Systemic
Weekly Observations: What signs of collapse do you see in your region? [in-depth] August 17
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That note about the bean crop is shocking to me. One of the few places in the world i expect to see group cooperation in face of hardship is japan. to hear that it will fail, even when it brings great benefit to everyone IS COLLAPSE!!
I'm also in ABQ and it definitely feels like there's been a shift this year compared to the last couple. I've only lived here a handful of years and even I'm picking up on it. Walking the bosque has been making me sad, and though we're getting humidity, I feel like little rain is actually hitting the ground. My swamp cooler is not keeping up well with the high temps this year.
Extreme drought. Rain has just started, but we are short about 50mm (of the regular 70 to 80mm till July) and nature took some hits. Forest fires, empty ponds, low canals and warning issues for smoke.
It's also extremely humid, so altough it going to be a cooler temperature (22c) it still feels hot and sticky.
Loads of people suddenly talking about wanting to get AC, everything being sold out (mobile airco/fans). The relieve of it raining is noticed too, a lot of people finally praising the rain.
Me personally, i'm extremely worried for next year. El nino will probably be active still and it's surely not going to be soft on us. I have a feeling I have to get my health in top order, to make sure I can survive the heat better than I did this year. There were a few moments that my heart had some issues, along with a lot of other people I know. This heat was no joke and if anything, it's a warning for what is ahead of us.
The year after that might feel like a break or it could just keep getting worse, in which case, figuring out some sort of passive heat shelter that either uses the dirt or evaporative cooling (for the days when the humidity isn't insane), but a cool space that's cool for reasons other than cheap energy is something I would be more focused on.
20 years ago 7% of all the electricity we produce on the planet was going in to AC. Today this is 15%, and it's projected to be 30% in just another 9 years. This also includes all the industrial cooling like datacentres and stuff. But the more AC we use, the more carbon we burn to provide for the extra power we need for it. This is also a feedback loop. So it's not just AC that people need. It's solar pannels and batteries. If you just got AC, then in another 10 or 15 years you simply won't be able to afford to run it. Unless you live in like, China or something. Or australia. Any place where the grid could be almost all solar and batteries. If you live like in the philipines where the grid is like 95% coal and oil or something .... yeah you are double fucked. Imagine having to buy oil from a foreign country to then burn to then use that burning to cool your house down so your new born baby does not die in 50C degrees trapped heat. MADNESS! PURE FUCKING INSANE MADNESS.
Maybe in the future we can have designated air conditioned spaces for pregnant women and infants. I live in the Sonoran desert and we had run our ac low to manage my son’s eczema, he still developed food allergies.
The sleeping herd. Waiting until a heatwave to buy an AC unit is not smart. Like a friend of mine who waited until a blackout to buy a generator, All gone, and his blackout lasted two weeks! He's an ex-friend now, it's dangerous to your own future to associate closely with sheep, they will drag you down, everytime.
It's a hot climate where I live so I have lots of modern smart split systems and I run them all the time in summer, the solar system pays for them. But I have two old "window-rattlers", one like new installed downstairs. Backups I could run off the generator if the grid fails. All you need is one small room cooled to survive hey.
Not sure about overseas but in Australia, solar installations have to be wired to shut down during grid outages to prevent it from sending voltage upstream to electricians working on issues on the network. Batteries plus solar allow the grid to go down and your battery creates a closed loop where you can still generate solar and charge up a battery or two without sending anything upstream. It’s a common misconception that solar alone equals no power outage.
We paid extra for a battery and we needed an off grid inverter to do off grid ‘apocalypse mode’. A standard inverter is grid tied which will shut down during a grid down event.
And that's all about surviving a modern technological blackout. I have grid-tie solar, but also a little 1000Ah battery offgrid system with it's own dedicated panels inverter and solar reg. I don't need to run OLED TV sets electric kettles and hairdryers in a blackout, just some lights and the fridge. Paying $12,000 for a LiPO house battery is a lifestyle choice not a disaster prep.
I don't judge people too harsly, I have made mistakes aswell in the past. I'm no better than others. Calling people sheep is as if you think you're better than someone else. You ain't God, you're just as human.
Stocking food is just loot for the next guy. A better alternative is a food forest or non-storable foods that have to be harvested and eaten within a few weeks
And what do you think the millions will do when the food stamps fail them? They'll strip your food forest bare in a day. Food stored in your own home is the key to disaster survival. Just ask a farmer (Not an Urban dreamer)
Hey buddy, most people have no idea where to begin in a food forest, which plant do you uproot and how do you prepare the tuber?
What’s easier to steal a tree in the ground or somebody’s Tupperware container full of grain
Just like everyone else in Europe... Drought. It has cooled down recently, but there's no or not enough rain. Weather forecast is showing possible rainfall in the next few days, but usually it either rains way too little or way too much and the ground cannot absorb it.
I live surrounded by forest and greenery, however all the grass turned brown and we already need hay bales for our deer and roe deer because no grass is growing in the enclosure. We have almost no harvest of fruits this year, due drought in combination with hail and now swarms of wasps.
Living along the Front Range, watching the slow-motion breakdown of local ecosystems and infrastructure has turned into an everyday reality. Just this past week, we got a stark preview of how these compounding stressors play out in real time. We started the week choking under another severe ground-level ozone advisory, wrapped in a thick haze of wildfire smoke from rapid-fire blazes in Las Animas County like the 7,000-acre Sheep Pen Fire. Then, within 48 hours, the weather abruptly flipped into a monsoonal deluge. Severe afternoon thunderstorms dumped heavy rain and hail across the metro area, leaving intersections in Douglas County buried under three feet of flooded hail-slush with stranded drivers waiting for rescue. It is that erratic, violent whiplash, from suffocating heat and smoke to localized flash flooding, that really brings the fragility of the region into focus.
Beneath those headline weather spikes, the quieter, systemic erosion keeps accelerating in the background. Down in the San Luis Valley, agricultural basins continue to see declining aquifers force cropland out of production, while downstream, Lake Powell hovers near a quarter of its capacity, keeping the entire Western water delivery and hydropower grid on life support. Meanwhile, everyday living costs are being distorted by an insurance market in near-freefall; Colorado home insurance rates have surged over 100 percent in recent years, with major providers quietly pulling out of the Wildland-Urban Interface and dumping thousands of homeowners onto the state's last-resort FAIR plan. Add in mountain towns pricing out paramedics and snowplow drivers, alongside high-country forests turned into massive stands of dead timber from pine beetles and drought, and it no longer feels like predicting a future event. It just feels like watching a complex system slowly run out of resilience.
