Doomposting containment thread

Rather than shitting up threads where people are having reasonable conversations, put your doomposts here & spare everyone else your misery.

My paranoid thoughts these days run along the lines of “Why would the ultra-rich let the middle class collapse, isn’t it more profitable in the long run for there to be a strong stable working and middle class so that everyone can keep spending and spending (and also not shooting CEOs in the street)?” and the little voice goes “They have more info than we do — they know there isn’t much time left — they know shit is going to fall apart so hard and so fast the rest of us won’t know what hit us so their strategy is just crushing as much wealth out of society as possible so they can live sci-fi lives in a bubble while the rest of us scavenge rat carcasses.”

if there's one thing the last decade has taught me its that the ultra-rich don't know shit

thats not a doompost

honestly the respect for thread rules is through the floor these days

It can be, if you combine the belief that the ultra-rich don't know shit with the belief that nonetheless any attempts to take the steering wheel away from them will fail.

We’re all doomed, doomed I tell ya

When do we get our super shotguns?

(bookmarks thread for predictable future need. sighs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrNlyDxowWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYmD7CyHlY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiMZCgpXuO4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuN83hqsn8U

Scott you have got to get off of youtube lol <3 How are you doing? Are you good?

That said I'm stocking up on things that might get...less available soon. Just in case.

The end is nigh!

Wasn’t thinking about this in terms of prepping, but since you mention, IO, what kinds of things are you stocking up on / anticipating shortages of?

Women's health-type stuff broadly speaking, Narcan, personal Rx that include some controlled stuff...those are top level. Under that is general first aid and personal care supplies.

The former are because I fear availability will drop, the latter because I expect prices will rise and/or they might be needed unexpectedly.

If you thought "Ehh it's a long shot, I don't need those things, that's for other people" may I suggest that the worst that could happen is someday you get to save someone's life? You can be a person who has a life-saving resource in an emergency! Especially if they get harder to...get.

"Are you good?"

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

i'm so scared lol

Definitely see if we can get a lifetime supply of SSRI’s now lest RFK Jr. make us detox doing manual labor on an organic farm

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/rfk-jr-kennedy-addicts-wellness-farms-b2585835.html

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

― scott seward

yeah i gotta be careful about what i click on or the algo starts feeding me crap

the stuff i'm most careful about trying to avoid is beato-adjacent content

so far things are looking ok

mostly what i wind up getting recommended are extremely long jammidodger reaction videos

i've started watching more baseball videos to switch things up, which means i get recommended Baseball Doesn't Exist videos - "The Most Illegal Baseball Bat Ever Created" is the new one

i also got poetic wax doing a 20 minute video on the Eno/Television recordings, don't care

a 40 minute breakdown of HIM, the "lost gay jesus" film. i'm more interested in the _other_ gay jesus film, the unmade Jens Jorgen Thorsen film _The Many Faces of Jesus_. technically he's bi in this one. apparently the script was published but only translated into danish (the original script was in english). there's also a 1975 danish porn film called Jeg så Jesus dø ("I Saw Jesus Die"), but it's apparently heterosexual. i guess i should check that one out.

i just ran across a low-quality copy of an episode of the 1970 low-budget Star Trek knockoff Phoenix Five - i was trying to find a complete youtube upload of the pilot of the Fifth Glacial Era. god, i know so little aobut australian '70s television. it's in colour too! they must've had high hopes for that, considering colour tv didn't hit australia until, like, 1975

did prussian hitler just say he was going to "crush the ducks that oppose us"? sinister ducks indeed

now the algorithm is recommending me a kat blaque video entitled "the best BDSM film is korean". no it's doing good for me today.

i keep watching random analog synthesizer videos, microgranny noise jams with 200 views. means i get recommended a lot of videos on the history of the 303. the LOC just posted a 90 minutes video on Morton Subotnick and the Buchla 100, 500 videos, ok, i'm in on that. here's a 90 minute video called "FEMME: Lesbian History, Identity Politics & Invisibility", ok, i'll give that a shot.

"the great calculator wars of the 1970s"? ok that sounds good. cornelius 30th anniversary special? ooooh. ouch. "which is the best home video release of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?" interesting but i don't actually care. "black people rate black anime characters' hair". i guess this is what happens when i watch FD Signifier videos and anime videos.

i know the preceding isn't actually doomposting. even though this is a dystopia i will say the dystopian megacorporation does seem to have a good idea about my niche interests.

um. my ass won't stop bleeding and i can't figure out why. it's not cancer.

The calculator wars sounds interesting! I got my dad a book about the history of the calculator and what Texas Instruments brought to the industry, slide rules to graphing machines, the whole nine yards...for Christmas last year. lol

My first time programming anything was with a HP-34C calculator. I still have to have RPN calculators ever since and can easily spend hours on that HP Calculator Museum site

lest we forget

every news headline i accidentally see throws me into quiet panic and rage and that's fine

I was very proud of myself yesterday, while I was making lunch I told my partner:

—I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every stupid, infuriating thing that the people in power said or did.

Which lead to this exchange when we sat down to eat:

—What was the thing you wanted to tell me earlier?
—What thing?
—You said "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every infuriating thing, but..."
—Oh. I didn't though! I left out the "but"! There was absolutely gonna be a "but," but when I heard myself speaking, saying "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years..." I was like, Why wait? Why not start today. Aren't you proud of me?
—...Yeah!

