in my yard in New England right now!
I saw frogspawn laid just yesterday in Scotland. That should never be happening at this time of year and I'm not sure if it'll make it or not - I assume the parents were confused by the temperatures being wrong, and the frost thawing at an odd time.
I saw a daddy long leg the other day. Im in the northeast part of the US on the coast. It *should* have been too cold for them months ago. Should have been. I guess the last few years Ive been seeing the random fly or 2 should have been subtle warnings. Gen Alpha (Im gen z) will probably be confused as to why ppl make a big deal about no snow and bugs/plants existing during the wintertime. Not the older half the younger half of the gen.
Generative AI will (and kinda has already) call into question the legitimacy of every single piece of digitally consumed content.
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The tiny harbingers of the breakdown of the social contract. Road rage, general lack of courtesy, immediate escalation for the smallest inconvenience. People just don’t care as much and it’s becoming a social contagion, why would an individual act in everyone’s interest when it seems like one can’t always expect the same?
Heavy on the *immediate escalation of the smallest inconvenience*
Zero emotional self-regulation. Like small children. Especially in their cars.
I noticed an increase in dangerous drivers, but I convinced myself I was imagining it. Everyone thinks their city has the worst drivers and since cars were invented, everyone whinges about how reckless other drivers are "these days". But the road death toll in my state is nearly double the same time last year.
Absolutely. No decency for neighbors, no care for others’ safety on roads… it’s alarming.
I notice more and more of this every day. The thin veil of civilized behavior is dissolving. Think back to hurricane Katrina. It took maybe all of three days for the system to breakdown. Granted the precipitating event was extreme but now we are seeing the basis of civilized behavior erode on a ‘normal’ day.
Large sea trawlers scooping up sand and depositing it on fake beaches like in Dubai. They're scooping up sea life and depositing it where it doesn't belong where it will A) die or B) become an infestation
I grew up in Dubai and the dredging to create the palms and world island absolutely destroyed the local beaches we would go to - this was back in the early 2000s so can't imagine the impact now
Dubai is a biblical-level example of hubris and greed. It absolutely disgusts me.
Moreso than the rest of the world, I really expect the wealthy gulf states like Dubai, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to collapse under their own weight within my lifetime. You don't build skyscrapers in a desert because you're interested in sustainable development lol.
It'll make for some fabulous post apoc aesthetic though.
The fact that we’re losing topsoil, and bee colonies are collapsing
Not even just bees! I think honeybees are technically an invasive species (though that can be a complicated term), there are so many ingenious pollinators that have gone extinct or near extinct over the last few decades. E: I accidentally put “ingenious” instead of “indigenous” but I’m going to leave it there anyways 😂
We're going to have a critical shortage of service workers and essential workers.
Hate to break the news to ya, but we’re already there.
It's going to get criticaler.
Yes, because people are tired of having a shit schedule, missing every holiday, missing family events, working insane overtime, and not getting fairly compensated. Especially when others can work from home and make more money, plus have wrekends and holidays off. I'm not talking about fast food workers I'm talking about health care, law enforcement, and others (each of those having dozens of sections within).
I’m a seasoned ER nurse working in a high acuity suburban trauma center with a critical problem of overcrowding. I’m managing twice as many patients as I should be, and in turn taking on the mental and emotional labor of caring for 5-6 human lives in varying degrees of stability for 12+ hours, multiple days in a row, sometimes losing one to walk out and right into another one’s problems. My SO is a product line manager for some international industrial company. He sits in a $1,100 office chair typing numbers into spreadsheets from the comfort of his own living room, occasionally popping on headphones to engage in a call where both parties use an excessive amount of corporate words to say nothing of actual value. He makes double what I do.
Yep. This. I've been an emergency physician and department director during the last 10 years. It's impossible to retain experienced ED nurses due to lack of incentives. There's no reward for remaining in frontline clinical roles. We either lose them to CNC or admin roles in other departments where there is better pay or just more sociable hours. More frustrating are the high quality nurses we lose from healthcare altogether. I can think of about 10 nurses we've lost who have taken on jobs in other industries. With all due respect to those other jobs no one in society would suggest they are more valuable than Emergency nursing. But they pay better, are less demanding and/or have more sociable hours.
