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Of course, a pokemon club isn't complete without a pokemon battle or two in it.

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Hello everybody. So to sum up this year, I would say another rollercoaster ride between monotony and wild excitement depending on what's your poison. I'll give you a few out of the whole list of events out of this year (sta.sh/01vm4izw25lu )(sta.sh/01bvhwyoi8ql )...

This year some of the biggest talks around the world include the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar of all places. John Oliver was right when he said the preparation of that game is going to be the deadliest Middle Eastern construction project since the Egyptian pyramids. Stadiums are as grand as you'd expect with sub-par standards for the tourist accommodations but considering how much wasted infrastructure was left behind in the Russian and Brazilian World Cup, you'd say it's somewhat of a wise choice the Qataris are not falling for some of its predecessors' mistakes. Can't say the same about their Work, Health and Safety practice.

Cameron finally released Avatar 2 which according to the box office is a huge success. I saw the first movie and it was alright but the teenage me didn't see the wow factor back then so I'm in no hurry to check out this latest one.

England's Queen Elizabeth passed away so her son is now the King Charles III. The whole funeral and proclamation was televised live to a world audience. Unfortunately the event is later shadowed by the family dispute between the Royals and Prince Harry with the release of the latter's documentary on Netflix.

You also got Tesla's boss pulling a Trump and bought Twitter. Went to town on it like a frat boy on hardcore weed and is now being shown the door of said bluebird company after a posting a poll up. Went down as you would expect. Thank God I don't use Twitter because latest news say the social media platform got hacked (hacker proved it by posting private info on our politicians who uses it). I hope SpaceX doesn't get hit from all this, that company has been silent ever since they tried launching and landing Starship without it blowing up.

And the biggest icing on the proverbial dirt cake is the Russo-Ukrainian conflict finally devolving into a war in all but name (well they say "special military operation" but our media isn't having it and is straight up calling it a war). As of writing this entry, it isn't a full blown total war yet as Russia has only done a partial mobilisation, whereas after putting up a surprisingly successful resistance movement with the help of some morale boosting speeches from the Ukrainian president, half of the western world is now throwing their lot into the blue-and-yellow side with whatever guns and foreign volunteers they can get. But Christ seriously, its only been a year since Afghanistan and now this pops up. Guess we won't be seeing an improvement to the 8% ratio of peace to war in recorded history.

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Well that's the general gist of world history. Down here in Australia it's a continuation of events piling up ever since the start of Covid-19. Namely speaking, the aftermath of the lockdown and decades of dependence on imports and oversea manufacturer is now crashing down on our economy.

Australia is currently experiencing one of its biggest skilled labour shortage in history. This is definitely felt where I work in construction as everybody is really feeling the squeeze. Almost every project we have is delayed due to low supplies or lack of installers and those that remain are breaking their backs to stay afloat, so much so that tradies, nurses, teachers and others have repeatedly gone on strike due to poor conditions or wages being unable to keep up with rising cost of living. The biggest being rail workers such that it has been called "the year of the strikes" by the news.

It didn't help with the reintroduction of La Nina this year which is the change in the ocean weather pattern dramatically influencing Australia's climate. Essentially we've swapped the droughts and massive bushfires we've been having for the past few years for monsoon like rainfall and massive flooding events all over NSW, Queensland and Victoria. The big eruption of Tonga's volcano didn't help either with the massive ash cloud cooling the Pacific Ocean even more, causing the rain to last longer in Australia and leading to 4 massive flood events to occur this year alone. Said floods destroyed a lot of the farms and small businesses we had which led to vomit-inducing levels of hikes for our grocery bills.

Price of living was another major issue that kept repeating itself this year as well. The biggest blame thrown around is the war in Ukraine but personally I also blame our over dependence on trade, imports and oversea manufacturing causing this mess. For decades, many Australian businesses have been forced to shut down or switch to manufacturing oversea due to public rejection or not being able to keep up with competition. As a result, we barely have any factories and capabilities to make our own stuff here to act as a reliable buffer against any international trade setbacks. So what we ended up now is an eye watering production cost due to oil supply uncertainty, base products in short supply because suppliers are stretched thin and covid ravaged, food and fuel becoming more expensive because a lot of our farms and roads got wasted by the floods on top of extreme housing prices so everyone is demanding higher wages to counter cost of living but we can't do that because many businesses can't support the higher labour cost on top of all the above unless they in turn hike up their prices in return. And that doesn't solve the issue of finding new workers to replace the workforce that has dried up since the lockdown. So yeah, we basically shot ourselves in the foot for that and unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll be getting better in the near or far future as I haven't heard of any plans to really solve this situation besides some isolated tax revision and government enforced price fixing which according to oppositions is going to backfire on us in the future or something.

At the rate things are going, I just hope 2023 doesn't get anymore insane or frustrating than it already is. Until then, can't do more than grit my teeth and take it one step at a time. Stay safe and I'll see you next year.

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Random Doom Fanclub Administrators of 2022

Left to right:

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Art (C)

OCs (C) Random Doom Fanclub Admins

Description

Of course, a pokemon club isn't complete without a pokemon battle or two in it.

