Remember the 80s and 90s? If you’re reading or listening to this, prolly not. You’re prolly watching some shit on TikTok. We’re talking before your phone became a permanent, glowing appendage fused to your face. A time when the only thing "going viral" was a case of mono you and your homies got from sucking face with that nasty person behind the bleachers.

Looking back, it seems like people were, I don't know, functioning without the constant, gut-churning dread that's become the background track to our lives.

Let's be real, it’s not just you. We’re all losing our goddamn minds. But why? What turned us from a generation raised on Saved by the Bell into a society of panic-scrolling insomniacs?

It’s not just one thing; it’s a whole goddamn cocktail of bullshit.

The Digital Shitstorm We Call "Being Connected"

This is the big asshole in the room. In the 80s and 90s, when you left school or work, you were done. Bullying, social comparison, and gossip still happened. The schoolyard or the office was the primary arena for social pressure, but the drama ended as soon as you hit the door. Now, the shitshow follows you into your bed, your bathroom, and your brain 24 fucking 7.

Thanks to Instagram, we're no longer just comparing ourselves to the neighbors. We're comparing our shitty Tuesday morning to Brittany’s "authentic" spiritual awakening on a beach in Bali, which we all know is bullshit, prolly sponsored by a laxative tea. It’s a relentless, soul-crushing firehose of other people's fabricated perfection, designed to make you feel like a worthless turd. The pressure to perform, to curate your own fake-ass life, is fucking exhausting.

Turn on the news? No, the news turns you on, blasting every war, plague, political dumpster fire, and economic collapse directly into your eyeballs. Our primitive lizard brains were not built to doomscroll every single catastrophe happening on the planet simultaneously. It weaponizes our anxiety, leaving us in a state of permanent, low-grade panic, convinced we’re about to be wiped out by murder hornets or a rogue asteroid at any second.

The Economy Is Fucked, and So Are We

Remember when the deal was: go to school, work hard, buy a house, and not die in poverty? When wealth was promised to “trickle down” if you voted for the right person and kept your nose clean? What a fucking fairy tale that turned out to be. The economic promise that baby boomers took for granted has evaporated, replaced by a steaming pile of uncertainty.

We’re saddled with ass-busting student loan debt for degrees that get us jobs in the "gig economy," which is just a cute way of saying "no rights, no benefits, and no security." You need to sell a kidney and promise your firstborn just to afford a down payment on a “tiny house” a hellacious commute away from your Instacart route. The constant financial stress, the feeling of running on a hamster wheel that's on fire, is a surefire recipe for a nervous breakdown.

We're All So "Connected," Yet So Alone

Here’s a fun paradox. In our hyper-connected world, we're lonelier than ever. Back in the day, people had to, like, talk to each other. In person. Wild, right? They went to bars and asked people to dance. They walked through rain-free air-conditioned malls. They joined bowling leagues, or hiking clubs, or skateboard parks. People built tangible in-person communities that could support them when life went to shit.

Now? We have 5000 fake ass "friends" on Facebook, or 2000 Insta followers, most of whom will ghost your ass when you ask anyone to help move a fucking couch. Who’s gonna bring you orange juice or soup when you have the flu? Fucking nobody, that's who. We traded real, messy human connection for the empty validation of a 'like' from someone we haven’t seen in 15 years.

I actually did the flu experiment a few years ago. Lots of “I’ll pray for you” or “feel better soon,” but only about 20 or so people offered to REALLY help. Those were my REAL friends. Literally took me hours to unfriend 4900 or so douchebag losers.

To be honest, personally, it leaves me feeling hollow and completely on my own with my spiraling thoughts. Am I the only one who feels this way? Doubt it.

The One Good Thing: At Least We Call It Anxiety Now

Okay, here's the one silver lining in this shit-show. We're actually talking about it. In the 80s and 90s, if you had a panic attack, you were just "hysterical" or "needed to toughen up." You buried that shit deep down, let it curdle in your gut, and pretended everything was fine. The only good thing was you could hide somewhere until it passed because no one had FindMy. You could actually be alone for a while.

Now, we have medical language. We can say, "I have the anx," instead of just, "I have a permanent case of the scaries."

So, are more people anxious today than back in the day, or are more people just finally admitting it? Guessing it might be a little of both. The world is objectively more anxiety-inducing, AND we’ve thankfully ripped off the stigma that kept millions suffering in silence. So, congrats, I guess? We’ve unlocked the achievement for "Naming Our Misery."

What the Fuck Do We Do Now?

Look, as much as we threaten, we can't smash our phones and go live in the woods. Though that shit is tempting. This is the world we've got.

But knowing why everything feels so fucked up is the first step. It means YOU are not broken; the WORLD is.