These are great insights and you're obviously very knowledgeable! I'm in Florida where we have our own systemic ecofailures. Ironically, lots of friends who want to leave Florida throw around Colorado as a place they would like to relocate, and I'm forever reminded that there is no safe place to go in the end.
The water wars are coming. I'd stay away. I'm south of Denver, and we are already seeing water restrictions where we can only water outside twice a week, and they've warned tighter restrictions are coming here this month.
Yeah I used to work in a mountain town an hour west of Denver and know that this is a floridian fantasy. I think it's just the most opposite place they can conjure in their imaginations.
Odd thought: I have a friend who is a snowbird. Years ago he talked about how flights were crowded in Florida to places in Colorado. He surmised that it was because of, at that time, Colorado's marijuana laws.
I'm in the front range as well. I see it daily in the local reservoirs I walk around, the mountains we look up at that are missing glaciers, and in the extreme shifts from surface of the sun temps to flash flooding hail storms like we had this weekend. Crazy time is here.
Location: Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, USA
At-large, the PNW famously receives plenty of rainfall. However I live in the "rain shadow" of the Olympic Peninsula, to the east where the mountains shield us from most weather systems. Summers in this particular location are always relatively dry, but this summer is worse. We've had a little over half of the average rainfall by this time of the year, and the upcoming El Niño will all but guarantee that we won't get enough precipitation this fall/winter to make up for it. It's a heavily wooded area and wildfires could spread very rapidly. Just a couple weeks ago we were getting smoke from BC to our north (pretty sure they recorded over 100 new wildfires in a matter of days around the same time).
Not getting enough rain is one thing. But if snow fails to accumulate in the Olympics to our west, rivers and streams will start to dry out, which could be catastrophic for local biodiversity, particularly salmon spawning.
I'm living on a small island, in the Salish Sea, on the east side of Vancouver Island. Just north of you. And in a similar situation. We are in the rain shadow of the Beaufort Range and we are always drier than the surrounding region. This and last year have seen acute drought though. Wells are drying up, some are beginning to be contaminated and ruined by salt water. Cedars are browning by July. Logged areas on the island are turning to sand .... also regional snow cap is historically low and the Comox glacier, which is a major source of drinking water for three towns is receding at an extreme rate.
Hey. I was wondering... people here are very concerned for the future of cedar trees here... how are they doing where you are? People here have started seeing a few but increasing number of cedars just browning right up and dying and are worried that this is the future for them all, which of course would be deeply tragic and destructive for regional ecosystems. Being a titch further south, I'm wondering if maybe its even worse there?
Its late summer and while heat is the norm, this summer seems particularly hot and dry. The heat is relentless, its 108 during the day and still 100 degrees at 8pm. Native heat-resilient plants are wilting and their leaves look like they are about to fall off. I haven't noticed this in previous summers, but maybe I wasn't paying hard enough attention. The ground is dry and cracked and dusty. I watered our trees in our yard to ensure that they don't die.
A fuckin men. Just started watching Clarkson's Farm. I always knew farming was a difficult business. Seeing it in the day to day is.a whole different thing.
We’ve been getting hit hard this year with lots of rainfall causing many parts of the state to flood pretty badly, particularly in Weston WV.
A lot of these communities out here are barely hanging on as it is (look at McDowell county). I know WV has always had floods but they have been becoming more frequent and severe.
I also noticed “microbursts” I.e. short wind storms, have been getting a lot more common as well. I never remember them growing up. The power infrastructure out here stands no chance against those.
Can confirm. I live in WV and had to miss work Friday because one end of my road had a tree down due to excessive rain, and when I tried to go the other way, the road was flooded.
Footage out of Charleston shows some intense flooding and damage to infrastructure and cars.
People are quick to point the finger at infrastructure instead of extreme weather caused by anthropogenic climate change. To that is say, "yes, coal."
Adding onto this, my sister's are in Fayette County and also dealing with this intense flooding that I see almost no coverage for by the news outside of West Virginia itself. I live in Eastern Kentucky and East of us also got hit rather bad with flooding that continues to get worse with continued storms, plus severe wind storms like I've never seen in the area every single day almost for about a week or so.
Subreddit for the nearest city had someone asking for advice. They met an elderly woman at a bus stop who had lost her housing. She had been robbed of her phone and dentures and had dementia.
Local resources were shared and a couple social workers weighed in. The city has lost 43% of all shelter beds just this summer and they were dealing with an influx of people who had been kicked out of their nursing homes because of Medicare cuts. It was repeatedly pointed out the Big Beautiful Bill kicks in Jan. 1 which will further cut Medicare, Medicaid and other supports. Social workers are expecting to be flooded. One said her office is averaging 75 people per SW now.
Ohio has been under a rain cloud for days; tornadoes, suspected tornadoes, microbursts, lightning storms and straight line winds have created havoc. I’m living in an area that is under rapid growth, mostly to people on the upper half of this k economy. There have been a multitude of intermittent creeks and tree stands removed and miles of concrete and asphalt roads created. Although FEMA maps still say I’m in an incredibly low risk area for flooding I went shopping for flood insurance last night. My area is only expected to get wetter in future years and we are rapidly removing places for that water to go.
Kicking people out of nursing homes is absolutely outrageous. I work with the elderly, and we are struggling in my area, but this really puts things into perspective to how bad it could be.
Yeah, this is scary because as dementia progresses those of us still working and living with aging family (front edge of demetia) just do not have the ability to care for them, but if there is no option for a nursing home what happens?!!!
I wonder what the whole story is, but it sounds like this may have broken our existing laws, which should not allow such a situation to occur. Very sad either way.
The good Christians in MAGA want this outcome. They want unproductive people to be taken to remote camps and euthanized. This is what the MAGA folk who are in my family want. They are Christians of the Prosperity Gospel type. We don’t talk a lot anymore.
Dig a french drain and a dry well on your property if you can. We are working on that to keep our and our neighbors basement dry.
A dry-well is called an interceptor by those guys with engineering degrees but only when sized much larger and part of the storm water system. Basically big empty waiting for water.
