I’m 43, almost 44, years old and went through a bought of alcoholism during the early part of the pandemic. I went through treatment and have been fine since. However, I can’t help but feel that all the news in the last few months is just the worst. Between the AI bullshit, the wars, the effects of capitalism, and the political situation in general it’s just the worst. Is it just me or have other folks noticed the same trend?
Edit: I should have also mentioned the enshitification of everything tech related.
Edit 2: Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. For some more context, yes I’m American and live in a state that’s about to ban the wearing of masks in public. I haven’t had a drink in over year and have been in therapy for 3 years. I don’t watch any news sources and rarely read media websites. But yet, that information seeps into my life somehow. I donate blood, I make charitable donations, and try to live a good life. I have 2 amazing kids and a great wife. It’s just hard to not end up in a doomer mindset at times. A Bitcoin company bought a power plant up here that has an existing lease to use a lake as cooling water, and it’s heated up the lake to the point that it’s killing fish.
Saiga antelope populations are recovering.
Crime rates dropping in US, multiple companies working with NASA for ISS access, direct observation of gravitational waves, left reddit for Lemmy, multiple COVID vaccines in like a year from outbreak, more usage of renewable energy sources, etc. There are some obvious problems we need to get together and address as communities, countries, and species, but there are a bunch of improvements and advancements being made too.
Massive drop in maternal mortality over the past century
This is enlightening. US maternal death rates compared to other industrialized nations.
From: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries
That’s messed up
USA, 55th in the world overall, for maternal mortality in a 2018 study.
A fast look at the UNICEF data for 2020 shows 66th.
That’s behind the State of Palestine (61st), Moldova (46th), Albania (34th), Poland (3rd) and Belarus (1st).
https://data.unicef.org/topic/maternal-health/maternal-mortality/#data
Big yikes
Thanks for the data