So, be ruthless with your digital boundaries. Purge those fake friends and only keep the ones who would bring you soup. Curate your feed to be less about fake "aspirational" bullshit and more about things that don't make you want to scream.

Seek out YOUR people—the ones you can be a mess with in person. Build your own damn bowling league, even if it's just two of you drinking beer and complaining.

We're all in this anxiety-fueled dumpster fire together. Might as well find someone to hold hands with while we watch it burn.

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It was Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. Who fucking knows. Turns out in early retirement days blend together into a featureless blob of doomscrolling and questioning my life choices. In a fit of what I'll generously call "profound boredom," I decided to do something productive: hold a seance. My target was my old friend Danny.

A little background might be helpful. As a child, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I was terrified there were ghosts who wanted to contact me and just shoot the shit. The dreams were horrific. I don’t think I slept a full night from the age of about five until I learned how to drink at about 15. When I got a little older, I met some interesting folks who became literal ghost busters. They needed a producer, so I joined their ragtag team and investigated quite a few haunts in and around Philadelphia. Saw a lot of nothing, but once in a while, something quite strange happened. More than once. And whatever happened was enough to make even the harshest skeptic a believer. Long story short, I overcame my fear and now embrace the dark. It’s fascinating observing how the mind functions absent of a specific sense.

Danny checked out a few years back, courtesy of cancer in a particularly horrific, drawn-out fashion. Watching this former beast of a manly-man waste away over a year or so was one of the hardest things I’ll ever do.

Let's be clear: Danny was no saint. He was a lovable degenerate. A retired Air Force Captain who knew the best dive bars in twelve states and five nations. He considered the food pyramid to be a suggestion for stacking pizza boxes. But he had a heart of gold, buried under layers of sarcasm and questionable financial advice.

If anyone deserved a peaceful, quiet afterlife, it was him.

So, I lit a few candles that smelled suspiciously like "pumpkin spice regret," dimmed the lights, and broke out the ol' custom handmade spirit board we found partially buried near a gravesite in an old cemetery. Yeah, I know. But I was bored, and it was either this or finally organize my liquor cabinet, which felt like a far more terrifying journey into the abyss.

To my absolute shock, it worked. The planchette started moving. And it wasn't the gentle, spectral floating you see in movies. It was angry. Jerky. It spelled out D-A-N-N-Y and then, for good measure, a few choice words I can't publish here but that were super funny, and unmistakably him.

I asked the obvious questions. "Are you okay?" "Are you at peace?"

The planchette slid decisively to NO.

Then, the zinger. "Where are you, man?"

H. E. L. L.

Okay. I was surprised, but not that surprised. I mean, the man once tried to pay a bartender with stolen guns. But what came next is what really baked my noodle.

I asked him what it was like. Who was there?

Like anyone else, I expected murderers, mobsters, tyrants, and maybe even the fuckface who invented the pop-up ad.

Danny's answer, spelled out with painstaking, bitter slowness, was this:

"IT'S A GATED COMMUNITY FULL OF HYPOCRITES."

He said his eternal cul-de-sac is packed to the brim with the very people who spent their entire lives looking down on guys like him. His direct neighbors? A politician who ran on "family values" while juggling three mistresses, an insurance salesman who specialized in bilking the elderly, and a family of "devout" Christians who never missed a chance to tell you who was going to hell for their lifestyle choices.

And the absolute worst, the people who get the primo real estate right next to the lava pits? The folks who hunt majestic animals for "sport." The guys in head-to-toe camouflage, grinning for a photo over a dead lion, elephant, or even Bambi. According to Danny, there's a special circle of damnation reserved for those who kill beauty for fun and call it a hobby.

Apparently, the Almighty is not a fan of trophy rooms.

I was floored. "But," I spoke slowly and carefully to ensure Danny heard me clearly, "the Christians... don't they get a pass? I thought you just had to say you're sorry on your deathbed and, poof, pearly fucking gates."

Danny's response was the theological smackdown I never knew I needed. He explained that there's a cosmic asterisk on the whole forgiveness thing that the priests and the pamphlets always leave out. Asking for forgiveness isn't a magical incantation. It's not a "get out of jail free" card you play at the last second.

It turns out, the universe actually keeps receipts. Forgiveness is only the first part of the equation. Let’s call it the Salvation Clause, which seems to follow a pretty simple formula:

Let S be Salvation, F be the act of asking Forgiveness, and ΔB be the fundamental Change in Behavior.

The formula is roughly: S=F×ΔB.

You see the problem? If you ask for forgiveness (F=1) but your behavior never changes (ΔB=0), then your salvation score is a big fat zero. You have to actually become a better person. You have to stop being a greedy, judgmental, hypocritical monster after you say you're sorry.

