has anyone else noticed that pretty much everyone who is worth knowing seems to be doing really bad all of the time and is never allowed a moment's respite from all the pointless cruelties and horrors ❓❓❓❓❓❓❓

You can also read This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It's on bookshop.org and, of course, on the Evil Empire website. It's all in the title, which is an ironic quoting of people who say what bubble-istas always say - what AI people are saying right now.

Ahmad Doli Siregar

the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.