- Doombot1 ( @Doombot1@lemmy.one ) 34•7 hours ago
Near-infinite access to pretty much any information you can possibly dream of, content, questions, etc, on a little device in your pocket
- ulkesh ( @ulkesh@beehaw.org ) English8•6 hours ago
The problem with that is it has led to ignorant people believing they’re smart — all because they can find any random site that backs up any nonsense they assert. Critical thinking and credible research are endangered concepts now.
- Doombot1 ( @Doombot1@lemmy.one ) 2•5 hours ago
Oh, of course. There are negatives to everything for sure. But I think as a whole it’s made life better in a lot of different ways.
- originalucifer ( @originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ) 16•6 hours ago
ive said to my kids "you have the sum total of all human knowledge available at your fingertips 24/7 and youre bored? "
- will_a113 ( @will_a113@lemmy.ml ) English41•7 hours ago
I try to be a “silver lining” type of guy whenever possible, and a recent example that I’ve been using is mRNA vaccines. They were advancing achingly slowly before CoVID-19 basically turned the whole world into an mRNA lab. Now, thanks to that, there are vaccine trials underway for seasonal influenza, Epstein–Barr virus, HIV, RSV and several types of cancer. There’s even talk of a bona fide cure for the common cold.
- hmonkey ( @hmonkey@lemy.lol ) English52•7 hours ago
Hitler lost WW2, the south lost the American civil war, and we haven’t all nuked each other (yet)
- Tiefling IRL ( @tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 19•7 hours ago
the south lost the American civil war,
They’ve been trying to play the long game
- forcedfail ( @forcedfail@lemm.ee ) 9•6 hours ago
The south won the war when they killed Lincoln.
- IninewCrow ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English4•3 hours ago
The fact that most of the world has decent access to food. And the fact that here in the first world (I’m in Canada), just about everyone has access to some kind of food.
I know it isn’t perfect and there are still a small percentage of people that may have difficulty with access to proper food, plentiful food or enough food … but everyone everywhere here has something to eat.
I’m Indigenous and when I was growing up in the 80s, mom and dad had enough for us to eat but we weren’t starving or anything.
However, my parents were born in the 40s and they said they had to live through famines as children … in modern Canada! They remembered a severe famine that swept through northern Ontario in the 50s where every hunter and trapper just couldn’t find enough wild food anywhere to feed people. It was a normal cycle that happens in our part of the world that takes place at least once a decade - most times it is just small decline in animal populations but other times, everything just disappears for one reason or another (disease, migration, weather, temperature, animal movements, etc)
In my grandparents time … starvation was a normal part of life to the point where lots of our old legends are filled with stories of cannibalism and murder because people were starving to death.
It all just means that in our modern era over the past hundred years … food has become plentiful for the majority of the world and that starvation has become less prevalent than it ever was in human history.
In our modern world of interconnected finances, services, governments and systems … it is all hinging on a very delicate balance … because as Will Durant put it …
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day”
Our easy access to food for everyone is only possible if we maintain a functioning world order of cooperation.
- wildncrazyguy138 ( @wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io ) 6•5 hours ago
I’m more a visual person, so let me show you some graphs: Famine rates are down: https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_850.png
We can do so much more with our computing resources - Note, logarithmic scale: https://www.singularity.com/images/charts/MicroprocessorClockSpeed.jpg
Billions of people live in a democracy, before 1850 almost none did: https://bigthink.com/the-present/democratic-rights/
- Lettuce eat lettuce ( @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ) 6•1 hour ago
All the times where we narrowly avoided nuclear war.
- Zier ( @Zier@fedia.io ) 8•6 hours ago
Instead of sleeping in a cave and spending all day trying to kill food with a sharp stick, you can use your pocket internet to have food delivered to your door. In your very comfortable living space. Thank you Science and all the smart people in history that brought us here. Life is not as bad as the losers would have us believe.
- StrawberryPigtails ( @StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ) 2•5 hours ago
US centric, violent crime is down. Not the lowest it’s been currently, but better than it was when I was growing up.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191129/reported-violent-crime-in-the-us-since-1990/
- KingJalopy ( @KingJalopy@lemm.ee ) 8•4 hours ago
I’m sitting in my air conditioned house, watching not one, but 2 HD screens, one of which is playing cheers because I love that show and I can watch it all I want anytime I want. The other is my phone which is a absolute miracle of human achievement allowing me access to the sum of the worlds knowledge which I’m currently using to look at funny shit that amuses me. Also I didn’t move a finger to say any of that. I just said it and it typed it for me, correcting most of my mistakes. And you, who are reading this, might be literally anywhere on this planet right now. I also used my phone to order my food which was promptly brought to my home for my enjoyment.
The world certainly has a lot of shit aspects but on the whole, we are living in amazing times right now for those of us fortunate enough to be in a safe country.
- Blackout ( @Blackout@fedia.io ) 3•6 hours ago
Applebee’s has announced the much-anticipated return of its All You Can Eat Special, which includes Boneless Wings, Riblets, and Double Crunch Shrimp.
- Empricorn ( @Empricorn@feddit.nl ) English5•6 hours ago
I hate… so much about the things that you choose to be.
- kugel7c ( @kugel7c@feddit.org ) Deutsch1•36 minutes ago
I mostly just think worst and even better is hard to judge. We just exist here. Good and bad are just labels. And I find absurd to be an often more applicable one when it comes to the timeline stuff.
- Dizzy Devil Ducky ( @AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee ) English1•40 minutes ago
The vast amount of good quality video games out there to play, the amount of good quality animated shows ranging from cartoons to anime to even Chinese Donghua (not you I’m Joybo) like the Legend of Hei movie or All Saints Street, the amount of amazing music being made today by hard working individuals (if you are into what I call the vocalsynth genre (vocaloid, utau, deepvocal, enunu, diffsinger, etcetera)), the ever growing amount of good yiff on E621, and more.
- edric ( @scytale@lemm.ee ) 1•4 hours ago
I believe we are statistically in the most peaceful time in world history right now. Unless someone triggers a nuke.
- queermunist she/her ( @queermunist@lemmy.ml ) 8•7 hours ago
We haven’t had a nuclear war yet!
- davel [he/him] ( @davel@lemmy.ml ) English5•6 hours ago
Actually we did, 79 years ago.
- queermunist she/her ( @queermunist@lemmy.ml ) 9•6 hours ago
A nuclear war definitely implies use of nuclear weapons on both sides. That was nuclear conquest, or nuclear terrorism.
Just slaughtering civilians in a country that was already willing to negotiate their surrender.
- Kalkaline ( @Kalkaline@leminal.space ) 4•4 hours ago
Japan wasn’t exactly a bunch of saints when it came to slaughtering civilians.
- queermunist she/her ( @queermunist@lemmy.ml ) 1•2 hours ago
Japanese civilians weren’t exactly the ones doing the slaughtering. It’s not like the nukes targeted a military target.
- webghost0101 ( @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz ) 9•7 hours ago
Good people still exist, so does love.