---
title: "Happy New Year, y'all!  2020 has been a challenging year in many…"
date: 2020-12-31
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# Happy New Year, y'all!  2020 has been a challenging year in many…

*December 31, 2020 · Facebook*

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[![YouTube video](img/2020-12-31-fb-001-yt01.webp){style="max-width:100%; display:block"}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw){rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"}

▶ Watch on YouTube
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Happy New Year, y\'all! 2020 has been a challenging year in many ways. But many good things happened too! Here\'s a few tidings that I\'m joyful about. Feel free to add your own! (Inspired by @\[94804075:2048:Minda Myers\]\' list)\
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Oregon became the first state to decriminalize possession of personal use amounts of drugs. New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota decriminalized weed. DC decriminalized mushrooms and mescaline.\
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The FDA approved Phase III trails for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.\
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DeepMind\'s \"AlphaFold\" solved a 50-year-old \'grand challenge\' for predicting protein folding.\
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GPT-3 AI was released and produces text that is difficult to distinguish from human text.\
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Two of Boston Dynamics tetherless Atlas robots danced together for the first time.\
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The Librem 5 phone was released, with many new features that protect user privacy and security.\
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Bitcoin reached a new high. MobileCoin, a new private coin with much better scaling properties than most private coins, was released.\
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Tiger King, The Queens Gambit, and Ted Lasso were released.\
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Drive-in movie theaters, street dining, and home gardening/canning made a comeback.\
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Working from home, and remote working became much more socially acceptable.\
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Children were liberated from compulsory government schools, and many parents learned the virtues of home schooling.\
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Three pro-2nd amendment, pro-market Supreme Court justices were appointed, along with hundreds of similarly sympathetic lower court justices.\
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The world\'s largest community fireworks display in history was launched in cities across the US on the Fourth of July.\
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Hiking, biking, boating, and RVing enjoyed a resurgence of popularity.\
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The world\'s largest seaplane, the AG600, took off successfully from the water for the first ime.\
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China successfully went to the moon and back.\
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Trump is leaving office without having started any wars.\
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Starlink launched the private beta for its global satellite internet service.\
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[![YouTube video](img/2020-12-31-fb-001-yt02.webp){style="max-width:100%; display:block"}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw){rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"}

▶ Watch on YouTube
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