Getting out of homeschool definitely felt like emerging from a coma, and I didn’t want to have to go through that again after about 13 months in the psych hospital. So, I spent a lot of time catching up on the news and writing myself some notes to help me study. I looked up all the gags in the video above, read the Wikipedia article on the year 2022, and talked to all my friends about what I should look up. The invasion of the Ukraine and other major news events that even we psych patients knew about are not included. I’m just putting it here because I’d already written it up, so why not?
The Metaverse
https://www.theverge.com/22701104/metaverse-explained-fortnite-roblox-facebook-horizon
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/facebook-changes-company-name-to-meta.html
The metaverse makes no sense but kind of seems to be like the internet, except everything is in VR.
“Going sick omo” ????
I did not understand this joke in the opening YouTube video and I would deeply appreciate anyone who can clarify it for me!
Astroworld Festival
A rapper named Travis Scott held a concert in Houston, TX and the crowd got so densely packed that several people died of asphyxiation. The show did not stop for at least 30 minutes, which makes some people question Travis Scott, but he says he had no idea that people were dying.
Dogecoin
A cryptocurrency that was meant as a joke based on a meme accidentally turned into a serious currency, mostly because Elon Musk tweeted about it
Kanye West / Kim Kardashian / Pete Davidson
Kim Kardashian left Kanye West for Pete Davidson and Kanye has not been taking it well.
Kyrie Irving
Kyrie Irving won’t get the COVID vaccine, and that is affecting his career in professional basketball. People have pointed out the hypocrisy that although Irving is not allowed to play, he is allowed to attend the games as a spectator with no mask requirement.
Adele
Adele is a singer and she is back after about five or six years of not producing music. She now participates in interviews that have nothing to do with music and are at least three times as long as any reason would cap them at.
Cicadas
“Brood X” cicadas appeared in parts of the country that are not here.
Dave Chappelle, they/them, Netflix
https://www.vox.com/22722357/dave-chappelle-the-closer-netflix-backlash-controversy-transphobic
Dave Chappelle had a comedy show on Netflix in which he openly made fun of various marginalized groups, including transgender people. A transgender Netflix employee tweeted about him and was suspended but ultimately got her job back. However, Netflix has been dragging their feet on actually doing anything to make Chappelle stop saying bigoted things on their platform, so many Netflix employees are enraged and expressing as much in various ways. Also one trans woman who knew Chappelle committed suicide and since then, it’s just been people screaming partisan things back and forth at each other.
Brian Laundrie / Gabby Petito
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/us/gabby-petito-notebook-brian-laundrie/index.html
An engaged couple took a road trip and for some reason the guy strangled the girl. Nobody knows why he did this, but he confessed that he killed her in his suicide note and then did himself in too. There are almost no details available.
Taylor’s version
https://www.albanystudentpress.online/post/taylor-s-version-what-does-it-mean
Somebody that Taylor Swift didn’t like bought the rights to all her music, so she re-recorded the songs and got the rights back.
Interstate travel
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/us-state-travel-restrictions-covid-19/index.html
We can cross state lines now. (Woohoo!)
COVID variants
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-variants-of-concern-omicron
As predicted, there are an awful lot of COVID variants and variants to the variants.
Hunga Tonga
There was a massive volcanic explosion in Tonga, devastating the nation and causing tsunamis all around the ring of fire.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi
In a nice change of pace, there was actual good news regarding the War on Terror, and a very bad terrorist was killed.
Feb 9, fusion energy, Joint European Torus
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00391-1
They’re still working on finding a source of clean energy.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2nd part of sixth assessment report on climate change
The future of humanity, and actually of any and all life on earth, is in serious question.
Terrorist attack in Pakistan
A mosque got blown up by terrorists in Pakistan.
Yoon Suk-yeol
South Korea has elected a new president, and it kind of seems like the new guy might be a male chauvinist douchebag.
Expo 2020 Dubai
There was a huge world fair in the UAE. It looked like a really good time.
Greenhouse gas emissions 2025
The scientific community continues to try to warn us of our impending demise, as though this has ever changed national policies anywhere, ever.
Global food prices, UN food price index
https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
Food prices are up because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which means a lot of people in vulnerable countries are going to either suffer horribly or actually starve to death in greater numbers than normal.
European southern observatory micronovae
https://www.eso.org/public/usa/news/eso2207/
https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-see-entirely-kind-explosion-150309751.html
The telescope people learned something new about explosions in outer space.
Large Hadron Collider
https://www.space.com/large-hadron-collider-particle-accelerator
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61149387
https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/large-hadron-collider-restarts
They finished upgrading a big physics machine and now it is back up and running and they’re hoping for major scientific breakthroughs in the near future.
Elon Musk, Twitter
Elon Musk owns Twitter now and he’s trying to pass it off as a good thing for free speech. Donald Trump has not re-joined so far.
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic remains an absolutely awful place to have to exist as a human, and very few people are optimistic that their recent adoption of Bitcoin as an official currency will lead to any improvement at all.
Will Smith, Chris Rock
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/27/entertainment/will-smith-chris-rock/index.html
Will Smith punched somebody on live television.
Medical debt in US
Nothing has changed about the United States’ totally backwards medical billing system.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not getting along
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/politics/kamala-harris-frustrating-start-vice-president/index.html
Biden’s people and Harris’ people don’t get along. Also there seems to be a lot of dysfunction between Harris and her own staff. Also nobody knows which of them is running for president in 2024.
Shanghai
There is some incredibly disturbing news coming out of China
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
I ran out of steam before I could find links for these last three topics, but it seems that Amber Heard lied and said that her husband, Johnny Depp, had been abusing her when in fact he was innocent. This is bad because now women everywhere who really are being abused will be even less likely to be believed than they already were.
Inflation
Everyone has been talking about inflation, even in here. I was going to look up the actual inflation rate as well as causes and other details but it didn’t happen.
Refugees to US/migration
Obviously, a lot of people including people from Afghanistan and people from Ukraine are in need of a safe place to live. What this means for the US and whether we’re even letting people in or just being jerks is something I intend to look up but not today.
Conclusion
Everything is awful, EXCEPT they’re making progress with COVID and Donald Trump is not currently president so it’s better than years prior. And I’m going to find a way to go to Expo 2025 because that looked fun!
