Ruin Impendent:

The time is around 4:30pm, it’s a Tuesday and I am working at home in my condo, we are supposed to go into the office twice a week, today is a popular day most people go in; but not for me. As today is Nov 5, the US presidential election, a big day for America and the world as a matter of fact, as the outcome of tonight would set the tone and stage for the next four years for the world at large for better or worse. It’s been a long year indeed, not just for the world, but everyone really; the war in Ukraine has been going on for three years now as well as the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas/Palestinians for over a year. What a crazy world we live in. I check my laptop before shutting down for the day just in case there is any more last minute work or requests, I had been moved temporarily from my normal team/work duties to help with a another team to fix accessibility bugs for the rest of the year on their product/project. Honestly, it sucks a lot but work is work I guess and I don’t make the calls. I check my MS Teams and emails, looks like there’s nothing else of urgency for today so I shut down my work laptop for the night. I walk to the fridge and see what I have to eat, looks like it’s left over Hakka Chinese food, some fried rice, chili chicken and some kan shue green beans that I ordered last Friday for takeout. Not bad, I mean, I had the same left overs on Monday so it’s not really a surprise. There is a certain lacking of what I consider ‘normal’ Cantonese Chinese food in my area/neighborhood, there used to be a lot of Chinese take outs but over the years they have all been turned to Hakka Chinese take out places. Makes sense, but still sad in a way, the influx of Indian temp students/workers into Toronto is very visible and noticeable, I see Indian and brown people working at Manchu Wok of all things, since they will take any job they can get, even minimum wage ones. The competition for these retail food service industry jobs is insane, things are not doing so great in Toronto and Canada in general for the job market, no one is hiring, even in my industry. I hear my Hakka leftovers is ready from my microwave and sit up to get it and walk past the bags of souvenirs and goods that I have obtained throughout this past year. It’s truly been a very eventful year really in terms of travel for me, I visited Atlanta, Las Vegas, Boston and New York again, four US cities, a crazy amount of travel for me. Insane really. It was also during my Vegas trip when Biden announced he wouldn’t seek re-election again, shocking the world and ultimately nominating Harris to go up against Trump for president. I sit down and eat my food, shit’s still good even after a few days old. I keep my favorite TV channel on my TV streaming, CP24 as it’s US election day after all, although I had cut my cable a few months earlier, having the ability to stream CP24 via chrome-cast is incredible, I should have done this years ago. It’s way too early for results to come in so after I finish my meal I end up zoning out and switch to watching one of my favorite vtubers and proceed to do my usual mobile game dailies. I figured, there’s no point in watching election results come in, Harris is going to win; it was such as good idea for Biden to drop out and give it to Harris as it re-energized the democrats, at least according to the TV reports and donations, she was sure to win for the democrats, I mean, who in their right mind would vote for Trump again in 2024? Only hardcore MAGA crazies would right? Especially after the Jan 6 insurrection attempt. A few hours pass and I decide to check the google election results map on my laptop to see how far Harris is ahead of Trump and….the map…it…doesn’t look good…at all…for Harris…Trump is ahead… he could win. At that moment, I already knew it was over for Harris, me and probably millions others in the states and around the world couldn’t believe what I was seeing in real time, Trump had a sizable lead and had won states that were projected to be democrat safe havens, a complete collapse in democrat support in key battleground states. The East and West coast states votes had already been counted and allocated but it did not improve Harris’s numbers; just by looking at the map, the math just wasn’t there, we were probably heading into a second Trump presidency. Oh my god. Madness and insanity. Upon this stark realization I closed my laptop and hoped that things would turn around for Harris later in the night, but deep down, I knew she had already lost, the numbers don’t lie, and in a few more hours a major media outlet did just that, declared Trump the winner and the next president of the United States.

As the clock moved pass midnight that night, came with it my birthday and also the grim reality that we were in for another four years of insanity with Trump and I say to myself quietly, “Well, at least I got to visit America before everything gets destroyed.”

—

Happy birthday to me I guess? Not so great for the future of America and the world I suppose.

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Where do we go from here?

A time of great instability and insanity awaits us:

As I reflect upon the past year of 2024 I am reminded of all the good fun times that I enjoyed, mostly due to travel and events that I attended in the US. As mentioned, I didn’t think it was possible to travel more than I did in 2023 but I somehow did, while each individual trip combined still does not come close to the grandeur and scale of my two week trip to Japan last year, it certainly was pretty great still visiting three cities that I had never been to and revisiting New York again. With that said, Covid19 is all but a distant memory from our sad pandemic era but as we move out from those times, the social, economic and political problems and cracks in our world become ever more apparent in the system and the status quo, we might be at a breaking point. Last year I predicted that things would probably get worse domestically in Canada/US and throughout the world; and I don’t think I am wrong in that prediction; things overall most definitely are indeed worse. With that said, let’s go over some of the bad things that have happened this past year, in a raw-train of thought manner in no particular order.

Bad things that have happened:

Trump won the US election and is going to be president again, an unthinkable outcome to any rational thought after the Jan 6 insurrection attempt in 2021 that defies all common sense, logic and normal modes of reasoning. Most people say that Trump won but the reality is that Harris and the democrats lost big time; this election was theirs to lose; democrat support was weak in key battleground states when it mattered most on the day of the election, people just didn’t show up to vote because they were lazy and or assumed that Harris had it in the bag, it was a repeat of 2016 all over again; with Trump beating Hillary Clinton for the exact same reasons. Biden dropping out, may or may not have had it’s desired strategic affect, we will never know if he would have fared better had he stayed on for the presidential race. The realization once again that America just can’t, or won’t elect a woman as president is deafening, I don’t think the democrats will try nominating another women for president for a very long time, they tried it twice, and they failed twice with the repercussions to the world and America yet untold and unknown yet. Despite all the fascist and dictator on day one talk by Trump during the election, he still won and Americans voted him in, which is insanity, not just because he openly admitted that but also because no one cared and turned a blind eye and voted for him anyways. The hyper normalization of far-right behavior and extreme points of views has become non-stop in the media and social media, society in general has taken a step back in progressive stances and has become more conservative. America is once again perceived as a fool for electing Trump by the world at large, the first time people were unsure if he would be good or not, but a second time pretty much solidifies how ignorant and dumb American are. Trump was almost assassinated during the election campaign, which brings further fears that others will target high profile politicians, not good for democracy in any sense of the word. The assassination attempts revitalize Trumps MAGA base and help indirectly with his popularity, because I guess Americans like to vote for people that survive assassination attempts. With the onset of Trump’s second term, he plans on implementing tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico, defying NAFTA or whatever the latest version of the agreement which will have harsh economic repercussions for all countries involved, for absolutely no reason other than culture war/nationalism points with his supporters MAGA base. Trumps picks for cabinet are mind boggling, basically choosing anyone who was loyal to him and is a rich billionaire regardless of actual experience in the role. Trump also picks RFK Jr of Kennedy family fame who is an anti-vaxxer to head up the department of public health, nominates TV show host Dr Oz to oversee the department that is in charge of health insurance, a Neo Nazi white supremacist to lead the Pentagon/CIA. Trump creates a new department called DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency that plays up the doge coin crypto currency headed by best new friend Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, former presidential republican candidate. The fact that they have two leaders for this new department is kind of odd considering it’s all about trying to be efficient, having two leaders head up a department is not really efficient. Elon Musk has essentially brought his way into the Trump government due to his wealth and has an arm’s length’s influence on Trump, with many people already considering him the real President as he apparently has a cottage setup on Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. A number of Trump’s cabinet appointments have been reported by the FBI/CIA to be Russian spies/assets, this is so bad, perhaps even Elon and Trump themselves are Russian assets working for Putin, only time will tell. The line between corporate interests and government/American best interests no longer exists as Elon Musk and other billionaires now have direct access to change government laws, policies and rules towards deregulation, making everything in America now even more skewed towards big business and profits. All of Trumps crimes like felony and impeachment mean nothing now, he basically has presidential immunity, meaning all the corruption and crimes he did with handling secret documents and tax fraud will essentially go unpunished, basically proving that he stands above the rule of law and rules don’t matter if you are rich and or the president. On a domestic front, the election of Trump means that Canada will have to face export/import tariffs, which will hurt our economy and increase prices for all goods for Americans and Canadians alike. On the federal level, Canada is politically in very bad shape, with no political parties willing to do anything drastic to change the status quo, with Canadians left feeling helpless as inflation, lack of jobs, lack of housing and increased immigration erode our quality of life and ability to survive. The federal Liberals and Trudeau are at all time lows in approval ratings going below 30% in some polls which essentially ensure that the next government will be the Conservatives and Poilievre. Trudeau himself has been called to resign as his Vice PM/Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland resigns suddenly at the date when she was supposed to present the fall economic statement of the country, citing disagreements with Trudeau about the direction that he wants to take and for only following through with ‘gimmick’ band-aid solutions such as a GST/HST tax break during mid Dec-Feb. Freeland herself apparently was going to be demoted out of the very important role of Finance Minister, so instead of accepting it, she just resigned, but will still run for MP in the next election, showing that she wants to distance herself from Trudeau as his popularity plummets. The conservatives offer no different solution from the Liberals but will win the next election anyways. The NDP also offer no new solutions to Canadians problems and are betting hard that the discontent with the Liberals will translate for their party to rise to official opposition, with Singh saying he will table a motion of non-confidence sometime in January when the house resumes that will trigger an early election. Despite all the calls and pressure to resign, Trudeau still says on as PM despite losing his vice PM and probably plans to go down with the ship and destroy support for the Liberals for the next decade or so, just like Conservatives after Harper’s run as PM. Due to the tensions and uncertainty of Trump’s second presidency with the tariffs and other questionable policy, the CAD/USD exchange rate has become horrible, the lowest it’s been since 2006 from what I last read, and will probably worsen even more with 1 CAD amounting to only 0.7 cents USD. On a provincial level, it looks like Doug Ford and his PC government will likely be reelected again if he calls for an early election, despite his tendency to feint ignorance on matters that are part of his control blaming them on the federal government/city as not his responsibility such as the poor state of healthcare and the public works in Ontario. Ford wants to rip up some bike lanes in some downtown Toronto streets because he doesn’t like them as say they cause gridlock, which is not really his jurisdiction but he thinks he’s mayor so he gets away with it. The Ontario Science Center is suddenly closed permanently by Ford in June citing repairs that make the building unsafe which is bullshit, he then announces a new Science Center to be built on Toronto Island and destroys much of the existing greenspace on that island, the old science center is likely to be destroyed and redeveloped with backing/kickbacks to Ford’s developer friends, corruption. There is an increase of general hooliganism and home break-ins in the city, break ins into mall jewelry stores and the like in broad daylight, pretty bad. Also increase in auto theft because cars are so expensive now, especially SUVs. There was supposed to be a Total Solar Eclipse in the city but it was largely not visible due to being a cloudy skies, resulting in most people wasting their time trying to see it and buy special glasses. Toronto itself continues to suffer as the massive waves of Indian immigrants/temp foreign worker/students continue to make finding any job extremely difficult; retail, food service to IT and computer related jobs are all being taken by temp foreign workers who will work for minimum wage or less, continuing to suppress wages for all industries in Canada. Gas is very expensive now usually at $1.5L at least. While the condo real estate market is currently in a downturn, it still does not help as the supply simply cannot match the demand still due to the Indian workers, as detached housing remains high with no immediate signs that it will fall drastically anytime soon unless something drastic happens. Fresh graduates from college/university that spent most of their years in covid pandemic times cannot find jobs, sometimes for years because all the entry level jobs are being taken by Indian immigrants, which makes post-secondary education a complete waste of time in today’s workforce aided with the onset of AI which makes many of those entry level jobs obsolete. The Eglinton LRT is still not complete, marking over 13-14 years since the project began and been in active construction which is absolutely horrendous. TTC continues to be shit as there with the death of the SRT, only busses to STC, the new bus platform is shit, I have to walk far to my bus stop, with a high chance that I will miss my bus because the stop is so far away at Kennedy station. The Delta hotel near my condo is still a homeless shelter, I have no idea if the motion passed to continue it for another 5 years but the hooliganism continues every time I walk by it or drive by it with police cars and other ambulances seen frequently. The condo right beside the Delta has opened which has increased traffic on the road inwards towards my building, which sucks. Inflation of goods has steadied somewhat but our wages are barely keeping up with inflation still which is not great. Pacific mall is somehow worse with more empty stores and haven’t really bounced back after the pandemic really, nothing has been built still after Market Village was blown up, what the fuck still. Ruined. Woodside square is still a kiddie circus with dinosauce bullshit gimmicks. My hair cutting place/barber semi-retired and closed up shop at Woodside square, and I haven’t been able to find a decent stable barber since, with me getting questionable haircuts every few months, looking pretty bad sometimes. There is alot of shootings at Woodside square mainly brown Taimils and browns fighting for control/beef because of the brown movie theatre, bad. Allens patties is sold to new chinese people who can’t bake patties and their recipe has gone to shit, not the same anymore and way worse than before, there is no longer any good patties in scarbrough. Muji closed at STC and several other locations, this is bad and sad. There hasn’t been much new developments on the China/CCP side of things but the country itself isn’t doing very well apparently domestically, with the same issues of lack of jobs, business, weakened economy have largely kept China to itself trying to figure out their own problems with economic slowdown, and the decrease in trade as foreign investment continues to dry up, with this year’s economic industrial profits declines 7.5%, the worst ever decline in over two decades. The continual and perpetual threat and saber rattling for an invasion of Taiwan continues as fear that it might happen and push through in order to try and distract people in China at the worsening economic situation at home. A coupe was attempted by former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol by declaring marital law, but then it kinda didn’t work and failed, causing outrage and political turmoil/protest in the country. South Korea also had a horrible plane crash