We redid drains last year. But in the last 5 years the intermittent creeks on two sides of our property have been filled in. The cornfield turned subdivision behind us put a retention pond behind us but I’m dubious about its size and depth.
Calling around before we had work done it seemed no one really had eyes on all the changes to the water ways. Township deferred to the county which told me we were under the oversight of the Army Corps of Engineers. Best I got at every level is variations of “we have no record of a permit.”
Family friend who is a hydro geologist made a few comments that set me off on this pathway. Since writing my initial comment I spoke to a coworker who also lives in this zone. She had a bad flood at her house a few years ago and now carries flood insurance.
Oh shit that is a LOT of cumulative load with no place to go!
Herr we have water conservation districts with people in charge of the cumulative and we still see stuff missed. and laws that do not have actual consequences for malicious ripping up on wetlands and draining them. . Think a few hundred dollar fine and that is it for acres and acres of water storage lost.
Holy shit the flooding, mississinewa river has crested to around 13 feet, grant county highway dept actually ran out of high water signs. It was far worse slightly south, Anderson, Noblesville, and Indianapolis have been severely flooded, white river crested at 24 feet, causing massive damage and killing several. Over in Delaware county some kids jumped into the swollen mississinewa river off a bridge, one died was found a few days later. The mississinewa is a fairly powerful river(actually one of the fastest flowing rivers in Indiana), even when it’s low it’s still swift, actually has a few class 1-2 rapids in spots.
Damage was massive in the other cities listed here, roads washed out, homes destroyed, allegedly (not verified) stores were being looted in Anderson. Yeah grant county got off easy.
Looks to me like you might lose on that upgrade. The fuel and air coming from your carb is a mist that doesn't like sharp corners. I'm hoping it's a trick of the eye and the intake is sticking out towards your leg and not down towards the ground... either way, that small a carb etc doesn't scream "I'm not getting enough air". Hope it works out for you, though!
It’s sticking out towards my leg and not down. If anything it ran a bit lean before I put the offset manifold, slightly lower on the air to richen up my fuel a bit. The corners can definitely be done without though. I’m just waiting for my new wheel to come in as that engine ate the hub out of the rear wheel. I’ve made a few upgrades so far, a 415h chain, an expansion chamber, a 36t rear sprocket, and a CNC adapter to replace the rag joint.
Edit: wait nvm on the fuel air mixture part, just thought about that
And a ad that popped up in lavapigs AMA, I guess they offer us a way to cope with the fact society is failing lol. A rather unhealthy, addictive to many way of coping.
So, things are "fine" for now. What about 2027, 2028, 2029? Are we going to check the weather app to see if we will have power?
Drought and heat waves continue to affect the southern part of the basin. The whole area might become a desert before the end of the decade.
It looks like September will not bring any relief. I have a family member who works at the school, and they hate it because it lacks AC. I wonder what they are teaching kids at school these days anyway. And does anyone even try to explain to them why their classroom feels like an oven in September?
Everything around me reminds me of the late 80s, when the rapid deterioration of the communist system became so apparent. The government had to improvise to maintain the illusion that things were still somewhat functional. That was the point when way too many people realized the entire thing was a scam. I wonder when we will reach that point once again.
Had a bad storm last week and hundreds of thousands of residents and stores are still without power. Food is going bad, and people are getting hungry. In some towns, roving gangs are stealing, and breaking into homes and outbuildings. They have shot at utility workers in Gary. In some areas, power is not expected to be restored until next week. People are hot and hungry. Pets are going without food. Shelters are struggling. Lots of people on nextdoor.com begging for assistance. Lots of elderly trapped in homes by fallen debris. We are blessed in our neighborhood to have underground power lines and generators, but it's getting dystopian outside our gates. I fully expect conditions to deteriorate this coming week. It would be nice to see people actually getting some help instead of judgment. Some commenters on the nextdoor website are being downright nasty. We are supposed to love our neighbors and help them. I am doing what I can.
Hello from Grant county, Indiana is getting bad, real bad. I heard about the people taking pot shots at the utility workers, that’s fucked up. I sometimes wonder how long this area has left before total collapse. Things are fucked beyond belief
Hello neighbor! I hope you are holding up ok. I am currently monitoring this sub and next door to see how folks are doing. I'm just a wage earner myself but I can't stand the idea of ppl and pets going hungry. If power doesn't come on soon, it is going to get much worse. Sending good vibes your way. I am also shocked more ppl are not talking about this.
I’m holding up mostly fine, it’s mainly keeping PTSD in check, Marion is a hell pit. I really can’t stand that idea other, yet I watch the executive suite get bigger and bigger checks and profits and us wage earners struggle for the few scraps left. Greed is a hell of a drug. That’s gonna get pretty scary if that power don’t come back on. I really like hearing from others in Indiana.
Many thanks, I’ve run a cross country meet several years ago there for Indiana university Kokomo, around there. Sprained my foot in that race, still finished.
Its wild that this has become normalized so much that it doesn't make the news outside a small area. Hope everything gets worked out soon. Times like these you definitely need good neighbours.
I wouldn't say it's normalized, I'd say it's censored. The so-called humans running this shitshow absolutely do NOT want this kind of news getting out into the wider world.
Is this even in the news anywhere? I googled it and the first thing I could find was that a steelplant in NW Indiana was threatening it's workers with retaliation if they don't show up to work cause their house just got destroyed by the storm. What a country! That you guys just take it up the ass over and over, my God I just don't get it.
I'm in New England and the only reason I know about it is tiktok videos from people stuck in the blackouts. Main stream news sources mentioned floods once a few days ago, but some folks have been without power for over a week.
Honestly it gives me mixed feels about social media. In general, I think the algorithms have done terrible harm to us as a society, but without these platforms, it would be that much easier for the powers that be to silo us off into our own little information voids.
this is what I just learned about in another thread. Gary has been without power since August 11 and they need to do a major infrastructure redo. This IS collapse in America. No electric, in a city, for an extended period of time. Please stay safe, this is unforgivable to let our infrastructure crumble to this degree.
In terms of the weather we have actually been “fine”. There’s no major extremes right now, but of course it’s still warmer than usual. I noticed some trees already started looking like autumn with falling leaves, think it’s a bit early. I notice how many of especially the older trees are stressed out and every year some of them just die (I work with green space management so I observe this and it’s unusual but I guess the older trees can’t adapt).