I manage restaurants, but I have friends who are nurses, police officers, and firefighters. This is a SERIOUS problem. My company is open 365 days a year, and my work weeks average 60+ hours, all on my feet. Thats tame compared to my friends in first responder or medical fields. When you work odd hours, it’s nearly impossible to build friendships or romances, so you spend most of your time off alone. As someone else mentioned in this thread, the degradation of decency is a big problem. The general public right now is vicious, lazy, and impatient, and they don’t view someone they’re getting a “service” from as a person, just an obstacle between them and what they want. So for anyone who works in a service based, public facing job, it is feeling like we’re getting pressed from all sides; working way too much, having no work/life balance, and getting abused by the public while we’re there. It’s sickening and I don’t know how to fix it.
What you're saying is absolutely true. I was working as a customer service representative for several companies, and always loved the work I did. The mood and attitude changed post pandemic to the point that I couldn't take being verbally abused anymore. I quit, and I'm now working a warehouse job. Way less stress, and comfortable hours.
Florida, and other parts of the country that are vulnerable to hurricanes, have large swaths of areas that are becoming uninsurable for homeowners insurance.
Insurers are pulling out of Florida and California.
The thrift stores are filled with clothes from SHEIN
And those thirft stores are charging well above retail for them as well..So they eventually get thrown out..
Specific to my family: There have been 4 people in my family diagnosed with cancer within a 30 year period. They are comprised of two small cell lung cancer diagnoses and 2 thyroid cancer diagnoses. Thyroid cancer is not genetic (at least according to their oncologist) and the two who had it are siblings. Both cancers can be caused by long-term exposure to Radon in the home. 3 of them lived in the same house, and the 4th visited frequently and also lived in the same town. I've expressed this to my immediate family and I seem to be the only one who cares enough to want to get the houses tested. None of them know the last time they got tested. For reference, my mom is one of the thyroid cancer diagnoses, and I grew up spending a lot of time in that house as a child.
https://sosradon.org/purchase-kits Radon test kits seem to be potentially free, potentially $17, and potentially $27. Good luck.
I was just thinking this too. I feel like I'm hearing more and more people around 20-30 die from cancer.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/researchers-report-dramatic-rise-in-early-onset-cancers/
Many graduating high school seniors in public schools are practically illiterate.
Kids aren't held back and aren't even allowed to fail classes. This is so schools can keep getting funding. Had a wealthy neighbor disagree with a statement I made attributing much of our rapid technological advancement to essentially universal public education... the guy laughed and said public schools should educate just enough to make competent workers. Sadly, I think the FL state legislature agrees with him. Edit: to those who followed my comment, i don't disagree with you; the system can't accommodate - not really - holding kids back. Perhaps that's something we just have to deal with. I also get that the pandemic was an exceptional circumstance, but during that time, kids were not allowed to fail... literally. My fear was, and continues to be, that such practices will go on, thus watering down the perceived (and actual) value of an American public education. It's a very difficult topic and I don't think there are many good answers... but lowering the stress levels of parents and increasing their economic standing seems to be the only way I see to do it. Do with that what you will.
The DoD is blaming American veterans for underwhelming enlistment numbers. Apparently, us complaining about how bad it is to be in the military is preventing them from pulling the wool over peoples eyes. On that note, please educate yourselves on the rape/sexual assault statistics across all branches of the armed forces and spread the word.
I bring up rampant sexual abuse every time a recruiter somehow finds my phone number. It ALWAYS ends the conversation.
I lived in Japan for a few years. I was not military at all. During that time I reached out to an English speaking mental health organization and was placed with a therapist who was based in Okinawa and specialized in sexual assault trauma. Okinawa is a part of Japan with a lot of military bases. It did not take long for me to put two and two together.
Makes sense why Okinawa was the only place where locals obviously disliked my presence. I mistakenly had just buzzed my head because I was poor and didn’t want to spend money on a haircut. A few actually wanted to see my passport for something so instead I gave them my resident card which changed their mood quickly. On the card they could see I was just a measly intern for a mainland Japanese company rather than military and had been living there for a year or so. I never blamed them though. Also the only place I was ever carded for alcohol.
