Some people come out of it better than others. You likely overcame a significant challenge in becoming so.

Heritage Foundation: "We want him to be a neutron bomb"

Trump: "I'm going to be a neutron bomb"

Musk: "I'm up for neutron bombs!"

CEOs: "Can you only neutron bomb some things?"

Trump: "No."

CEOs: "Eh, he probably doesn't mean it."

Media: "Trump not going to be a neutron bomb, everyone says"

Voters: "...eh? Sorry, is there an election or something?"

Honestly, I think the old FirefoxOS could do well these days. Literally everything an app can do can be done by a browser with a decent caching/local storage scheme. Slap a decent camera on that and it would be amazing.

I'm not at all trying to argue that things now are worse in general, for everyone than they've been during those time periods. I'm not even saying that it's as bad as it could possibly be across every metric. I'm just wondering if we've ever had this cyclone of so many things all compounding at once. Even the stuff that you mentioned, each of which was awful, was at least more or less sequential. The Civil War didn't happen during the Gilded Age, and the Great Depression wasn't concurrent with the runup to World War I. 2025 feels like the Great Depression + the Gilded Age + the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand + the Civil War + segregation + Asian-American internment camps, but instead of happening over the course of a hundred years, we're packing it all in to Thursday.

It happened because people fought and died to make it happen.

Yeah, but then we're right back to the public disinterest and economic risk, both of which make large-scale collective action a very difficult prospect (by design).

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not trying to be a fatalist here. I'm trying to calibrate for the extreme level of danger that we're facing, from multiple corners, all at once.

Personally I am almost certain that we're going to see a reverse operation paperclip soon, but it'll probably be China running it rather than the EU.

I think there's a significant correlation with lead poisoning due to leaded gasoline, too.

we've been through way worse than this bullshit in this country, and we've usually come out of it stronger and wiser.

I've been wondering about that myself. What events are you specifically pointing toward? I think the Great Depression and immediate aftermath are pretty close cousins to our current level of public disinterest and economic risk, and the 1890s-1910s are pretty comparable to the current level of deregulation and regulatory capture, and the run-up to the first World War is pretty similar to our risk of armed conflict, and the Civil War isn't too far off of our current level of political division...but have we ever had all of those things at once, plus a constitutional crisis?

There's also a complete rehash of the Wikipedia article about the game, its release and reception, and maybe even a slideshow of memes before you get to the "No confirmation" part. And then a list of all the times the developers have said, "yeah, if they want to do another one, we'd take their money."

Looking through their portfolio, I honestly don't know how XDA and Android Police maintain their quality levels. Everything else is Taboola-level click farming junk.

Well, you've just unlocked a new goal of mine: move to Atlanta...

I did also leave the walnuts out because my son is allergic, so there's that. But left to my own devices, I'd rather have the walnuts on the side.

The recipe I used actually suggested raisins in the cake and walnuts in the frosting. While I don't mind either on their own or in other things, carrot cake is supposed to be creamy and smooth. If I wanted crunch or chew, I'd choose...I dunno, german chocolate or something.

Mass layoffs, though. That doesn't usually presage a great time in a news site's life.

Aftermath is the only gaming site I really pay attention to anymore. I still have Kotaku and PCGamer in my RSS reader, but I don't really read any of their articles.

Deepfakes predate the current AI craze, if I recall the timelines correctly.

The editor of The Verge tends to be fairly neutral-to-negative about AI, at least on his podcast.

I'm just a few short years away, myself. Woof, hadn't realized that.

My old work number used to have a 404 area code. I work in tech. It was a fun inside joke.

Just last week, someone left a note for me saying I'm a "goddess among mortals" for making a carrot cake without raisins.

I'm an overweight 40-year-old man with a beard. She hadn't seen who made the cake, so she was just making a guess that the baker was a woman, but still. Funny experience.

Incredibly brave of him. I'd love to say I'd say the same, but I'm not sure if I have the courage.