Science fiction has usually always portrayed colonising the moon as something out of our modern reach, but what if I were to say that with our technology in 2022 we could successfully set up a permeant moon base? The main problem is funding. To set it up, it will need and investment of 20-40 billion US dollars over the course of 10 years. For this, we will assume that we have all the funding we need. Colonization in the past has had 3 common phases: 1. The explorers sent by governments set foot on the new region, plant a flag, stay for a few days then leave. 2. Semi permanent outposts are set up, some dying out and some surviving, but still heavily reliant on the home nation. 3. After that, permanent city's are set up, almost always exporting goods for the benefit of the home nation until there is some sort of revolution resulting in independence. On the moon, the first phase started 65 years during the Apollo mission. Before the colony can become self-sufficient, it needs time to grow. The best spot to set up a base is near the lunar artic poles, where days and nights are 6 months long. This means that we can use reusable rockets to land, set up, stay for 6 months while solar panels work, then leave and come back when its day again. Another advantage to the the lunar poles is the ice, which can be melted down and used in hydroponics (a process where plants are fully grown in water, not soil). Another idea which can be utilised is growing fish in the same water as the plants, as a more mixed diet could be an amazing boost to the astronauts having to spend 6 months in a pressurized metal tube on the moon with only 4 or 5 other people. Once the colony has been established, the next people to come will probably be engineers, builders, and contractors sent by companies and governments. The moon is rich in rare metals, and will be viewed as a massive profit by big business. Two of these people will result in a breakthrough, not scientific, but social: the first baby in space. The big question after this is about national identity: will the baby take the nationality of their parents, or be the first of a new nation, the moon. And when treaties about space and inevitably rewritten, will the colonists get a say. And when that happens, will there be independence...?

(So, I'm writing this as Storm Eunice rages outside, and being constantly frustrated by the whistling its making, so that's why myself will be very angry through the duration of this post. Also, this is adapted from CGP Greys video This video will make you angry.)

So, we all know about viruses, with most of us going through repeated lockdowns throughout these past few years due to Covid-19, but little did we all know that the most deadly virus being spread was through the Internet. See, if you are on Twitter and post a funny cat video, and say get 1000 views, then 10% of those people find it funny enough to share it to their friends. Some of these people will share it to groups or repost, so the funny cat video grows. Now, some of these people who know how to photoshop will change the cat video and make it funnier. This is like a mutation of the virus that makes it spread faster. The video will grow and grow until perhaps either a super-spreader (or extremely famous person on Twitter) will post it and it will explode onto other platforms. Or it just fizzles out and dies. But it has to die. Its just funny cat video, after all, and there are thousands of them uploaded every day, so all that will happen is another one will go through the same process, kicking you off your podium. When it has all ended though, you will have had thousands of people follow you, so your next funny cat video will have a far larger platform to kick of from. In this virus analogy, memes are like the common cold, ripping through quickly, barely killing anyone, and leaving, although some extremely popular ones stay around. Now take a hate Tweet, posted by non-other than our favourite racist orange, Donald Trump. He has a massive platform, so when he says something particularly racist, by which I mean more than the usual daily stream of bullshit coming out of every orifice then being viewed by millions, it blows up. First its shared on Twitter, then covered by more liberal news outlets and noted down as another hate crime by activists, then covered by conservative "news" stations such as Fox. This could mean wide spread violence and discrimination against whatever group he's targeted. As it grows, unbiased news like BBC reports about. After that, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson .etc jump on board. What either happens is it again fizzles out by people debunking everything in the Tweet as wrong (in this analogy chemotherapy) or it keeps growing, either seeping into culture, perhaps even recruiting people to vote for their conservative party in the next election, or even worse becoming something like the Capitol Hill riots in 2021, and the only people who want that is the powerful conservatives, don't they?