As the clock struck midnight, we were all very hopeful. The covid-19 vaccines were just around the corner. We were promised a year of hedonism. New, dangerous strains of covid-19 like Delta popped up faster than we could keep up with, so Hot Vax Summer never really began.
The Omicron variant iswreaking havoc as the year draws to a close. Positive test rates are increasing, and restaurants are closing. You would be forgiven for feeling like we are living in a movie. Why can't we stop?
The news is not as dire as it could be. The newest covid strain is more likely to be spread than the older ones, but it is also less likely to be fatal for people who have received three doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. The world is still precarious because Omicron could still overwhelm healthcare systems. The Centers for Disease Control issued guidance this week shortening isolation time for those who test positive, which is tone-deaf and dangerous, according to scientists. It is clear that the pandemic isn't over, no matter how hard we try.
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Einstein established the theory of time. His elegant theory and the refinements that followed may not capture time's true elasticity. There is no truer test of the Unified Theory of Relativity than the year of 2021, a year where moments stretched and collapsed upon each other, making it impossible to gauge if minutes or months have passed.
The rise of the MyPillow guy and Joe Manchin, hitherto relative randos in the political environment, was contained in this year. It is usually reserved for theMona Lisa to give a hushed reverence to JPEGs and GIFs. Or the boat. Remember the boat.
As we chatted with our fellow editors, there was no shortage of double checks to make sure that our memories were not failing. This year was so fucked up that it was hard to fit it into 525,600 minutes. We still have a couple more days to reach that mark, but as we have already established, time is plastic.
Scientists will have to reexamine their understanding of time as they crunch the numbers. The raw data is what they go through with their peer-review machinations.
If it wasn't for the insurrection that kicked off in 2021, last year would have been the worst in recent memory. The epidemic rages on. Cool!
A group of right-wing extremists went to the Capitol building in Washington, DC, to try and overturn the election of Donald Trump. The rioters forced their way into the Capitol and many of us watched CNN or refreshed our accounts. This was a violent attempt to overthrow American democracy after the hours-long siege ended in five deaths.
The Congressional undertaking to figure out who was behind the attempted coup is still unfolding. The paper trail is extensive because most of the planning happened online. If we actually learned a lesson from this year, the outcome of Trump's candidacy will prove that the U.S. political system is fragile. Early returns show that the answer is not really.
As the clock struck midnight, we were all very hopeful. The covid-19 vaccines were just around the corner. We were promised a year of hedonism. New, dangerous strains of covid-19 like Delta popped up faster than we could keep up with, so Hot Vax Summer never really began.
The Omicron variant iswreaking havoc as the year draws to a close. Positive test rates are increasing, and restaurants are closing. You would be forgiven for feeling like we are living in a movie. Why can't we stop?
The news is not as dire as it could be. The newest covid strain is more likely to be spread than the older ones, but it is also less likely to be fatal for people who have received three doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. The world is still precarious because Omicron could still overwhelm healthcare systems. The Centers for Disease Control issued guidance this week shortening isolation time for those who test positive, which is tone-deaf and dangerous, according to scientists. It is clear that the pandemic isn't over, no matter how hard we try.
The rise of the NFT is one of the best examples of the mad libs year. The meme was sold for a dollar amount equivalent to working many years at minimum wage and became a template.
The year began with a Nyan Cat Gif selling for $587,000 and continued with a Beeple JPEG selling for 69 million dollars. Tom McKay sold his cat on the internet. It was a good deal for an excellent cat. Climate, copyright, and What Is Art, Really discourse were some of the topics we were treated to. Good things could come out of NFTs. Yes. The investor class snapping up NFTs leaves a bit to be desired. The most clear sentence about NFTs was published earlier this month, and it was as if the whole discipline of photography consisted of pictures of George Eastman with his shirt off holding a samurai sword. How is that not an NFT yet? Would click out of it.
Many of us were amused when Facebook changed its name to Meta to reflect its next phase, building a virtual world called the metaverse. Virtual reality headsets have many hurdles to jump before becoming ubiquitous, the metaverse will require a lot of technical achievements to become fully realized, and the timing was more than a little sketch. The name change and new mission seemed like a good way to get away from the bad press.
Other tech companies are more than willing to participate in the metaverse if Meta makes it happen. The brands decided to do The Most to prove they are ready for the metaverse and are hip. Whatever that means!
