#Quality Of Life

[reasonsforhope]

Here's the top 2 stories from each of Fix The News's six categories:

1. A game-changing HIV drug was the biggest story of 2024

In what Science called the 'breakthrough of the year', researchers revealed in June that a twice-yearly drug called lenacapavir reduced HIV infections in a trial in Africa to zero—an astonishing 100% efficacy, and the closest thing to a vaccine in four decades of research. Things moved quick; by October, the maker of the drug, Gilead, had agreed to produce an affordable version for 120 resource-limited countries, and by December trials were underway for a version that could prevent infection with just a single shot per year. 'I got cold shivers. After all our years of sadness, particularly over vaccines, this truly is surreal.'

2. Another incredible year for disease elimination

Jordan became the first country to eliminate leprosy, Chad eliminated sleeping sickness, Guinea eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus, Belize, Jamaica, and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, India achieved the WHO target for eliminating black fever, India, Viet Nam and Pakistan eliminated trachoma, the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness, and Brazil and Timor Leste eliminated elephantiasis.

15. The EU passed a landmark nature restoration law

When countries pass environmental legislation, it’s big news; when an entire continent mandates the protection of nature, it signals a profound shift. Under the new law, which passed on a knife-edge vote in June 2024, all 27 member states are legally required to restore at least 20% of land and sea by 2030, and degraded ecosystems by 2050. This is one of the world’s most ambitious pieces of legislation and it didn’t come easy; but the payoff will be huge - from tackling biodiversity loss and climate change to enhancing food security.

16. Deforestation in the Amazon halved in two years

Brazil’s space agency, INPE, confirmed a second consecutive year of declining deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. That means deforestation rates have roughly halved under Lula, and are now approaching all time lows. In Colombia, deforestation dropped by 36%, hitting a 23-year low. Bolivia created four new protected areas, a huge new new state park was created in Pará to protect some of the oldest and tallest tree species in the tropical Americas and a new study revealed that more of the Amazon is protected than we originally thought, with 62.4% of the rainforest now under some form of conservation management.

39. Millions more children got an education

Staggering statistics incoming: between 2000 and 2023, the number of children and adolescents not attending school fell by nearly 40%, and Eastern and Southern Africa, achieved gender parity in primary education, with 25 million more girls are enrolled in primary school today than in the early 2000s. Since 2015, an additional 110 million children have entered school worldwide, and 40 million more young people are completing secondary school.

40. We fed around a quarter of the world's kids at school

Around 480 million students are now getting fed at school, up from 319 million before the pandemic, and 104 countries have joined a global coalition to promote school meals, School feeding policies are now in place in 48 countries in Africa, and this year Nigeria announced plans to expand school meals to 20 million children by 2025, Kenya committed to expanding its program from two million to ten million children by the end of the decade, and Indonesia pledged to provide lunches to all 78 million of its students, in what will be the world's largest free school meals program.

50. Solar installations shattered all records

Global solar installations look set to reach an unprecedented 660GW in 2024, up 50% from 2023's previous record. The pace of deployment has become almost unfathomable - in 2010, it took a month to install a gigawatt, by 2016, a week, and in 2024, just 12 hours. Solar has become not just the cheapest form of new electricity in history, but the fastest-growing energy technology ever deployed, and the International Energy Agency said that the pace of deployment is now ahead of the trajectory required for net zero by 2050.  

51. Battery storage transformed the economics of renewables

Global battery storage capacity surged 76% in 2024, making investments in solar and wind energy much more attractive, and vice-versa. As with solar, the pace of change stunned even the most cynical observers. Price wars between the big Chinese manufacturers pushed battery costs to record lows, and global battery manufacturing capacity increased by 42%, setting the stage for future growth in both grid storage and electric vehicles - crucial for the clean flexibility required by a renewables-dominated electricity system. The world's first large-scale grid battery installation only went online seven years ago; by next year, global battery storage capacity will exceed that of pumped hydro.