recently that killed 179 passengers, a tragic event. The war in Ukraine continues for it’s third year now with no signs of a resolution anytime soon as Putin continues to push forward and seems determined to take over Ukraine at any cost, with thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives lost, the longer the war continues the worst it goes for Ukraine as support continues to waver in America and in Europe as the financial support gets harder to come by. Putin continues to make nuclear threats on the West and in Ukraine and is only stopped from continuing forward with warning from China. The threat of nuclear war and disaster will never fully be gone, in fact, more countries will probably seek out nuclear arms as America can no longer be relied on to defend their sovereignty. North Korea and Kim Jong Un decides to be friends with Putin and sends some ten thousand North Korean troops to Ukraine to fight for Putin’s invasion. The troops are malnourished and poorly trained, becoming addicted to porn shortly after arriving as they gain access to the internet; Russian command has no idea how to use these North Koreans other than cannon fodder and seemingly that’s exactly how they are used as they are killed easily. The conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza continues to escalate and mark their one year anniversary after the terror attack on Israel of last year with no end in sight but the outcome very clear that Israel will take complete control of the region in due time with force to weed out Hamas even if it means leveling the entire region. Austria elects it’s first far-right government since WWII, which marks a global trend towards authoritarianism and far-right extremism across the world due to bad times, this is not good. Bangladesh experienced civil unrest and mass protests because of some laws that gave preference to government jobs to former military vets or something, which made young and collage aged people pissed. Further confirmation by the Canadian gov that India, Russia and China have been trying to influence our affairs via social media and other spy like behavior. Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health care is shot and killed in broad daylight in NYC, just before an annual financial press conference while walking out of his hotel by Luigi Mangione, a seemingly normal and successful young man with no history of crime or violence. The killing is celebrated online by many who have had bad experiences with US insurance industry and for profit healthcare in general, such as being denied claims for expensive treatment or drugs. Luigi has become something of a hero in some circles as a martyr to bring to attention the corrupt and sinister nature of for profit health care and insurance, and the struggles of the middle/working class. The media attention surrounding Luigi as the police find and detain him, parading around him with fully armed police escorts and politicians, illustrate the media trying to downplay and change the narrative online from him as a hero to something like a monster, showing clearly the extreme bias that the rich and establishment media want you to think of him when mass murders and school shooters hardly ever get the amount of attention that Luigi is getting and will likely be a much covered topic in the next year. The 2024 Paris Olympics happened and no one really cared. Athletes swam in the river Seine for some events and some got sick, a river that has been dumping raw sewage into it’s waters for hundreds of years; they tried to clean it up, but people still took a shit in the river because they don’t like the Olympics coming to Paris. The opening ceremony had a lot of controversy for some reason and was shitty, taking place outside across the river and not in the main stadium. Women’s soccer Team Canada was involved in a drone cheating scandal and cost them points and some level of shame and improbably odds of winning due to the point system ultimately being defeated in the quarter-finals. There was some controversy about some trans woman boxer who was eventually allowed to compete and ended up winning gold, bringing into question the place of trans people in gendered sports once again. While the exchange rate between Japan and Canada is largely at parity, the shipping situation is not good as all shipment costs have gradually risen even more. The cost of anime figures are at an all time high, with some companies asking for up to 18-35k yen for some 1/7 scale figures and 1/4 scale figures rising to 44k+ yen or more. The hobby increasingly is trying to make alternative cheaper budget lines of figures to make it more accessible to casual collectors but the quality is not to the standard that I expect, despite good price points. I have essentially ran out of shelf display room now in my condo unless I buy another cabinet or shelf, which I don’t have room for, which means I am forced to choose more carefully what figures I display, usually newer ones, while older ones I have to pack away into storage since I just don’t have enough room now. Canada post strike that lasted for roughly a month was a big waste of time as no resolution was had and the government forced them back to work anyways for future settlement on contract terms, created a huge backlog of mail and packages in prime time Christmas holiday season in Nov/December. Because of the strike I didn’t get some gifts in time for my family and or I had to pay more for other delivery services to have my goods arrive. DHL price increases is absurd now, absolutely you will probably pay more than the price of the goods you are wanting to buy to have shipped. In the celebrity world, Drake is completely owned by Kendrick Lamar with his ongoing diss rap track battles with “Not like us” becoming the summer song of this year and uniting the West coast rap music scene together against the east, insinuating that Drake is a creep/pedo, whether or not those allegations are true or not, is unproven at this time. Puff Daddy on the other had, was actually exposed this year for leading a sex trafficking ring involving minors, both girls and boys underage and conducting degenerate sex parties with other Hollywood and music elite. Puff Daddy’s fall from grace has been historic and sets to bring to light other sex crimes within the industry and perhaps other celebrities/musicians. JayZ is also in hot water for similar allegations but the case against him is not as strong as Puff Daddy. Trump initially picked Matt Gaetz as attorney general for his cabinet but has since dropped out as he has an active investigation/report by his own party of paying for and having sex with an underage girl, so bad. There hasn’t been any blockbuster movie this year like last year unfortunately, good movies, but not mega hits. Future of Star Wars is still ruined and uncertain as they announced a new movie starring Rey/Daisy Ridely, but then after a day or so retracted that statement and basically said, never mind, were working on it. Shit man. Marvel in general is still in a limbo state as it tries to figure out what direction to take after their Jonathan Majors Kang the Conqueror multiverse movie route collapsed last year. A new Blade movie was pushed back and set to indefinite status, it was supposed to come out in 2025. I saw The Eternals finally, it was a shit movie that went nowhere, so bad, Marvel has no idea what they are doing after Endgame. The new Star Wars show involving the sith and some Chinese guy and black women is not renewed for a season 2, cancelled basically, didn’t watch it but it’s bad because it shows they don’t know what direction they want and pumping out anything and hope that it sticks. The gaming industry had a lot of layoffs and alot of studios closed due to a variety of reasons. Suicide Squad game is shit because it kills their heroes in such shitty undramatic ways, brings controversy to the game. Elden Ring studio fromsoftware’s parent company, Kadokawa wants to be acquired by Sony, bringing even more consolation into the anime and game media empire which is probably not good but necessary. Sony’s overwatch/apex/valorant/fortnight clone team FPS shooter Concord fails spectacularly because you have a pay for the base game and offers nothing that other free games have already have, tied with crappy and ugly looking character designs and game play, the game is shut down two weeks after launch to full refunds after a development cost of over 400million, an insanely high cost. PS5 Pro cost more than normal PS5 and doesn’t offer that big of an improvement, disappointing people. I kinda stopped playing Guilty Gear Strive at the beginning of the year which is unfortunate as I would like to continue but after so many changes and patches, I have to relearn some of my characters like Ram as they changed how they play, which I am kind of lazy to do right now. Might get back to it one day. South Korean game Stellar Blade upsets some people because the main girl is too sexy or something and some graffiti in game that can be interpreted as saying nigga or something. Japan experiencing more tourism than they can handle due to the low value of the yen in comparison to USD for example and with it brings many unsavory tourists and influencers that shit on and disrespect the people/country/culture, not good such as Johnny Somali, forces some places in Kyoto for example to close off from tourists. Japan continues to struggle in the face of population decline as usual along with other developed Asian countries like South Korea also made worse by the harsh economic times the world in general is facing. Honda and Nissan announced their intent to merge as Nissan has become a poor and indebted company desperate for help, in an effort to prevent a foreign owned Chinese/European company from buying Nissan which has become a troubled and sick company; only time will tell if this goes through but it likely will and what kind of cars/products they will eventually make. The Mr. Donut in Akihabara has closed for good and the entire building is being renovated/blown up due to building rules in Japan that say old buildings must be rebuilt after so many decades or so, bau bau. It was a very rough year for vtubers and the vtuber industry in general. Many vtuber companies shut down this year and many talents were terminated/graduated. Selen Tatsuki of Nijisanji English branch went missing for over a month after she released a cover of a song on youtube in Dec 2023 without the blessings of management and was ghost suspended/terminated, unknown to fans and the community keeping it a secret for weeks. Behinds the scenes, the trauma of being so abruptly terminated caused Selen to make an attempt at her own life, leading her to be hospitalized for some time. When the truth finally came out a month later of what had happened to Selen, the entire vtuber sphere and community was in shock, with mass online protest and boycott against Nijisanji and it’s parent company Anycolor as it solidified it’s reputation as black company that treats employees and talents as disposable and worthless. After some time, Selen eventually releases a statement from her past life/indie vtuber persona DokiBird outlining that she is taking Niji to court in regards to bullying from management and potentially other Nijisanji talents partaking in her bullying which ultimately lead her to her attempt. The ensuing backlash is immense against Nijisanji but they make things worse by having three of their most watched/popular talents address the situation with Selen/DokiBird and her litigation against the company. The infamous “black screen” stream by the three Nijisanji EN talents is universally panned and denounced, causing a mass exodus of fans of Nijisanji to boycott the company, marking the beginning of the complete collapse of Nijisanji EN as a brand and it’s reputation tarnished in the English speaking vtuber world that it will never recover from. Nijisanji is essentially blacklisted by Anime Expo as they cancel their planned concerts due to low ticket sales and have a horrible booth presence at the convention. Further Nijisanji controversy would pop up