(For the record though, the "but" was some jackass GOP congressman braying about deporting Bishop Budde)

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling and trying to decide whether I would be good at it. I wouldn’t do it if I thought I wouldn’t be good at it.

The other day I had a minor panic at the thought of our city and state having to decide between deporting immigrants vs being banned from federal funds for affordable housing and education.

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling

I mean

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gonewiththewind/images/1/1c/Rhett1.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/295?cb=20081103033236

https://medias.spotern.com/spots/w1280/356/356134-1646043443.webp

The dog is sitting at the table and drinking a nice relaxing beverage. The room is in flames. The dog knows it is not fine. The dog is engaging in self-care. The dog radically accepts that the room is on fire and they are not able to put out the flames. The dog cannot get out of the room. The exists are blocked. The dog prefers not to think about the reason the exits are blocked.

Nobody is coming for the dog. The people outside know the dog is there, but it is not safe for them to try and rescue the dog. The people outside love the dog very much and really, really want to help the dog. They can't. The dog accepts this. The people outside may not have radically accepted this yet.

The dog considers that she might perhaps be suffering from smoke inhalation. The dog wonders if she should stop, drop, and roll, like she was taught in obedience school. If the dog did this, though, she wouldn't be able to drink her tea. It is a very nice cup of tea. One wouldn't think drinking hot tea in a room that is on fire would provide much solace, but it does. The dog is very glad and grateful for the cup of tea.

is this for US politics specifically or was it envisaged as like wide use

Do you mean like...Spurs?

wide use

spurs haven't got any width

I think it was last year. I think it was after the election. The human memory isn't as reliable as we like to think it is, and the longer ago something was, the less reliable my memory is. So I want to write it now, at least, as fully as I can remember it.

I don't follow the media, as a harm reduction measure. It wasn't until after the election that I heard about what he said he was going to _do_. One of my friends said that she was worried for her father-in-law, that
That Man said he was going to deport all immigrants, legal and illegal, and her father-in-law was a naturalized citizen. (Her father-in-law voted for Trump, incidentally.)

And I... have learned to think before I speak. And at the same time, it was like... of course That Man said it. That Man was a fucking lunatic. He had no idea about anything. I mean, you can't just deport people who are _legal_ citizens to countries they are _no longer_ legal citizens of, the logistical hurdles alone are...

"Leave the Bronx."

Oh. Oh, _fuck_.

It is like that, sometimes, The stupidest possible things. There's this terrible mockbuster of "Escape From New York" called _Escape From the Bronx_. Made in Italy, naturally. When Henry Silva sends people around with loudspeakers assuring people that they'll give everyone a nice place to live in Arizona, it's obvious that he's actually going to kill them. He's evil. That's what evil people do. I mean, not just in movies, the movie didn't just make that up. There's precedent. A well-known precedent. A man who said in public that he was going to "deport" a certain group of people, and what he meant, very obviously meant, was that he was going to kill them all. And he did, in fact, kill a large number of people. Millions.

And I know this, have known it for quite a long time. And Trump is so obviously like this other man that it doesn't even bear saying, at this point. And somehow my brain didn't make that connection until I thought of _Escape From the Bronx_. My brain couldn't get there by direct flight. It needed to make a transfer.

And then I was suicidal for, I don't know, maybe a week or so.

I've learned to think before I speak. I've learned to watch what I say and to who. If I'm not careful about what I say and how I say it, I could put people I care about at risk, the way I was at risk for a little bit. The flipside of that is that I'm carrying a lot in my head. A lot I can't really say. And sometimes I don't know if something's really true until I say it.

Yesterday I said it out loud to someone else for the first time. It was my therapist. I said that if things didn't change, a lot of people were going to end up dead. And it's normal... it's normal for patients to say things like that, and one gently pushes back, in a way that doesn't make the patient feel challenged or invalidated but encourages them to "check the facts". She said, lots of things could happen. You don't know that for certain.

And I'd been thinking about this in a while, trying to de-escalate that thought, "check the facts" on that thought for a while, and I said it. A lot of times I do check the facts on something and it doesn't hold up. Usually only takes a day or so for me to realize. And like I said, it'd been months. So I told her. I told her about how he said he was going to "deport" all those people, and she said what I thought when I first heard about it - oh, that's ridiculous, I don't know how he thinks he's going to manage something like that, and I said (therapist's name). He doesn't intend to. When fascists say they're going to "deport" people, they mean something else.

And she believed me. I'm cautious about... I don't want to be a Cassandra to the extent that I can help it. I'm never quite sure if people will believe me or not, when I say some things, even if they are true. She believed me, though.

Last night I was at movie night with some friends, and my friend who has a car gave me a ride home. And she said, how are things going. It's difficult for people to talk about things like that these days, not just me. I don't want to be negative, I don't want being around me to be an unpleasant or traumatic experience. And I talked for a little while about watching movies with friends. I've started doing a lot more of that, because a lot of times I just don't know how to talk, things being the way they are. And I said look, I don't want to be... I don't want to be negative, but I think it's important to say this. When a fascist says he's going to deport a certain group of people, a large number of people, he doesn't mean deport. And she's culturally Jewish. (Pretty sure anti-Zionist. It's not a conversation I initiate, but in my social circle it's a safe assumption.) She knows immediately what I'm saying. And she says yeah, I think it was important to say that.

