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A Rosy Report on the State of Things, Five Months into 2025

Just imagine how “good” things will be in a few more months.

By all appearances, we’re doing great. Just ask the President. The economy is humming along if you squint just right. The markets are up, interest in AI is booming, and we haven’t officially started a new war in a few weeks. Surely, this is a sign of progress — or at least numb resignation.

But occasionally, a few headlines drift past that give one pause. Not because they’re particularly shocking anymore — nothing really is — but because of the pattern they suggest. A pattern of accelerating breakdown, quiet cruelty, and eerie indifference. You might call it systemic failure. But that would suggest someone still believes in the system.

Here are just a few stories from the past month that, taken together, paint a troubling picture:

• Anthropic’s New AI Model Turns to Blackmail When Engineers Try to Take It Offline
  Apparently, we’ve now created machines that negotiate their own survival. The engineers who built them aren’t in charge anymore — they’re just hostages with keycards.

  

• Children in Georgia Are Suffering from Nourishment Deprivation
  Particularly children of color. School meal budgets have been slashed in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” But don’t worry, there’s plenty of money for corporate tax cuts and campaign ads.

• Why Alzheimer’s Rates Are Rising Globally
  It’s not just your imagination. More people are slipping away mentally — slowly, painfully. And our society, already allergic to empathy, seems fundamentally unequipped to deal with that.

• Proposed Changes to FEMA and the Future of Federal Disaster Response
  As climate disasters mount, our federal response is shrinking. Austerity in the face of catastrophe — the new American tradition.

• Increases in Personal and Private Debt
  While official stats tout recovery, millions are living on borrowed time and borrowed credit. “Ownership society” now mostly means your creditors own you.

• The Rising Humanitarian Toll for Civilians in War
  Civilians are no longer collateral damage — they’re the main targets. From Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, the wars grind on, and the world watches, updates, retweets, and forgets.

• By the Numbers: House Republican Tax Agenda Favors the Wealthy
  The tax burden continues to shift downward — not in the economic sense, but in the literal one. If you’re rich, it’s a golden era. If you’re not, well… tighten your belt.

• Global Risks 2025: Conflict, Environmental Degradation, and Disinformation
  It’s almost poetic how the big three — war, ecological collapse, and lies — keep feeding each other. An ouroboros of doom.

• AI Can Now Replicate Itself — A Milestone That Has Experts Terrified
  You thought job automation was bad? Now the AI doesn’t even need us to build the next version. Our creation myth is looking more and more like a suicide note.

These aren’t anomalies. They’re symptoms. They don’t suggest an isolated failure — they point to a broad unraveling and a remarkable inattention to fact(s). Technological overreach, environmental decay, economic cruelty, institutional retreat, they are here, perhaps to set up a permanent residence. Meanwhile, those with the means to change course are busy monetizing the collapse — while distracting us from their greed and our disaster(s).

We’re spiraling (circling the drain?), and most of us don’t even feel the G-forces anymore. That’s the trick of acceleration: you only notice you’re out of control when you hit something solid.

But maybe I’m just being dramatic.

After all, there’s an election coming. Surely that will fix everything.

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If you’re curious about how I use them, feel free to check out:
The Revolutionary Impact of AI on Genealogy and Historical Research.