every month continuing to erode support and monthly graduations leaving only hardcore fans in the fanbase. Hololive, while not as dramatic has also had it’s share of bad things happen this year, such as the surprise and sudden termination of Yozora Mel due to reasons not fully known but likely due to breaching NDA or company inner workings, possibly unknowingly but she accepted her fate regardless. Hololive also lost two giant pillars of the company with Minato Aqua leaving/graduating and Holo EN’s Amelia Watson leaving to become an affiliate, a unknown status that has the possibility of return for some occasions. Aqua was one of the most popular vtubers so her departure was extremely sad for fans and within the company, the same for Ame, which was an important member of Holo EN gen 1 Myth, which paved the way for all other vtubers in the EN sphere. The pain at holo does not stop however as before the end of the year, two more members would announce their graduation, Sakamata Chloe and Ceres Fauna of the EN branch, both of which were announced back to back one day after. Both very popular and beloved talents, which caused panic among the fan-base that Hololive/Cover was doing something wrong or not doing enough to retain talent, running with the narrative that it must be idol activities that are being forced upon them that is causing talents to leave; but is soon debunked that is not the true by the talents themselves and it’s for other reasons such as the changing of the company. Hololive would also see their beloved Content Director, A-Chan also leave the company, which was kind of a talent in of herself but also held more of a management position. Holostars growth has largely stagnated in comparison to the rest of Hololive, with many talents taking mental health breaks such as Altare due to being under supported and frustrated with management. Many Holostars still cannot get over the graduation of Magni and Vesper in 2023, further hindering the growth of all other Holostars members. Cover was also fined/called out for bad working practices when dealing with contractors in regards to illustrators and live2d/3d riggers by the Japanese government, made example because of their dominance in the market. Mikeneko, former hololive vtuber Rushia has become an attention seeking joke in the Japanese media influencer sphere, doing anything for attention even if they are so sad and pathetic like playing hololive fan-game, which is kind of like torture to her. Uzumaki anime came out, the beloved manga of horror god Junji Ito and it was kinda shit, very disappointing animation after the first episode. Akira Toriyama, creator of dragon ball dies at 68, so young. Atsuko Tanaka, the voice of many mature sexy ladies also died this year at 61. Voice actor of Amuro Ray, Tōru Furuya is caught up in a scandal where he is involved in an affair with a 30 year old women which accuses him of sexual abuse/harassment, he is already married and is 71 years old; the news of his affair ruins his reputation and basically his career as a voice actor. Popular youtuber MatPat of “Game Theory” fame retires from personally streaming and will no long appear on videos anymore although he he still owns the company and work behind the scenes, causing great sadness among many youth who grew up with him and his videos which helped bring the Five Nights at Freddie games into popular culture. Serveral other popular youtubers are exposed for being creeps and or molestors and are effectively cancelled such as Dr. Disrespect. Mr Beast has allegations that he is an asshole and has very questionable business practices and is not what he appears to be. Several notable famous people also died this year such as, Jimmy Carter (former president, made it to 100 tho), Quincy Jones (music production), Liam Payne (one direction member), Maggie Smith (professor from Harry Potter), James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader), Donald Sutherland (Hunger Games), Susan Wojcicki (former CEO of youtube), Alexei Navalny (fought against Putin in Russia), Carl Weathers (Kony 2012, Predator, Mandalorian, Chubbs), O.J. Simpson (he totally did it), Morgan Spurlock (super size me), Richard Simmons (gay fitness man) and probably many others. Taylor Swift had 6 concerts in Toronto this year which shows the power of blonde white women, too much power and it made commuting/going down town busier than normal with the additional people that visited the city. There was as per usual alot of natural disasters and wildfires that destroyed a lot of shit around the world and for some reason a lot of plane crashes and other mass loss of lives. Global warming is doing it’s thing with weird weather in general with hot summers and cold winters and unusual temperatures like summer like weathers in like mid October, which doesn’t make any sense. In terms of economy, things are heavily invested into AI and other chip based companies like Nvidia and TSMC that produces the chips which make up a large chunk of the world economy, all of the big mega corps continue to consolidate their wealth and get even more centralized and wealthier while startups struggle to survive and find foothold. Intel has fallen behind so bad in comparison to Nvidia that even a US government bailout can’t really help the stagnant company. Some kid invests 600k of grandma’s inheritance company into Intel and after a day or so it’s value decreases by like 30%, creating a WSB meme legend. Some meme bitch known as “hawk tuah” girl is a thing and super cringe/bad taste; makes a crypto coin and rug pulls scams, people are mad obviously. The crypto market and bitcoin is as crazier than ever with pump and dumps for shitcoins and other scams rampant throughout social media and influencers, you can get rich, or lose alot of money, most likely the ladder. I got scammed/defrauded out of a lot of money this year through a phone scam by browns posing as rbc employees. Enshittification becomes the new word of the year, a word that describes products and services/everything getting shittier and worse because of corporate greed. I somehow ended up getting a wart on my foot, probably from the hotel I stayed at in Atlanta this year which only now I am close to having resolved/going away after about half a year with daily treatment. My hotel experience in Atlanta was the worse hotel experience that I have ever had in recent memory, as they didn’t even have the room that I booked for and got a single bed instead of two double beds. The hotel staff was shit and didn’t care at all, not to mention the hotel was super busy and the fact that I got a wart from this hotel means that they fucking didn’t clean the shower floors at all from previous guests and the faucet was leaky. Motherfuckers. At work, we continue to work on AI driven product solutions but near the end of the year, my department once again is going to be re-organized and I may be moved to another team for a more permanent basis, which sucks. My boss that hired me is no longer my boss so I have two new bosses now which kind of sucks but it is what is is, my old boss is still around tho doing something else at the company. In September my company made mandatory that individual contributors aka regular employees have to come in twice a week and it will be tracked by the card system when you enter the building, this sucks big time as before they didn’t care, they just noticed that the office is being under utilized and want for force people in, bosses and directors have to go three times a week, ouch. Because of this change, popular days like Tuesday and Thursday are packed, I can’t even book a desk and end up working on my laptop in the hall or some shit, it’s ridiculously stupid to force everyone back for no reason. The threat and fear of layoffs at my company is always present after every quarter as many other companies in tech this year suffered a lot as well with layoffs. Social media is the worst it has ever been, with Twitter, now X under Elon Musk continues to push questionable changes like the increase of ads and essentially making blocking on the platform useless, as you will still see people you don’t like because ad money. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram are also continuing to degrade and go to shit, with some companies now creating AI generated profiles/bots that will post and interact on their platforms for the sake of the illusion of engagement/fake active users which moves forward the dead internet theory which says that eventually all of the internet will eventually have no real people on it, just bots and AI talking to each other. Chinese social media spy app, TikTok continues to spread brainrot to the youth furthering their own ruin due to being raised in covid times. US said they were going to ban TikTok, but recently Trump said he might reconsider because he gained alot of likes on the platform from his campaign. Kids born after 2025 have been dubbed Generation Beta, a horrible name which basically dooms them to be made fun of and dubbed weak and incompetent even before they are born. Current youth in general are pretty much confirmed ruined as per stats, Zoomers and those younger first time voters are dumber and less socially inclined than ever before with less knowledge and less engaged in school than ever before, literacy has declined and youth have a greatly reduced attention span and no focus, no drive to do better in their studies or work because they also know: the world is ruined, what’s the point in trying. A large number of zoomers voted for Trump in their first election because of course they did, many are beginning to regret it. Google search just after the US election had an increase in search keywords/phrases like “what are tariffs?”, “how can I change my vote”, “can I still vote for biden” which also illustrates the stupidity of the general US populace. My grandma continues to lose her mind towards insanity, she forgets that she ate dinner sometimes or what time of day it is, who people are now. Dad slowly loosing his sanity taking care of grandma, it’s rough. My condo installed security cameras on all the floors because there had been instances of hooligans entering the building and or shitty residents not pushing their garbage through the chute and the want to find out who. In terms of sports, same ol same old, all Toronto sports team are shit, Raptors especially so with their longest streak of like 11 losing streak or something, Jays are shit, Toronto is decent but it doesn’t matter unless playoffs, TFC is a joke and no one cares, Argos won and no one cares. Hockey Canada scandal where the org covered up sexual assault cases from some of players from world juniors, pretty bad. Lots of food recalls with like metal in bread, plastic in salt and spices and shit. I couldn’t go to the CNE this year because I was so busy/tired with travel and other things, the first time in many many years that I didn’t go, unfortunate. Taste of Danforth was cancelled this year and there are no plans for it to ever come back because it’s not beneficial to local businesses and costs way too much money, sadge. The food at my work’s Christmas/holiday party was worse compared to last year. One of my team bosses brought a Cybertuck. Cybertrucks are on the road now and exist. A Bro brought a Tesla, at least it’s not a Cybertruck. Bird flu is a thing but hopefully it stays isolated. Indian PM was directly linked to the assassination of Sikh leader in Canada, not good. Jeff Bezos owned newspaper, The Washington Post prevents it’s editors from publishing an endorsement of Harris in the US presidential election and many in the paper resign in protest, further illustration how compromised and corrupt our news media truly is, owned by billionaires/rich. The newspaper also prevents recently a political cartoon criticizing Jeff Bezos. Similar trends of censorship also happen on Elon Musk’s Twitter suppressing any posts and comments criticizing him or his businesses, the fact that he is so close to Trump are frightening. With the election of Trump again and the pending Canadian conservative government, social/cultural equability is so over.

