As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve decided that for the holiday season—maybe even for the whole of 2026—I’m simply going to stop believing that reality is all there is
For a while now I’ve felt like somewhere, probably around 2016 (what with Trump and Brexit), humanity somehow took a wrong turn.
Like, for some reason, as we were heading in the generally right direction of human evolution of consciousness, something happened and suddenly we jumped the tracks and smashed into a different timeline and the baddies started winning.
Then I saw this.
It’s real. In April 2016 a weasel got into CERN’s Hadron Collider and chewed through some wiring.
If you’re unfamiliar with what the Hadron Collider does, the layman’s TLDR explanation is: it accelerates teeny tiny bits of matter around this really sophisticated tube to nearly the speed of light and then smashes them together to create new teeny tiny bits of matter.
The white coats do this to understand the nature of life, the forces that create the universe, the structure of the very fabric of matter and antimatter. In 2012, doing just this, they discovered the Higgs boson or ‘god particle’.
Don’t ask me to explain it, I couldn’t if I tried, but you get the gist of the vibe of the problem here with the weasel, right?
So I thought I’d look into it some more and here’s what 2016 looked like in case you think this might not be a valid theory.
Here goes…
In April 2016 a weasel gets into CERN’s Hadron Collider and chews through some wiring.
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
Against all logic and belief, on May 26, 2016, Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. In June 2016, against all logic and thanks in part to a disinformation campaign almost certainly funded by Russia, the UK votes in favour of Brexit. In October 2016, Peter Thiel makes his first political stab by backing Trump as part of his personal master plan, and in November 2016 Trump is declared the next US president. His campaign wins largely due to Russian interference via the email hacking debacle (Hilary’s emails!) which is confirmed to have been given the go-ahead by Putin.
In 2016, Elon Musk also further entrenches himself in the collective as he co-founds Neuralink as the first step to human-AI symbiosis and declares that he’ll be colonising Mars. Palantir, Thiel’s baby, embeds itself further into the US military industrial complex, including ICE, further advancing his master plan of undoing the US government and, frankly, democracy.
In 2016, AI goes from scraping photos and listening in with Siri, Alexa and Echo to beating a human at Go, a practical and conceptual milestone in the technology’s evolution. North Korea begins nuclear testing again with the aim of creating an arsenal and in Syria Assad gets away with mass murder with the help of the US and Russia, revealing the world’s tolerance to crimes against humanity while refugees continue to flood into an economically slowing and unstable Europe fanning the flames of fascism that still glow in the Old World, stoked and kept alive by far-right, racist elements.
By December 2016, Nvidia’s share price nearly triples and their dominance in the AI arena set, starting the economic trend—or bubble if you’re that way inclined—that is currently propping up the US economy. In 2016, the first case against Netanyahu for corruption is opened, planting the seeds for his greatest subterfuge to keep himself from jail: genocide.
Luckily, Syria’s slaughtering of more that 600 000 of its own people has prepared the political world not to give a fuck about the Palestinians.
And, I shit you not, in 2016 a novel coronavirus makes the leap from bats to pigs.
Also, 2016 was the hottest year on record at the time (now surpassed many times over).
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
Now here we are.
On a timeline where wanting clean air and water, food and equality for all, and a regulated capitalist system is considered ‘woke’. Where the middle classes fight each other and the poor to keep the ultra wealthy safe from taxes and accountability, where the ultra wealthy take all they can, employing the wholesale theft of resources and human endeavour to support this wealth grab, and our humanity disintegrates further with each new AI update, and millions and millions of people crawl in a puddle of their dribbled-out brains and squeak, ‘it’s the way of the future bro, it’s a tool dude just chill out’.
On a timeline where world leaders who behave like savages and nine billionaires (soon to be trillionaires!) decide the fate of humanity, burning the world down around us and telling us that it’s inevitable, that it’s progress.
Oh for the heady days of the ‘90s when oil spills were our biggest problem.
Of course, you could argue that it’s possible to cherry pick bad things from every year, that these political players aren’t the only ones in the world being dastardly. But you must admit, for post-Cold War and World War babies, 2016 was pretty impressive as the moment all the shittiness of today really kicked off.
Not at all weird for me then that I started writing The Fulcrum in 2016.
When I chose the title, I searched and searched to see if anyone else had used it. At the time there was maybe one other book by the same name, but it had a long subtitle and was some metaphysical treatise on the nature of the human soul or something.
By the time I was finished with the first draft, ‘The Fulcrum’ was the title of dozens of books.
Was there something in the air? Were we tapping into the collective consciousness, sensing the cusp we were on?
My The Fulcrum is about hope. About the balance. About how baddies and their ‘bad things’ are all, eventually, equalized for the benefit of the project that is the human experiment on Earth.
It feels so naive now. More fantasy than the fantasy I thought I was writing. I think about writing the sequel but find myself utterly unable to buy into the myth I’ve created for myself.