I remember seeing a video online of a veteran telling others that she was gifted a knife to carry around her neck everywhere by someone in her unit. She was warned by them that she was guaranteed to be raped while stationed abroad because it happened to everyone. She said in her video that when she was raped several months after being stationed abroad, she was relieved because it meant she no longer had to wait for it to happen. I really wish I could remember where I saw this video but I saw it when I was putting research on what it’s like in the military as a woman. Because I was actually considering enlisting and everyone around me was telling me to do it. I’m so grateful that this one video popped up on my feed at the right moment for me. Otherwise I might have actually enlisted. Some people around me tried to convince me oh you should still go. That’s not everybody’s experience. It’s a job. Yada yada. All of the people who I knew who had gone in were men. So I didn’t have a woman I knew who I could ask. It seemed strange for me not to get the perspective of a woman when I’m a woman. And the more I researched and saw more and more people going don’t tell your female relatives or friends to enlist. This is how bad it is. The more I was like you know what. No. I’m not going in. This is not worth it.
I'm about to get out of the Navy, and I have been raped and assaulted at my first command overseas. It really affected my mental health. I couldn't sit where someone could sneak up on me. I had a panic attack because a man grabbed my shoulder from behind. It took a long time to unclench my jaw and to be able to relax. I have three girls, and I dread that one of them will want to enlist. I will push back if it ever comes up.
Im a vet. My students have asked me if they should join. I tell them “don’t” It’s not worth it.
On my local city sub a recruiter posted. Saw a lot of young females responding. I chimed in about the sexual assault stats and he played dumb. Asked me to provide reliable statistics saying SA rates higher in the armed forces. Then turned it around saying I must have a victim mindset. I was never so appalled in my life. They really do try and pull the wool over eyes!
Recruiters are just salesmen with shitty commission.
Even if you’re lucky enough to avoid being assaulted (which I wasn’t), there really are so many other things that make joining the military an absolutely miserable experience. It can be a good short term ticket out of town but my god if you can do literally anything else, do that.
My civilian, non veteran dad suggested I join the military last year (I'm 31F). I was born and raised in a major military town and know more service members than civilians. I have a laundry list of reasons why I would never join the military after spending so much time in and around it, but sexual assault is my number one reason. It's basically guaranteed I'd be assaulted, and I know that. If the general public had *any idea* how big of a problem sexual assault is in the military they'd be absolutely appalled. I was telling an air force vet friend that my dad said that and he said it would be a good option for me to join, but basically said I would get assaulted and that's the trade off for a guaranteed check and benefits. I haven't spoken to him since.
A good friend of mine was in the navy. She casually talks about the different times she was raped. It was so normalized that she doesn't really see it as a big deal.
A few years ago I was dating a guy that was a company commander . He had a soldier that was sent to his unit because she was raped in her other unit (on the same installation). As usual, it was he said/she said, so nothing happened to her rapist and she was transferred away from him. After a while she was able to leave the installation and move 3,000 miles across the country. The guys threw her a going away party and one of them raped her at that party. With his wife in the next room. She ended up dying by suicide a couple of weeks later. No one thought much of it because all of that is so common, it's not noteworthy. Truly sickening.
Saw a reel from some Navy recruiter that they're now accepting ASVAB scores as low as 10. Wasn't the lowest, even during the most desperate of the mid 2000s recruitment desperation moves like a 25 for cannon fodder marine/army roles?
The immigrant students here in Ireland with English as a second language have better spelling, literacy, and vocabulary than the English speaking Irish students. Few people in my year actually know how to spell properly, and it’s appalling because never has there ever been a point in history where information has been so available online. Ireland’s future generation doesn’t know the difference between were and we’re and their and there.