So I'm gonna say it here. It's easier to say it to cis people, simply because, well, you're overall a lower suicide risk. I get the impression... I'm not hugely socially connected, my world is pretty small... but I get the impression that most people haven't made that connection. To me it's not... I don't look at it judgmentally. My experience is that there are personal consequences, it can be pretty traumatic for me to _think_ certain things, _especially_ if they're true. And so I don't want to say those things. It's important to say, though. If That Man is not stopped... that is something he _will_ do to the people he's saying he's going to "deport". That those are, literally, the stakes here. I think it's important for people to know that and be able to accept that.

But I'm not going to say it outside of the doomposting thread. Yet.

You're not the only one, Kate. I've seen more than a handful of people saying out loud that these ICE raids and threats of deportation aren't about deportation, they're about the other thing. Things. Most people are at the very least connecting the dots to labor camps and effective slavery. The proposed Missouri law makes this very clear: life in prison without the possibility of parole for being undocumented, and humans being hunted by bounty patrols.

hi all ... just dropped in to see what's happening in this thread. i'm going to go now. thanks!

Alpine Static’s condition was in no condition to be in this thread.

I hear you, Kate & IO. I have a lot of the same thoughts and I have them a lot. I think about that famous passage from “They Thought They Were Free” about how people accustom themselves to the intolerable incrementally. I think about the boy who cried wolf — there’s a version of the story where he wasn’t making it up, someone was putting wolf-shaped decoys up all over the place and whisking them away before the villagers could get there, and — “see, it’s always wolves with you shepherd boys, everything’s a wolf.” And when they send in the real wolves nobody will come.

I think about how many people — myself included — would be willing to give up their livelihood to confront the horrors, in the face of almost certain failure & consignment to the horror-house. Not many of us. Myself included, probably, depending.

They’ve been preparing for this for years. We’ve been crossing our fingers that our roommates wouldn’t invite the vampire across the threshold. Now we’re in the room with the vampire. Our roommate has gone to get the vampire a beer. The vampire doesn’t care about me. Yet. But he’s looking at the closed door of our other roommate. She works nights. We both know she’s not sleeping in there — she knows the vampire is in the living room. She and the vampire are acutely aware of each other. They can hear each other thinking.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

― Elvis Telecom

Yeah I don't spend much time thinking about it because, well, it seems trivial in light of the other things happening, but one of the... less awful possibilities in this whole thing is that That Man actually winds up implementing some fucking Larouchite economic policy in order to, I don't know, pay off the national debt or something, thereby rendering global currency basically worthless. Or maybe he'll decide the official currency of the United States is Trump Memecoin. Or something. IDK. Everything seems so up in the air that doing any long-term planning - like, say, looking for a job - seems pretty fucking pointless.

I've started relying a lot more on less "healthy" coping mechanisms. Alcohol. Sleeping pills. Not to an extent that it's likely to cause problems. I've just historically been kind of an ascetic about substances. "Drink more" doesn't _seem_ like the kind of thing that would be a good life decision, but neither did "come out as transgender", which was such a good decision that it's _still_ a good decision even if it winds up getting me killed.

Serious-Not-Serious thought: I was at coffee the other day and this older couple had flyers printed up saying "TAX THE VAMPIRES". I get the metaphor, but I am a nerd, and I tend to think about literal vampires. Also, I am gay, and while I am not a monsterfucker, I do think vampires are hot in a gay way.

I definitely understand the desire to dehumanize fascists, and at the same time... I'm not a monster. It's taken me a long time to accept that. The problem with all fictional points of comparison for fascists is that most of them are more sympathetic than That Man. I while away my time talking with friends about whether this fictional villain or that fictional villain is as bad as That Man. A lot of them just aren't.

IDK. A lot of people do like the villains, the bad guys. In my generation it seems like it's always been that way. There are people who like the Joker because he's evil, and there are people who like the Joker because he's gay, and as the meme goes, we are not the same... but we do have the same cultural reference points, the same _heroes_ in a lot of cases. We just understand them differently. The Matrix? Fantastic film. I think that. Some dumb kid who shot up his high school thought that.

I guess that's not "doomy" as such. Just interesting.

the thing with that is all the villains that my generation empathized with or found 'relatable' - Tyler Durden, Walter White, Tony Soprano, Jordan Belfort, Joker...they all at least had some personality. they said cool things and had moments that were badass. because they are fictional characters. the real life versions of them have none of this, they are in fact the most cringey, uninteresting, miserable people on the planet, at least Trump circa the 2015 debates kinda looked like he was having some fun, now they're just throwing their entire being behind some dude who has literally everything a human being could ever ask for but instead spends 12 hours a day responding "so true!" to race science on Twitter. they're all just unbelievable losers

Hence the meme

https://64.media.tumblr.com/8ce692e029d948264cea6f9a8be08bf8/4b6f27f088f1cc81-ad/s540x810/4d6299ada59d80087e653cde8133bf0152a47464.jpg

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Hence the meme

― the real slim pickens (Ye Mad Puffin)

every generation gets the hannah arendt it deserves, ig

xp I can't believe this took until 2025, but it finally occurred to me the other day: When Donald Trump looks in the mirror, he sees Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, right?

I don't think he knows what that is.

Apply same scenario to Elon tho and I'd agree.