65. Democracy proved remarkably resilient in a record year of elections

More than two billion people went to the polls this year, and democracy fared far better than most people expected, with solid voter turnout, limited election manipulation, and evidence of incumbent governments being tamed. It wasn't all good news, but Indonesia saw the world's biggest one day election, Indian voters rejected authoritarianism, South Korea's democratic institutions did the same, Bangladesh promised free and fair elections following a 'people's victory', Senegal, Sri Lanka and Botswana saw peaceful transfers of power to new leaders after decades of single party rule, and Syria saw the end of one of the world's most horrific authoritarian regimes.

66. Global leaders committed to ending violence against children

In early November, while the eyes of the world were on the US election, an event took place that may prove to be a far more consequential for humanity. Five countries pledged to end corporal punishment in all settings, two more pledged to end it in schools, and another 12, including Bangladesh and Nigeria, accepted recommendations earlier in the year to end corporal punishment of children in all settings. In total, in 2024 more than 100 countries made some kind of commitment to ending violence against children. Together, these countries are home to hundreds of millions of children, with the WHO calling the move a 'fundamental shift.'

73. Space exploration hit new milestones

NASA’s Europa Clipper began a 2.9 billion kilometre voyage to Jupiter to investigate a moon that may have conditions for life; astronomers identified an ice world with a possible atmosphere in the habitable zone; and the James Webb Telescope found the farthest known galaxy. Closer to Earth, China landed on the far side of the moon, the Polaris Dawn crew made a historic trip to orbit, and Starship moved closer to operational use – and maybe one day, to travel to Mars. 

74. Next-generation materials advanced

A mind-boggling year for material science. Artificial intelligence helped identify a solid-state electrolyte that could slash lithium use in batteries by 70%, and an Apple supplier announced a battery material that can deliver around 100 times better energy density. Researchers created an insulating synthetic sapphire material 1.25 nanometers thick, plus the world’s thinnest lens, just three atoms across. The world’s first functioning graphene-based semiconductor was unveiled (the long-awaited ‘wonder material’ may finally be coming of age!) and a team at Berkeley invented a fluffy yellow powder that could be a game changer for removing carbon from the atmosphere.

-via Fix The News, December 19, 2024

[gent-illmatic]

NATURALLY 👌🏾

[furiousgoldfish]

I hear a lot of 'Don't give up, keep trying, you'll get there!' when people mention some of their worst struggles, but you know, it's okay to give up. If something is making you feel awful about yourself, it's stressing you out to the point where you lose your life quality over it, if you're identifying your entire value over how it goes, if you're experiencing crushing anxiety over it, if you're starting to feel suicidal over it, it's okay to give up. You are worth more than that thing that is stressing you out.

I can't think of anything that is worth bearing so much pain for. What in life is worth losing your will to live? We humans don't need to spend our life struggling so badly. We need comfort, feeling good about ourselves, feeling worthy, feeling safe, and cozy, and peaceful, and happy. If trying desperately hard at something is taking this away from you, it might not be worth it. Finding new ways to experience calm and comfort, that could be a better focus.

We're not alive only to accomplish. We can exist just to find ways to feel good. Even if it's something that people wouldn't usually do, even if you feel calmer and better when alone, when not accomplishing anything, when you're removed from any stress or competition, when you're just you and there's nothing to compare yourself to. You can do that. There's nobody worthy of judging you for that.

[siofae]

I'm "avoid Covid" as much as possible, but not everyone can 100% isolate which is why masking is so important. Yeah, I know every time I go out is a risk because I'm the only one masking most of the time. I also invested in a flomask to try and get the best protection I can. I haven't ever tested positive for Covid but I'm sure I've probably had it asymptomatically. I can't afford to test constantly, I'm on disability which pays pennies. You aren't superior for being a novid and thinking less of people for not 100% isolating is ableist, frankly. Would I survive without a lot of my treatment? Probably, but I would have no quality of life. People are allowed to take risks that improve their quality of life. That doesn't make us plague rats.

[gotellmama]

[loganwritesprobably]

Autism Study

My name is Logan, and I'm still recruiting

I am in my final year at university and in order to complete my dissertation I'm conducting a study on autism, hyperlexia and adult quality of life.

This is a huge passion of mine, and my project supervisor has said if my research is a high quality, there is a chance my research is publishable, and to get high quality research, I need a high volume of responses.

