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Cake day: June 20th, 2024

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  • I don’t think anyone really doubts that. entire 4000+ word think pieces decrying why “move fast, break things” doesn’t work in govt are being written alongside hours+ long YouTube essays describing project 2025 goals to dismantle the state. you’re not sharing a secret, you’re describing what we see with our own eyes… well, I guess maybe apolitical brainwashed normies aren’t aware.

    but breaking shit isn’t the actual GOAL, imo, at least not the whole goal. it’s a methodology, a strategy perfected in silicon valley boardrooms unleashed into the realm of politics. it will merely pave the way for other goals down the road.

    heritage foundation freaks might be content with dissolving government, but Thiel and Musk and others like them have much longer term plans than that. we need to focus on that while yes, simultaneously spreading the truth of what’s happening to the normies.




  • meh. you’re not a psycho.

    compassion is a muscle. if you’ve never spent much time, dedication, or effort working on empathizing with other people you won’t be good at it (or even think about it).

    we just so happen to live in society where those skills are not as rewarded compared to being self centered, independent, and ruthless. conditions maketh the man. hang out with someone who’s got a lot of compassion and concern for the feelings of others and you’ll quickly realize what you thought was your personality is actually a learned maladaptive response to living in a cruel and apathetic world.







  • I believe people who study public opinion about science have noted that confidence drops during outbreaks and epidemics… if that’s the case, Covid does stand out to me as the first time in my life when laypeople began misusing and misunderstanding science at scale, loudly and as part of their proclaimed identity.

    makes sense that when a story of global 24/7 proportions eclipses all other news for 2+years straight, that it would become politicized and weaponized in the culture. our winner-takes-all first-past-the-post lesser-of-two-evils duopoly political system, combined with news as entertainment, and now we have folks that have made anti science their entire fucking identity.

    Carl Sagan refered to it as The Demon Haunted World (good book btw). Goya criticized it in his paintings. the Catholics burned people at the stakes because of it.

    History repeats; reactionary political/theological movements help ensure that it does.



  • that’s an important (yet debatable) prediction. historically, in subsistence based economies where more farmhands=more food I think that’s been true. and holds true up to the point where costs of living don’t exceed net household wages (picture Dickens era chimney sweep kids laboring for a pittance).

    what’s interesting is that it’s not true AT ALL for any other species in nature, only humans in the post ~1800s era have developed a seeming unlimited capability to secure more food for their young. wild deer populations naturally reduce themselves when food is scarce, but humans found a cheat code to growing forever.

    hard to say. but it’s worth mentioning that although the doubling time for population has been contracting since 1800, it now appears to have flattened and is reversing direction.

    maybe more accurate to compare say, fewer people choosing to have children vs fewer kids surviving to adulthood and what conditions contribute more to each




  • our only hope at this point is probably

    1. people globally deciding to have fewer and fewer children due to rapidly deteriorating standards of living paired with rising inequality (no one will be able to afford kids let alone a home or healthcare)

    2. perpetual multi-crises and climate catastrophes disrupting supply chains and halting economic growth/consumption

    3. global economic collapse due to war, mass refugee migration, reshaping of national borders in a race to extract dwindling reserves of precious minerals and ore, also resulting in plummeting per capita consumption and/or birthrate

    4. all of the above in a self-reinforcing feedback loop

    … fuck, this was supposed to be the hopeful scenario. smh, we live in interesting times.



  • As much as I agree, it will take things getting a lot worse before people do anything like that.

    agree completely. we are as a nation and as a community too desperate or complacent to ‘take to the streets’ at this point. until fascism and austerity reaches one’s own doorsteps, most will wait and see and carry on with their boring daily routines.

    that said, it will gradually change though, already has. it’s reached the doorstep of more people today than it did 10 years ago. what will be your personal breaking point? what is your neighbors breaking point? no one knows. I for one won’t be sitting back doing nothing until then. it’s time to talk to the neighbors friends and family and decide in advance as a community what we’re going to do before they drain us dry or drag off grandpa for re-education at Guantanamo.

    A lot of the most heavily armed

    sounds to me like we shouldn’t wait around for those guys to wake up. maybe some of us on the left should arm ourselves instead?


  • if 10,000 people in a stadium are shouting “Fuck Shit Up! Fuck Shit Up!” it gives that 1/10000th person in the crowd -courage- perhaps even a primal ‘permission’ to ya know, Fuck Shit Up.

    if an old lady is standing outside a burning building on the sidewalk and pointing up at a window says “someone should do something”, you wouldn’t start yelling at her to shut up and intellectualizing how she has no right to tell others what to do. in fact, you telling her that makes you worse than her. she’s at least encouraging action while you advocate…what? silence?

    scolding others who SAY the right thing, because you’re unhappy they should DO the right thing (themselves) is peak hypocrisy/braindead logic and misapprehends basic group psychology and the nature of humans as social mammals that yes, god forbid, do need some encouragement from the crowd sometimes before taking action.

    no one is volunteering anyone else… we’re telegraphing to the person who finally does take action that we approve of their decision to act.