If I’m honest, this lack of being able to engage with the central philosophical theme of The Fulcrum’s universe has been a major indicator of how much hope I’ve lost over the last few years.
I simply cannot fathom, cannot make sense of the reality—of the weasely timeline—I find myself in.
How are humans as a species so utterly short-sighted and selfish, fearful and hateful? How are we here, jerking off over more stuff, eagerly applauding the decimation of humanity and human endeavour, still believing and behaving as if we’re medieval ignoramuses?
Ah. Wait a minute…
Maybe I just answered my own question there.
Sigh.
It’s enough to make you weep.
Now, I know this all sounds like a downer. But bear with me. Because I’ve really said all of this to get to what this post is really about.
And what this post is really about is ‘not this timeline’.
What I mean is, is that I’ve decided that I’m simply going to not believe this is happening. Yes you read that right. I’m just going to not accept it.
Call it ‘fabricating hope’ or ‘manifestation’ or ‘denial and wishful thinking’ or ‘faking it til the whole world makes it’, either which ways I’m done with this timeline. I do not like it, I do not want it, I will not hear it and I won’t respond to it.
So for Christmas, for this little holiday season, maybe even for the whole of 2026, I’m giving myself the gift of ‘not this timeline’.
I’m giving myself the gifts of denial and hope wrapped in manifestation tied with a bow of wishful thinking.
Introducing a new timeline
I’m going to believe that the facists and religious fundamentalists are ousted from government and positions of power. I’m going to believe that world leaders work towards their own fame and legacy by choosing to become leaders who work for the benefit of their people and humanity as a whole.
I’m just a Trekkie at heart I think
I’m going to believe that capitalists are held accountable for their decisions and actions. I’m going to believe that companies and world leaders fundamentally understand the value of protecting our habitat for our own survival and that they fundamentally understand that our own survival depends on the health and survival of our fellow species and the elements that keep us alive.
I’m going to believe that they take action that exemplifies this understanding.
I’m going to believe that the AI bubble bursts. That the creators and pushers of this product who were happy to sell out the earth and humanity for a profit suffer consequences meaningful to them.
I’m going to believe that AI is used in the sciences for discovery that benefits humanity as a whole, not a small group of war-mongering, anti-human, anti-life people. That efficiencies won through tech are not at the expense of life.
That the human creation of ‘new life’ is not confused as more important than actual life.
I’m going to believe that humans turn back towards each other and connection, rather than further inwards and towards a solipsistic fantasy controlled by profiteers.
I’m going to believe that somewhere, someone—even with the help of AI or some other tech—is making it possible to communicate with animals or is about to crack clean, free energy or make health accessible to all.
I’m going to believe that those who profit off the suffering of others are held accountable in a time and moment that matters deeply to them. That they suffer a moment of true empathy.
I’m going to believe that humans collectively move their belief centres out from child-like, near-prehistoric concepts of god and devotions to death cults—I’m looking at you specifically Abrahamic religions—and experience an awakening that leans towards collective empathy and life-affirming behaviours.
I’m going to believe that humans mostly want to human, that very few are genuinely interested in handing over personal sovereignty, that very few, given the option, would genuinely choose to offer their one precious life to be the battery powering a trillionaire’s one precious life.
I’m going to believe that good—that life—wins out in the end.
I know you could argue that AI-powered robots is a kind of life. I know you can get all Cylons Are People Too on me. I know that a part of me would agree with you.
You know, it just didn’t end well for everyone, not really.
I just don’t think that this tiny blue dot in the vast expanse of nothingness, a tiny blue dot that is a literal miracle of life, should be shat on and its life-giving elements and creatures destroyed in favour of man’s insatiable ego and desire to replicate himself or jerk off to a new kind of object.
But maybe that’s just me.
Got me feeling my song of the week…
Anyway. Shoo.
Almost went too dark there again. I was enjoying the fantasy. So let me go back to it.
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
Life is beautiful and real and flowers smell good and octopi are wondrous and we’re all going to die one day so we better make the most of it.
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
Trump is dead and Vance is gone from the levers of power and Thiel and Musk died in that car crash. Netanyahu is arrested and Putin’s seventh meat suit rejects him.
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
Humans remember that we got to where we are today through cooperation and shared thought and intention.
blrrrt zzzzzp schpeeeee tlblrttt zzzzp
There we go. Much better.
Happy holidays internet friends. Or as happy as you can get. I know this time isn’t always the happiest or the easiest for some, so do what you can with it.
And if you get caught in a dark mood, just remember: dream a little dream of a new world, where that weasel didn’t get stuck into the Hadron Collider, where we’re all doing better and better, and ‘enshittification’ is only something that happens to your toilet when you’ve eaten too many fruit pies.
See you in January 2026.
TANYA MEESON 