Otherwise, the words are just empty noise, and the universe sends your soul to the eternal suburbs to be annoyed by your fellow douchebags until the end of time.

So, Danny's stuck in Hell, listening to a politician explain his tax plan, a salesman try to sell him fire insurance, and a choir of hypocrites complain that the brimstone isn't hot enough.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense. And it’s strangely comforting.

I asked Danny if he was sad. He responded that it wasn’t that bad. Like on Earth, there are different levels of suffering. Turns out he wasn’t all that bad in his escapades here on Earth, so his part of the burbs was one of the nicer areas. He told me I’d like it there.

I didn’t know what the fuck to think about THAT comment, but I’m definitely on the wagon. My delta B would def be greater than zero from this point forward.

So next time you get cut off by a pickup truck with dueling "God is My Co-Pilot" and "I'd Rather Be Hunting" bumper stickers, just smile. Danny's saving them a seat. And he says the welcome wagon is a real killer.

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Let me start with a clarification, though I doubt it’ll penetrate the target audience. When I try to articulate my deep frustration with our political hellscape, people say, "You just hate him," as if it’s a simple personality clash.

I’m old enough to remember the last real President. You know, the two-term guy before "45" and Biden. The constitutional lawyer who still promoted honor, promise, and hope. The man who allowed most of us to feel safe and connected as Americans again.

I haven’t slept soundly since November 7th, 2016.

Have you ever tried to reason with a Trumper? It's a fool's errand. It’s not just that their vocabulary seems limited to about six rally chants and four angry bumper stickers; it's that they seem fundamentally incapable of reason itself.

But fine. Let’s pretend for a moment this is a good-faith discussion.

My issue isn't with a single man, but with the entire toxic phenomenon he unleashed. It's about the sleazy methods that are now considered normal, the values he gleefully eroded, and the social fabric he shredded for sport. It’s the lasting stain he leaves on the very idea of a functional, civil society.

It’s about the relentless assault on basic, verifiable truth. Sure, politics has always had spin. But this is different. This is a full-scale war on reality, waged with a firehose of falsehoods so powerful it has worn the fabric of American society down.

We live in a world where a leader's tantrums are treated as policy, scientific consensus is a deep-state conspiracy, and journalists are "enemies of the people" for the crime of quoting him accurately.

This isn't a policy disagreement. You can’t build a house on quicksand, and you can’t solve national problems when half the country has been convinced that up is down and facts are optional.

It's about the gleeful celebration of willful ignorance. My frustration boils over at a culture that not only dismisses expertise but actively scorns it as "elitist." It’s the conscious choice to marinate in a media ecosystem of pure, uncut propaganda, where any inconvenient fact is "fake news." It is absolutely maddening to watch decades of research, data, and history get flushed down the toilet in favor of a conspiracy theory some guy cooked up in his basement.

This isn't a critique of intelligence; it's a lament for the masses who have proudly chosen to shut their brains off.

And most painfully, it's about the normalization of just being a terrible person. The "us vs. them" mentality is now the only setting. Basic human empathy is now derided as “woke” weakness. Compromise is for suckers and traitors. The language is no longer about disagreement but about dehumanization, with glee taken in the misfortune of others.

The highest political achievement isn't helping your country; it’s “owning the libs” online. This coarsening of our collective soul—this newfound public permission slip to indulge our worst, cruelest impulses—is the most dangerous part of it all.

Remember Pandora’s box? That shit is out.

So no, it’s not that I hate one single person.

I hate that shameless lies are now a legitimate political strategy.

I hate that rejecting facts is worn as a badge of honor in a cult of ignorance.

I hate watching the seeds of division and hatred being sown, knowing we'll be reaping this bitter harvest for decades.

And I especially hate that there is no apparent accountability for anything in the federal government. We vote for convicted criminals. The Electoral College, which was tasked to protect our nation against shit like this, completely failed. Verified news stories or protests no longer influence any sort of change. And the notion of impeachment has been proven to be a complete joke.

This isn't personal animosity. It's the primal scream you let out while watching arsonists burn down the home your ancestors died to protect and preserve while the fire trucks that could quickly extinguish the flames helplessly sit there and watch.

The only good news? The base is shrinking. Not from a sudden wave of education or the realization that their guys are nothing more than elitist, unqualified carnival barkers, but from the simple, undefeated march of time.

The cavalry isn't coming, but the mortician is.

Of the original 66 million voters who were on the foolish side of the 2020 election, it is projected that approximately 58.9 million would still be alive by the time of the next presidential election in November 2028. An informal statistical forecast indicates that roughly 7.1 million individuals from that group will pass away before this timeframe.

