#doom and gloom

[tilbageidanmark]

100 tons of dead fish collected in a Greek town last week

[lavendergoddesstarot]

UNSUBSCRIBE from the negative media & news.

Constantly telling you "You cant afford a house"…

This only makes you hopeless and depressed because you're focused on the negatives, what you don't have & the lack

What you focus on, you attract more of!

Instead focus on opportunities and the blessings you already have

It's annoying how everyone's always complaining about inflation or groceries...

But we still live in the arguably the greatest country in the world! We have so much opportunity. We can make money sitting at home! What we make in a week is someone's yearly salary in another country! People fight to be here. We can easily build wealth with the right steps. We have working toliets and access to clean water!

Focus on the blessings, to attract more blessings.

(It's okay to vent but don't indulge yourself in that everyday because it puts you in a negative vibration of constant misery)

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Everyone's being vaguely optimistic about 2025 or at least trying to be somewhat hopeful and I'm gonna be honest gang, I do not have it in me to even make a pretense at optimism right now.

Trump is about to be inaugurated, Canada is about to follow suit with Pierre fucking Poilievre, and meanwhile the planet continues to be on fire, a pandemic rages on disabling thousands of people every week, and there's still a fucking genocide happening being fully funded by our taxes and no one with any power is even trying to stop any of it.

Like fuck me, I just can't even pretend to be hopeful. I'm just hoping this year doesn't fucking break me.

[mrporg]

I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point in our recent history, we stopped being hopeful about progress and optimistic about the future. I'm not saying this is without good reasons, but I kind of miss the rose-tinted glasses.

In Things to Come (1936), the movie adaptation of The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells, Oswald Cabal make this speech at the end of the movie:

- Oh god, is there never to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest? - Rest enough for the individual man. Too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet, and its winds and waves. And then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last, out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning. - But... we're such little creatures. Poor humanity is so fragile, so weak. Little..., little animals. - Little animals. And if we're no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that! All the universe or nothingness! Which shall it be?

Oswald Cabal and Passworthy, Things to Come (1936)

I haven't read the book (one of my failings), so I can't tell whether it was Wells or the writers who came up with this speech, but I find it interesting that at that time - right before WW2 - they already considered the internal struggle of humanity between progress and complacency, and made it one of the major points of the story (albeit among others).

This is not the only movie about progress mind you. A much more recent one, Tomorrowland (2015) takes us back to one of the last great World Fairs, and paints a hopeful future. At least for a little while, before turning downright depressing, and recovering only at the very end. This movie isn't a masterpiece, but it has one of the best villain ever, played by Hugh Laurie. The reason he's so great is because he is hardly a villain at all. Indeed, he's just a guy who has become desperate that humanity has decided to close its eyes to its problems and is heading for its doom. I really like the speech that he gives:

Let's imagine. If you glimpsed the future and were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with this information? You would go to... who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? With data? Facts? Good luck. They only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if..., what if there was a way of skipping the middleman, and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of widespread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they have ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse! But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to imminent doom? They gobbled it up, like a chocolate éclair. They didn't fear their demise, they repackaged it. It can be enjoyed as video games, as TV shows, books, movies. The entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one!

Governor Nix, Tommorowland (2015)

Bees and butterflies start to disappear. The glaciers melt. Algae blooms all around you. The coal mine canaries are dropping dead, and you won't take the hint! In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future. But you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it, you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this terrible future, and you resign yourselves to it. For one reason, because that future doesn't ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg, we warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up. That's not the Monitor's fault, that's yours.

And I think he's right about that. At some point, we stopped believing in progress and science. We stopped believing in a better future, and we started instead focusing on the negatives, trying to limit the damage to our own lives. I'm not saying no-one is fighting the good fight anymore. As a matter of facts, plenty of people still do. But I think as a society we have kind of given up, and we are ignoring the few of us who haven't. I am unsure what it would take at this point to set us in a different direction, hopefully not another world war like in Things to Come.

We are already measuring the damage of the gloomy future we have been imagining for ourselves: ecological issues, late-stage capitalism, populism, oppressed minorities, degraded education and health, etc... I believe that we have already everything we need to make each day better than the previous one. But instead of working together on that, we prefer competing in the "who has the most" and "who I hate the most" competitions.

And again, I think governor Nix has a point with regards to self-fulfilling prophecies. Very few art pieces these days remain hopeful nowadays. We prefer stories of apocalypses, downfalls, tragedies. The futures we imagine for ourselves are cyberpunk capitalist hellscapes, zombie apocalypses, ...

"When I was young, the future was different" - Frank Walker (Tomorrowland)

Brb, I'm going to go watch some Star Trek and its hopeful post-scarcity utopia.

[madfoolish]

[seb-and-doom]

They’re remaking us dude

Sigh.

Remakes are never as good as the originals. Covers that flop in my shoppe could tell you that.