If this is enough for you, the link is here for you to complete the survey, and it should only take about ten minutes. If you'd like to know more, there's more below the cut. You must be 18 or older to partake

I cannot emphasise enough how valuable it is for people to share this with friends, to reblog, to share this with family members, to redistribute this link so I can get even more participants. If you can't partake, please reblog

I am a psychology student, and technically I do not complete a dissertation but a final project. This involves me conducting a study of my own making, on a topic of my choice (in a certain area) and then analysing it and writing a report paper on it which is what will be graded.

My research question is: Should more weight be placed on the connection between hyperlexia and autism, leading to a higher rate of diagnoses, in order to improve adult quality of life?

Hyperlexia - a childhood condition in which a child's reading ability is considered advanced for their age, but their comprehension ability does not match.

I'm looking at the rates of self/lack of autism diagnosis and hyperlexia rates to determine whether a large number of those self/lacking diagnosis had hyperlexia (and therefore may have been perceived as 'high functioning' reducing their chances of being diagnosed), to suggest that more children with hyperlexia should be assessed for autism, despite a 'lack of signs', to hopefully increase the rates of autism identified in childhood.

Past studies have identified that adults with autism experienced quality of life improvement once gaining a late diagnosis, and that those who were diagnosed young had an overall better quality of life, and so, following from the previous point, if more autism is identified in childhood, general quality of life of the population should increase.

[kouhaiofcolor]

Dude you know what makes less and less sense to me the older i get? The basis of being charged for rent and utilities in this day and age when we spend less and less time actually at home doing anything fr. Like when you take into consideration how fucking burnt out we are on a regular basis (esp and particularly among adolescents and young adults), how do I even have a bill for utilities I’m never home to really use for any significant amount of time?

I’m being charged increasingly for streaming services i don’t have the energy outside of work to watch with any actual consistency or attention. Most of the time I turn the mf tv on for white noise — to scroll through social media on my damn phone 😂 bc the sound of the tv in the background gives me this illusion of control over how I’m spending my time “leisuring”, only bc it’s something i can use to convince myself that the shackles have been at least temporarily removed. They’re never removed though. Literally ever.

You spend $200 on 10 damn items at the grocery store now; groceries that don’t even last, at that. The essential-est essentials have prices straight out of apocalyptic hell. At the same time, this is the same damn country that decided no one has a technical right to food or sustenance — with the phenomena of food insecurity all over the damn nation. People can’t even truly afford to take care of their health being tethered to working “tirelessly”, and with health insurance having no seriousness here whatsoever.

I’m paying 1,000+ damn dollars a month for rent alone, working for shit wages that never really budge in any way that matters and that I can’t actually save shit with, bc I never really have any disposable income. It’s just a fucking nightmare. How are y’all doing this with children??? How are y’all doing this with dependents and pets and car payments and student loans and credit card debt on top of a never ending series of American obligations?? How are y’all not losing your very minds living like this every day??? The math doesn’t even add up. Logic doesn’t even apply.

There’s nothing logical or fair about any of this. It doesn’t even make systemic sense the way we’re charged damn near everything year-round to exist here. How are they incentivizing y’all to breed playing w our rights like this in our faces?? It’s worth it to y’all? I could grind my teeth to nothing trying to make the vaguest sense of it. I feel so utterly squeezed by and ensnared in bills 24/7/365. And like………… in a way…… it kinda doesn’t make declining birth rates seem so bad? This really might be for the best.

Tf we supposed to do, just work for other human beings all our lives? 8 billion of us?? What right do human beings have to demand such consistent energy from other human beings? 😂 Just to be a vessel by which others procure and sustain wealth via our underpaid and exhausted labor while we struggle to survive on meager resources? Doesn’t seem sustainable. Or realistic. Or humane. I’ve never wanted to be here less. I’ve never wanted to not be needed so badly in my entire life. I’m so fucking tired of being here.

[mx-lamour]

Just found a picture of myself naked with breasts and I cannot even comprehend the way I gaslit myself into thinking those weren't big and that was fine for so long. They were not an insignificant obstacle. Who even was that.