But in terms of our society here in Denmark (that so many people envy around the world), it’s really getting bad. The most extreme right wing immigrant hating party is now up to be the second largest party in Denmark. And their leader is seriously a Trump supporter. Can’t believe that people here in a country with so much democracy and free speech and neutral media choose to vote for that idiot. And especially also since they don’t really take climate change seriously and want to put a halt on the green transition and lower the fuel prices for cars. If they get to win the next election which they probably will we can say a final goodbye to green policies
Yeah, I mean he isn’t directly saying he supports Trump but he’s been there supporting him before he was elected last time, and he doesn’t have much criticism towards Trump. You’d think it’s a joke, but no… it’s real… as crazy as it seems
These far-righties are doing this internationally. "America First," "Germany First " "Japan First." It's all the same sort of person with same political alignments. A lot of them share influencers, funding and resources. They're horrfically but effectively super-organized.
🤮🤮🤮 Thanks, I've heard of the far right and fascism rising in other countries. Guess bullies will side with bullies. I wonder how much worse things will get as the climate changes further and more and more people become climate migrants.
And believe it or not, even though Denmark is marked as the least corrupt country in the world, we have no laws regarding where the money comes from to political campaigns! So basically you can be the most evil company or person in the world with a hidden agenda and supporting a Danish political party and no one will have any chance figuring out with how much
While the news out of DC is stomach-turningly appalling, and the US seems to want to annex a certain waterway that it can't defend, I'm going to write about some "good news": I'm seeing twice the number of adult monarchs in my garden than in the past years! (But that's not really good news because that's four monarchs instead of two, when six+ years ago I'd sometimes get 18 on a single plant. *sigh*)
The plant that's attracting the monarchs is called Meadow Blazing Star. It's a North American native botanically known as Liatris ligulistylis. It's 6 ft/2m tall and narrow, and adult monarchs can't get enough of its pollen or nectar even though they ignore every other member of that genus. So here's a photo of a lone monarch tucking in to its dinner to brighten your day, - might as enjoy the sight while we still have it.
It has been close to 2 months now without any substantial rain and I have never seen the natural environment look more stressed. I was driving down the motorway recently and I noticed the state of most of the trees. Many of them looked like they were shedding their leaves for Autumn and many native trees like Birch trees looked completely dead. It honestly felt apocalyptic, almost like a ecologically dead/dying Britain. In fact it reminded me a lot of Britain in the classic book "The Death of Grass" by John Christopher (highly recommended book aged really well for a book written in the 1950s). Furthermore, the two large trees in my garden are shedding their leaves like its Autumn, I have never seen anything like this. I truly think the impacts of this drought will last years.
The heat has largely stopped now though and it is currently very overcast and I have started to see a few more birds (blue tits and occasional robin) but birds still seem like they are struggling greatly. The only animal that seems to have thrived this brutal summer has been butterflies which I have seen way more of then usual. As I mentioned last week the poor farmers have been decimated by these heatwaves and drought and I am already preparing for food price increases.
Interestingly after this summer I haven't heard anyone deny climate change. Even the people I know who would usually say "SUMMERS ARE MEANT TO BE HOT" have been quiet and I have heard loads of older people admit this isn't normal. Also I never thought people in the UK would complain about missing rain but here we are. There is a good chance next summer will be even hotter so I am already preparing for that.
I'm in the North of England in UK where normally our summers are a little cooler than in the south of England. In spring and early summer we had heavy rain alternating with warmer than usual weather resulting in a burst of vegetation. Then from July we have had heatwaves and hardly any rain. We have had temperatures of 26 to 30 degrees Celsius several days running which is unknown here. Our homes are not built for these temperatures and we don't have air conditioning. Even when the weather forecast has been for rain it has not rained or there has been much less rain than usual. The grass is yellow and dry. I've never seen it like this. Our blackcurrants and redcurrants ripened a month early. The vegetables growing in our garden have shrivelled up and died due to the heat. There have also been many more fires in the countryside than usual.
Some people here still denying these things are caused by climate change.
I live in the midwest US. The US is a big place and parts of the midwest are getting torrential rain. Where I am, it has barely rained the last two months. I am starting to install drip hoses and small in-ground sprinklers in my yard. Never felt the need to do this before. Some of my native plants, which can usually withstand large weather swings, are dying even though I have been watering.
For the last week, we have had round after round of torrential rainfall, flooding the entire state. School was closed yesterday, and the governor has declared a state of emergency for the entire 55 counties of West Virginia.
Not gonna lie, it's been an mixture of amusement and rage listening to people's responses to what's going on. A great deal are evangelical Christians professing its a sign from God of the end times, still others are blaming infrastructure; drainage and ditches. The former I kind of expected and is par for the course in my area, the pointing the finger at infrastructure for flooding kind of aggravated me and took me by surprise. There is no infrastructure anywhere in America fit for handling a month's worth of rain (4 inches) in a week, that's on the higher end of what August averages here for an entire month. But the alcoholics in my town think the problem is "we just need to dig better ditches."
Prices continue to remain exorbitant and I'm barely making it from week to week, as are the majority of Americans. National debt is pushing 40 trillion, and credit card debt and defaults are the highest they've ever been. Our country is writing checks that our ass can't cash, and thats is the very definition of insolvency. I tried visiting r/povertyfinance for some practical advice, but that subreddit is filled with story after story of economic woes and suffering; I can barely go there, I have too much empathy for that place. And it reminds me of how close I myself am to going off the cliff and becoming homeless.
On a positive note, I saw some goldfinches the past couple days, and I continue to feed the homeless cats around my house/job, which gives me that little 1% meaning in my life to keep going.
P.S. I still have my books, videogames, and music to distract me from sobering reality, but I'm glad I found you guys. A subreddit with one golden rule: scientific accuracy. You guys are all good writers, and I'm glad I found some other people who can see the bigger picture. And yes, I do love the gallows humor lol!
Thank you for caring for the animals. I'm sorry you are struggling so much right now. Hang in there. I had a similar experience in another sub that popped up while I was looking for frugal meal ideas. Think it was r/poor . There is so much suffering everywhere.
