I need a drink.

Of course, it doesn't help that others do alot of the thinking for me and have the time to put together lists like this:

5 THINGS REALLY WORTH WORRYING ABOUT

1. Climate change. Needs no explanation, I assume. (I would like one, actually.)
2. Robots. Explanation here. Even Paul Krugman is tentatively on board now.
3. Immortality. Laugh if you want, but it's hardly impossible that sometime in the medium-term future we'll see biomedical breakthroughs that make humans extremely long-lived. What happens then? Who gets the magic treatments? How do we support a population that grows forever? How does an economy of immortals work, anyway?
4. Bioweapons. We don't talk about this a whole lot these days, but it's still possible—maybe even likely—that extraordinarily lethal viruses will be fairly easily manufacturable within a couple of decades. If this happens before we figure out how to make extraordinarily effective vaccines and antidotes, this could spell trouble in ways obvious enough to need no explanation.
5. Energy. All the robots in the world won't do any good if we don't have enough energy to keep them running. And fossil fuels will run out eventually, fracking or not. However, I put this one fifth out of five because we already have pretty good technology for renewable energy, and it's mainly an engineering problem to build it out on a mass scale. Plus you never know. Fusion might become a reality someday.

So I guess I need to worry about an arid, relentlessly hot and oxygen-depleted environment where robots who don't mind the heat and don't breathe and, by the way, are already kind of immortal after a fashion, are wielding deadly viruses (which would negate immortality for us, don't you think?) for as long as they have sufficient energy to destroy the planet.

Oh, goodie.

The bright spot in all the news today is that drinking makes you live longer. So if I have to see this future, at least it will be with a Senor Playboy in my hand.

STUDY: ABSTAINING FROM ALCOHOL SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTENS LIFE

 A newly released study shows that regular drinkers are less likely to die prematurely than people who have never indulged in alcohol. You read that right: Time reports that abstaining from alcohol altogether can lead to a shorter life than consistent, moderate drinking.

 So I'm good. Really good. I have the consistent part down, anyway. I will live to see immortal deadly robots burning under an angry sun.

That thought alone would make me drink, if I didn't already.