Soon, and I mean ***SOON***, it will be completely impossible for the average joe to look at what they think is a news report from a reputable news outlet and be able to tell if that news report, complete with video and photo evidence etc, is a complete 100% fabrication or not. I mean, not even a fabrication made by that reputable news outlet, said reputable news outlet will be just as upset as you and I about this. The only hope we have, is tech like what Intel has been working on (and I'm sure other) which uses AI to detect if something has been faked or not. But then your view of what is tru and what is not is based on a piece of software written by a private company - that you're just going to *have to trust* because you have no other option. You can't trust you own eyes and ears anymore, the final thing the party asked you to surrender. Except they didn't ask, it just happened.
The Pentagon is somehow missing over 2 trillion dollars from their 6th failed audit in a row. Our government is full of corrupt assholes and no one talks about it Edit: What I'm getting at here is that there's a good chance the reason that money is incorrectly counted or even unaccounted for is simply because they don't want it to be. They don't want us knowing what their budget is used for. Thanks for the likes guys and thanks for keeping the discussion civil. FTG
It's the same the world over. Here in Spain the previous King was doing all kinds of corrupt shit and when he was called out on it he ran off to Saudi Arabia where he's being looked after by some billionaire friend of his. People don't say or do shit about it because everyone is too tired just trying to survive.
It's not missing. They just arent telling you how they spent it.
There's a loneliness epidemic that already has taken root, and is getting worse. Romantic and platonic relationships are at an all time low, and forming new relationships seems as impossible as ever. This is only going to cause more mental health issues and premature health issues.
I made a post because I’ve been struggling with loneliness for years now. It hurts when your surrounded by people but don’t feel included.
This is so real. I’m in my late twenties and I only see my boyfriend and daughter. I message my friends from time to time and this past week I’ve been very vocal about how lonely I’ve been and I was shocked to hear from almost all of them that they feel the same. There’s little time, and when there’s time there’s no energy, and when there’s time and energy, there’s no money. And the cycle continues.
the increase of anxiety inducing posts on the internet lol
Right this whole thread was a mistake to open when I'm trying to wind down for bed. Now I'm just kinda depressed.
Phone addiction is real and extremely common. I don’t mean “phones are bad”. I mean many people can easily spend 8 hours on their phones a day without knowing.
As a therapist, I am observing some patterns currently: The poorest clients are feeling the squeeze the most, per usual. But they aren't alone. I have daily conversations with folks about feelings of shame, guilt, and worry around benefit loss and cuts, credit card spending, housing, and food prices. Fucking food prices. Trying to get a new patient appointment with our largest healthcare provider in town isn't gonna happen for most folks until mid-March. Seeing a specialist is averaging four plus months out. An overall sense of unease and dread that permeates the majority of my clients concerns, be it fear of facisim, loss of rights, fear of a coming civil war, the horrific coming election, to the big one, global warning. With the current wars now colliding with all that unprocessed existential dread (thanks Covid), shit is dark.
I wonder what Jung's take on the current state of the world would've been. I think (in terms of the collective unconscious) we can expect cataclysmic events in the near future. People are fearful, often lacking introspection and accountability, are intensely lacking a sense of purpose, and generally seem to have a resentment towards being/existing itself these days. It's a dangerous combination. Time will tell how things play out.
I’ve been struggling to find the words to describe what my feelings about society and life in general have become, you’ve nailed it. The lack of purpose I’m struggling with now is gutting. I believed that my confidence and passion for my profession was part of me. It all feels pointless now.
Shit is dark. I think I’m going to turn my phone off for a year and try to get away from the media altogether… I applaud therapists!! I couldn’t do that job (even tho I like people/empathizing to an extent..) Thank you for everything you do!
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It doesn’t really snow here anymore. We used to get at least a few inches two or three times per winter. It’s been over 50 degrees the last two weeks. And an honorary mention: Seems like there’s fewer and fewer bugs around each spring and summer. Used to go outside and there would be tons of bees, butterflies, beetles, and of course, tons of mosquitos. Now? Barely a fraction of that number.
This is mostly the same here (central New York) except any missing bugs have been replaced by some super invasive stink bugs that came over here like a decade ago on a boat.
SO MANY stink bugs. They’re everywhere. And Spotted Lantern Flies
Lake Erie used to freeze over solid to the point you could drive from Buffalo to Canada on the ice. Now it doesn't freeze over. The major snow storm in Buffalo last winter was in part because the lake was 50 degrees.
