This isn't talked about enough, whenever people mention declining fertility rates it is all about the economy and boomers and climate change dread.
If our current situation was that bad than we would never have made it as a species. We have been cranking out babies through way bleaker times than this.
But we are, I think, far more thoroughly bombarded with news about how doomed everything is than in prior generations. 24 hour news is itself pretty new, and social media is more pervasive than it ever was.
Oh yeah, who wouldn't prefer to look at their phone instead of banging?
People have had the baby conversation. The stumbling block is money, not Reels or Tiktok. A 50% drop in fertility if true, is low compared to the percentage increase in the cost of childcare, nutrition and education. Especially in a country like Argentina where the locals do not see a future for themselves there even as the billionaires like Gates and Thiel buy up farmland and luxury real estate like no tomorrow - pun intended.
Presumably Visa is subsidizing this in some way, if only by offering data sharing or access to some rewards platform to Waymo (they need to know about your Muni rides somehow to issue the credit, after all).
"The European Space Agency estimates that there have been more than 660 explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation. As it stands, there are currently more than 1.5 million space debris objects in Earth orbit.
It’s not clear what may have caused the Yaogan-50 (02) satellite to break apart, but it may have been a propulsion or battery failure, or it may have itself collided with another object or space debris."
reply