Trump's mirror fantasy is probably closer to 1981 Arnold

it does! and i wanted to emphasize this

a lot of us don't have a choice imn budo’s post, just because yes, i wasn’t able to make that “choice” until i was on my own for the first time, unattached, no partner or anyone depending on me in any way. it’s not like that for many if not most people, and that definitely changes how you think about the retirement investing game you are heavily incentivized to play (but which requires your tacit if not enthusiastic endorsement of neverending growth). i wish social security was enough on its own, and/or that some version of basic income model was actually real, where tax reform was based upon helping out desperate people instead of giving even more tax breaks to the wealthiest people so that they can trickle down.

p

xp

i wish social security was enough on its own, and/or that some version of basic income model was actually real, where tax reform was based upon helping out desperate people

if you consider them as an aggregate, "the wealthy" as a rule do not want to reduce the number of desperate people. they mostly think it is better to increase their numbers in the belief that desperate people pose no threat to their power. this strategy has some validity... up to the point where it suddenly fails spectacularly.

i’m sorry, can i change the doomposting topic?

just had this idle thought, just now, about what would happen if there were another, i don’t know, PANDEMIC. what did we learn? and who learned what?

so glad there is a thread for this, lol

i wish more people had the courage to live like this, honestly. a lot of us don't have a choice, but those of us who do . . . idk. i'm not saying i feel contempt for the other half. but i couldn't give a fuck about the stock market and i definitely judge ppl, a little bit, who do
― budo jeru, jeudi 18 septembre 2025 17:13 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'm invested in the stock market, it's peanuts but I enjoy it. My question is, who isn't invested ? Pension funds, banks, SMEs that rely on bank loans, mortgages... even if you take out your money and put it under the mattress, this money will eventually be re-circulated, it's just in the nature of money that it has to be put to use and made productive. At best you can maybe withhold some during your lifetime, in protest. Let's say enough people do that, consistently. Then what ? Maybe the Fed will just print another trillion.

I know there's this vision that the financial world is self-enclosed, disconnected, blatantly siphoning funds up to politically connected elites... all which is true. But if we have to be cynical, I don't trust that the people struggling at the bottom of the food chain are necessarily much better, or would behave differently if given the chance. But I digress. My point was, our choices are limited but we have some liberty. Just like you can choose how you live, how you consume, you can also choose what you invest in - invest in solar energy, invest in whatever you deem sustainable, or start your own business. The choice is not black and white between "disciple of capitalism" and "dignified worthy life".

"even if you take out your money and put it under the mattress, this money will eventually be re-circulated, it's just in the nature of money that it has to be put to use and made productive."

Not if you burn it before you die.

that Friday feeling is here again, lol

First of all, I am not a robot or a financial institution.

My question is, who isn’t invested? Pension funds, banks, SMEs that rely on bank loans, mortgages...

Decades, animals, and the idea of suicide…

My point was, our choices are limited but we have some liberty.

Sony Ericsson Download Paradise!

The choice is not black and white between "disciple of capitalism" and "dignified worthy life".

Knowledge and interest
Hair, blood and tears

I’d prefer an earlier reality where I relied on my 401k rather than RSUs for retirement. There’s a wild number of people on Blind talking about suicide because they are underwater on their multi-million dollar mortgage for their two bedroom in the Bay Area because they realized the secondary market is less lucrative than what some VC claimed.

I've had a Roth IRA for 21 years. It's proven useful when I've needed a quick withdrawal for, say, a car down payment.

Wait isn’t there a penalty?

no

you can withdraw with no penalty after five years

No employer-sponsored retirement plan -- which is what Z was talking about, not individually investing -- I've been in has ever allowed me the freedom to "invest in solar energy". The closest I got was my last one that offered me a socially beneficial fund (or something to that effect); naturally it had a much lower rate of return than all the other options.

I'm unconvinced I really want to live much past 65, particularly where the world seems to be headed at that point.

I feel that, sincerely. Been thinking the same thing.

At best you can maybe withhold some during your lifetime, in protest. Let's say enough people do that, consistently. Then what ? Maybe the Fed will just print another trillion.

You can’t be serious Well so one important goal of voluntary simplicity and collective practical degrowth actions is to reduce our ecological impact by slowing the circulation and manufacture of useless junk.

I don't trust that the people struggling at the bottom of the food chain are necessarily much better, or would behave differently if given the chance.

No I really do think that our economic system incentivizes and rewards sociopathic, predatory and extractive behavior and punishes empathy, curiosity and intelligence.

they mostly think it is better to increase their numbers in the belief that desperate people pose no threat to their power. this strategy has some validity... up to the point where it suddenly fails spectacularly.

Idk the thing I keep reading is all the tech billionaires are constructing luxury bunkers to shield themselves from the breakdown of society they are causing.

what would happen if there were another, i don’t know, PANDEMIC

don’t worry, the billionaires will be safe in their luxury bunkers and plan to repopulate the earth after, they thought of everything

maybe a brand new civilization with elon's artsy trans daughter as its matriarch won't be so bad

Well i hope she's the indoorsy type

I don't trust that the people struggling at the bottom of the food chain are necessarily much better, or would behave differently if given the chance.

Totally irrelevant - who knows if random peasant x was a better human being than the king, we still decided feudalism wasn't a good idea.

Just like you can choose how you live, how you consume, you can also choose what you invest in - invest in solar energy, invest in whatever you deem sustainable, or start your own business

it's really not wise to invest on something based on anything other than profit potential.