And yea, that’s all I can think of at the top of my head. I know it’s not a lot but you get the idea. Last year I said that 2023 already proved my point that we are in times of ruin, 2024 continues that trend even more so, we are well underway towards the path of insanity with the re-election of Trump, war in Ukraine, Gaza conflict with no end in sight and brewing tensions in Asia with China vs. everyone else in the pacific, not to mention all the domestic problems we face in Canada. Well then, aside from the wholesale continued ruin of our times, what good things happened this year?

Good things that have happened:

Once again, following the trend of the past two or so years, I have enjoyed relative stability at my job, as of this writing I have been at the company for about 2.5 years now which is pretty good I’d say and have solidified my importance at work as a good employee that is respected and listened to (most of the time). While the probability of me being laid off/terminated is low, anything could happen given the uncertain economic times we are living in. While the boss that hired me is now no longer my boss, he moved to another position, my two new bosses are alright, they are roughly the same hands off kind of people who don’t want to interfere with my day to day work but that might change this coming new year in 2025, we’ll see but for now, I think I am ok. At the start of last year I got a normal quality of life raise of like 2% I think, better than nothing I guess as as well as a decent bonus yay which is always nice to get. In a few weeks I am going to have my performance review again and in all likelihood I expect roughly the same thing, despite me having done probably more than expected of me and doing work that is outside my assigned role/job description, which honestly I don’t even know for sure because I never read the job description for my current job to begin with honestly. The work itself this year is less stressful than previously because I am now comfortable with the code and the particularities of the projects, I also got on-boarded onto some other projects that are different which is always good for learning and improving your knowledge/skills. Going to the office twice a week is mandatory now and they will begin tracking it and reporting the numbers to my manager, it sucks to still come in but at least I don’t feel alone in the office anymore and everyone has to suffer I guess. Because I come in more frequently than before, I began to explore more food places in DT Toronto and rediscovered some good food courts like the Grange near OCAD which has a great food-court with lots of different kinds of foods and McDonald even. I tend to walk along east or west of Queen Street West, and eventually tired a popular shawarma placed called Alpha’s Shawarma, given it’s name, you would expect it has to be good, and it was good, probably up there with some of the best shawarma places I ever tried and reasonably priced too, good shit. I think they are going to open a location on Yonge street so it’s going to be more accessible to lots of other people. I also go out to lunch with some of my fellow co-workers that I know more often now, since we are forced to the office I guess. They still have the policy of unlimited vacation at work and much like last year, I used it the best I could. I took four trips this year to the US, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Boston and New York again, which is kind of insane really. The most surprising trip honestly was the first trip of the year, to Atlanta with my sister to see the Nier concert on Easter weekend, which only just so happened by chance, just everything lined up perfectly for a quick 3-4 day trip and we did so much shit on those few days. While the concert itself was worth the trip alone, I thoroughly enjoyed the Coke museum and the Aquarium, especially all the merch and shit that I ended up buying. The food in Atlanta is good if you know where to find it but like I wrote in my daily travel logs, is overall a shit city to go to unless you have something to go to like an event, would not recommend, especially with the crappy hotel that we went to. Las Vegas with my sister was also a mad lad insanity trip with the goal of attending the EVO fighting game tournament/convention, which is something I had always wanted to do as well as do/see all the bait Vegas thing, most notable see the thing at the Sphere. EVO was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it to the fullest, would definitely consider going again in the future, maybe not every year but when the game selection is good or when a new hype fighting games comes out. The convention merch aspect of EVO I didn’t expect to grow that much and didn’t expect to buy that much shit/merch as I did, but I did anyways and it was glorious, no regrets. The Sphere lived up to my expectations but the movie itself was questionable as mentioned in my travel logs so we’ll see if it gets blown up one day. As for Vegas overall, it lived up to my expectations, the casinos, the bling bling rich and extravagance of it all. What I didn’t expect was how hot it was going to be, especially for a July, damn it’s hot but it’s a desert after all. The food and buffets were good but way overpriced in general, Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen was good shit, worth it even tho expensive. Next I went to Boston to see YOASOBI in concert and tour the historical aspects of the city as well, this was like a week and a half after coming back from Vegas, insanity intensifies. YOASOBI in concert was great and was a great excuse to visit Boston as I had never been there before, the city itself is very nice and livable with all sorts of diverse people and things to see and do there, I even visited two boats here and walked the bait freedom trail and see all the old American history revolutionary war landmarks and shit. Lastly, to end off my last trip of the year again was solo travel to New York City, even though I visited there in 2023, they moved AnimeNYC to the end of August much earlier than the Nov date prior so that was a thing. I ended up getting hololive tickets to the world tour concert at the convention so I just had to go again, just like Suisei’s concert in year’s prior. I had a great time again at AnimeNYC although honestly it was worse than the first time I went probably because they didn’t have enough time to plan and had a shortened time-frame, I still enjoyed it however because of Hololive’s large booth and presence at the convention. I also ended up going to DUMBO this time, fulfilling my dad’s greatest wish and taking a photo of myself in front of the Brooklyn bridge, I also ended up walking that bridge too. Yes, this year I really outdid myself this time in regards to the amount of travel, four trips all on planes to the US, while not as grand as Japan, it was a really fun experience. While I haven’t played guilty gear strive much this year, I hopped on and brought the season 4 pass that has Dizzy, Venom, Unika which is a new character from the recently announced Guilty Gear Strive anime and Lucy from Cyberpunk anime, good shit. Dizzy was completely redesigned and reworked game play-wise so I don’t really think she’s a character I would like to play anymore, too bad. I hope to play a bit more this coming year in 2025, especially when the anime comes around to airing, going to be good shit I hope. For the sake of the Nier concert I played the Nier Replicant remake/remaster of the original Nier game that came out recently and it was good, necessary lore to fully enjoy the concert, no regrets. FF7 Rebirth came out and I also finished it, the second game of the FF7 remake trilogy, it’s an incredible game with so much stuff and polish but it has almost too much content in it, it’s overwhelming really but worth a play. Because of that I also enjoyed attending the FF7 Rebirth orchestra concert in Toronto, which was also a fun experience with nice merch haul like the exclusive busters sword pen lights x2 that I obtained, ahahaha. I also recently finished the new Vanillaware game, Unicorn Overlord, a game that is a bit like Fire Emblem and it’s pretty good, although it has some mechanical game system flaws which I can overlook because of the beautiful 2d sprite artwork and backgrounds. Good shit. Once again, I am pleased to say that I didn’t start any new mobile games, even though every year the urge to is always there, like Nikke and such because I see all the cute figures coming out of that franchise. In FGO, I am a god, I got basically everyone I really wanted this year, which is not alot really but mainly wanted Tsukihime Arcueid and even got her to NP2 for power, I even got my Morgan to NP3 which I also use alot. All of the good servants from summer I also got, although I kind of skipped out on Koyan of Dark as she isn’t that meta. For china boats Azurlane, it’s same as usual really, got everything I want, it’s not even a question anymore if I will get the boats, they expect it from you now but it’s still a game that I play daily along with FGO for mobile game purposes. FGO LB7 was finally released at the end of the year, still need to finish the 6.5 story first however. While there wasn’t any super mega hit movies like Oppenheimer like last year, I did see some movies in theaters like Dune 2 which was excellent, Civil War which was ok, Sabaton movie concert on Halloween and Gladiator 2, which was good but doesn’t hold a candle to the original. On the home watching side of things, I saw Deadpool and the Wolverine, which was pretty good and Alien Romulus, a kind of soft reboot sequel fare which was also pretty good