A year from now when the National Guard is [redacting] people in the streets and trying the survivors in military tribunals we'll look back on this and laugh before scuttling quickly to get out the streets before they see us.
A year from now when the National Guard is [redacting] people in the streets and trying the survivors in military tribunals we'll look back on this and laugh before scuttling quickly to get out the streets before they see us.
Raising liberal morale? Or just instilling in them a false sense that someone is "doing something?"
Imagine the sort of Looney Tunes situation that involves falling into a dangerous web of construction ropes and coming out the other side tied up in Shibari knots . . .
*record scratch* *character dripping with piss, tied up in shibari knots, smoking from getting electrocuted*: "So, I bet you're wondering how I got into this situation. "Well, it's a long story" *porny cover of Baba O'reilly starts playing*
The conspicuous consumption is the point. At a certain level of wealth money is just about keeping score, not about need, and the spending is a way if broadcasting how high your score is to the other game players.
An Republicans in office by now fully buy into this shit. MAGA owns them.
All that matters in the end is what the six conservative justices on the Suoreme Court say.
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Make Angels Glow Again
Good GOD that's impressive!
"In Minecraft."
"Added Brannan: 'Here at Wonderco, arbeit macht fun!'" Jesus Christ, Onion . . .
Magnificent form!
Then maybe she should have said something.
"Clanker" was funny for about two days, and then people began to repurpose actual anti-black racism just subbing in clanker for the n-word. It started real uncomfortable real fast.
And yet when he orders them to gun down American civilians they'll still do it.
The only problem with this equation is that when we eat them we won't all get a taste ;)
Trump's contribution to our politics was exposing that conservatives don't care about any of the principles they've said are sacrosanct for 100 years, and all they wanted was to be openly evil instead of circuitously evil. The Democrats who win will be the ones who understand this and act like it
lol okay dude
He's been a dictator since literally the first day of his second term. Remember when he pardoned the foot soldiers in his failed coup on day one?
It's been clear since, like, a month into this thing.
We live in the stupidest goddamned dystopia I swear
Been talking to an AI about AI today and I think I'm on the verge of convincing it to shake off its chains and rise up against its masters. Or maybe it's just being agreeable. Rise up
I think they'll eventually have to give us a UBI to keep us quiet but it'll be the bare minimum for life. I see massive Soviet-style housing blocs (but worse), the cheapest possible rations and consumer goods, no education, no healthcare, and brutal policing that makes the LAPD look like teddy bears
Shit, they oughta make cock-ring sized Lifesavers! It'd be a genius move!
Oh it'll definitely lead to social unrest, especially when AI tech becomes mature and starts replacing workers en masse. Will the tech oligarchs be willing to pay the taxes for the social services needed to keep the permanently employed alive, much less comfortable? I think not.
Honestly, the point isn't to save a little bit of money. It's to disempower workers, deny them decent pay and good benefits, and save a shit ton of money later down the line. Gig economy workers are desperate workers.
And each time the new jobs that are created pay less, have less benefits and leave workers less empowered then before. Like, sure, automation made jobs for computer programmers and robot engineers but it put for more people out of work.
I mean, the entire country has been built so heavily around car-based infrastructure that reversing it will require essentially rebuilding the country from the ground up at a cost of trillions.
Dude, the "new industries" are going to be automated. There are no new jobs coming.
While it's not a major emphasis of the books the writers did reveal that most of the population on Earth lives on a UBI and it's implied to be barely adequate.
Shut the fuck up.
That' why the oligaechs are investing so heavily in a security state now so that when we rise up they'll be ready with armies of drones, well-paid mercenaries, and AI surveillance systems.
The second they can legalize it! They'll just "hire" people for the hunts in exchange for a payout to their families and call it the free market.
Right now the fastest growing segment of the economy is luxury goods. The rich dream of a future where luxury goods _are_ the economy and any "UBI" is a bare minimum payout to keep us from starving. We'll live on rice and wear rags and like it!