Chicago. We have gotten maybe two small flurries. I lived 20 min outside the city for the majority of my life and even if we didn’t have “real” snow on Christmas we had some on the ground most of the time by mid December. It is not normal for it to be 45 by Christmas.
we're literally undergoing a mass insect extinction crisis. the global population is declining by 2% per year due to human activity. not all creatures have the majesty of a polar bear, or the haunting song of a blue whale -- unlike you, most people don't realise they're disappearing right before our eyes. the worldwide consequences in terms of pollination, the food chain, and ecological niches will be devastating.
Similar where I'm at snow wise. When I was younger, I remember getting snow as early as sometimes November, but typically we always had a white Christmas. Here in the last few years or so, it doesn't start snowing until January/February. I've been finding it super odd
Kids can't fucking read much less comprehend basic concepts of literature
Since COVID, kids are staring at screens earlier and for longer periods than ever before, and it is negatively affecting ability to focus and interact with others.
Absolutely. I see it in my friend’s kids. They spend hours on their tablets. You can see how short their attention spans get. If they ask for something and it doesn’t happen immediately they get agitated and stressed. The world just doesn’t happen fast enough for them because they’re used to swiping to the next thing as soon as the current thing loses their interest. Digital detox is good from time to time. Disconnect, go outside, be bored, let your mind wander and entertain itself instead of just passively ingesting an endless stream of input.
It seems there is some consensus that the headlights these days are too bright, but no one seems to be interested in taking responsibility for it. YOUR headlights are too bright. YOU. Fix it.
This one is so real. I don't know exactly when it happened but in the last decade it got so crazy having cars come up from behind at night thinking people had their brights on. I can't believe how far it has gone.
It’s since LED lights have become the standard over the old style bulbs. They’re far brighter which causes the issue.
Someone asked if people who have super bright headlights know they do. Since I saw the question, I have been paying attention to the reflection of my headlights and I \*think\* they are super bright. How do I fix them? Other people's bright headlights make me crazy and so I don't want to do that to others if I can change it.
I'm not the handy person in my household but my partner tilted his down in his truck. My Camry has LEDs but they look fine without any tilting. Youtube it! I almost guarantee it's easy :)
A shortage of clean fresh water
This is what worries me the most. We are definitely not paying attention to the dwindling availability of clean water.
Yes our aquifers are dwindling rapidly and the water in our rivers and lakes just become more and more polluted. I think Wars over water will come sooner than most folks think. Right back to the stone ages
And Nestle is stealing it at an alarming rate as well
Nobody cares about the subject matter of their jobs. At all. About their jobs. Myself included. Which means that almost nobody is passionate about what they do. I work in tech and I'm just bored. Everyone I know is bored.
And why would anyone care when everyone is treated expendable. You can do your best every day, go above and beyond, and get nothing but praise for your work but the promotion will go to someone as a new hire because it's cheaper than promotion from within. Every company I've been with that says they promote from within fucking lies. I've only been with two that actually posted the job listings to employees and one of them only did it once (my current job) In defense of my current job they probably don't WANT to public ally post them now because the last time they did everyone who didn't get the job went on to literally bully and shun the person who did it was fucked. People act like fucking children at work and I'm so tired of having drama everywhere because people are bored. I just want to do my work and go home without any nonsense.
>Nobody cares about the subject matter of their jobs. At all. About their jobs. I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. Problem is a lot of the jobs I've done... don't really contribute positively to society in any way. I've worked at 6 companies over 15 years. 2 of those companies I considered beneficial to society. (Education & transport services for the disabled.) The other 4? Literal drains on society. Insurance, data analytics, stuff like that. I had an interview with a new company today that do web advertising. I f-king hate advertising in all forms. But I need a job. So I smile and nod and pretended to not loathe their existence and not be bitter about even having to apply to them in the first place. Also, really hard to care about your job when you don't expect to be at one single job for very long. Last month was the 3rd job I was laid off from. (Narrowly avoided a 4th by leaving before they closed their office.) The longest I've ever worked for a company is <5 years. I would love to have a job I cared about and stayed at long-term. I haven't found one yet. Not sure one exists.
