You're very lucky if you didn't lose normalcy during the last five years. Maybe it's more common here in the US since the lockdowns were so prevalent. Those lockdowns caused so much harm to friendships—mainly due to long absence from face-to-face interactions. My inner life didn't change all that much but my entire social circle was broken down during that time.

I was one of those people who still had some trust in aspects of government and certain elected officials prior to 2020. The pandemic was a huge wake up call for me about how deeply the system corrupts those who enter into it. I'm no longer nearly as naive when it comes to this. I see people worshipping politicians and it makes me cringe every time.

Grok is really cool. It's evolving so quickly it's insane! Elon plans to double the computing power soon and I expect Grok to surpass almost all the other AIs at that point.