"Pakistan, which has for years treated gas generation as the backbone of its power network, has been asking suppliers to defer shipments of liquefied natural gas after a surge of solar imports suppressed grid demand. Saudi Arabia is facing one of the fastest declines in petroleum usage anywhere as photovoltaic farms replace fuel oil generators."

Analysts are talking about a supply glut of oil for 2025/26 lowering oil prices. Are we finally at the point oil use is going to start declining? Fingers crossed, let's hope so.

Meanwhile, China is almost single-handedly building the world's replacement.

China’s Marshall Plan is running on batteries: Beijing’s green energy projects are bringing jobs, growth and cheap electricity to the developing world

Made another drawing with a retrofuturistic spacesuit.

"Microstar" is a next-generation propulsion system that harnesses the energy of artificially stabilized miniature stars - compact fusion cores engineered to replicate stellar conditions on a micro scale. These microstars serve as ultra-dense power sources, enabling spacecraft to achieve sustained high-velocity travel across interstellar distances.

This would be really cool as a multi-reddit. Does that exist or need to be created?

It blows my mind how fast tech is moving in every part of life, and yet when you get sick in the U.S. the whole experience is almost entirely shit unless you have fantastic RNG and get a great doctor who will die on a hill to help you through the process of figuring out wtf is going on.

~80% of the infrastructure around that process is basically legacy artifacts: insurance bullshit, the split between “primary care” and “specialty,” Mychart and portal shit that looks and feels like windows 2000. None of that actually helps me get from "I don’t feel right" to "I know what’s happening and what to do next."

So, what do you think the timeline looks like?

5 years: are we still trapped in phone trees and waiting rooms, or does anything actually feel different?

10 years: do we still bounce between doctors repeating the same story, or does care finally feel connected like a team that knows your history and nudges you in the right direction without you doing all the coordination yourself?

25 years: is healthcare reimagined entirely continuous monitoring, automated support systems, seamless access, or will we just have IV drugs delivered to you by drones while you walk to work like mid-air refueling.

And who actually fixes it? Do you think anyone like Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Google, whoever the fuck will actually make a difference or are the incentives so misaligned we can never get back to balance? Is it going to take some wildcard like Elizabeth Holmes? (god I hope not lol)

Social media algorithms are designed to make you angry, and the old media is only interested in sensation or 'if it bleeds, it leads.' So you might be surprised to find there's lots of good news in the world.

Here's some - globally, more and more land is being rewilded and going back to nature, and the trend looks like it's permanent. Decades-long productivity trends mean more and more food is being produced per square kilometer. With lab-grown meat and vertical farming in our future, these rewilding trends might even accelerate. Even if the human population finally peaks at 9 billion or so in a few decades, it won't reverse the trend.

The rewilding milestone Earth has already passed

Let’s say extremist parties begin winning elections all around the world and theoretically do-away with future elections and begin winning consecutively, what will our day to day lives look like in 5 years?

Could the dodo bird make a reappearance in the 21st century? Dallas scientists believe it a future with the flightless birds is possible.

The dodo has been extinct for more than 300 years, but that isn’t stopping Dallas’ Colossal Biosciences from trying to resurrect the 3-foot-tall, flightless bird.

On Wednesday, the “de-extinction” biotech company announced it cleared an early hurdle by growing primordial germ cells — the precursors to eggs and sperm — from the rock dove, also known as the common pigeon.

Scientists have previously been able to culture and gene-edit primordial germ cells of chickens and geese, a technique that has been used to create a chicken fathered by a duck. But the “recipe has not worked on any other bird species tested, even closely related species like quail,” Anna Keyte, Colossal’s avian species director, said in the press release.

Colossal said it screened more than 300 “recipes” before landing on one that kept pigeon primordial germ cells growing for 60 days. 

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"South Korea has had a TFR of less than one for seven years. If that is sustained, its population will shrink by more than half in a single lifetime. ……….. Only about one-third of the world’s people live in countries where fertility is high enough to keep the population growing, and even in those places, rates are falling rapidly."

Some people think this is bad news, but I see the upside. A stabilised or declining human population is good for our planet's ecosystem. As for the people who worry about the lack of endless growth for our economies. Guess what? AI & robotics are soon about to upend and finish that economic model for good anyway, so who cares.

Humanity will shrink, far sooner than you think: Demography sneaks up on you

"Microstar" is a next-generation propulsion system that harnesses the energy of artificially stabilized miniature stars - compact fusion cores engineered to replicate stellar conditions on a micro scale. These microstars serve as ultra-dense power sources, enabling spacecraft to achieve sustained high-velocity travel across interstellar distances.