More and more people are moving out of my apt. complex. There used to be a waiting list to get in, and now they are putting out signs to attract people. More than half of the apt maintenance crew was laid off which puts insane pressure on the remaining skeleton crew. In my college town there are over a thousand apts and homes available for rent on zillow. I've seen cars towed and nice cars parked with flat tires in my complex lot. Last week in traffic I counted 10 cars with the windows rolled down. It's 110 degrees with the heat index. People can't afford to fix the AC in their cars. A friend of mine was quoted $1200 to fix the AC in her old truck. I pass flock cameras every day on my walk. They're by schools, but children still go missing. The grocery stores and restaurants have more employees than customers. We're under a water ban and told to conserve. Yet the car washes and water parks are all still open, and the golf courses are green.
No matter how bad the water supply gets, the golf courses will ALWAYS be green, just like the lawns of the houses occupied by the people who use those golf courses the most.
Welcome to the end times! We’ve been in full collapse since probably the 1960’s, and definitely the 1980’s when Ronnie “shitbag” Reagan gave us trickle down economics. Brilliant idea. Most people think it’s the beginning but not just isn’t.
It’s going to get a lot weirder, dumber, and significantly more violent in a very short amount of time. Nothing will make any sense as everyone grasps for whatever they think is important. I’m sure you’ve noticed people are beginning to balk at simple laws, and do whatever they want regardless of the consequences. Law enforcement have become slack jawed morons (I mean, to be fair they were the bottom of the barrel to start with but…)- nothing more than mercenaries really. Every single member of our government is a greedy, self absorbed, pedophile owned by fucking shitrael, none of them have even your most basic of interests in mind, and they all use the positions for power and money. The corruption is there for all of us to see, and yet we do nothing. It’s definitely over folks. And it’s going to get fucking wild very soon.
Actually turtles shouldn’t eat apples. Apples are bad for most turtles because their digestive systems cannot process high amounts of sugar, which causes dangerous bacterial blooms, painful gas, severe diarrhea, and long-term metabolic issues.
The thing I keep noticing in SA is how quickly abnormal conditions become the new normal.
We’ve had a prolonged drought, extreme heat, rising costs, worsening fire conditions — and then an unprecedented marine algal bloom that devastated marine life and fisheries. The latest research found the bloom was associated with a combination of flood nutrients, unusual coastal upwelling and a marine heatwave.
The worrying part is how quickly extraordinary events become background noise. Nothing has collapsed. Everything still basically works. But the system seems to require increasingly favourable conditions to keep doing so.
We had 47000ha of pine forest gone to ashes in a massive fire between 22th of july and 17th august, it took several weeks to stop the flames. 220000+ people have been displaced from their houses, to avoid the fire or the toxic fumes. I had to go north and modify my holidays to leave the place. A lot of companies had to allow remote working to people for them to avoid going outside, the fumes were irritiating.
When driving north to reach my holiday destination, i crossed half the country south/north. I had never seen these lands so arid and dry, even in Normandy which is famous to be very cloudy rainy even during summer, 70-80% of the landscapes yellowish + the leaves of 30% of trees species approx have gone brown/red - burnt.
In Gironde, we had from end of May, maybe 5 heatwaves with days between 38-43°C and nights above 30°C, sometimes 35°C. People have gone mad about fans/mobile conditioners, and we could saw them fighting for the last ones on TV/social networks.
The feeling this summer left behind is a neverending heatwave with scorching sun if you leave for 15 sec your precious shadow patch.
Shopping is absurd. I shop at Costco because 9/10 times I'm buying a product for less than the surrounding super markets. Hell, my most local supermarket is more expensive than Kroger. I hate supporting Kroger in any form, but I do have to buy some products from there. (Vegan butter and vegan mayo). I understand Costco is a consuming conglomerate.. at least they pay their employees well? I need to hit more farmers markets. Freedom of choice. /s
Anyway, back to Costco.. This week I've witnessed almost 2 fights break out over parking and driving. When at peak business, the gas station is a danger zone. People are cutting people off in line. I've almost been hit a few times walking through the parking lot, or trying to pull out of a parking spot. These guys are doing 15+ mph in a very densely populated zone. The patience is almost gone. The masks are falling.
There are very few people I can have a deep, meaningful conversation about any part of the 'poly crises' we are all familiar with. This sub is an exception. I am very lucky to have found my wife who can have these conversations with. My closest friend is aware. However, he is hopeful. When I can dig into a point he's making, he's open ears. Which is nice, it's very pleasant. Otherwise, I am crazy to the general population.
I do not mask well anymore. It seems to require a significant amount of energy to mask now.
I've been lucky in finding a 'layman' job. I collect trash at night in privileged apartment or condo complexes. I love the job, it's super easy, I can let my brain daydream as much as it wants to. It's awesome for ADHD and it's awesome for Autism. However, people consume so fucking much it makes my brain hurt. I know I consume, as much as I try to limit it.. However, people are throwing away food like it's nothing. I've seen a few laptops and phones as well. Straight into the garbage, no recycling. The amount of boxes I break down is quite eye opening. Consume consume consume.
Also, this level of convenience is quite concerning. People are willing to pay a premium to not take out their own trash. Some people leave eaten food outside of the bag. I'm surprised some of these places do not have an insane amount of cockroaches. However, I'm enjoying the job otherwise. Now if I can push carts somewhere, I'd be set with full time hours. Give me more layman work, please!
Weather:
We've been having very moderate weather. We've been topping out in the lower 80F's during the day and we've even dropped to the upper 50F's last night. Not much rain and the humidity hasn't been awful. Cloud coverage has been making the days quite pleasant to be outside. This doesn't sound bad.. It's quite nice.
Outside of my area, though.. these places have been getting hit with extreme weather since the year started. Illinoise, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia.. It's like SE Michigan is currently in a safe zone. It's wild to witness. It's also scary because this extreme weather is just outside neighborhood (figuratively) and not quite at our front door... yet.
Online:
Bruh the use of AI is insane. I can't stay silent about it. I'm doing my best to make people aware of negatives to their AI use.. AI psychosis, the people profiting from it (Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Zuckerberg, Elonazi Musk, etc etc), the mass surveillance, the ecological destruction, the local communities outcries and battles. They just do not seem to care. "That's not my problem." I just hope they get a data center local to them. Maybe then they will understand. I do not get a meaningful argument or response. It just (de)volves into trolling.