too. So good movies but no masterpieces, except maybe Dune 2 but then again, I can only say that when part 3 is out and the trilogy is complete. I had the displeasure of watching The Eternals, but the good part is that now I know that it is shit, so I can now talk shit on it if I wanted to. There was alot of good anime shows this year, many sequels and new shows but too many to remember off the top of my head like Oshi No Ko S2 and Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete just to name a couple. My family is still alive and doing ok, my sister is alive and doing good, I have not died yet and I am doing alright. A Bro has his second child and I visited his house to visit, first time after many years, good times. A Bro brought a Tesla, at least it’s not a Cybertruck. A Bro got a more stable job working more human normal hours, which is great. The Bros are alive and doing stuff. Randy’s patties reopened after closing for a year or so after much support from the community, which is considered one of the best patties in Toronto, I have to try one of these days. Uniqlo opened at STC which is good as well as Ikea City, which is great. Hotdog combo at Costco still cost $1.5. I am using generative AI to help me a work now, which is encouraged by my org and it has improved my knowledge and productivity in learning new things. Covid is just whatever now, although it still exists. While the vtuber industry in general had a really rough year, Hololive still had a very good year despite the many graduations it suffered and lost of talent/members. Hololive EN Gen 4 Justice debuted this year and are focused on getting viewers from europe as 3 of the 4 members are European, one British, one German and one Italian and the last being American, good shit. All very good and talented girls which will sure to grow and expand the brand. One of my favorites, Koseki Bijou recently moved to Japan, fully committing herself to do the best she can while in Hololive. Fuwamoco also moved to Japan as well as Zeta from the ID branch, which is truly showing their dedication towards hololive. Hololive’s new JP branch debut recently FlowGlow, which consists of a couple of former AKB48/NMB48 idols which is really something and a few other high profile JP talents that were already popular, good shit and they appear to follow the same path as ReGloss as units and doing away with the concept of ‘generations’ for one reason or another. Hololive EN had their second concert in NYC and many members had solo lives for the first time like Fubuki, Miko, Towa etc. Many members this year reached over 1 million subs, most notable being Mumei, Irys, Luna, Roboco, Azki, Kronii, Fuwamoco and lastly Fauna – 6 days before her graduation. Holo also had lots of baller event collabs like HoloGTA RP, Minecraft ENRECO and several other big collabs across branches, good shit. Hololive also had their first ever MLB collab with the LA Dogers which is huge in collaboration with baseball god Shohei Ohtani. Gura is still alive, even though she rarely streams. Pekora and Marine have had a great year, with Pekora being nominated in the game awards for best streamer even though she lost, still cool tho. Suisei had her first mainstream megahit Bibideba with a banger music video and is played on mainstream radio in japan and in malls/shops. Aqua’s graduation stream breaks many concurrent viewer records, something like 600k active watchers for her final live concert stream. Outside of the hololive sphere, Selen after recovering from her trauma and attempt, returns as indie vtuber DokiBird, with massive support from the community behind her to continue streaming and do what she wants to do, free from the shackles of black company Nijisanji. DokiBird gains over 800k subs on YouTube in under a year, a huge feat for her since she was being suppressed by Nijisanji. She and MintMaid, another popular former Nijisanji talent that left plan for an event for their 3d live concert on their own as indies with the help of Dooby, formerly Ame of Hololive. Dooby herself debuts as an indie with a different direction that she wants to take to help other indie smaller vtubers now and make that her main focus of attention instead of being a main talent. Aqua returns as Sakuna as an indie after a few months to much rejoicing of vtuber fans, with the same artist that illustrated Aqua. Formerly Yozora Mel also returns as an indie as Rica. DokiBird also re debuts with a new design/model by the same illustrator that did Selen and ends up calling her fan base the same name as before, Dragoons, which is jokes. DokiBird gets a planned nendroid which is insane since it hasn’t even been a year since she went indie. Hololive’s revenue is doing very good with the main money makers being events/concerts and merch, especially the newly released Hololive TCG. Holostars is miracliously still alive, being supported by Bettel and some of the newer male gen’s like Jurrard and Ruze. Iron Mouse on twitch becomes the most subbed creator for a time and the most recognized western based vtuber, winning much recognition. On the money and the stock market world, despite being supposedly a year filled with uncertainty, it didn’t seem that way for the stock market as the S&P 500 reached all time highs this year with a year over year gain of roughly 20-25% returns on investment, which is insane. All of the mega tech corps on the market like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla and newly crowned Nvidia are literally propping up the entire stock market, as Nvidia itself experienced massive growth this year with it’s stock increasing in value over 1000% over the past year, insanity. Other related chip and AI companies like TSMC also experienced growth because of Nvidia, basically ensuring the safety of Taiwan at least for now because China wouldn’t dare try to invade Taiwan if it means destroying TSMC, they produce something like 70-80% of the entire world’s supply of high tech chips that power all the mobile phones, Apple Samsung, all of it including other super computer AI stuff and US military chips that power advanced aircraft, missiles and other weapons. I personally have done very well in my financial investments as I am heavily invested into US equities and stock and I am sure many people who also invested have done well as well. I think the US has actually accomplished the ‘soft landing’ that was nearly impossible and prevented a recession, the last year of the stock market basically proves it. Bitcoin reaches over 100k in value, marking a new high for the original crypto currency that has attracted traditional financial institutions to invest and take a look into the asset because money. Sweden officially joined NATO which is great as now both Scandinavian countries are part of the alliance to protect against Russia. Taylor Swift came to Toronto and had 6 concerts, bringing in something like $282 million into our local economy because hotels, food, tourism and shopping for the swifties, which is great. I attended my first Blue Jays baseball game for free from my company since I was a little kid this year, they lost but it was a cool experience none the less. Food prices are somewhat more stable this year, but still slowly rising with inflation more under control which is good. My condo switched over to Bell from Rogers and now receive pretty fast and stable/reliable internet speeds although the location of the modem is not great and I have to get a extender, even though my place is so small to resolve dead zones. I got a new phone, Samsung Galaxy S24+ during Black Friday deal, the biggest sized phone I ever had and it’s pretty good, I like it. It came with as a deal free, Galaxy Buds3 and I am actually using it now, these copy cat Airpods works great, never tried wireless earbuds before, cool. I discovered what’s all the fuss about with Spotify and it’s pretty great, even if you just use the free account, not paid, you have access to thousands upon thousands of music and artists, even obscure weeb stuff like anime and game music, even hololive music, a long overdue replacement to downloading mp3’s and ipod days which I never really got over/moved away from until now. They have roughly like 70-80% of the music I used to have on my old ipod which is mainly not that famous metal bands and some very famous ones, all free, no adds, at least for now for me, good shit. A lot of good video games came out this year that I didn’t play, such as the first AAA Chinese made game Black Wukong, proving that Chinese people can actually bootleg even AAA games decently, good job. Other top nice games that came out this year but haven’t played are Tekken 8, HellDivers 2, Astrobot, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Hades 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Stellar Blade, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, good shit. I actually brought Stellar Blade and plan to get around to playing it sometime in 2025 whenever that will be. There is probably a lot of bad things that I missed that happened in 2024 but because Trump is going to be president again, they don’t seem so bad anymore, because Trump becoming president again is probably the worst thing that happened this year for the world. The GST/HST tax break is nice, although it’s just a gimmick, just like Fords $200 carbon rebate or something. Toxic influencer Johnny Somali who shat on Japan gets punched in the face and arrested when visiting South Korea, will probably face jail time, gets what he deserves. So yea, I think that’s about it from what I can remember from 2024 in terms of good things, which honestly is not a whole lot, better than nothing I suppose.

