fascinating, and also good to have it all in one place.

the subtle bitcoin shill at the end is a cherry on top.

No doubt some bullshit happened in economic policies and capitalist influence, oil crises had their hand, but 1971 is conveniently 26 years after the end of WW2. Which means the boomers entered the job market and society for real.

Yes. And they know protecting themselves means destroying lives of billions so they need to make sure the billions won’t go after them. And since the masses are also aware of the situation it means at least short-term planning against the people. This requires at least basic coordination between interest groups and gradual capturing of whatever means of power are still left for the masses. Then they figure out how easy it is to wield even more power and off we go to the land of the tin foil headwear.

It could make sense when compared to Brexit. The brexit referendum was supposed to be a 4D chess move from less insane Tories to shut down the new populist party and more radical conservatives. Instead we got shady meddling, “leave” won and they were actually forced to do it and shoot their both feet with a cannon.

Maybe the established powers in the US wanted to use Trump to channel extremism into him and have him lose to get rid of the sentiments. Instead some shady meddling happened etc.

I’d put the cutoff between the “natural” history and emerging NWO around 1995. From whatever little I know the Clinton administration wanted to seriously tackle climate change and use it to reestablish the US as global leader in some regards. In 1992 the first attempt at global climate treaty was sabotaged by big business lobby and it kinda went downhill from there.

Was there a massive behind-the-scenes NWO plan between billionnaires, old aristocracy and top politicians to fuck up the world, reduce population etc? No, the world ran its natural, chaotic course for most of history.

Is there this kind of conspiracy now?

ABSOLUTELY YES.

In 2023 it is not possible to have any influence and not be aware of the climate disaster. Anyone who does have big influence and does not act to mitigate warming and its consequences is doing it willingly and with full conscience. Doubly so if they act to worsen the situation. It’s almost like the elites read some of the crackhead theories and thought “hey, this is actually a decent plan!”

Heh. Survived but at what cost? 10% infected are temporarily disabled, 2% permanently. Unless you design it for battlefield, quick death is not a priority. In the era of directed refugee streams used as bargaining card at best, weapons at worst it’s not hard to figure out, that disabling/incapacitating a part of population is a better long-term strat than going for decimation: you burden the social services and diminish the workforc. For the record: I DO NOT believe COVID was a weapon and I DO NOT believe it leaked from a bioweapon lab.

gossip that Elon has no idea about running anything was circulating for a long time but since Tesla/SpaceX were not social media it was easier to manage the PR to make Musk seem like “tech and business genius, also twitter troll” regardless of what was going on behind the scenes. On Twitter every single decision hits millions of people and businesses within an hour and managing that is impossible for any PR department so we get to see the man as who he really is.

I tried Mastodon and failed. Lemmy is different IMO in that you can freely access, write on and read all lemmy communities from any Lemmy instance (and apparently from Mastodon). On Masto you’re quite siloed-in, can’t follow “local” from a thematic instance with an account on another (and in Lemmy you can follow thematic communities from all around the threadiverse), people won’t see your content unless they either actively follow you or read the local/global feed. Curating feed is a necessary effort and not too easy one since you only get to follow individual users.

Unfortunately I think we’re not there yet. My one folds into a meter-long bundle of a metal plank with wheels and a metal pipe and while it;s still light and handy it won’t fit in any backpack.

The lightest from Decathlon which is large enough to hold someone over 12 yrs of age. They may or may not still have them on offer as it was a few years ago.

Oh I believe. I live in an area that’s very flat.

Scooter. Not an electric one. I had a thought once “hey I did ride one in childhood, maybe it can be a bit of nostalgic fun from time to time”. Got myself the cheapest Chinese thing I could find, “no point investing too much into a fad”.

Turned out a scooter is absolute peak urban mobility. Short distances become much shorter. Mid-long distances become short. Granted, for a longer trip somehow the time gains diminish, probably because it’s not as efficient as a bike. But a scooter isn’t a long-hauler. It’s there to zip through an empty mall. It’s there to be folded up in a second and brought into a bus or a shop without being a hassle. It’s like 3-4 kg, not too fast for sidewalks but fast enough for bike roads, extremely easy to stop, doubles as a cart when carrying bags of groceries home.

The chinese one broke after 1 season because I was riding it everywhere. Then I got myself one from a better company, I chose it for small weight and portability. It’s technically children’s thing but I’m well below weight tolerance and also smol so it’s easy to handle. It’s already like a 5th year and whenever it’s not raining or too cold I ride it for shopping, errands, leisure walks, to work… Almost daily.