After yet another successful revolution around the Sun humankind continues to advance at
an ever increasing pace.
It's incredible to think that mere decades after conquering the skies, humans would walk on the Moon.
But even so, this was merely the beginning of the revolutionary space age that followed.
The Venusian sky stations and the ever expanding Mars colony established a multiplanetary safety net.
The boom of the asteroid mining industry convinced even the most hardened skeptics that space
exploration was a worthwhile endeavor and the Lunar Spaceport granted cheap...
After yet another successful revolution around the Sun humankind lingers on.
It was a bit touch and go there for a while with the whole North Korean situation but,
as luck would have it, we are still here to complain about it.
The reclusive regime has had an exceptionally destabilizing year.
A teaser for the apocalypse was released as early as February when the North Korean government
decided to flaunt its military prowess by launching a ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan.
Numerous launches would follow and the situation escalated on the 4th of July when the DPRK
launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile.
Meaning they could soon possess the means to fling nuclear warheads across the Pacific.
A month later professional golfer Donald J. Trump, moonlighting as the President of the United States,
issued a contentious response from his private golf course:
DONALD TRUMP: ...and as I said they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power
DONALD TRUMP: the likes of which this world has never seen before, thank you.
The supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, responded within mere hours by threatening
to strike the US territory Guam and some compared the rising tensions
to that of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The United Nations imposed sanctions but North Korea further escalated the situation by detonating
a nuclear device in early September.
Donald Trump doubled down on his readiness to destroy the rogue state in his address
to the United Nations General Assembly on September the 18th.
DONALD TRUMP: ...but if it is forced to defend itself for its allies we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.
Then in November a dramatic scene of a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea was
captured at the demilitarized zone.
He was shot five times but fortunately survived his injuries after being rescued by South Korean soldiers.
Meanwhile the world looked on in suspense as this nuclear conflict
devolved into a long-distance name-calling contest.
On both sides.
DONALD TRUMP: Rocket man.
DONALD TRUMP: Little rocket man. He is a sick puppy.
NEWS ANCHOR: Kim calling the president a dotard which mean weak or senile person.
Billions of years of evolution and the cause of our inevitable demise could unironically be a tweet.
This is truly the worst timeline.
To distract ourselves from the looming threat of thermonuclear war we have the annual concoction
of trends and memes.
The year kicked off with the inauguration of Donald Trump and, in direct response to
this event, actor Shia Labeouf launched a project known as He Will Not Divide Us.
An uninterrupted livestream that was intended to span the entire duration of the Trump presidency
allowing people to defiantly regurgitate the project's message.
However, things did not exactly unfold as intended.
Users of 4chan soon brigaded the livestream to spread their own unique message.
The trolling resulted in the livestream being relocated and the camera being fixed on a solitary flag.
However, it turns out that Shia had severely underestimated the collective determination
of these trolls as they quickly tracked the flag down and hoisted a red MAGA cap in its place.
For a much more detailed summation of this absurd trolling campaign
YouTuber Internet Historian has made a great series on the topic
which I highly recommend for anyone interested.
A spinning plastic toy went through the typical meme life-cycle of achieving sudden mass appeal
only to be denounced by the same people who popularized it a few months prior.
The music video for Despacito became the most viewed video on YouTube.
Two scenes from Star Wars: Episode III were revitalized.
The animated TV series Rick and Morty and the
fandom surrounding it gave rise to a number of memes such as Szechuan Sauce, Pickle Rick,
and some IQ-related copypasta.
Proof That God Has Forsaken Us: The Movie saw the light of day.
A teenage girl momentarily attained fame by not being able to speak.
Pepsi proclaimed itself savior of the world in a beautifully tone-deaf commercial.
A man announced his inability to be hot.
Whatever this is.
A guy sprinkling salt.
The final chimes of Big Ben in London.
And countless inanities which I failed to mention here.
Since August of 2016, a hacker group known as The Shadow Brokers has been leaking various
hacking tools developed by the US intelligence agency, the NSA.
At the time of the leaks, cybersecurity experts cautioned that these tools could be used to
launch far-reaching cyberattacks and, unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happened.