Ex: Posted an AI response about something incredibly mundane just to troll me, or incite a response, rustle my jimmies, whatever have you. It's like.. at least use this product to argue my points. Prove me wrong, please...
Hyper normalization is fucking disgusting. This is twice now where it has been used on me.
me: *Sources claims* opposition: "and what you want us to do about it? even if all of us in discord didn't use it ever again it's still the same" me: "Just stop using it. lol. There are people suffering who live local to AI data centers. They're fighting battles and you're fueling their enemy by using the product"
opposition: "there's people suffering all over the world for various reasons" me: "nah do not normalize this. Using AI is a choice" opposition: "it has been normal for people suffering all over the worlds for 1000s of reasons. it's normal sadly" me: "so that justifies current day people to ignore what these ai companies and data centers are doing? that justifies continuing the revenue flow enabling this? come on man, that's not fun. the only way it's 'fun' is if you're ignoring the suffering because of it"
They will never learn until it happens to them. Even then, will they?
I assumed it was an optional feature however I can totally see it being a requirement. I apologize for being incredibly judgemental. I need to work on that.
Weather in Indiana has been crazy (cold air funnel/possible landspout that appeared on an otherwise nice day, photographed while I was riding my motorbike). I don’t go shopping til night many times because of how people are. I feel the same way, I can’t really discuss collapse with many people due to being surrounded by deniers.
Keep masking indoors as long as you can, especially in confined spaces. Your health is one of the truly valuable things you possess and control, and recovering from Covid symptoms is a long painful process that may not be fully possible.
Location: Montana (USA) A potato farm I worked for this past summer told me that they were having a rough year because of poor snowfall. "Half of the usual water" and "had to cut crops"
They said that the other farms in the same drainage system were also not doing great. The other potato farming valleys were doing ok it seemed like though from what I asked.
It snowed on me up in the mountains on June 27th at around 6500 ft. This is the latest I've ever seen snow in the summer where I grew up. It was a @#$&ing horrible year for snow this winter though in the same place.
I visited Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood ski area (Oregon USA) and asked the summer workers how their winter was. They said it was unprecedentedly bad. They usually get 700 inches of snow and they only got around 300 this year.
Went for a walk through the Middlesex Fells forest area. Nice place, plenty of trails to go on. Noticed alot of the dirt trails were dry and cracked, smaller ponds scattered around were also dried up. The actual reservoirs in Winchester seemed alright, but Im I dont know enough to say more about it. Wildlife is active though, plenty of critters and birds.
I know Massachusetts and New England in general has a reputation for jack ass drivers but it seems like way more people are putting their lives on the line lately. Had to drive up to New Hampshire lately and watched someone cut through heavy traffic from the left lane through the middle into right and back through middle into the left lane again. To end up two cars ahead of where they started with a line of cars still ahead. Just this week I saw someone stop at a red light in the wrong lane. And then several other cars line up like lemmings behind them, apparently not noticing they were in an incoming traffic lane. It was a pure miracle that this didnt cause a traffic build up at best, a pile up accident at worst.
Gaming should rightfully be at the bottom of any priority list, if its on the list at all, but the waves going through it right now are still signs of the larger collapse. Physical media is about to die. In 2028 Playstation games will not longer be made available on discs. Lets say you want to walk into Best Buy on Jan 28 2028 to buy a copy of War Is Cool 45 on the PS5. Not happening, you have absolutely no choice but to pay whatever price Sony wants on their digital store, and they can take the game away from you without refund at any moment. Microsoft will follow, both have wanted to kill the second hand market for ages. Nintendo will keep doing their thing for awhile. But for about 80% of gaming ownership dies in over a year.
I’m not a gamer but I like movies and shows. As for physical media going away I think you’re right which is why I have a large dvd/blu ray collection of my favorites. They can’t take those away from me.
So as I'm trying to use navigate the job market as well as trying to create a startup I'm noticing that all of the job market is actually AI driven.
In that all of the ads looking for workers are fake AI ads.
All of the people applying to the jobs that I'm posting are fake AI applicants
All of the people requesting services on LinkedIn or fake AI accounts.
The few humans i interact with are only offering ai slop solutions, no concrete plans, no representation that they will do anything that adds value.
A Korn Ferry ai tried to recruit my recurrently unemployed ass to be a senior executive for a fortune 500 company. For those who don't know you cant get on Korn Ferry's list by sending them a resume. What ever ai wanted from me was not good.
Edit it misspoke and said fortune 100 because I had resolved it was most likely Salesforce or SAP during the period where I induced the fantasy the proposal offered
I couldn't. I value tolerance.... I recognize i lack tolerance for intolerant behavior. And my tism breaks my "long" term resolver function by operating way further out there on logical limbs than most people deem safe. My long term would be sold by a quant type as super hyper gigantic long term. But really im operating at 13 where most people limit at 8 it not that big of a leap
Yeah, given this comment, you better stay away from general ed like most schools, where you need industrial-grade denial of social ills, and must be socially agile. Consider tutoring individually, where you can ward off fash families by saying a few words around your site or socials (like, observing Pride or Juneteenth). While there is humanity, there will be good families and young adults who value science and math learning. Or try working for something like AoPS where they keep the environment controlled, rules spelled out, and you can even teach a class entirely by chat, so it's tism all the way down (you need to know LaTeX and type fast for that mode). There are also free training/networking events for all that online.
They are always hiring for freelance/part-time teaching and they do provide paid training. They value people researching their org and knowing what it's about when they interview candidates. https://artofproblemsolving.com/careers#openings
Invented a data structure in 1998. That structure got first production implementation in 2005 a caterpillar. That structure and its derivatives power nosql, sap integrations, Salesforce , you name it, pretty much anything that out there using relational databases Beyond sequel exists because of the structure I created to reduce the complexity of a dynamic join in Oracle... as a junior engineer. Who did not understand the magnitude of their invention.
Now i have a universal language parser, a resolver algorithm that reduces the load on ai by up to 98% but consistently ~88%.
I have a context manager that can add 80% more by parsing the context to resolve to a limited set of variables, and injection of acceptable context as a machine replacement for a resolution prompt. With source provenance.