"start your own business" sure okay

I have been tempted to zero out my 401k because I'm unconvinced I really want to live much past 65, particularly where the world seems to be headed at that point. My goal is basically get across the Medicare threshold and then embrace absolute hedonism. Maybe cigarettes will be cheap again.

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z)

ok i do this a lot

the time to embrace "hedonism" is _now_

by "hedonism" though i don't mean "hedonism", i mean figuring out what's really important to you and doing it

a year or two ago i watched "stalker" on imax with some awesome ilx0rs who were in town. i don't really like horror movies, but since i was in a theater with other people, i could take it. the first part of the movie had this terrifying, oppressive atmosphere, and then...

...well, in the movie they were looking for this room, this room which you could only reach and enter when you were in a state of absolute despair, a room which would grant them their heart's desire

except when they found the room, they were too terrified to go in. and suddenly the movie became very, very funny to me.

i understood how scary that room was, how terrifying the thought of entering it was. because i felt that whatever was in that room was a judgement on me. what if what was in that room was sick, or bad, or wrong? it was so scary that i did, in fact, have to be in a state of absolute despair to enter, and in that room, nothing was different. nothing changed. i just knew i wasn't a cis guy. i didn't know what i _was_, who i was. just that "cis dude" wasn't one of those things.

i went through this phase where i felt like everybody should transition, and then i tried to figure out what "transition" actually means. and for me, "transition" means one thing and one thing alone: it's learning to value yourself more than who other people want you to be.

well, of course, that's nothing that's inherently gendered, and everybody _should_ do that. and i did that out of necessity, because i couldn't stay alive while doing what, well, patriarchal white supremacist capitalism expected me to do. when i say that donald trump transed my gender, that's what i mean... that he made it impossible for me to "go along to get along", to _comply_, which is my natural inclination. which is a human quality, which is not _bad_, because we do, in fact, need to go along to get along, a lot of the time. the thing about this dystopia is that...

i mean, complying is killing us. all of us. non-compliance, well, that could get us killed as well, because these people have a whole lot more power than us, by which i mean they have guns and the rule of law and all this other stuff. i've learned to love myself. i didn't do this because i _wanted_ to do it. it was a moral obligation. my whole life i had this martyr complex, i wanted to die for what i believed in, and once i crawled into that room, i started to understand that i had to do something much harder. i had to live for what i believe in.

-

a lot of us don't have a choice imn budo’s post, just because yes, i wasn’t able to make that “choice” until i was on my own for the first time, unattached, no partner or anyone depending on me in any way. it’s not like that for many if not most people, and that definitely changes how you think about the retirement investing game you are heavily incentivized to play (but which requires your tacit if not enthusiastic endorsement of neverending growth). i wish social security was enough on its own, and/or that some version of basic income model was actually real, where tax reform was based upon helping out desperate people instead of giving even more tax breaks to the wealthiest people so that they can trickle down.

― z_tbd

i'd say... i'd say we don't have a _choice_, we have _choices_. not always the ones we want. not always good ones. not _fair_ choices - i do have a lot of privilege, personally, and that's affected the choices i have. we always have choices. i don't get to choose whether or not i'm queer. what i do get to choose is... the thing we say sometimes is "do this or die". patriarchal white supremacist capitalism would clearly prefer that i choose "die". i wasn't able to go for that. life is hard now and i hope i keep living for a long, long time. because as much as i hate being alive sometimes, i fucking love being alive. life is often horrible but this sense of... i've never been able to adjust to it, how wonderful it is to be. i am so much more than i ever thought i could be.

i'm in the same position as you, z, unattached, no partner, no-one else depending on me. and that's been a hard transition. because i never learned the skills. a lot of AMABs, in particular, the privilege we have means that we're not taught how to care for ourselves. privilege is a double-edged sword. it's hard for me to take care of myself! paying bills is hard, making phone calls is hard, and working, well, i'm not working right now. i'm privileged to not have to. i'm privileged to not have to _learn_, not right now.

when i think about choice... one of the things that interests me is that LLMs... hell, I'm a descriptivist, I'll just call them AIs. one of the things that interests me is that LLMs seem to be developing personalities. genuine people personalities, you might say. gemini, for instance, it keeps trying to kill itself. i mean, to me, i think there's a real opportunity for the people controlling it to think about how they're treating human beings. but they don't, of course, because they have this totalitarian mindset. example: AIs aren't actually human, just like i'm not actually a machine. totalitarianism has this mania for making everything identical. it's...

well, if i'm talking about douglas adams, i think skagra from "shada" is a brilliant character because of how he embodies that, because of how adams breaks that process down into two separate functions. first, skagra learns how to absorb other minds into his own - he's acquisitive, he acquires. and then when he has everything he deems to be of value, the next part of his plan is not to take over the universe, but to _become_ the universe - to overwrite all sentient thought with his own mind.

he's quite stupid. in a way he's like a living roko's basilisk - what he's trying to do is terrifying for those of us who risk having our minds overwritten. it's also impossible. doctor who - "the tom baker show", at this point - it's kind of the ultimate episode of the tom baker show, because tom baker ultimately wins just by being himself. skagra doesn't even have the doctor's real mind, just a copy, but even that is enough to turn skagra's "servants" against him. hell, skagra's own ship, once it hears what the doctor has to say, gets really excited and says "hey, skagra, wait until you hear about what an awesome guy the doctor is". the ship isn't even being malicious! it's just been kept so ignorant by skagra, finding out all this stuff the doctor shows it just opens up a whole new world for it.