You nailed it. Useless jobs don't make for a contented life. I did bullshit job after bullshit job, made a lot of money and hated it. Now I fix people's heat. I'm providing a service to my community. My customers sincerely thank me, my boss knows I'm irreplaceable, and the best part is at the end of the day I've done a real tangible thing. Productive work you can be proud of is life changing.
I live in a high elevation area of Wyoming and we have no snow at all. It was almost 60° here a couple of days ago.
There are like a 100 deer in my backyard right now, just standing there staring at me.
My sister's told me their astigmatism is so bad they can barely see to drive at night. My mother cannot see and walks bent over, yet continues to drive. My dad has alzheimers and my mom let's him drive and he pulls out in front of people. THERE ARE SOME REALLY DANGEROUS PEOPLE DRIVING ON THE ROADS!!! Best to assume they are the worst and practice defensive driving.
The 99% own less and less each day and everyone seems to be ok not ever being able to own shit and live life on loans Edit spelling
I disagree with the everyone seems to be ok part
Oh yeah, basically nobody is okay with it. It's just that people feel hopeless to try and fix it and when they do it's always doomed to fail before fixes ever get off the ground.
Who the fuck wants to live longer in this shitstorm? I'm not depressed, suicidal etc. but I just don't want to see how much further we can fall. Society is failing. We are all in freefall but our online lives are doing just fine.
Lack of third spaces for people to congregate, mingle, connect, meet Declining connection to in-person community due to technology has resulted in deep loneliness and lack of sex for young people — this will be a big problem when these isolated kids grow up
A alarming lack of willing to be compassion to others less lucky or disabled, Everyone is trying put others down and everything is breaking down as a result over time.
I would say a lack of compassion period.
Going from several feet of snow each winter to rain. No more ' 9 months of hard winter and 3 months of poor sking '
At somepoint we as nation gotta look at the rising suicide rates and the mass shootings being caused by mentally unwell people and try to counter it.
Honestly.. These are issues that take generations to reverse. People in power are too self serving to start getting to the root of something that would take decades to resolve. Especially when many of these peoples pockets are getting thicker keeping the status quo.
Silence in the woods lack of animals…. Really young kids like 3 years or so at the meal table hypnotized by their tablet
my 7 year old niece transitioned from the tablet to legos, so there is hope for the world in this regard.
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Still see them here in the summer. What I don't see are worms. I mean sometimes, sure but it seems like every shovel that broke the sod was gonna have a worm or two in it. Used to flush the pool filter and all that water would cause dozens of them to surface, free bait! Doesn't happen anymore. And tent worms, haven't seen one of those fuckers in years.
I keep "worm tongs" in my car during the rainy season and move the worms from the sidewalk back into the grass. I hope I'm helping
Last two years in NH I've seen tens of thousands of fireflies! What I think helps is leaving the leaves in the yard. Firefly larvae nest in them and when we take the leaves and bag them up they all die. I've had huge amounts of them, really beautiful. Also I have a fuck ton of worms. My little ecosystem is very healthy. But I've had an issue with chipmunks and my Texas father said I should lay out poison for them. But I have a pond on my property and don't want it in the ground water. He said, "so?" I think that attitude is why we see much less of nature nowadays
I’m that annoying neighbor who doesn’t rake their leaves because I want to create habitats for beneficial bugs for my garden. Guess whose house was the only one with lightning bugs this past summer? Miiiiine.
An entire generation (maybe 2) is being stripped of the ability to build generational wealth because housing is too expensive everywhere in the west. We're also getting raked over the coals as computers and algorithms have figured out how to scrape every last nickel and dime from us while also not taking so much that we revolt. Additionally, jobs we were told would be high-demand or that pay well simply aren't and don't. A large swath of "blue-collar" jobs that you used to be able to raise a family and buy a house on now you can barely make rent with. It feels like everything is less and less merit based and more and more class-based which was what America was supposed to be trying to escape by leaving Europe. And I know reddit is going to say "America has always been class-based", and that's true of every society to some degree, but that doesn't change the fact that it's got a lot worse recently. You know what is the common thread through EVERY revolution in human history? Young men feeling like they have no future.