Two weeks post op. Only two weeks. Everything is different now. I feel so normal.

I have scarred other women already by pointing out that my chest no longer rests on top of my stomach when I slouch and that my nipples are actually attached to my body now instead of floating around in space. These are things I noticed and had to contend with every day.

It was not just about looks. It was about high key sensory sensitivities. Don't let anyone guilt you, scare you, or convince you to stave off quality of life improvements.

[cilil]

So I think we have all seen those posts going around that were talking about some users sorting AO3 by hits and kudos and using ratio to determine if the fic is "worth" (yucky wording ngl) reading. Once again I'm glad that I saw pretty much all of the people around me agreeing that this modus operandi is... suboptimal to say the least, for reasons I don't need to rehash in this post.

I've now gone one step further and disabled stats on AO3 altogether so I don't have to worry about anyone's "performance" or "popularity" and can let the fics speak for themselves.

If you'd like to do the same or are bothered by the numbers for other reasons, be it sensory overload due to too much stuff on your screen, feeling down because your fics don't get as much attention or whatever else (these are all very valid and understandable reasons btw!), here's a link to the script. OP also provided a guide with screenshots showing exactly how to set it up and which part of the code to delete if you want your inbox to remain visible.

Happy reading!💜

[reasonsforhope]

"In one of the more remarkable marches of human progress, Bangladesh has reached the point of near-universal electricity access for its citizens.

Coupled with the rapid electrification has been one of the greatest single declines in the poverty rate of a nation ever seen, falling from 44.2% in 1991 to 18.7% in 2022.

In 1991, only 14% of the nation had access to electricity. By 2021, 99% had access.

Granted, half of these households are considered according to Our World in Data to have lower tier access, which accounts for home lighting and charging mobile phones at least 4 hours a day, but the other half are considered as having higher tier access, defined as the added capacity to power high-load appliances (such as fridges) for more than eight hours a day.

Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated large country with a density of 3,020 per square mile. As the twelfth densest country in the world, the 11 above Bangladesh are all microstates whose combined land area would not even equal half the size of the smallest state in Bangladesh.

To put this into perspective, (a rather silly perspective) if one wanted to reduce the population density of Bangladesh to that of Mongolia, its borders would have to include both all of Africa and all of Eurasia. That’s how crowded Bangladesh is, and what these amazing reductions in poverty truly mean to global human flourishing."

-via Good News Network, January 21, 2025

--

Note: This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that very, very few people in the West know the degree to which absolutely massive societal progress has been happening in a lot of different developing countries.

Especially around access to infrastructure and access to electricity.

The quality of life improvements to electricity access are massive.

It's not just access to phones/the internet (already a huge deal that opens up massive channels of communication and information-sharing).

It's being able to preserve food because you have a fridge, meaning you get to spend less money on food/have less food waste/run fewer errands/have way more flexibility around food.

It's being able to do things after dark, because you have a lightbulb. It's being able to work late, make more of your time.

It's less air pollution because people can use electricity instead of burning fuel for things like heat/light/cooking. (Yes I know these things often use fuel or natural gas still, but they can be done with electricity, and a lot of developing countries are skipping over a natural gas/etc. phase and straight into renewables.)

Hell, it's safety. I had a friend when I was younger who was from southeast Asia. She was horribly injured when she was a kid because her family only had kerosene oil lamps that had to be manually refilled. If her family had had access to electricity, that never would have happened.

It's infrastructure for heating, air conditioning, and water access. It's so, so many things. It's huge.

[lobautumny]

So like, there's some really shitty video that this toy saw a while back about QoL mods in Terraria and how if you install all of them and then crank all of their settings up to the maximum, then the game basically plays itself. The whole video was weirdly hostile and vindictive and effectively just made fun of the concept of QoL features/mods as a whole. But it stuck in this toy's mind, not because the video itself holds any value, but because the core topic of how quality of life & accessibility features have a tangible impact on a game's design is really interesting and nobody talks about it with any kind of nuance.

