I think others see this but not enough: the slow collapse of Liberal democracy.

A rot has set in and people in politics and government no longer believe in liberal democracy. If you read history you find impassioned fighting for liberty, freedom and equality.

Now we have quasi democracies, with erosions of freedoms, rights and even dumbing down of access to news coverage and knowledge. Countries like the USA and UK that were leading lights in liberal democracy have fallen back into more authoritarian regimes. Countries in continental Europe that were bastions of liberal democracy also seem to losing their way. Big corporations and a wealthy elite are working against the interests of Liberal democracy and we’re letting them do it.

Authoritarianism is the scourge of our age - being pushed by China and Russia and taking hold in India, the middle east, Africa and increasingly in the west.

It’s depressing to see the rot.

When I was young I saw the night sky with the milky way clearly visible. I never got the chance to see it again.

I travelled to the top of a remote mountain free of any light pollution or air pollution. It was a dark night with new moon. The sky was completely clear. I still had good eyesight at that time.

The starry night sky was magnificent and mesmerizing.

The way fear, anger, hatred, and the resulting division is being used to control populations.

We have more in common with one another than we think. We all do. But our media highlights the things about each other that we fear or hate.

I know plenty of people across the political spectrum. There is a distinct lack of empathy for anyone who doesn’t share specific views or experiences.

Note, I am not trying to “both sides” here, I’m really not. Modern conservatism is dangerous. But it remains in place not only because conservatives are fed fear and hatred about progressives, but also because progressives are fed fear and anger towards conservatives.

I don’t think the original goal here was to control people, I think fear sells. We seek out warnings, they impact our mental state more. News organizations originally realized they could make more money by making their audience afraid.

But there have always been those who capitalize on those fears. And today it means that those who control the channels simply need to keep us afraid of and angry at one another over some wedge issues and they don’t then need to fear anyone coming together to make actual meaningful societal change happen.

I wish we’d all spend a bit more time talking to other people. But that’s becoming more and more rare.

Following a reaction to being put under for surgery, I see way more colors than I used to. When I look at a rainbow, I can see more bands of color than normal.

Down side? Bright light is physically painful. When I woke up from surgery I had to beg to be put in a dark room.

Having spent too much time in OS security, I wish people building today’s products could realize and internalize just how their project is a house of cards built on top of a house of cards, security-speaking. We’ve normalized a seriously insane amount if sketchy shit that the critique of a modern product core to many linux OS distributions was seen as just old people ranting … and the shady shit continued.

One day we’re going to run into a series of deep-seated security exploits that will blow our mind and cause a chernobyl of damage, and we may not even link it to a particular weak link among SO MANY weak links; but that’s what we’re looking at. And the fact that we’re ignoring common-sense, best-practice rules to develop core apps is leaving a hole in the proverbial fence that we’re ignoring as well.

God help us.