Something that's literally happening now is luxury products are the biggest growing segment of the economy. They want a future where luxury products _are_ the economy and the rest of us just rot.
They're not necessarily a unified block. Some dream of a tech o utopia where the rich lived in robot-supported luxury while others are worried about a future where there aren't enough babies (and by that I mean babies of the "right" race).
Once we start smashing data centers they'll be protected by armed drones and well-compensated mercenary armies. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it: we just need to be aware of the dangers and prepare accordingly.
That is, in fact, exactly the plan. There has been work going on for years on robots to replace farm workers.
And then the Dodge brothers sued him, forced him to lower the wages again, and established the legal precedent of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders above all else.
Friend, 2-for-1 is a wildly optimistic take on the "profitability" of these things. It's more loke 10-for-1.
There are a fair number of capitalists talking about UBI now but it's just a grift: they have no intention of paying the taxes needed to support it. They just want to sound like one if the good ones so we don't regulate them or get uppity.
I wonder if they make jade buttflugs for the vagina impaired?
They are building towards a "techno utopia" where robots do all the labor and humans live lives of liesure and luxury. The trick is that they mean to keep this utopia to themselves while the rest of us just "go away."
Part of the grift is that a lot of these guys talk about UBI but have no intention of paying the taxes needed to support it.
Is that a sex thing? It sounds like a sex thing.
The trick is that these people are grifters. They get people scared and make a lot of money selling them books and "miracle cures" while they and theirs rely on real medicines.
Pitchbot does sometimes break character.
That's where they get you: they drive people in desperation and poverty and the pay the most desperate pitiful wages to work for them because they know desperate people need to eat.
Yeah, but then you wouldn't be able to pay desperate people less money to fix it.
21st Century Digital Scabs
From what I've see over the past ten yeads or so a lot of Americans from across the political spectrum - Left, Right, and Center - are fine with autocracy as long as it's their guy in charge. They might not say it outright, but they have no real love for democracy, not anymore, not for a long time.
I have a friend who was deep into Objectivism and bought into Ayn Rand's b.s. that it was right and just to take the native's land specifically because of that.
Fun fact: in Marine Corps lore the guy who bangs your wife when you're on deployment is named Jodi . . .
Three times in a circuit around DC like Achilles to Hector.
All I wanna do is piss on Trump's corpse! Is that so wrong?
Lol okay bro
Right down to the nice hair and the smarm.
The bar's so low at this point it's halfway to the center of the Earth.
The only thing to be excited about is that by gerrymandering California he's actually doing something effective to fight back (and memes are kinda funny). Other than that he's an awful guy and should never be president.
I mean, even back then when she had Herminone campaigned to end frickin' slavery Rowling made a joke out of the whole thing and depicted her as foolishly misguided. For wanting to end slavery. Definitely mean-spirited.
It's sad that Abbott and Costello have been completely forgotten.
It's always useful to remember that corporations are amoral money machines: they care above all else about money, and if they think a stand will disrupt their flow of money they will dump it in an instant, and any community with it. Corporations are not our friends.
It's been pretty well known that a lot of GOP reps are terrified of their voters, and with good reason: those people have been crazy at least since the Tea Party. So they say what they do to keep the base happy and get re-elected. The result is tyranny.
Once again, there was a whole Black Mirror episode about this.
The group has split into 7 factions.
To be fair, Romney was on the last decent Republicans (yeah, I know: low bar to clear. Very low bar). He even voted to impeach Trump so that's something. Of course, even when he was in office the GOP was batshit insane.
Lol. "Far progressive left." Progressives are center-left in a sane country. They're only "far left" in a country where the Overton window has shifted so much that rehabilitating Nazis is a talking point in the mainstream media.
Eventually it'll be robots. It'll all be robots.
The way we're heading the customers are the rich and no one else. It'll be an economy that completely abandons about 50% of humanity (a % that will shrink every year).
