W. G.The Woven Guild

As we head towards the new year, there’s a sense of grief that plagues the world. For some, the new year marks the purchase of a new calendar and the interminable existence of torment.

Humans in Gaza, Congo, Somalia, and even the glorious United States of America have found themselves bearing the brunt of all forms of inexplicable brutalities – some are being taken away from their homes, some are having their homes burnt down to ashes.

This could be an awfully long article, but the evident collective negligence of just so many, which has ramified into the exacerbation of genocides and ethnocentric terror, has proved that nothing can move people enough now – we’ve all become insensitive to the crimes against humanity to a great extent.

Yet, if you have read this thus far, I hope you continue reading it, not for me, but for the sake of those who truly deserve our help.

2026 is just around the corner, but Palestinian children are still living under the roof of terror, for their roofs of brick and mortar, which they once called home, were set ablaze long ago.

Women are still being sexually assaulted, and brutalities against women in general are still awfully conspicuous. Palestinian women have been used by ‘aid providers’ for sexual benefits, and their vulnerability continues to be misused even today. Misogyny still leads the way – be it one’s home, or an Instagram comment section.

ICE continues to terrorise people of colour residing in the United States of America. Citizens or not – if ICE gets ahold of a racially different human, that’s not a human anymore, not to the atrocious government at least.

The glaciers are melting, coral reefs have practically gone extinct, climate collapse could become irreversible in 3 years if nothing changes, yet the corporations continue to drown in money unfailingly, and the Aravallis remain endangered.

Countries are becoming increasingly racially divisive. People of colour in several countries have found themselves under threat primarily due to hostility driven by stereotypes and racial intolerance.

Several countries have banned New Year's Eve celebrations due to detected bombing threats in popular celebration spots, and hundreds of people have been convicted of facilitating these bombings already.

Artificial intelligence has finally reached its most powerful stage thus far. With Google’s Nano Banana Pro, the naked eye will not be able to differentiate between reality and prompts. The line between reality and generation has been officially blurred. Even artificial intelligence detectors will fail to work properly, for their execution is confined to locating watermarks and SynthIDs, but even that is selective, and no detection is now foolproof.

Speaking of what artificial intelligence has brought to the ecosystem, we have only one answer: collapse. This ecosystemic collapse is driven by expansive, excessive, and unregulated use of AI. De Vries-Gao has found that the carbon footprint of AI in 2025 alone could be as high as 80 million tonnes, and the water used for its data centres could be as high as 765 billion litres. Analysing the given figures, we also find that the AI industry has consumed more water than the bottled water industry itself, which has consumed 446 billion litres thus far.

I have not written this to ruin anybody’s celebratory mood, yet I find myself leading a life of privilege, a life where I do not have to constantly live under threat, a life where I have the opportunity to go out and celebrate.

Yet, even after all this privilege, I feel restless, and that is self-explanatory, for I can’t find solace anywhere knowing that there are women in this world who are being assaulted or discriminated against as I write this. I can’t find solace anywhere knowing that people of colour are being robbed of their homes and children have to celebrate their New Years away from their family while their parents are coercively rotting in detention centers, and I most certainly can’t find solace anywhere knowing that people of several countries around the world are dying of malnutrition and hate crimes against them – facilitated by one, empowered by many.

This is an age of destruction and perpetual misery, and the choice of cure or empowerment is in our hands – it always has been.

May we find it in our hearts to work towards collective safety before individual greed.

Feliz año nuevo.