In being consistent with our times of insanity, 2024 by and large when measuring the overall outcomes and events of the world, was a very very bad year by all accounts. In fact, this year is probably the worst year since 2022, when Putin started his invasion of Ukraine; everything since then has escalated and tensions in just about every area in the world has increased and things have gotten worse. Ukraine, Russia, Hamas, Gaza, Isreal, Palestine, South Korea, North Korea, China, Taiwan, India, US Election, Trump, Elon Musk, Lugi Manigone, Puff Daddy, just thinking about a few of these in a single sentence makes you go ‘ugh’ cause you know it’s been a bad year. You know that things are bad when even Canada itself is facing a snap Federal election because Trudeau has dealt so poorly with the influx of mass Indian temp workers and its’ effects on Canada that even his own vice PM/Finance minster stepped down and those within his own party are calling for his resignation. I would like to think that what is happening in Canada is also happening across the world to varying degrees as-well, even in places like Japan, where now so many employees in stores are Indian. The drastic increase of immigrants to Canada has made everything worse for everyone who already lives here, and I just kind of shake my head when only now the Federal government acknowledges that it is a problem and are reducing immigration numbers for the next few years, not that it matters since almost no matter what, the Conservatives are going to win the next election, it’s just a matter if it’s a minority win or a landslide blowout majority. Luckily, because it appears things are so bad in other places in the world too, powers like China are unlikely to act right now, because they are dealing with their own domestic shit now, lest they want to start some shit with Taiwan to try and redirect attention from the government and create a unified movement/enemy. But with Trump coming into power again in a few weeks, who knows what’s going to happen then with trade and the promise of tariffs in North America, things could get pretty bad for Canadians and our already poor economy built upon housing and real estate as a crutch. America will probably do fine because it’s America, but Canada will have to fight in order to protect our interests and with Trump saying he is going to deport illegal immigrants, we have a crisis brewing where people will flee to Canada or Mexico to escape deportation from America, which further worsens our situation. And with best friend Elon Musk by his side, Trump will probably just do anything that Elon asks of him such as further deregulation of everything for probably the worse interests of consumers and for the benefit of mega corporations and the rich.