In May of 2017 the WannaCry ransomware infected more than 300,000 Windows systems, demanding
a ransom of up to $600 to be payed in Bitcoin in order for the infected system to be decrypted.
Affected systems include hospitals in the UK and railways in Germany and it looks like
North Korea was behind the attack.
However, in a stroke of luck, a guy from the UK accidentally stumbled upon a kill switch
in the malware which effectively halted the attack.
In late June the Petya malware primarily struck the Ukraine as well as a few other countries.
Unlike the WannaCry ransomware, Petya was designed to look like ransomware while in
reality its encryption was irreversible.
Meaning, that even if you did pay the ransom of $300 your data would not be restored.
Speaking of ransomware, Battlefront II infected millions of systems back in November while
demanding payment in exchange for a fleeting sense of pride and accomplishment.
In other cybersecurity news, the breach of the American credit agency Equifax is among
the worst in history.
Highly sensitive and personal information of nearly half the American population was
stolen and leaked by hackers over the course of several months.
Leaving some 143 million Americans open to identity theft.
RICK SMITH: I deeply regret who we are and what we do.
In YouTube related news we have the Adpocalypse fiasco.
It began when Disney decided to sever its ties with PewDiePie in response to an article
published by the Wall Street Journal in which they intentionally took jokes out of context
in an effort to portray him as an antisemite.
The story eventually morphed into what is now known as the Adpocalypse in which mainstream
media outlets criticized YouTube itself for allowing adverts to be displayed on genuinely
vile or otherwise inappropriate content.
Videos about racism, terrorism, pornography, child exploitation, pedophilia, and the list continues.
Advertisers freaked out, abandoned the site en masse, and ad revenue charts transformed
into Line Rider maps.
YouTube "fixed" the problem by introducing certain algorithms which, in theory, would
automatically divide videos into various advertiser-friendly categories but, in practice, turned the upload
button into a demonetization slot machine.
Some channels had their entire catalog demonetized
while others, like myself, only suffered the occasional issues.
Hopefully things will improve by 2018.
Like all years, 2017 was filled with anniversaries.
10 years ago the first iPhone was released.
Hashtags became a thing.
The final Harry Potter book was released.
Pornhub was launched.
The first installment of popular video game franchises such as Portal, Mass Effect, BioShock,
Assassin's Creed, The Witcher, and Crysis saw the light of day.
50 years ago the Soviet Union landed a space craft on Venus, becoming the first country
to visit the surface of another planet.
The US stopped being afraid of interracial marriage.
And the world's first ATM was installed in the UK.
100 years ago the United States entered World War I.
The Russian Revolution lead to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the subsequent rise
of the Soviet Union.
Finland became a country, if you can call it that.
The US also purchased a few Danish controlled islands in the Caribbean and renamed them
the Virgin Islands in commemoration of their former landlords.
1000 years ago the 67th emperor of Japan sadly passed away while sporting this unfortunate haircut.
Although the barber must've known what he was doing.
I mean, there's no way that's an accident.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
2017 was unfortunately a year plagued by record-breaking natural disasters.
The annual monsoon season of South Asia struck with unforeseen severity as widespread flooding
affected up to 45 million people and resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand.
Rainfall normally expected within a week fell within mere hours and displaced millions across the continent.
The Atlantic hurricane season was also one of the most active and by far the most destructive
season on record, taking hundreds of lives and inflicting nearly $400 billion in damages.
Most of which were the result of three major hurricanes named Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Harvey inflicted major damage along the Gulf Coast, primarily in the form of catastrophic flooding,
while Irma and Maria struck the islands in the Caribbean and the state of Florida.
The devastating destruction of islands such as Puerto Rico, Dominica, and others triggered
a humanitarian crisis as the rapid succession of the two Category 5 storms left millions
without access to food, water, electricity, and shelter.
Sweeping wildfires also dominated the news as their unprecedented devastation broke record
after record in places such as Canada, the US, Chile, France, and Portugal.
In September, Mexico was struck by two powerful earthquakes in less than two weeks.
Hundreds died in the wake of the quakes' destruction.
Then, in November, the deadliest earthquake of 2017 struck the border between Iran and Iraq,
killing more than 600 and destroying tens of thousands of buildings.
