My Boring Life

Vaccines (yay!)

Pasteurization

Implementing and enforcing food quality and sanitation standards. Did you know White Castle was called as such because their gimmic was that they continually cleaned and bleached their stores inside and out to prevent food poisoning.

The invention of antibiotics! The first sulfa drugs dropped in the 1930s-40s

Widespread access and distribution of enriched food products! Enriched flour did a lot to prevent malnutrition, and it’s how Wonderbread got its name!

We got a hell of a lot better with medical care for sick and premature infants. The first incubators for premature babies were actually used as something of a sideshow attraction at Coney Island! It was the only way the doctor who invented them could get funding to keep them running because no one thought it would work. It showed a lot of people that really premature babies could survive with the right treatment and eventually was adopted by hospitals.

The green revolution in agriculture that prevented around a billion people from starving to death

*Not limited to mammals

In the year 2000, there was not a single country in the world where they could have gotten married.

The first country to legalize same sex marriage was the Netherlands in 2001.

Now, in 2026, there are thirty-eight countries with same-sex marriage, with another two on average being added every year (x). Including three of the most populous countries in the world (the US, Brazil, and Mexico, x).

Altogether, over a billion people now live somewhere that same-sex marriage is legal. Twenty-five years ago, that number was zero.

Things are hard right now, but in so many ways they are so much better than they have been for a very, very long time.

In the year 2000, there was not a single country in the world where they could have gotten married.

The first country to legalize same sex marriage was the Netherlands in 2001.

Now, in 2026, there are thirty-eight countries with same-sex marriage, with another two on average being added every year (x). Including three of the most populous countries in the world (the US, Brazil, and Mexico, x).

Altogether, over a billion people now live somewhere that same-sex marriage is legal. Twenty-five years ago, that number was zero.

Things are hard right now, but in so many ways they are so much better than they have been for a very, very long time.