this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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Comic Strips

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SpaceboyCantLol | Instagram

TranscriptComic title: Life in 2030”

This shows guy facing futuristic yet bleak smart home with many IoT devices and AI etc. Smart toilet is updating so he cant use it. Robot wife low battery so cant sleep with her. Fridge locked behind ads and ask to upgrade to premium version. Park is now data center so no walk for him. Smart bed subscription expired so he falls on floor. Air is taxed so he cant breath and vents say pay now to getair. Man looks stressed and sweaty in every panel.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 47 minutes ago

So many dystopian novel authors predicted this. P K Dick and Gibson among others. Forced to pay for life critical necessities like air and water, as well as fees to enter your apartment or take a shower.

Companies have given up making anything new. It takes too long, requires a large R&D investment, and expensive tooling to manufacture new things. So they just start making up ways to claim ownership over everything they can and the delivery method to get it there. Robber barons and bridge trolls profiteering as middlemen that actually produce nothing. Want a concert ticket? Buy it through a service that bought it from the venue and pay fees on top of that if you can get them at all on release, if not pay again to the same company that lets scalpers resell and they get fees a second time. Want music? Pay for the data service, pay for the music service, pay again for the album if you actually want to keep it, pay for the cloud you store it in.

Itβ€˜s only getting worse.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

That's been the joke for a long time. If corporations could charge you for air, they would. This comic is too real.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

People are buying water right now as we speak.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 1 points 57 minutes ago

Oh, yeah, I'm waiting for the water ears to start. Already have in some middle eastern countries. But, I'm sure they'll reach richer countries as well like the U.S. eventually.

Climate change isn't going to wait for us to care.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 11 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

They flag you as a terrorist because the AI hallucinated, and you find your pay for air button just does not work anymore one day.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

And once you're pissed enough at the AI, ICE will deport you El Salvador, because the AI tech bros have lobbied out a law that labels all anti-AI activities as an act of terror on behalf of China.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago

Whatever happens, I'll never forget to charge my Wife Pro Max.

[–] Vinylraupe@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 hours ago
[–] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

And that's why you should always have a can of PerriAir at home!

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 58 minutes ago)

I hope at least the Unicode Consortium pulls their head out of their ass by then and defines sequences like

U+1F3F3 WAVING WHITE FLAG  
U+ FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16  
U+ 200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER  
U+1F7E5 LARGE RED SQUARE  
U+ 200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER  
U+1F7F7 (not yet existing) LARGE LIGHT ORANGE SQUARE  
U+ 200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER  
U+ 21BC WHITE LARGE SQUARE  
U+ FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (forces emoji rendition of this pre-emoji character, also used in the existing trans flag sequence)  
U+ 200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER  
U+1F7FA (not yet existing) LARGE LIGHT PURPLE SQUARE  
U+ 200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER  
U+1F7EA LARGE PURPLE SQUARE

This would render as a striped flag like tiny render of waving hand-staff 5-stripe lesbian pride flag SVG by JoyPixels if supported on the platform (on devices before Unicode 20.0 like yours right now, the fallback is "πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŸ₯β€πŸŸ·β€β¬œοΈβ€πŸŸΊβ€πŸŸͺ", much like the fallback of πŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ is "🏳️⚧️"). Fonts could include most common pride flags (with exact "canonical" color values) and/or the platforms could generate the stripes on the fly up to a limit. I think both approaches have been implemented for the family emoji set on some platforms (yup, those also use separate codepoints for members and ZWJs), after all. (Yes, there are evil "pride" flags like TERF or MAP but Unicode has always been able to express evil, valid Unicode sequences include U+0FD5 RIGHT-FACING SVASTI SIGN, U+1FAC3 PREGNANT MAN, U+20E0 COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH or the entire text of Mein Kampf.) And would people abuse it for color bitmap text art? Yes, like they do Braille now.

[–] borkborkbork@piefed.social 17 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

joke about the air, but in a few short years we're going to be paying for climate control like that because we're in for one hell of a summer here, and from here on out they'll only get hotter.

[–] gilokee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

it will always be the hottest summer... so far.

[–] kender242@lemmy.world 24 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

"Every time we demand to be heard, they hold back our water, ration our air, until we crawl back into our holes, and do as we are told!"

[–] oyzmo@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

A capitalist's dream come true! ... remember, socialism is bad πŸ˜…

[–] meowcar42O@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago

sadly this is actually the direction we're going in. everything will be a subscription

[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 88 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (8 children)

This is silly. A tax is something the government charges you. We'll be paying a privately owned corporation for ~~our~~ their air.

[–] meowcar42O@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

ancapistan, baby

[–] thessnake03@lemmy.world 39 points 11 hours ago (1 children)
[–] tgcoldrockn@lemmy.world 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

Land of Confusion music video is fucking wild

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 16 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, but with regulatory capture they outsourced air-distribution to private companies.

[–] Denvil@piefed.world 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Don't a lot of people already pay companies to do their taxes for them? They're just cutting out the end man and keeping the middle man

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 7 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

That seems to mostly be a thing in the US, in developed countries we have pre filled out tax forms that you sign online, if you haven't got anything special to report, it takes 5 min to just double check the numbers and sign it.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

But, but how do you lie and cheat to pay no taxes at all (assuming you can't afford a senator)?

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

I don't, it is way less stressful

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Here in the UK "normal workers" dont even do that. Your employer does it all for you and you just get told about it in your payslip.

[Here's how much you earned.]

~[Here's a bit of tax.] [Here's a bit of other tax] [Here's a bit of national insurance] [Here's a bit of pension contributions] [Here's some other numbers that I cant even remember because I never bother looking] [boring stuff really] [you should probably look at this but who gives a shit its boring]~

[Heres what youre actually getting!]

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 0 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Oh yeah, your employer pays your tax here in Sweden, I am just talking about the yearly income report you have to submit.

You only have to make any changes if you have earned money not automatically reported to the government.

I sold some stock a few years back, and had to report it and pay tax on it.

I ran the simple calculation, reported everything, and transfered the money to my tax account, total time was 45 min.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

PAYG (pay as you go) Australia uses it too

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I have even reported a slightly higher tax rate to my employer, this means that I slightly overpay my taxes through the year, and when it is time to report your taxes, you will always get a tax return.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

I had that happen inadvertently- my employer forgot to claim the tax free threshold. I just said fuckit and we'll fix it next financial year

$18,000 on my tax return was glorious

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

In Spain your employer pays, and you also pay some at the end of year. And for more complicated cases Spain publishes short instructions on how to pay taxes as an individual, just about 900 pages

I heard, Spain tax system is considered the most complicated in the world because of all the legacy stuff

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 points 7 hours ago

In France, when you check your income tax if you have nothing to correct you don't even need to sign it.

[–] Mika@piefed.ca 4 points 12 hours ago

Do the air pollution -> sell air filters and compressed clean air cartridges.

If it’s a recurring fee required to live what’s even the difference

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

there won't be a government, just private corps

[–] humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

So like the same as it is now?

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 hours ago

Yeah, but they remove the pretences

As a libertarian this is my wet dream.

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 19 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Doesn't seem much different than now

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

this would be an upgrade for me right now

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 6 points 10 hours ago

Should be "You haven't paid to license that feature."

[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 2 points 8 hours ago
[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Professional wife haver