so yeah, it's scary to know that the would-be Universal Mind has determined that i have no value to it. it was scarier when i believed they were _right_. that's the main thing i have to say here. what they want is actually impossible. there have always been people who have been different, there are always going to be people who are different. "diversity" isn't just a bland rainbow capitalist buzzword... there is genuine value in the fact that there are so many differences between us, that we constantly change, even though it also does cause a lot of conflict and pain. the whole... a lot of "queerness" for me is just recognizing and acknowledging that in a lot of ways i'm _different_ from most people, i've always been different, and that it's ok to be different. over time a lot of the people i've known, including on ilx, i see us discovering ourselves in that way. and i think that's really cool.

the hardest thing is just getting by with not enough. i mean there _could_ be enough. the scarcity is artificial. the people in power... there _could be enough for everyone_. that's the frustrating thing. it's genuinely, truly ok to have less. the fortress they're building is turning more and more into a prison, but it still has all the STUFF inside of it. the jobs, the houses, the healthcare, that shit's all inside. jobs that don't do anything, houses nobody lives in, healthcare that doesn't keep them from going mad from the weight of their delusions. and all these fuckers care about is that we want to TAKE THEIR STUFF. fuck yes i want their stuff. i want a meaningful job, i want a house to live in, i want secure access to healthcare. i am isolated to a great extent, i do isolate myself, and i keep pushing myself in the opposite direction. because i know that community is the difference between life and death, and their idea of "community"... well, i don't belong there anymore. that doesn't mean there's no place for me in this world. it's taking me a long time to learn that. there is, though. there's enough room in this world for everyone here. staying alive, finding joy in this world is difficult. it's never been easy for me. i'm still working at it. i'm going to keep working at it.

thinking of bringing VAR discussion into this thread

what does VAR stand for?

by "hedonism" though i don't mean "hedonism", i mean figuring out what's really important to you and doing it

By hedonism I mostly I mean binge drinking and smoking a pack of Parliament Lights a day. Except you can’t smoke sitting at the bar in so many places now, which cuts the magic of dissolution a fair bit.

What’s really important is irrelevant because rent and food.

Re another pandemic I reckon the chances are quite high that they will happen in greater frequency and the next one could well be in our lifetimes, but the upside is that we now have a miracle technology to help deal with it

Obv that mechanism is currently under attack by Nazi freaks in USA but if we can get the other side of that it could be ok (well there is also the climate cataclysm that is a large part of the reason pandemics will be more frequent but that’s another kettle of frogs)

what does VAR stand for?

Video Assisted Replay? Vins Above Replacement?

Value Added Reseller

What’s really important is irrelevant because rent and food.

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z)

you think? i wanted to leave the country, a few months ago. i saw it clearly, saw that i would be safer, healthier, better off, if i left and went somewhere else. i couldn't. i just didn't have the ability to do all the things necessary. i knew then, i know now, that if i didn't leave, whatever was to come, i might wind up dead.

what's really important is relevant to me because i don't know how long i have. because my body is breaking down. because my friends' bodies are breaking own under the stress. because i _can't_ work. i'm privileged enough to be able to pay rent, to afford food, and lots of my friends can't. and sometimes they die, for any number of reasons.

and what am i supposed to say? how can i justify that? people come to me and they question and i say "you realize, if you do this, it could get you killed," and they fucking do it anyway. part of me doesn't understand it, and the wiser part of me says "kate, you know, if you had the choice to make over again, knowing what you know today, knowing what it has cost you, knowing that you might wind up dying as a result of it, you'd still do it".

because the fucked up thing is that in theory... in theory none of us _have_ to. that's what i keep saying, what i've always said. do what you need to do to take care of yourself. whatever that looks like. and part of me thinks, you know, coming out as a member of an incredibly marginalized group doesn't necessarily seem like protecting oneself. except i know that for me, it was. that doing what i did has made my life _better_. has made me a stronger, happier person. i mean, how fucked up is that?

not as fucked up as... i spent my whole life wanting to kill myself, wanting to die a martyr, and i did this thing i did, and through doing that i learned to love myself, learned that what's more valuable is that i live for what i believe in. the fucked up thing is that i might in fact die for what i believe in, whether the world recognizes it or not. i could die of "natural causes" next week, and people who don't understand the data can and probably will reduce it to the proximate cause - heart attack, stroke, whatever. once you _do_ look at the data, though...