So like, Terraria is obviously a very different game from what it used to be. But all of the raw content (hardmode, bosses, biomes, weapons, NPCs, etc.) that always gets the spotlight in updates only makes up a relatively-small portion of that outside of, like, the tinkerer’s workshop from 1.1, and damage classes being added in 1.0.6, both being relatively-early additions. The plethora of things that were changed/added to make the game look nicer also aren't the core thing responsible, obviously. So what is the biggest reason modern Terraria feels so alien when compared to 1.0.X versions, or even 1.1?

It's the quality of life features. Inventory management got exponentially easier/more efficient, you have a minimap at all times, smart cursor lets you expend far less effort mining and dealing with backwalls, there are special equipment slots for grappling hooks and light pets, grappling hooks are bound to a hotkey instead of being an item that you need to manually select and use, you can use items directly from your inventory instead of needing to place them in your hotbar and then select that hotbar slot, you automatically walk up 1-block inclines and open/close doors as you walk through them, there’s a plethora of features to make getting around the world trivial, the start of the game moves way faster due to the player getting access to better equipment faster, block-swapping exists… This toy posits that this is all why Terraria feels like a fundamentally different game. In old versions, it felt like you had to fight tooth and nail to get anything accomplished, but nowadays, everything feels all buttery-smooth. The main friction you encounter in progressing through the game is with boss fights, as Re-Logic obviously intends.

Now, obviously, it would be insane and stupid to claim that Terraria is a worse game, right now, than it was all the way back in the 1.0.X era, and it would be even stupider to claim that it’s worse because it has QoL features. However, this toy does not believe that every single QoL feature added to the game was inherently objectively positive or correct from the game's inception. Rather, they were natural, smart conclusions for Re-Logic to come to with the direction they decided to take the game in as it continued development. But this was not the only direction Terraria’s development could have taken.

There’s a very unique feeling to old-ass Terraria versions, and it sucks that tracking down and playing these versions is so goddamn hard. You only ever have a vague idea of where you are because there’s no map to use as reference so you’re heavily encouraged to keep most of your stuff on the surface, and to build infrastructure to connect important things underground/in the sky so you don’t get lost. Everything is so unwieldy that building a simple house and making it look remotely nice feels like a herculean effort, enemies kick your ass way harder earlygame due to decent gear being much harder to access, and there’s a lot more gravity to the choices you make in what gear you use, because it’s a lot harder to hot-swap your armor and accessories when you're not actually at your base, which is harder to get to/from due to the world being far more difficult to navigate, as a whole.

This all leads to an exponentially slower game than modern-day Terraria is, where every single thing you do needs to be deliberate and well-thought-out, and everything takes a much longer time to do. This toy remembers spending weeks as a kid building housing for the meager number of NPCs that were in the game back then, alongside farms for all of the potion-making herbs and a big obsidian generator, and all of that could be accomplished in a single play session in 1.4.X.

There is a universe in which Terraria saw minimal QoL updates and instead leaned really hard into this direction, making a slow, exploratory game where the player’s power level very slowly increments upwards and you’re encouraged to build largescale infrastructure rather than the (relatively) fast-paced boss rush where your power balloons out of control immediately and your infrastructure is a fast-travel teleportation network that takes minimal effort to set up that the game currently is, and that version of the game would not have been wrong, inherently. It would’ve been more niche, for sure, but it wouldn’t have necessarily been bad, or even worse than the current game is.

This is what makes this toy sad that old Terraria versions are so difficult to get ahold of, as well as what fascinates it so much about the retro Minecraft community. Speaking of, let’s switch gears and talk about Minecraft for a bit.

Minecraft, as it’s sure most of the people reading this are well-aware, has recently been having something of a renaissance in its retro community, the people who prefer alpha and/or beta versions of the game to the modern game. A handful of complete overhaul mods have come out for these versions (notably, Better Than Adventure and ReIndev) that put interesting spins on the game’s design, basically asking the question, “What if Mojang decided on a different direction for Minecraft to take from this point in time?”

A lot of these mods cast aside the instant-gratification convenience and linear progression of modern Minecraft in favor of slower-paced, more survival-ey gameplay, placing more emphasis on the act of exploring your world and gathering resources as the core gameplay loop as opposed to… Well, modern Minecraft really doesn’t have much of a core gameplay loop to speak of, and that’s sort of the problem, now isn’t it? This toy doesn’t want to get too far into all of this, though, as its thoughts on Minecraft’s game design are not the focus of this essay. Rather, it wants to put the spotlight onto Minecraft’s community.

