Jun 20, 2025, 10:11 AM@cstross The amazing thing to me is that we seem to have decided that bubbles are a good idea.
- Jun 20, 2025, 10:11 AM
Replies
Paul HealeyDialectician@universeodon.comJun 20, 2025, 10:19 AM@jmax @cstross No greater bubble, there is than the egos of fascist ultras being blown by their cult! #TheSource #FascistCelebrityCults
The Liquid SchwartzOvertonDoors@infosec.exchangeJun 20, 2025, 2:23 PMThis one... This one feels different. In the past the dirt ags in question were fuc-bos like Dubya, Cheney... People who essentially wanted the American economic system to exist when they were done taking from it.
Trump, Musk, Theil... They all have too many ties to BRICS. The amount of US sovereign wealth/debt they want to collateralize into crypto. I don't think this is going to be like the derivatives bubble or the rest before it. This has all the trappings of a controlled demolition of the $US and our place as a clearing house for global trade. Too many damn ruZZians keep showing up in DOGE and Trump's administration. It stinks to hell and back.
- Paul HealeyDialectician@universeodon.comJun 20, 2025, 2:37 PM
@OvertonDoors @jmax @cstross And lurking behind it all, are the new face of fascist ultras; the transhumanists. Their sado-maschistic tech fantasies, are not unlike the SF ideas of the Borg and Ori; a total surrender to the mindless normalisation of extreme terror and violence. Their information overload is literally a reflexive logic bomb. Transcending their LLM bible of biblical abstraction, the implosion of their deluded super egos is as close to a certainty as is.
Brett Rswiftone@mastodon.onlineJun 21, 2025, 2:47 PM@Dialectician @OvertonDoors @jmax @cstross I've heard these transhumanists complaints before, and I'm quite confused. How does inhumane tech bro cultists equate to a genre ( often progressive) of pushing the physical and existential limits of humanity?
Not denying, just expressing my confusion. On issues of sexual preference, gender identity, gender equality, accepting non-human intelligences as "people", and general tolerance I've always seen transhumanism as good. What am I missing?
Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shopJun 21, 2025, 3:52 PM@swiftone @Dialectician @OvertonDoors @jmax You're missing a hard turn towards the far right in the past 5-10 years, catalysed by mega-rich techbros adapting transhumanist ideas to suit their own emotional needs. Much as 2016's US election outcome suddenly gave a bunch of libertarians a license to turn into outright nazis, and 9/11 made islamophobia socially acceptable again. Original transhumanism was *relatively* innocuous, but some time after the dot com bust in 2001 it turned toxic.
- Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shopJun 21, 2025, 3:53 PM
@swiftone @Dialectician @OvertonDoors @jmax Don't underestimate the subliminal social impact of numerology: the Julian calendar's dating system rolled over 25 years ago and that change in the leading digit did a number on many peoples' heads.
- Brett Rswiftone@mastodon.onlineJun 21, 2025, 8:23 PM
@cstross @Dialectician @OvertonDoors @jmax Thank you, I had missed that turn, co-opting makes a lot of unfortunate sense.
Is there another term now for the original, or are we just stuck with the confusion, as with the evolution of "meme" and "literally"?
Garrett Wollmanwollman@mastodon.socialJun 20, 2025, 12:49 PM@jmax @cstross Good is a but strong, but there's certainly an inevitability about them. I don't want to be one of those annoying twerps who says "because capitalism" as the answer to everything but bubbles really do seem to be inherent in a system that relies on people always seeking higher returns on the basis of imperfect knowledge.
Space Hobospacehobo@teh.entar.netJun 20, 2025, 1:34 PM- Brett Rswiftone@mastodon.onlineJun 21, 2025, 2:32 PM
@spacehobo @jmax @cstross This. I vaguely thought of capitalism as currency, but capitalism is only a few hundred years old while currency is thousands of years old.
Capital as authority isn't some unintended side effect, it's the defining quality. All the gross abuse we hate isn't a failing of capitalism, it's "success".
This was an absolutely mindblowing revelation for me; The fact that it wasn't obvious speaks to either my obliviousness or the effectiveness of propaganda.
Jun 21, 2025, 3:40 AMthe oligarchs who are in early and are riding the bubble think it's a good idea
then you have the wannabes who think they are riding the bubble, but bought in late and are the ones who are going to go under but don't know it
the desperate gamblers. the ones who think capitalism is their personality and a religion
and there's a lot of them
then there's the rest of us, who know it's a pile of shit, and wondering when it means we're going to lose our job/ house