I was already assuming that everything around the white House is covered by snipers anyway.

Even from the “national security” standpoint, doesn’t a predefined sniper’s nest kind of defeat the point?

I’m also in Canada, but I’m a bit more optimistic about our direction. When you zoom out and look at Canada’s usual electoral cycles, the last election should have been an absolutely guaranteed Conservative win. The fact that we allowed the Liberals to pivot rightward (but not nearly as far as the Conservatives), and not only retain control of government, but actually gain seats, presents a major deviation leftward from our usual pattern.

To be fair, they can already do whatever they want, consequence free, in the continental US. The Mars exploration and ocean bases may just be honest “let’s do cool science fiction shit (and profit off government contracts to do so)”.

The tattoo comparison has kind of aged like milk, considering the popularity of tattoos nowadays.

And though the average building may be a drab box these days, we have built towers that are so tall, that 1 km in height no longer seems like pure science fiction. If those super tall skyscrapers don’t count as wonders, what would?

Commonplace wonders are no longer wonders though,

I wholeheartedly reject that worldview. Life is just so much better when you can still see the wonder in things you pass by every day.

We didn’t. We just stopped paying attention because there’s so much other bullshit going on, some wonders became too commonplace, and other wonders were created by people we don’t like.