• booscience@beehaw.org
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    7 hours ago

    I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do know this - oil reserves globally have been sinking fast, with levels predicted to reach near or actual zero by July, just in time for the traditional yearly mass travel period for Americans. Crops have been planted in half their usual numbers because of a lack of affordable fertilizer, and those crop shortages won’t be seen or felt until fall and winter at the earliest, but will be felt hard in winter and next spring, thanks to how crops and agricultural production works. Gas will continue to climb in prices, goods will continue to climbs in prices, until they’re unaffordable or there’s runs on necessary goods and perceived wants/needs. Then will come the lines. Then will come the anger when people go home without enough, or without any.

    So will they riot? Maybe not. But people have become much less social and community oriented since Covid, and since the attention economy has used algorithms to make people more extreme and more narcissistic than they were during shortages in the 70s and 80s, so i can tell you this - it won’t be pretty, whatever happens. It won’t be business as usual. Trust this old person. I know people, and I know the industries that are about to fuck it all up, after decades of warnings about just this kind of nexus of events in a perfect storm of shit.