—

Who knows, I have no idea what’s going to happen next year now that Trump is going to be president again, let alone another four years of it.

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Ironically enough, despite how bad this year was, for me on a personal fun times experience level, it was pretty good, again. Traveling to four US cities in retrospect this past year really does seem like a farewell tour of sorts, a kind of pilgrimages to see how America is in it’s current state at it’s high point, before Trump comes in and potentially destroys and ruins everything. I mean, they already have porn officially banned in most of the southern US states as of this year starting in 2025, I guess after roe vs wade being overturned in 2022, Republicans and the far right are moving towards their master plan of implementing ‘Project 2025’, a conservative think tank roadmap initiative to push forward new laws and policy to permanently shape American culture and social values to be ultra-conservative, basically trying to peel back progressive rule of law and try to go back into the 1940-50’s America where the white man has the power over everything. I mean, with Trump, America could very well on the path towards fascism and corporate oligarchy, I just hope that I am wrong and things are not as bad as people say things will be, only time will tell.

Well then, I guess I gotta still ‘party hard’ in 2025, the world is not going to end overnight, I hope. Might as well visit Britain, New York and who else knows where else I may travel to for fun. Cause you know, you never know when war or disaster might happen, both at home and around the world or some other health or personal tragedy, I ain’t getting any younger. Maybe the stock market will continue to go up, maybe it will crash, maybe I will lose my job and become unemployed for a year or more, maybe I will win the lottery and become a millionaire, maybe I will get sick or get diagnosed with some terminal illness. I mean, the year just started and there was a mass truck killing on new years day in New Orleans killing 15 people and a cybertruck blowing up in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on the same day…things are not ok. I have to do something, and I guess the only thing that I can be confident enough to do is see the world before it’s too late because in this time of great uncertainty and instability, we only have our sanity to rely on for piece of mind, perhaps even then that will be lost; because after all, we are living in time of ruin and madness, a time of:

Eternal Insanity

Ruin Impendent, the time has come.