The NFT of a burger that sold for $25 was kicked off by Applebee's. The buyer got a year's worth of actual burgers for the winning bid, so at least they got something of value out of the whole thing. Isn't everything absurd? Whatever. You move to Olive Garden. Just hurry up.
We have been blessed to not pay attention to Joe Manchin for most of his 11 years in office, but he decided that 2021. While other politicians were making headlines for being evil, Manchin pulled out all the stops.
He blocked his own party from passing legislation that would address climate change, help families pay for childcare, and expand affordable healthcare, all things a Democrat should theoretically be down to vote for. Manchin was stalling the Senate Democrats from passing the President Biden bill, which would benefit West Virginia coal miners. Please ignore the fact that Manchin takes weekly calls from Exxon and his large corporate donors.
Manchin told Fox News that he wouldn't vote for the bill because he was concerned about the national debt. The coal miners think he's terrible. Will Manchin admit he is a Republican and stop annoying everyone with his stupid antics so that the world can burn in peace? One can only hope.
The death knell of democracy could be heard by the man who made a fortune on Fox News. We are here. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was there for a year. Between selling pillows to own the libs, he also managed to produce a conspiracy theory "documentary;" got sued by a company for over a billion dollars due to false claims, and launched a failed social media platform. He refused to give a straight answer, so take away what you will get.
Things can always get worse, even if Lindell succeeds in overthrowing democracy.
The Earth had one less billionaire this year. The planet was at least metaphorically and literally lighter, even though it didn't yield a lasting Communist utopia. The space tourism pissing match was between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, with the latter becoming the first billionaire to visit space this summer by a few days. Our new space barons want to put humanity on a path to become an interplanetary species. In Bezos' case, to save the Earth so future generations can visit it like we did today, by sending all the industry into space. It seems like they are just trying to make space tourism a thing, based on the number of high-profile people being sent to space. Which is cool. We could try to fix a few things before we go that route.
There were many misleading and anti-vax statements. The story of the balls is an example of how off track we got. The various covid-19 vaccines will not affect your or your loved one's nuts. The saga of the family jewels.
The international incident was set off by the rapper. It is too stupid to even copy and paste the words, so we are just going to refer you to the picture above, and note that it got a lot of engagement. It's a nightmare for public officials around the world, who went into scramble mode to counter another spurious vaccine claim. The White House offered a call, Anthony Fauci rebuked the UK's chief medical officer, and the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Health was forced to take action.
The Health Minister said that they had to check and make sure that what she was saying was true or false. We wasted a lot of time yesterday running down this false claim.
May we never talk about the balls of the cousin of the artist.
It was the year that regular people decided to have fun with stocks and upend the financial system. What a ride.
In January, retail investors who congregated on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit decided to start buying up the stock of decidedly not cool companies to stick it to hedge funds who were counting on those companies to fail Traditional investors took notice when a coordinated move sent the stock of GameStop up 1900%. It seemed like Wall Street was in for a rough year after the chaos, and AMC and Nokia were beneficiaries. The stock of GameStop is trading higher than anyone at the company really had any right to expect.
In a fitting close to the year, GameStop just joined a payment network that allows you to pay for games with Dogecoin, a meme coin. Does anything make sense now? Not really.
If you look closely, you'll see that 2021 started out fine, despite the near overthrow of the U.S. government. The supply chain issues were somewhat resolved, as were the vaccines. The Ever Given happened. A big ass boat was wedged across the Suez Canal, snarling traffic along a key trade route. There was chaos and meme. Some dreamed of blowing the boat up. Those wishes were not granted. The Ever Given was freed using more mundane methods. The boat returned to the scene of the commercial crime earlier this month to take another pass through the canal. The supply chain doesn't need any more disruptions so it made it.
The ocean would rank near the bottom on the list of things that would catch on fire. Our world is not ours to live in. The U.S. was sliding into July 4 weekend and a series of tweets looked like a trailer for a new Michael Bay movie. The water of the Gulf of Mexico was ablaze as boats tried to put out the fire. It is a pretty good metaphor.
Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company with a long history of accidents and questionable safety videos, was responsible for the fire in the Ku Maloob Zaap oil field. Not that we needed another reason, but having the ocean not catch fire is a pro on the pro/con list.