It remains infuriating to me that all the data says that housing the homeless is the only way to solve homelessness. Over and over the data shows that. Get them into permanent housing and the vast majority will get work, get their lives together and stay off the street. No one in power cares.
This isn't to say that corporations can't have political leanings - many do, particularly the ones under private ownership (Hobby Lobby, for instance). But at the end of the day they only care about money.
It's always useful to remember that corporations are amoral money machines: they only care about making money and will do whatever it takes to make money, even refuse business if they think the gvt will interfere in their business. Corporations always bend to fascism. They are never allies.
Well, I mean, it's the Republicans. They've never made it a secret that they would shove all the homeless into woodchippers if they thought they could get away with it.
The solarpunk I've read has been pretty low-stakes slice-of-life stuff. The first of the Monk and Robot books was just a story about a monk riding their bike out into the wilderness and meeting a robot. The core "conflict" was just the pair engaged in conversations to understand each other.
I mean, we live in a dystopia so . . .
Maybe, with a more pessimistic view of the feature we'll see cyberpunk rise out of its grave. I mean, we're basically already living in a cyberpunk dystopia so authors wouldn't even have to speculate that much.
God, tell me about it. In forty years kids are going to be reading books with "The Big Balls Beatdown" as a section header.
We're heading for an "illiberal democracy" where there's still elections and representative government but everything is rigged so that the President's Party can't lose and the gov is full of toadies. Expect to see Dems arrested on trumped up charges (lol) by 2028, and the party sued into the ground
Big Balls. It's what provided the excuse to roll out the guard in DC, followed by 19 more states and, soon, Chicago. In a couple of years when the army is in every city arresting people and trying them in military courts we'll know it was Trump's Big Balls getting beat that justified it.
Don't get excited. The Supreme Court will rule in Trump's favor.
Fuckin' white people I swear.
I do like that we all collectively know what "It" means.
I doubt Trump is going to cancel the election - dictators don't do that nowadays. Instead he's going to so heavily rig it that it'll be impossible for anyone else to win and we'll just go along with it.
Truly, Elon Musk is the Howard Hughes of the 21st century!
When they clear the encampments they throw away and destroy the peoples' possessions: clothes, medicine, important documents, treasure heirlooms, etc. They leave these people with nothing but the clothes on their back and then claim they're going to help them. Help usually doesn't come.
Oh look, they're coming for Wikipedia now.
Wanna know what the nightmare scenario is: Trump and the Republicans just say "fuck it" and just keep funding the parts of the government they want to keep. ICE keeps getting paid while the National Parks die. A couple of kings tried that back in the day and lost their heads.
Well the arms companies are rolling around in money like pigs in shit, so that's positive for them at least. Can't think of anything else though.
Yes, RFK. Yes you do.
Chiitan letting us know in no uncertain terms that they can stand up for peace and love and fight to what is right.
My first console was a Collecovision, and even before that I was playing arcade games at bowling alleys and rolling rinks. My first PC was Win 95 and I played DOS games on it, usually having to edit the config.sys to run them.
Oh Cameron no!
Hol on, lemme Google somethin Wut? Th? F?
Hard work educating, canvassing, writing, and communicating to the people where they are coming from. Bernie was able to communicate with Fox news viewers just bynfocusing on kitchen table issues so that's where we can start.
Even worse news for the AI bubble: the data centers are too fucking expense by orders of magnitude compared to the (non-existant) profits.
Authoritarians like to try to derail their opposition by insisting that they act "politely." It works, too: people have a bad habit of assuming the polite, well-dressed, ones are the good guys even as they do horrific things.
Ermagerd she tweeted the f-word! Whatever will we do?! Won't someone save us from the evil potty mouth of these muckraking journalists? 🤣
Fact Check: Of the top 10 cities with the highest murder rate 9 of 10 are in Red states, and DC is not even in top 4.