Rick's b.log - entry 2022/12/31

A year in review

I wrote a retrospective of the year.
And then deleted it, because... well...

You know, I'm not sure whether this actually was a year, or if it was just a third attempt at doing 2020 and screwing it up yet again.

All in all, 2022 has been a year to generally forget. Actually, this is a decade that we'd probably all rather not have had happen.

And, guess what, there's always next year. It'll likely be just as bad, if not worse.

The Good

Along the way, we also got a sort-of picture of what a black hole looks like. Just a couple of months later, the James Webb Space Telescope blows us away with images that have a clarity never seen before. It's like watching an HD television after a lifetime of looking at 144p videos on a featurephone.

Fusion ignition finally happens. Sort of. It took a lot of energy input to get some energy out, but it's a promising start.

The Mars drone helicopter thingy has been doing well, something like 37 flights? But we wave wave goodbye to the InSight mission as it could no longer maintain power because Mars is a dusty old place. But, let's not forget it was supposed to be a two year mission and it kept on going for just a little over four years. Impressive engineering.

I fixed up an old washing machine, which has been working great since. And was amused that film older than I am still works, while CDs a third of my age are starting to fail. Analogue tech, not a great bandwidth, but it's reliable.
I also got myself an air fryer and a multicooker (well, mom left that for me) so my cooking abilities can now stretch a little further than pasta in a pan and "does this microwave?".
I also fixed the fridge.
And, I suppose this is a Good Thing, nobody died on me this year.

After about a billion years, RISC OS finally got a new stack. One that supports IPv6.

We also had a summer that was, finally, sort of maybe a bit warm.

The Bad

The bad.

The bad.

Well, let's see... <smile, think happy happy thoughts>

Russia may or may not set off a nuke that kills us all (yup, the asshat actually went there).

Covid is still around, but it's being joined by Monkeypox. And as if that isn't bad enough, social media and anti-vaxxer dipshits mean that a disease previously thought to be mostly eradicated is making a return. Yup, say hello to polio.

<smile, think happy happy thoughts>

The war in Ukraine has it's funny moments like how utterly the mighty Russian army is having it's arse handed to it by farmers and grannies with guns. But those moments of levity are few and far between given an enemy that doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with aiming their missiles at a maternity unit, in abducting loads of children, in messing with a nuclear power station in a way that anybody with half a brain would know is a terrible idea, and a list of war crimes so bloody long that the devil himself would need to take a seat.
Knock on effects, spiralling fuel and grain prices. Shocks and aftershocks in the global economy. Petrol prices at the pump their highest level since forever. Electricity prices out of control (meanwhile power companies just happen to announce record profits). Gas prices are a joke. This has lead to inflation shooting up which means that everything else now costs a lot more too. Daily essentials such as food. Somewhere between 10 and 30% more expensive. Part of this is justified, part of this is sheer profiteering.
And, of course, whether or not the governments are doing anything useful probably depends more on your party affiliation than actual evidence of useful things being done.
Which means that a huge percentage of ordinary homes can't afford their bills this winter. Nor can quite a lot of businesses, which means laying people off or just going to the wall.

<smile, think happy happy thoughts>

And as if that isn't enough, there's a climate "emergency". The little Swedish girl might say that bad things happen if you fail to recycle your pizza box, and that action must be taken now...
...I'll point to the varied hurricanes, heatwaves, freezewaves, floods, floods, storms, brimstone, and fires to point out that the actual climate "emergency" is the climate actively seeking out ways to kill us.
Scientists might argue over when and where the point of no return is, but one can't argue that the environment enjoyed a little bit of recovery in 2020 when nobody went anywhere, and it's pretty annoyed that rather than saying "oh, what a beautiful blue sky" we're instead saying "so, how many planes fly to Malaga in the next hour and can I get a seat on one?". It wants us gone and it's starting to get proactive and creative in it's ways of getting rid of the blight known as humanity.

<smile, think happy happy thoughts>

And just after the shiny new RISC OS stack was announced by the people who own the rights, the other people (who maintain the source) announced a forthcoming shiny new stack.
They aren't the same shiny new stack.
Oh, FFS.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died. I am not getting used to a King. Having a Queen as the symbol of Britishness is part of what made things interesting. Especially with one who defined what it meant to be a Monarch. Now that long era has passed, and with it we revert back to "a man in charge" and along with him a family full of pseudo-celebs.
However, it wasn't missed on planet Earth that united in grief, British people did the most British thing possible. They formed an enormous queue.

I would like to say "thank <whatever you believe in> this awful year is over. But I can't. Because we've been on a downhill slide and I really don't have any particular reason to think that 2023 is going to be anything other than "more of the same". Even Rish! is hinting at that, but in his case maybe it's because he won't do us all a favour and hold an election...

Happy New Year - remember, happy happy thoughts, like happy happy trees.

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Zerosquare, 1st January 2023, 01:44

Happy new year, Rick!

Anon, 1st January 2023, 15:12

And Greta Thunberg wins the internets for 2022 after taking down a mysoginistic troll (who represents the very pinnacle of so-called 'toxic masculinity') with a single one-line tweet. #smalldickenergy    (Hope the hashtag is allowed. It's the one that's been trending since Greta pwn3d Andrew Tate's sorry arse.)

Rick, 1st January 2023, 15:26

Yup. From the article: "The little Swedish girl might say that bad things happen if you fail to recycle your pizza box", and followed up with giving her email address as smalldickenergy@getalife.com. Total win. ;)

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