---

Hello everybody. So to sum up this year, I would say another rollercoaster ride between monotony and wild excitement depending on what's your poison. I'll give you a few out of the whole list of events out of this year (sta.sh/01vm4izw25lu )(sta.sh/01bvhwyoi8ql )...

This year some of the biggest talks around the world include the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar of all places. John Oliver was right when he said the preparation of that game is going to be the deadliest Middle Eastern construction project since the Egyptian pyramids. Stadiums are as grand as you'd expect with sub-par standards for the tourist accommodations but considering how much wasted infrastructure was left behind in the Russian and Brazilian World Cup, you'd say it's somewhat of a wise choice the Qataris are not falling for some of its predecessors' mistakes. Can't say the same about their Work, Health and Safety practice.

Cameron finally released Avatar 2 which according to the box office is a huge success. I saw the first movie and it was alright but the teenage me didn't see the wow factor back then so I'm in no hurry to check out this latest one.

England's Queen Elizabeth passed away so her son is now the King Charles III. The whole funeral and proclamation was televised live to a world audience. Unfortunately the event is later shadowed by the family dispute between the Royals and Prince Harry with the release of the latter's documentary on Netflix.

You also got Tesla's boss pulling a Trump and bought Twitter. Went to town on it like a frat boy on hardcore weed and is now being shown the door of said bluebird company after a posting a poll up. Went down as you would expect. Thank God I don't use Twitter because latest news say the social media platform got hacked (hacker proved it by posting private info on our politicians who uses it). I hope SpaceX doesn't get hit from all this, that company has been silent ever since they tried launching and landing Starship without it blowing up.

And the biggest icing on the proverbial dirt cake is the Russo-Ukrainian conflict finally devolving into a war in all but name (well they say "special military operation" but our media isn't having it and is straight up calling it a war). As of writing this entry, it isn't a full blown total war yet as Russia has only done a partial mobilisation, whereas after putting up a surprisingly successful resistance movement with the help of some morale boosting speeches from the Ukrainian president, half of the western world is now throwing their lot into the blue-and-yellow side with whatever guns and foreign volunteers they can get. But Christ seriously, its only been a year since Afghanistan and now this pops up. Guess we won't be seeing an improvement to the 8% ratio of peace to war in recorded history.

---

Well that's the general gist of world history. Down here in Australia it's a continuation of events piling up ever since the start of Covid-19. Namely speaking, the aftermath of the lockdown and decades of dependence on imports and oversea manufacturer is now crashing down on our economy.

Australia is currently experiencing one of its biggest skilled labour shortage in history. This is definitely felt where I work in construction as everybody is really feeling the squeeze. Almost every project we have is delayed due to low supplies or lack of installers and those that remain are breaking their backs to stay afloat, so much so that tradies, nurses, teachers and others have repeatedly gone on strike due to poor conditions or wages being unable to keep up with rising cost of living. The biggest being rail workers such that it has been called "the year of the strikes" by the news.

It didn't help with the reintroduction of La Nina this year which is the change in the ocean weather pattern dramatically influencing Australia's climate. Essentially we've swapped the droughts and massive bushfires we've been having for the past few years for monsoon like rainfall and massive flooding events all over NSW, Queensland and Victoria. The big eruption of Tonga's volcano didn't help either with the massive ash cloud cooling the Pacific Ocean even more, causing the rain to last longer in Australia and leading to 4 massive flood events to occur this year alone. Said floods destroyed a lot of the farms and small businesses we had which led to vomit-inducing levels of hikes for our grocery bills.

Price of living was another major issue that kept repeating itself this year as well. The biggest blame thrown around is the war in Ukraine but personally I also blame our over dependence on trade, imports and oversea manufacturing causing this mess. For decades, many Australian businesses have been forced to shut down or switch to manufacturing oversea due to public rejection or not being able to keep up with competition. As a result, we barely have any factories and capabilities to make our own stuff here to act as a reliable buffer against any international trade setbacks. So what we ended up now is an eye watering production cost due to oil supply uncertainty, base products in short supply because suppliers are stretched thin and covid ravaged, food and fuel becoming more expensive because a lot of our farms and roads got wasted by the floods on top of extreme housing prices so everyone is demanding higher wages to counter cost of living but we can't do that because many businesses can't support the higher labour cost on top of all the above unless they in turn hike up their prices in return. And that doesn't solve the issue of finding new workers to replace the workforce that has dried up since the lockdown. So yeah, we basically shot ourselves in the foot for that and unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll be getting better in the near or far future as I haven't heard of any plans to really solve this situation besides some isolated tax revision and government enforced price fixing which according to oppositions is going to backfire on us in the future or something.

At the rate things are going, I just hope 2023 doesn't get anymore insane or frustrating than it already is. Until then, can't do more than grit my teeth and take it one step at a time. Stay safe and I'll see you next year.

---

Random Doom Fanclub Administrators of 2022

Left to right:

--

Art (C)

OCs (C) Random Doom Fanclub Admins