Not meaning to complain too much, but... I've just had this overwhelming feeling lately that so many things are objectively WORSE in 2026 than they were say 7 years ago. Here's a short list of things:
1. Google. I no longer get anywhere near an honest search, mostly either AI or ads
2. YouTube, search is also completely broken, serving only recent things and / or shorts. I guess social media in general just feels more and more pointless and far less about humans.
3. Uber / Lyft, prices are INSANE
4. DoorDash, prices are also absolutely off the charts
5. Rental cars, needed to rent a car yesterday, couldn't do it under a few hundred for 2 days.
6. Groceries are almost $200 every time I go
7. Insurance has sky rocketed for everything. The house in Texas is about 2 times more expensive to insure in 2026 than it was in just 2021
8. Food. Starbucks and Subway sandwiches were never particularly amazing, but now they're not even a shell of what they used to be, and many many others.
9. Online ordering. I feel like I used to kind of know what I'd get. Now there's a decent chance of seeing some AI slop and getting a complete scam of a product with no responsibility
10. Phones. I'm less happy with my phone and getting more and more spam calls now more than ever, and I'm more often either waiting for faceID to work, or accidentally hitting something, or accidentally hitting the camera button, or accidentally changing the background. Like multiple times a day, I'm doing an input that I did not want to do. That didn't used to happen
11. Housing / Rent prices / hotel prices
12. EVERYTHING being "private equity", screw that. Stop chasing profit, chase making good products.
I guess a lot of this is just inflation in general. I'm really noticing the price of things get more and more ridiculous...
But it also feels like a lot of things are just getting worse. Adding features that shouldn't exist, chasing profits over making a good product, adding steps to make something more frustrating to use or order or do. Trying to have AI just simply "replace" something instead of being a tool to help improve it, or a way to just opt back.
I don't know. I'm trying hard to just keep my head down and do my work the old fashioned way, and I just feel like there's this mantra of "hurry up or you'll miss out". I've been enjoying being outside more, trying to be healthy and offline, and it just feels more and more like things aren't what it used to be.
I say this, yet I'm still hopeful for the future. I still think there's incredible things happening and amazing technologies, and exciting things happening in our world. I just feel like if I could hit the rewind button on a few things, I absolutely would. Would you? Maybe this is just part of growing older and feeling nostalgic? I am getting old...
I hate work.
Like, I HATE work.
Not necessarily my job. I hate the whole fking system of waking up at the same time, driving to the same place, doing the same sh*t for five days straight just to earn two days of “freedom” that I’m too exhausted to actually enjoy.
Saturday is spent recovering.
Sunday is spent thinking about Monday.
Then Monday comes, and we do the whole damn thing AGAIN.
I’m not lazy. I work. I show up. I handle my sh*t.
I just refuse to believe we were put on this earth to spend most of our lives waiting for the weekend.
I want to dispel the most disingenuous argument made against keeping physical discs: Nobody buys physical games! 89% of games are bought digitally! Gamers are choosing digital!
This is an incomplete figure that is skewed by digital-only releases. IE, most games that are sub $9.99 are digital-only releases. On top of that, this figure is only comparing ALL digital releases to ALL physical releases.
If you are going to compare fairly, you are comparing sales for when a game has a simultaneous physical & digital release.
Here's some food for thought with a proper source
Physical games sales
- 45% of Hogwarts Legacy sales
- 49% of Assassin's Creed Mirage sales
- 45% of Resident Evil 4 Remake sales
- 54% of Spider-Man 2 sales (Inc. console bundles)
- 55% of Astrobot sales
For games that receive a physical release, consistently you get more than 40% of those sales going to physical editions.
Anyone telling you that this is 'consumer choice' is entirely gaslighting you. Sony is entirely looking at the bottom line, and they see the extra bucks they can make when they cut out disc production as well as eliminating secondhand sales entirely.
Source info: https://t.co/wfnIFrMs2K
On the same day Sony told a billion gamers to embrace digital forever, it quietly showed them the catch.
Two announcements, one blog, an hour apart.
First: from January 2028, no new PlayStation game will ship on a disc, digital only.
Second, buried below: Sony is closing the online stores for the PlayStation 3 and Vita, so you will no longer be able to buy games there at all.
Read together, they are not two stories. They are the whole argument about what you actually own.
A disc is the last thing in your home a Silicon Valley company cannot reach. A PlayStation game from 1994 still works today, and the law lets you resell it, lend it, keep it forever.
That is ownership. It is protected by something called the first-sale doctrine, and it applies to physical objects. It does not apply to digital purchases. That is not Sony being cruel. That is the quiet legal truth underneath the whole shift.
Sony's own spokesperson said it plainly today. With all digital content, you are not buying the game. You are buying a personal license for non-commercial use. Not the thing. Permission to use the thing, which depends on the company's servers and goodwill. They once pulled a game called Concord two weeks after launch. Buyers got refunds, but the game itself simply vanished.
This was never really about discs versus downloads. It is about moving the largest entertainment medium on Earth from a world where you own an object the law protects, to one where you hold access the law treats as rented.
Convenient, cheaper, and easier for almost everyone. Also revocable in a way a disc never was.
The click of a disc into a console was ownership. The download is permission. Sony just showed you, in a single morning, how differently the two age.
Do you agree with what Sony did??