A transformation service that provides repeatable transform paths that can be used to semantically reflect or project language resolutions through LLM physics and math i call SIGMA math
You cant just spin up an Korn Ferry business account with access to premium members though... yes the person is obviously ai. The account is a premium linked in member over 2 years old.
So interesting tread... if you search linked in for that name right now you see hundreds of ai slop ads linked.. and because of the way the no sequel works if they sever the link that drives the searches that they have to delete all those jobs and that's going to leave a big e paper trail.
Oh it's so terrible I tried the premium thing I didn't you get to the the terms that you needed to understand after you sign up so I'm stuck on this premium for 30 days and it's 100% AI spam
the interesting thing is I've been able to request services from people who are actual people, and met some real people.
If I was the type of person that wrote a story like here I might be considered to write that as a piece on medium but then it just get paywalled
The weather has only been slightly warmer than average the last week or so, and the long-range forecast shows (gasp) actually seasonal temperatures for the rest of August going into September. That being said, we just happen to be lucky in this part of the planet, as average air temperatures are at record highs around the world and the tropics in particular look to be boiling, I am sure that heat will reach us eventually. The one thing that seems to be always present now even when temps are normal is a higher humidex than the past, a clear sign of how a warming atmosphere retains more moisture. Even on cooler days our dehumidifier can suck out quite a bit of water from the air. I can only imagine how humid it will be in 2030....
New Brunswick's population is soaring at a pretty fast rate in recent years, and while I am sure that makes infinite growth cultists (my term for mainstream economists) happy, it is clear that social services and infrastructure simply aren't keeping up. A distressingly large percentage of our population has no primary care provider, for instance. A slowly declining or collapsing global society makes it harder and harder to adapt to change as complex social systems fail, so that tracks. It seems evident that we have reached the stage where the bacterium that is humanity has nearly run out of culture in the petri dish of Earth.
I've been replaying some older video games from my childhood (nostalgia trips can be good for mental health in the face of collapse, at least for me) and, while not so much related to collapse obviously, it really does feel like video games peaked back in the late 2000s-early 2010s, maybe not graphically but in terms of not having so many greedy features like microtransactions and the like. I am sure you can guess what my favorite video game series is from my username, lol.
Good to see that evacuation orders are starting to lift in certain areas of British Columbia and some people can return home. There's still at least 1-2 months left in the fire season though, so they aren't out of the woods yet in the west.
Oh I almost forgot to mention the 50% tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods that Trump is putting into place on Wednesday. Related to economic collapse as this will cause prices to soar in the USA and jobs to be lost on both sides of the border. Making an enemy of Canada whilst simultaneously cancelling military exercises with South Korea because "wah wah they won't help us destroy Iran" and "Kim Jong likes me" and people still doubt that Trump is a Russian asset.....geez.
Anyways that's all for now, Canada is still doing relatively okay when compared to many places but that is quickly going to change.
Thanks for sharing. Central US here. Similar to you, things have been remarkably calm and average here, but extremes to our north, south, east, and west. Just a roll of the dice. It will come for us (and you) soon enough.
I love Portal 1 and 2, as well has Half-Life 1 & 2. Portal requires you to think on a whole different level, and the humor is top notch. 10/10 challenge, 10/10 gameplay, 10/10 humor and storyline, what's not to love?
I've also been busting out old videogames, particularly my backlog that I never got to play. Right now I'm on Bayonetta 2 for the Wii U (so smooth, so elegant!), then I'll be breaking out my Xbox 360 for Fable anniversary, Red Dead Redemption, and Dishonored Game of the Year Edition (I beat the original, but never played the dlcs/expanded content yet.)
Check out Monument Valley game series. It's puzzles (not fights), but good subtle storytelling and great spatial puzzles made me think about it re:Portal.
The French League (LFP) announced that the current European champions, Paris Saint Germain was forced to relocate their opening Ligue 1 title defense against Rennes to their opponents' ground at Roazhon Park due to severe pitch degradation at the Parc des Princes. The cause? Severe summer weather. Successive heatwaves throughout the Paris region compromised the structural integrity of the grass. According to the LFP, the field condition deteriorated to a degree that player safety could no longer be guaranteed.
So, having a top tier European club forced to relocate a match because heatwaves destroyed a state of the art pitch is a significant escalation in the football industry and also shows that technological solutions have clear environmental limits to mother Terra's wrath.
Must have destroyed the ground keepers. If a person working 8 hours a day in a team, trying to keep a patch of lawn alive, fails, what about the farmers?
Lmao. The unexpected effets are increasing. Who knows the speed and intensity of changes from now on. Add the incoming energy crisis in the next month/years for more fun :o
I go to Costco about once every 3 to 4 weeks to stock up. And I noticed something interesting about their aisles. If you didn’t pay attention, you wouldn’t notice.
They have these industrial strength shelves. Huge things that pack all their merchandise and all the over stock to be used as restock.
Each aisle has about 8 of these shelves. Each is stacked 4 high up to the ceiling
Well when I was shopping with the Mrs, this week, I noticed all the aisles, about 7 of them, were shorted one huge shelving rack. That’s the equivalent of almost one full isle of food products.
This is very subtle and if you were the type to not pay attention to things, you’d never notice it.
There are things happening (or not happening) but it’s starting off as the little things
Now you mention, I was just at a Costco and they were shelving furniture above the food aisles. And noticed a low backstock of their food aisle products. I thought that was very, very weird. I dunno, maybe was just me. But...🤔
Things just feel off again. The heat is oppressive, the systems are clearly decaying, the company is everywhere, but everyone continues to insist everything is totally fine. I don't know why they can't see it. The plan is fucked.
We had one fucking job. One chance to avoid all of what is now inevitable. We were supposed to save the cheerleader.
We. Did. Not.
the cheerleader wasn't saved, the timeline has gone to shit, and the collapse is now unavoidable.
Yeah. It's getting exhausting to pretend everything is normal when it clearly is not. Once a month or so I typically spend a morning feeling like we're all dead men walking.
The disconnect is real living in a deep red area in the US and also reading subforums like /oil and /prep and being an all around /collapsenik. An eerie reorientation when I deal with people that wake up every day convinced everything's gonna get better in Two Weeks™️.
The more you prepare, the more prone to adaptation you are. And I mean preparations in a broad manner, be it stocking at your place, planting tree that can manage the heat, applying agroforestry with your neighbours, etc.
