Forget about AI. The damage was done in 2008. The iphone, already-lethal 'safetyism', the triumph of feminism – the conspiracy was complete.

Jonathan Haidt's The anxious generation: How the Great Rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness (2024) starts with an arresting metaphor:

Matt Haig's The Humans (2013) uses sci fi, 'speculative fiction', for what it does best: reveal to us how lethal human beings are and how we need to control technology before it turns us into monsters and reduces planet Earth to … Gaza. This time it's a simple tale of the seductiveness of 'going native' faced with totalitarian alienation, and genocide by the latter against those oh-so seductive natives.

The US has become ground zero for gaylib, its rise following WWI, turbo-charged by WWII … and its slow decline following the dramatic AIDS crisis, which swept the world in the 1980-90s and lingers on today, proof positive that the 'gay lifestyle' is toxic, pathological. Three memoirs provide snapshots of the life and death of gaylib:

Meet Joe Black (1998) is basically a 2 1/2 hr anecdote, where an angelic Brad Pitt, the angel of death, comes and saves the day by impersonating an IRS agent investigating and exposing the vile young suitor Drew, as Brad takes fiancee Allison's father (Anthony Hopkins) to heaven. Brad quotes money-grubbing Drew: You can't avoid 'death and taxes'.

Yes, Death gets us all in the end, smokers and nonsmokers,

How can a cat be alive and dead at the same time?

I love how science has rediscovered religion. Leaving aside the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, the universe itself is conscious. In the beginning was consciousness -- inner light. Then there was outer light, etc. Mind you it took billions of years, but what's that in divine reckoning? Religion was the first 'science', followed by astrology. Now both despised. How times have changed.