An ever-increasing number of people have been growing more and more critical of Minecraft over the last 5 or so years. It’s obviously always had its detractors, but in recent time, there have been more of them that have gotten more vocal, and it’s become pretty normal to have the take that Minecraft has been getting worse lately. And a big culprit that people keep pointing to is QoL. One of the most common criticisms of Minecraft online is that quality of life features have made it way too easy to trivialize the process of blasting through the game’s content, getting obnoxiously overpowered enchanted diamond (or netherite) gear, reaching the End, and getting access to elytra and shulker boxes.

Despite both being excessively popular games that have been made far easier through their QoL changes and overall polish, that have both been in constant development for over a decade at this point, the critical responses to those features in Terraria and Minecraft could not be more different. This is amusing, and gets at something deeper with regards to game design that this toy doesn’t know it’s ever heard anyone actually say: Quality of life features are fantastic tools for reducing the noise that gets in the way of a game’s vision, but when you add them haphazardly and/or with no real vision for what you want your game to be in the end, you can very easily wind up accidentally removing a large portion of what could’ve otherwise become compelling parts of your gameplay loop. They need to be used intelligently, or they can, in fact, harm your game and make a significant contingent of your playerbase enjoy it less.

[gent-illmatic]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A new economic report from TD says Canada is falling behind the standard-of-living curve compared to its peers.

According to the report published last week, Canada has been lagging behind the U.S. and other advanced economies in terms of standard of living performance (or real GDP per capita), despite recent years of “headline growth.”

“Economic growth does not necessarily equate to economic prosperity,” TD economist Marc Ercolao wrote

Aside from considering GDP, Ercolao explains, standard-of-living quality is an important factor in understanding Canada’s economic performance.

In the 10 years before the pandemic, Canada was pretty close to the U.S. in terms of average growth, just over two per cent per year, which hovered above the 1.4 per cent average for all G7 countries, Ercolao says. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[santaeofficial]

Quality Of Life Improvements Continue

Today's a big day for hidden avatar hunters across Santae. We have several updates to share that make it easier to track information about the avatars you've discovered -- and show off your favorite ones to others!

> Your Forum Avatar is now displayed above the HA on user profiles! Now you can show off your favorite avatar outside the forums, or select your forum avatar to perfectly match your HA. The number of avatars a user has unlocked is now also displayed on user profiles.

> For the coders among you, some inline styles on user profiles moved into CSS classes/identifiers to allow further profile CSS customization.

> Your user profile now links to a new Hidden Avatars page! This collection-style page has space to display all the hidden avatars on Santae. The art for avatars you haven't yet found is hidden, but you can see the titles -- along with the ability to reveal the solution for how to unlock it (if you wish!).

> Profiles have been improved on mobile. They should look ALOT better when viewing them on mobile - from the HA no longer spilling out of it's container, to the pet content being wrapped underneath to make it look better.

> Button added to profiles to view the avatars of the user you're looking at.

> Guess the Cup is now awarding the trophy upon winning all 10 levels. For the next week we have increased the odds of winning.

Thank you everyone for your valued feedback, without you, we would not be where we are today! <3

With Love & Gratitude,

~The Santae Team

[sataniccapitalist]

Socialist Countries are Outpacing the US in GDP and IQ

Socialist nations are surpassing the United States in various metrics, from economic growth to intelligence quotient. This video explores how countries with socialist policies are outperforming the U.S. in key areas like GDP, education, and overall quality of life. We'll examine data comparing socialist and capitalist economies, debunk common misconceptions, and analyze the factors contributing to these surprising trends. Join us as we delve into the complex relationship between economic systems and national success, challenging long-held beliefs about socialism and capitalism. Whether you're interested in global economics, political systems, or social development, this video offers thought-provoking insights into the changing dynamics of world powers.

How Socialist Countries are Outpacing the U.S. in Everything from GDP to IQ

/ how-socialist-countrie...