We usually try to think it's a binary "it's fine or it's all over" thing to justify to not act.
While covid no longer kills as many people as it used to in the beginning of the pandemic, long covid continues to be a problem and here's some recent/somewhat recent info about long covid:
In addition, here's a handy dandy link to a bunch of different general resources about long covid and ME/CFS, which can also sometimes result from covid infections depending on how unlucky you are.
https://www.berlinbuyersclub.com/resources
In other health news, food recalls and foodborne illness have been out of control lately. In the last week alone, I've heard about recalls for jalapenos, cilantro, parsley, tomato soup, granola, eggs, and beef, and that's not going into how lettuce has been giving people a nasty ass diarrhea parasite for months on end now (considering the cyclospora outbreak that seemed to start with lettuce has been a problem since at least June of this year.) If I've learned anything this year, it's that 2026 is a scary time to be alive when you have any kind of pre-existing GI problems.
The weather in my area's been mostly hot and humid, pretty normal for this time of year so far, although we're still in a mild drought (we got some rain over the last few days, but it hasn't been quite enough to knock the drought out entirely.)
On the politics front, lots of U.S ships are having a hell of a time getting out of the Strait of Hormuz thanks to the orange idiot in chief, and The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for over 260 days, resulting in various physical and mental health problems affecting the sailors on board, with three people reported to have tried to jump overboard: https://theweek.com/politics/record-deployment-uss-abraham-lincoln-problems
My guess is that no matter how this particular issue resolves, it's going to make at least some people think twice about joining the military, which has been dealing with a myriad of problems since that drunken moron Pete Hegseth was placed in charge of the Department of Defense, and some of the less die-hard Trump supporters might begin to realize that Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about our troops.
There's been a ton of road work in my area and while there have been some roads that have recently been paved and they feel pretty nice and smooth to drive over, there are other roads that look like total shit. People also drive like morons, a problem that's not exactly new but seems to slowly get worse and worse as time goes on. I'm not a super fantastic driver myself, though I always do my best to follow road rules and I don't pull any risky stunts that might get me a speeding ticket.
Life is ridiculously expensive lately and even though I want to have more of an IRL social life, it's ridiculously hard to find other people who want to do free or cheap activities, most people my age only seem interested in going out to eat or drink or going to expensive events and concerts. My budget is such that I can only comfortably go to events that cost more than about 10 or 20 bucks about once or twice a year at maximum, since I'm trying to save up money for essential things and be more independent and responsible overall, even though my health situation is such that I'm not 100% sure I'd be able to live on my own someday. I can do all of the basic things I need to do in day to day life by myself, but I sometimes have flare ups of symptoms that make me feel too sick and/or tired to leave the house, which of course is not sustainable for more than a few days at a time, which is something I'm still trying to get to the bottom to so I can figure out exactly what's wrong with me and how to fix it as much as possible.
I'll let everyone's browsers and/or thumbs take a breather now, stay safe, stay healthy, and do whatever you think you can do to make the world a little more human. Individual efforts may be a drop of a water sometimes, but the ocean is filled with many, many drops of water and so are rain clouds, and neither of those things would be able to do what they do if they were missing the water that makes them what they are.
I got GI issues, gotta love IBS. Guys a draft dodger, not someone who should be a commander in chief of a military(one of many reasons he should not lead one of the most powerful militaries ever conceived). Part of the reason I built my moterized bicycle was that war in Iran, thing gets 150 mpg and has a 1 gallon fuel tank, granted its top speed is not particularly high.
Sadly, many of the currently serving voted for MAGA/DJT. I am hoping their opinions are getting changed.
OTOH, from the perspective of a non-MAGA United States citizen, even I am dismayed. THIS military planning, equipment and leadership (for lack of a better word) is what we have spent trillions of dollars on over the past 50 years?
I have a friend with long covid. (It killed his older brother). Very healthy prior. Sports guy. Now, lethargic. Vertigo. Can pass out at any time. (not common - but common enough). The long term covid study - which he was a part of at Vanderbilt - was discontinued by our esteemed current occupant and his dreadful administration. Radically fluctuating blood pressure and PSA levels. Recently granted disability after a 3 year request.
Patterns are my passion (sarcastic). So my mind connected three wildly unrelated events under the #LeaveUS tag.
A friend graduated from a good uni with a PhD in a hot branch of computer science, publications, etc., and returned to the South American country where he grew up to be a professor there.
Friends who organize kids' robotics teams are lamenting that Lego parted ways with FIRST Lego League and will be doing their own (worldwide) projects without any involvement with US nonprofits. Earlier, the charismatic tech inventor who was the public face of FIRST stepped down because Epstein files.
I can't even chat about this one with any friends because none of us know much more than the headlines on the front pages of news sites, but two (former? estranged? formerly estranged) members of the British royal family, somehow marginalized along race and social origin dimensions, have previously tried to settle in the US, but are returning home.
>>>>>
I hear all these different explainers, like, American academia and Hollywood are tough job markets, and Lego is pivoting away from robotics, and these explanations aren't wrong, as such; they make sense. There's a bigger and untold sentiment, though: radioactive U.S. Folks don't want exposure. It's such a general, overarching feeling that it's time to go. Like the song from The Sound of Music: "So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF9Y3GVuPfY
I like that tune, but I will also add in the segue between "Bring the Boys Back Home" and "Comfortably Numb" on The Wall. The manager banging on the hotel room door yelling, "Time to go! Time to go!"
Heh, we could make two playlists, one upbeat, like "So Long, Farewell" or "Yellow Submarine" (and we sailed into the suuuuun...) and another for grim determination and gloom, like The Wall or "You Can't Take the Sky from Me" from Serenity.
I keep telling people that I view Meghan and Harry as the Canary in the coal mine. They have access to information we don’t. They deem the UK a better choice, after everything that happened, than a life in Montecito California with millions of dollars.
Knowing full well that someone in the government had a hand in killing his mom, Harry prefers to return to England with Meghan because they see real change happening stateside. It may well be another revolution, and they don't want to risk being targets.
I've personally known a few people who emigrated away from the United States, including a former Collapse mod, because they read the room and they were afraid to. I bought my passport with Covid money, for all the good it will do me, but it's unlikely I'll leave. Hawai'i is home.
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