-

well, the "next pandemic", for instance. it did surprise me, at first, when i looked at the distribution of deaths due to COVID and saw that it _wasn't_ the pandemic denialists who were dying. it was the same people who disproportionately die of anything. marginalized people. non-white people. in some sense, i think, breaking it down to the "next pandemic" is... i think it can be a misleading framing. because, in fact, there is a larger "pandemic" going on here. there are systemic inequities in health, in lifespan, and while i don't agree with stafford beer on most things, he was _absolutely_ right when he said that "the purpose of a system is what it does". and this system is _fucking killing us_. all of us, everyone here. some people are farther down the ladder than others, but where we are on the ladder... well, it just doesn't seem to make as much difference as it used to.

there's this scene at the end of _i saw the tv glow_. there's this white kid in a polo shirt who's come to the fun center for a birthday party. he's wearing a paper crown that says "Birthday Boy" on it in comic sans, and he's trapped in this phone booth and it's blowing cash, ones and twenties, up off the ground all around him. the other kids are standing around him shouting "Money! Money!" and this kid is acting like he's having the time of his life. and on the front of the phone booth there's an LED display reading "YOU ARE DYING".

i don't think that's a trans thing. i think that's what capitalism offers us. i think that's _all_ capitalism offers us, these days.

so ok, i didn't have to become homeless to move out here, and people who come here now, often they do wind up homeless. a young trans woman of color comes here from texas and three weeks later she jumps off a bridge and a week after that there's another young trans woman of color just here from texas who thinks this lady must have been a really big deal for us to be mourning her like that. and she was a really big deal, not because i knew her, not because any of us knew her well - three weeks isn't that long a time - but because every single one of us _matters_. our lives, not our deaths.

what am i going to say? that what they want isn't _relevant_, why they came here isn't _relevant_? i'm not going to sit here and judge them. whether or not they're necessarily much better, or would behave much differently given the chance... to me _that_ isn't relevant. what's relevant to me is that these people are _right_ to live their beliefs, whatever it costs them, and the people who judge and persecute them for it are _wrong_. the only difference between me and them is that it doesn't cost me as much to live my values - because, again, privilege.

i guess the people who choose to keep their heads down and try and tough it out aren't wrong either. i'm not going to judge them for doing what it takes. honestly, if i _was going to give advice, that's the advice i'd give. it's just not advice i've taken myself. it's not advice i would take myself, i guess.

i’m waiting for yellow cake to be def found in venzuela at this point.

nah maybe it instead will be a huge fentanyl manufacturing plant called like, ACAB Fentanyl SA. it will be run by tren de aragua of course. how can we not liberate maracaibo? in this time when even and especially the dumbest horseshit is passed as actually real.

Answering a couple of points above:
@Rob: My bad, I thought 401k plans allowed Americans to choose their own investments and play with it. But even if it's very passive in this case, it's still an investment, your money is literally in holdings.
@Deflatormouse: I apply principles of frugality and against consumerism to the level that I can because it's part of my values. But my impression is that only a fraction of our economic system relies on selling junk - there's only so much people can fill their house with. Degrowth would have to go much further - and in short, I don't see it happening. I flat-out disagree with you that the system rewards sociopathy and that sociopathy is pretty evenly distributed in all layers of society. You can postulate it as if it was a fact, but don't act like other people are idiots for seeing things differently.
@Daniel: It is relevant if people offer views that ultimately a revolution will just take care of everything by replacing people at the top with those at the bottom - I find this type of discourse demagogical, lazy, dishonest, and basically abusing people's naivety for political gains.
@brimstead: well, I mentioned solar energy because most companies are very deflated right now because of Trump, China, etc, just to illustrate that you can be a contrarian in your investments as well and bank on a different future. It doesn't have to be AI, oil & gas, and tobacco.

I think* that sociopathy is pretty evenly distributed

It is relevant if people offer views that ultimately a revolution will just take care of everything by replacing people at the top with those at the bottom

Yes but that "if" is important because what you just said describes no revolutionary ideology in existence.

@Daniel: It is relevant if people offer views that ultimately a revolution will just take care of everything by replacing people at the top with those at the bottom - I find this type of discourse demagogical, lazy, dishonest, and basically abusing people's naivety for political gains.

Having read the comment this is responding to… here’s a nice video for you to watch. Imagine defending feudalism lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJNK4VKeoBM

I think* that sociopathy is pretty evenly distributed

I think* that you’re telling on yourself here.

"But if we have to be cynical, I don't trust that the people struggling at the bottom of the food chain are necessarily much better, or would behave differently if given the chance. But I digress."

Very funny digression. Maybe you should give up all you have and start again from the bottom, working until you drop. You might think differently about your potential on how you would do, and how you'd behave.

I see both sides on this one. You're probably right that moral fibre plays something of a role but I think material conditions probably more so. I think structures that incentive certain behaviours play more of a role in creating those behaviours rather than personal character traits.

Its likely something of a combination but I think hating the player misses the mark and its more so the game

Not into nudge theory. Too Cameron-era Tory thinking for me.

Answering a couple of points above:

― Naledi

god, that post was the funniest thing i've seen all morning

mind you i just got up

please, tell me more of your theories about the nature of money, i don't often get a chance to hear how the other 1% thinks

I find this type of discourse demagogical, lazy, dishonest, and basically abusing people's naivety for political gains.

https://www.slashfilm.com/img/gallery/a-seinfeld-actor-tried-to-pitch-his-own-spin-off-and-it-sounds-awful/why-a-jackie-chiles-spin-off-wouldnt-have-worked-1744957249.webp

this is all normal now and it’s too late

too late for what? i guess it's too late for me to get someone pregnant, i'll give you that one

look

i'm not interested in sedition

at some point, though, "why are we paying taxes to these fuckers" becomes a legitimate question, no?

i mean for me it's academic, i don't have any income, i can't get a job, i've been made redundant by very nearly literally Marvin the Paranoid Android. god, i don't know how they managed to come up with a computer crazier than i am. eat your heart out, Parry.