[polybiiex]

its the "best we have"

[theanonymousbooks]

I try to not to divulge to much of my personal life on here but god how am I suppose to tell my disabled father undergoing cancer treatment? What am I going to say to my sister trying to divorce her abusive husband and secure her custody rights? My closeted niblings? My nephew who is still a fucking teenager and is already being sucked into an abusive law enforcement and court "justice" system? Half of my family lives in "one of the most progressive states" and is hurt by the systems that be here everyday and the other half lives in fucking UTAH and I shutter to think what will happen to them.

I know I know. Hope, fighting, community and fucking whatever. But right fucking now is grieving and anger and worry. God I fucking hate this country so much. I am gonna strangle every neighbor with a trump sign in their yard today. Tomorrow I can let them know they can always pick fruit off of our trees if the gorcery prices get too high.

[mindnot-found]

It’s just the usual

doom and gloom

[bongaboi]

Honkai Star Rail: Doom And Gloom

[ultrakeencollectionbreadfan]

I really don't like the way people have been talking about current events lately. Sure, a lot of the things that have happened recently certainly aren't good, but they're not the end of the world either. What the American people need right now is comfort and reassurance, not doom and gloom.

[ricardian-werewolf]

Chapter 5: The world is lying fallow and you are apart from me.

Ao3 link

Summary:

Alina deals with the realities of living at Keramzin and comes to terms with the Firebird. Her connection with a certain too-clever fox strengthens. Finally, she begins to restore who she was before the White Cathedral. Sturmhond returns, except wearing a new face. Mal is... Mal.

Chapter snippet below cut - as always.

The Sankta Sol herself turned away from the direction of the ducal house’s basements, and instead ascended the long, spiraling staircase. She’d broken into the attic their first weekend at the old orphanage while the others were settling the Grisha children in, and here, found a sanctuary.

Now, she knelt before the western window, from where she could see the setting eclipsed sun, and stretched out her fingers. The light motes dusting her own skin glowed, and in a dizzying blast, exploded out in the way a fire was given fuel. Alina’s hair, moon-dusted and star-lit as it was, stopped being brittle and thin, and returned to the heavy locks she was accustomed to.

The Apparat had made the myth of Sankta Alina a reality, but his perversions had mired her image in sinful deceit and mistruth. Alina, even if she was the Sankta Sol, needed to be pure . Ravka needed a figure who could fight the Darkling on his own terms, not a scared, frightened girl hiding beyond Ana Kuya’s tattered and patched skirts.

Alina reached for the deep green robe she’d worn for weeks as she’d paced the house like some restless ghost. In a way, Ana Kuya had become Alina Starkov. The endless worrying, the dark circles under her eyes. The satin of the robe slipped easily off her shoulders, pooling at her feet. She bent over to pick it up, and draped it over a single wooden hanger she had for the purpose. Crossing the floor, she knelt and ran her fingers down the length of one of the trunks Nikolai had packed for her before her work in West Ravka.

Before all this. She heard his murmur in the back of her mind, and smiled.

Lifting the 6 latches with quick flips of her thumb, Alina’s smile turned radiant at the sight before her eyes. The Kefta laying on a bed of soft velvet was hunter green, a shade darker than the robe she’d been wearing. Embroidered in his own hand, painstakingly, were the rays of golden sunlight she was used to. However, the flames of the Sunne in Splendour - as he’d called it, that stretched down her front, were edged in the tiniest amount of Lantsov blue. The fur edging was red fox fur that warmed her neck and wrists as she slipped it on over the Sarafan.

Clad as she was in her house-shoes and poor peasant’s dress, Alina knew the Kefta had matching boots. What she found shocked her. A pair of sensible black leather work boots that stretched up to her knees. Its buttons were miniature gold suns. The whole outfit, as she twirled in it, looked extremely fetching. However, it was what was under the Kefta in the trunk that really caught her eye.

A cloth of gold gown with the longest train Alina had ever seen. And with it, a gold kokoshnik crown.

Suddenly, she realized what it was, why he’d packed it - a wedding gown. For when the war was over. She’d already accepted his engagement, but this… he’d made this himself by hand.

[euesworld]

"The world spins on my fingertip, as it spins I get lost in the motion.. tossed about by the cosmic loss of the ocean as it flies off and gets lost in your eyes. The sky evaporates, and all life dies.. but the circle of life tried and true begins again under a sky so blue as the waters continue to trickle from your lips as you laugh and tickle with eyes like moon's and bring back life once again to be consumed."

The circle of life, planets die only to be reborn under other skies like lovers that can't be denied - eUë

[timye-smalls]

Can you come on Doom and Gloom again? Another try hard and Nicky is gonna be doing this shite alone.

Yes, please. Love me some intelectual chat and see my mates, we can do some raps. Next time we need the whole crew.

[seb-and-doom]

They killed me off, so I’m gonna spoil the big secret.

It was possible for MC to end up with me during my season.

Secret ending and all that.

[shantellelynetterose]

These characters have me dying 🤣

I know it's all fun and games but here's me trying to get a kitten off seb. Yes my little friend come to mumma hahahaha