A human pie managed to become the most hated person on the planet when he decided to drag
the internet back to the dark ages.
Well, at least in the United States.
The Federal Corruption Commission's repeal of net neutrality was so unbelievable that
thousands of deceased Americans where brought back to life just in time to vote in favor of the bill.
Former president Barrack Obama was so excited that even he could not resist the urge to
express his support of a bill that aimed to repeal the very policies he helped to instate.
And then he did it, like, 50 more times just to be safe.
Democracy™ strikes again.
However, some claim that a lack of net neutrality could be good for the internet and that
Internet Service Providers will act fairly and in the best interests of the American population.
You see, they're not going to abuse the system, they just wanted the ability to abuse the system.
It's nice to have that option you know.
They're not going to actually do it though.
But they could.
But they won't.
They could though.
But I'm sure they won't.
But they certainly could.
But nah...
In early October the prominent film executive Harvey Weinstein was accused by dozens of
women of everything from sexual harassment to rape.
Weinstein was soon ousted by his own company and this initial scandal triggered an onslaught
of similar allegations against numerous Hollywood executives, producers, actors, as well as
many people outside the movie industry.
This cascade of allegations became known as the Weinstein effect.
The hashtag #MeToo served as an awareness campaign and a vehicle for victims to publicly
denounce sexual abuse and to highlight the widespread misogyny by men in positions of power.
While the abuse had been systematically suppressed from the public, it appears to have been more
or less an open secret within the industry.
SETH MACFARLANE: Congratulations you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.
At the start of 2017 one Bitcoin was worth around $1000 but throughout the year the value
of Bitcoin continued to rise and by late November it surpassed $10,000 making it one of the
largest currencies in the world.
And the Bitcoin price continued to rise until it peaked around $19,000 in mid December.
This unprecedented increase generated a lot of buzz in mainstream media and as a result
the global interest in Bitcoin and other altcoins have grown significantly.
However this surge in popularity is also turning Bitcoin into somewhat of an environmental
hazard as Bitcoin mining is consuming vasts amounts of energy.
The global energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is now greater than the total energy consumption
of entire countries.
Even third-world countries like Denmark.
Which means that Bitcoin is technically worse than Denmark which really puts it into perspective.
Regardless of how great or not so great a year might've been
one can always rely on the space industry to inspire much needed hope for the future.
In late March, the private space flight company SpaceX demonstrated the reuseability of its
rockets with the first successful reflight of an orbital-class rocket booster.
In more conventional terms, this rocket was launched...
...and then landed...
...twice...
...whilst avoiding this.
And then they did it again.
And again.
Even the microtransactions company Electronic Arts gave space reuseability a go but unfortunately
blew it on the second launch.
A rare and distant kilonova, which is when two neutron stars collide and merge into one,
was detected in August by dozens of ground-based and orbital instruments.
On August the 21st America was invited to an exclusive preview screening of the much
anticipated event known as the End Times when the Sun was momentarily snuffed out of existence.
Enthralled onlookers equipped with 3D glasses could do nothing but watch as the sweeping
darkness engulfed the mortal plane and brought them face-to-face with the looming abyss of
nothingness that is the end of existence itself.
It received broadly positive reviews.
The Cassini spacecraft concluded its 13 year long mission with a kamikaze dive into the
dim clouds of Saturn and captured this final image a few hours before its inevitable demise.
But the most fascinating astronomical event of 2017
has to be the brief visitation of an extrasolar object.
The asteroid known as ʻOumuamua passed through the inner Solar System in September and was
first detected a month later as it moved away from the Sun.
Its terrific speed and hyperbolic trajectory precludes it from being part of the Solar System and as such it is
the first detection of an object from another corner of the galaxy.
While the origin of this elongated space rock and the duration of its journey remains unclear
the Solar System is likely the first star system it's encountered
on its lonesome voyage through interstellar space.
On the remote possibility that ʻOumuamua could be more than just a galactic drifter multiple
astronomical institutions either have or will survey the object for signs of artificial
transmissions but none have been detected as of yet.
Already half way to Jupiter, it will have surpassed the orbit of Neptune by 2022
and will ultimately return to a transidereal existence for millions of years to come.