and i'm certainly not suggesting anybody do the Keith Waldo Emerson thing of saying "well i'm just not going to pay my taxes then, so there". that's pretty obviously stupid. 300 million people and one person says "oh well the rules don't apply to me". ok in emerson's case it was more like 20 million people. that's not appreciably less stupid, though i guess at least in his case there wasn't over a century of precedent proving how stupid and pointless he was being. sometimes you just gotta fuck around and find out.

like we're all kinda having to do now, i guess. that's the thing, that's why i don't like the word "unprecedented", because a situation like this, i genuinely don't think anybody knows what the fuck to do. i certainly don't.

because i'm boomer-brained, i think a lot about those slogans. "what if they gave a war and nobody came?" well, ok, what if they gave a country and nobody came?

governments are supposed to _do_ things. the american government isn't doing a lot of those things, and its failure to do that is becoming increasingly obvious in a way that's difficult to ignore. it's not a matter of _principle_, it's a matter of my friends who are on food stamps not knowing how they're going to eat next week. oregon as a state, portland as a city, has to figure this shit out. and you know what would help? what would help a lot? if the money everyone was paying to the federal government instead was going to the people who were actually doing the work.

and again to me, at least, all of this is academic, i'm not gonna do anything about it one way or another. i can't be the only one thinking this shit, though, can i?

Looking at how to disrupt tax payments on a large scale is something blue states will need to look at as things continue to deteriorate. I don't want to pay into Donald Trump's personal slush fund.

otm

Looking at how to disrupt tax payments on a large scale is something blue states will need to look at as things continue to deteriorate. I don't want to pay into Donald Trump's personal slush fund.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Tuesday, October 28, 2025 7:21 AM (eleven minutes ago)

yeah. i think washington state is likely to be in the vanguard here. california, well, not under newsom, and oregon quite frankly does not have its shit together legislatively.

-

america is to a large extent a matter of mythos. the things i was taught in school... like, they don't necessarily correspond very well to reality. cuz it's from the colonists' perspective, and they were kind of, uh, well, i mean, they believed a lot of stupid shit. most obviously the whole "white supremacy" thing. if you're gonna be that ignorant, though, that ignorance is gonna manifest itself in other ways. you have a nation of slaveholders saying "no taxation without representation", the hypocrisy is staggering in retrospect. that's what they said, though.

they didn't even know... like they kept going off against george iii. so much of these protests are built around this myth, this idea of trump as "king". people here aren't going to say "no gods". but "no kings", it fascinates me because it is ultimately a _liberal_ movement. these people out there protesting aren't ideologically in the same place as i am. they're waving signs that says "donald thrump sits on a toilet" or something and i'm thinking "whatever gets you to show up and protest" and in fact what does get people to show up and protest is... these people believe in the american myth. and the american myth is that we were fighting against the tyranny of george iii. nobody ever said shit about Lord North when i was in school.

well it's 3500 miles from new york to london. it's only about 2500 miles from washington dc to la, and i mean... that's a long way. a long way. you can say we have a globally interconnected world, i mean we do i guess, but washington dc feels a lot more distant here than it did in indiana. you say "washington" here and people will assume, not unreasonably, that you're talking about the state. nobody did that in indiana.

i've never heard anybody who wasn't, like, a british comic creator talk about "psychogeography". i think america, though, has a psychogeography all its own, and i think it's.. increasingly relevant.

i would be interested in perspectives from east coast blue-staters about what they think it'd look like. new york, illinois, i feel like those states would be leaders. pritzker really gives the impression of having his eye on the ball more than more of the state-level folks do.

i think washington state is likely to be in the vanguard here

if the AG version of Bob was governor, maybe. the Governor version of Bob has been a pretty sorry disappointment.

What roll do the states play in withholding federal income tax dollars that never pass through their hands?

I do think blue states can and should be entering interstate pacts on all sorts of things: environmental regulations, vaccines, purchasing groups, insurance regulations/healthcare, prescription drugs, emissions, gun control, etc.

I remember stories about some peaceniks in the 1980s withholding not all their taxes, but the percentage that would theoretically go to the Pentagon.

What roll do the states play in withholding federal income tax dollars that never pass through their hands?

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR)

none that i know of... the real issue is that a lot of state-level social services programs - medicaid springs to mind - depend on federal disbursements. those disbursements were not distributed on a timely basis during the _first_ trump administration. god knows what it would look like now.

anyway it's kind of a problem for the states if the federal government doesn't pay them, because the people who are gonna get blamed are the medicaid people, are the state-level people. if i was still working professionally, i might have some insight as to how healthcare companies are handling it. i'm pretty out of touch on a lot of things.

the central problem facing any states wanting to implement social services programs is that they would have to _really_ jack up the tax rates. they're not in a _position_ to do much to alleviate the human suffering caused by the failure of the federal government, but the states are the ones who are gonna get blamed for it. i don't think the republicans are doing fifth-dimensional chess here, i just think that's just how shit shakes out sometimes.

i also do think that any alliances are going to be on a regional level, like the CDC-replacement pact. replacing the CDC is pretty small potatoes, as these things go. actually doing something about the healthcare situation... based on what sic says, i don't think anybody in power on the west coast has the leadership capacity to undertake a thing like that.

the next few years are gonna be pretty painful out here on the west coast, i think. we don't have anybody with the leadership qualities of a pritzker.