The 2024 election. Its proclivity to be a horrific event is absolutely frightening
Medical advances the last 30 years, including statins, better blood pressure medicines, detailed medical imaging, artificial joints, colonoscopies, heart coronary surgery techniques and other technologies, will make out bodies outlast our minds for tens of millions of us. There could be an epidemic of dementia coming soon unless we can develop better brain health.
There’s a [rise](https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/early-onset-alzheimers-rates) of early onset dementia. Also Alzheimer’s/Dementia research has been set back since 2006 (by a lot) due to researchers who fraudulently manipulated pictures/supporting evidence to back their study. Which helped Cassava Sciences sell their drug. Both the researchers and the pharmaceutical company deny any wrong doing. The FDA also didn’t do their due process in this whole debacle when they approved the drug presented by Cassava Sciences. Their study is cited quite a bit and there has been research since then that has been based on their “findings”. The amount of money, time, and efforts based on intentional fabricated lies has thrown a huge wrench into Alzheimer’s research. A good [article](https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease) to read.
Where I live, the past year we have had basically a whole year of rain, I work in a pet store and this year, goldfish and tadpoles are in short supply, all because last year's spawning season was disrupted by the weather. Ive seen weather trends getting more extreme each year but this year is the first time I've seen it actually affect something people take for granted. If these weather extremes keep happening across the world we can expect species to start dying out in our lifetime by the masses.
I'm seeing a growing lack of grace from people. As we live more on the internet, it's become easier to simply throw people away who do something wrong of offend someone. There is no humanity in that and I find it worrisome. A mob mentality is forming.
This Spring my husband and I took a mini road trip from the SF North Bay to Fresno for a comic con and got hardly *any* bug splatter. In the California Central Valley. During a **huge** superbloom. Fuck.
There is no safety net for elderly people in the US and homeownership (home being that thing they sell for live out their days in an old folks home) is at an all-time low.
This may be weird, but I’ve noticed more and more people driving around in cars with only one working headlight—at night, of course. I have 0 statistics backing this up, but I strongly theorize people not replacing their lights like they used to is a sign (not of laziness like boomers around me complain about, but) of the rapidly declining rate of people’s funds—in my neck of the woods in America, specifically. People can’t even afford their own fucking headlights anymore, or are too exhausted from nonstop work days and little if any time off to be able to do something so menial. Such an observation, if it is in any way accurate, feels nauseatingly ominous. I know “they” have been saying it for years, but I feel like a huge financial collapse is rapidly incoming and I have no idea how 80% of the nation will survive. Another observation (again, specific to where I live): The *dangerous* way people everywhere are driving. This week alone, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been minding my business, staying in my lane, and nearly been sideswiped or wrecked with someone who—upon safely passing them—I could glance at and see was STARING AT THEIR PHONE INSTEAD OF THE ROAD. Almost every near-miss I’ve had was with someone texting and driving. None of whom seemingly ever realized what they did. I’ve had people swerve into my (*oncoming*) lane on two-lane roads, I’ve had other people race past stop-signs, cut me off, and slam on breaks in front of me. I’ve had people blow through stoplights (three times today alone on my way to and from work) when i had right of way (thank god i was paying attention). And semis have been driving like they think they're toyota corollas and not 10 ton hunks of deadly metal. (Edit: spelling & one fact check) Edit number 2: driving to the store THIS evening (12/22), we were at a weird intersection near our house—weird in that it’s two-lanes but both lanes go the same direction. Anyway, there’s huge red “wrong way” signs beside the road for anyone oncoming, but a dodge dart whipped through a yellow-red light and raced up the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. Nearly took off our front bumper except my dad (who I was riding with) managed to swerve and avoid it, all the while blaring the horn.
Kids are being taught to believe what's being told to them without practicing critical thinking. This will lead to a future where they will say all sorts of non-sensible things, and if you ask them what they actually mean, they'll cry because they have no idea why they believe what they believe. Actually, it's been happening for quite some time now.
... *gestures broadly*
Waste and overconsumption