But don’t fear, Trumper. New idiotic voters who were raised by TikTok and couldn’t recite a Constitutional amendment if it were posted on a computer screen in front of their dim eyes are turning 18 by the thousands, and I’m sure they too will be coaxed to easily find the single red party button to elect the next unqualified idiot, probably based on even more shallow and unrealistic promises and lies.

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I figure y’all could call me a modern-day Prometheus. Alright, settle in, because I’ve had my morning coffee and I’ve figured it all out.

All of it.

War, poverty, climate

change, that weird noise my car makes—the whole shebang. And the solution isn't some complex, multi-trillion-dollar, 75-point plan that requires international cooperation and nuance. Please. We don't have time for that.

The answer is simple. It glows. It's the atom, baby.

That’s right. We just need to switch the whole planet over to nuclear power. I know, I know, some of you are clutching your pearls, whispering "Chernobyl" into your hemp-fiber reusable tote bags. Relax. That was basically the beta test. We've got the bugs worked out now. Probably.

Let's walk through my flawless vision for this glorious, atomic-powered utopia.

Step 1: Defund All the Bad Guys

For the last half-century, the global economy has been held hostage by a handful of countries sitting on a giant puddle of black goo. Their primary export has been, let's be honest, funding shenanigans. From garden-variety extremism to state-sponsored unpleasantness, it's all been generously underwritten by our insatiable thirst for oil.

Well, what happens when we don't need their dinosaur juice anymore?

Suddenly, their biggest asset becomes about as valuable as a MySpace page. The endless firehose of cash that funds terror cells and regional proxy wars gets downgraded to a leaky garden hose. You can’t build a caliphate on a budget that tight. You can barely fund a bake sale.

Problem 1: Solved.

Step 2: Instant Peace in the Middle East

With the oil monarchies now preoccupied with figuring out how to diversify their economies (hint: giant, air-conditioned shopping malls might not be a long-term strategy), their focus will inevitably shift away from their neighbors.

Specifically, Israel. It's just simple math. You can't afford to be the regional antagonist when you're trying to figure out how to keep the lights on. All those ancient, intractable conflicts? They'll suddenly seem a lot less important when the national budget can no longer support a five-star army and has been reduced to "maybe we can afford a few strongly worded letters."

Suddenly, peace breaks out. Not because of diplomacy or understanding, but because everyone is too broke to fight. Hey, a win's a win.

Problem 2: Solved.

Step 3: A Cleaner, Safer, Glowing Planet

Let's talk about the "clean" part. For decades, we’ve been choking the planet by burning stuff like cavemen. Nuclear power, on the other hand, produces energy with the carbon footprint of a gentle sigh. We get to keep our air conditioning and our giant TVs without giving the planet a terminal fever.

"But what about the waste?" you cry. Oh, the humanity! We'll do what we do with every other problem: bury it somewhere and let our grandkids figure it out. It's the American way. We'll stick it in a mountain in a state nobody cares about. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a tiny amount of waste for a colossal amount of energy. It's a trade-off so good, only a fool would refuse.

Airplanes. Cruise ships. Data centers. Air conditioning. All those power-sucking and normally polluting devices now run cleaner and meaner.

But what about meltdowns? So much drama. There are better designs now. Plus, A.I. can now model, evaluate, and watch everything. Homer Simpson can finally retire. Today’s nuclear reactors are so safe they practically run themselves. It's like comparing a 1973 Pinto to a 2026 Subaru. They both have four wheels, but you're significantly less likely to end in a fireball in one of them.

Planet saved. Problem 3: Solved.

Step 4: Bye-Bye, Wealth Gap

Here’s the kicker. What happens when energy is no longer a scarce, expensive commodity controlled by a few powerful players? What happens when energy is abundant and cheap for everyone?

The global south gets to build factories. Developing nations can power cities, run schools, and refrigerate medicines. The economic playing field gets leveled with the force of a controlled nuclear reaction. The wealth gap, that pesky chasm between the haves and the have-yachts, will begin to narrow. Not out of charity, but because free, limitless energy is the greatest economic equalizer imaginable. Everyone gets a shot.

Problem 4: Solved.

So there you have it. Four global crises averted with one neat, tidy solution. It's so painfully obvious, you have to wonder why we haven't done it yet.

It's almost as if reality is a messy, complicated thing full of unforeseen consequences, entrenched interests, and human fallibility.

Nah, couldn't be. Let's get to splitting those atoms!

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Gotta be honest, one of the best perks of my job is a little thing I like to call "The Great Reversal." If you were one of us—a card-carrying member of the library lunch club, the locker maintenance group, or the AV squad—you know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about. And I, for one, am loving the view from the top,

.

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The world is crazy. American hiring practices are even crazier.

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