I check out the news every other day or so. It's good to know what's happening.

Welp, lately it's been failing businesses; non-US nations paying a bunch of money to influence US government, so they can continue being our friends while being utter shits to their own people and neighboring nations; destruction as infrastructure crumbles and extreme weather systems continue getting worse.

Ever played Chrononauts? It's a card game where one uses their cards to change Linchpin events on a timeline, making a few events after just not happen (Paradox). Players then attempt to Patch the Paradoxes with alternate versions of events (or flip the Linchpins back to save the "original" timeline.)

I don't think it would surprise the folks in various think tanks to hear me say that the world is building to a pretty terrible Linchpin event. Things are arguably working "as they should", but only because the people with the most money are setting the rules. As a species, humanity isn't winning any awards for peace, for human rights, or for ecological stewardship. Some event is coming – something most likely preventable ten years ago – that will define the next fifty to one hundred years.

Can you feel it?

If memory serves, the Linchpin that alters the most events in the Chrononauts timeline is 1943: Manhattan Project / Sabotaged, though it might be 1936: Hitler Opens '36 Olympics / is Assassinated. Players – all the players, at once – lose the game if 13 timeline events are in an unPatched state of Paradox, and changing any of the Linchpin events of World War 2 can suddenly put the timeline close to ruin.

It feels, to me, like we're heading for one of those. It might not be a war; it could be a large-scale collapse of finance, infrastructure, or an ecosystem. We may predict it; we may have to piece together the factors and influences in the aftermath.

But friends, I know we should be doing more now.