It's incredible, though, how the first person in the house to run to me when I fell and check if I was okay was the dog. (Yes she's people, have you met a dog?!) She's snuggled up beside me right now; obviously she recognizes that her human packmate is very clumsy and needs close supervision.
Imagine this world if people were more like dogs.
Slipped on the stairs and hurt my left shoulder and wrist something fierce, like blackout-from-the-pain bad, but haha, that shoulder was already fucked up. It's actually feeling better now. Will be a lot worse in the morning. So it goes.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.
Wake up and smell the petrichor, California.
If Obama had held a rally where he said, "Yeah, North Korea may hit back at us, but it'll be worth it... Let 'em take out Corpus Christi, let'em take out Oklahoma City, it's a small price to pay," there would have been riots in the streets and an impeachment vote shortly thereafter, with several Democrats joining the republicans.
That's the difference between them. The conservatives are ready to riot at any moment and delight in the use of force; Democratic leaders are timid debate club nerds.
I vaguely remember a conversation I had in '16 where someone was arguing that people have rights, and my response was that every right that's been given can also be taken away. And by extension, every norm we live by was at some point not a norm and so can also be undone.
What's happening around the world right now is the direct result of people falsely believing they have inalienable rights. You don't. You have to fight for them, forever, at all times.
Nothing is ever settled and done.
Hey #California voters, can I get a sanity check on the #vote for this November? Got our ballots, read the proposals, here's what I'm thinking:
Prop 1 - yes
Prop 2 - yes
Prop 3 - yes
Prop 4 - yes
Prop 5 - yes
Prop 37 - yes
Prop 38 - no
Prop 39 - hell no
Prop 40 - hell yes
Prop 41 - no
Prop 42 - no
Prop 43 - no
Prop 44 - no
Prop 45 - no
Thoughts?
Hot take, but aging and death are not problems that need to be solved. They probably could be "solved" in the sense that we could probably figure out ways to extend human lifespans, but that would be up there with the invention of the internal combustion engine, leaded gasoline, and nuclear weapons in the hall of fame for terrible, terrible inventions.
Like, imagine a future where the current crop of billionaires is still around and fucking things up 200 years in the future. No thanks.
Just tell me how many people this El Niño is gonna kill, how many homes this monster is gonna destroy. Tell me how many crops it will ruin, and give me a number for how much more it'll cost to feed my family. Show me where the destruction will hit hardest, which species will be wiped out, and what things we took for granted will be swept away.
Inches of rain means nothing to me; neither does percent above average. It's only when the suffering becomes tangible that minds change.
Paying taxes would be a lot more fun if my money weren't funding ICE terror, a military that is outdated and unnecessary, the cruel whims of a deranged narcissist, and the salaries of science-denying wackos and white supremacists who are out to kill us all.
I want my tax contributions to fund childcare, education, clean energy, healthcare, science, the arts, and international aid.
How amazing would it be if taxpayers could allocate how their contributions are spent.
Here's a word we should add to our dictionaries:
vericide
noun
ver·i·cide (ˈver-ə-ˌsīd)
: the deliberate and systematic destruction of truth
One of the chief uses of generative Ai is large-scale vericide.
vericidal (ˌver-ə-ˈsī-dᵊl)
adjective
: tending toward or producing vericide
Generative Ai is an inherently vericidal technology.
Spread the word.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: popular progressive online media guy gets outed on social media as having committed sexual assault in the past, gets dropped from his gigs, posts apology, people go at each other in the replies over whether to forgive and move on or shun forever.
I don't think we should expect people to be perfect. But I do find it odd that someone with that kind of history would choose to become a public figure.
An idiot savant, emphasis on "idiot."
I bet the whole "rebrand Ai as Super Intelligence" nonsense is because old soup-for-brains thinks "artificial" is why people don't like Ai. Like, he thinks it's a branding issue, because "artificial" has a generally negative connotation (not that he'd ever put it in those terms) but "super" usually means "good."
What scares me is that this brain-rotted dimwit has had the average American dialed in with scary accuracy before, so this is stupid enough that it just might work.
Remember, in this place you kinda gotta curate what shows up in your feed a bit. For example, if I see someone posting slop that's not marked as such, I just block 'em.
Say no to slopper spreaders.
And, like, where do we even go from here. If we can't even agree on a shared reality, if we can't even agree on facts, then we're in deep, deep shit. And Ai isn't going to make our reality dysfunction any better.
Is this it? Is it just gonna be more division, more polarization, more violence, and fascists laughing all the way to the bank? How do we even find a way out of this?
I don't know, man. This is one of those nights where it's difficult to find hope.
9/9
In the post-truth world, you can get canceled for calling a genocide a genocide. You can become a trillionaire by lying about everything at all times. You can sail a comfortable lie straight into the White House. And god help you if you're a journalist, because odds are your paper belongs to one of the very people who have become rich and who thrive in this exact society.
Antisemitism is on the rise, just as Hamas wanted. Truth is under attack, just as the billionaires want.
8/
Folks are looking at the world through some kind of funhouse mirror right now. Two people can look at the same thing and see something completely different.
So when Macklemore gets canceled for commenting on Gaza, people (correctly) call out that that's bullshit. But then people also (correctly) point to stuff he's done in the past that probably was a bit antisemitic, like that fucking costume, and here we are.
Everybody gets to pick their own truth now. And I think that's made us crazy.
5/n
In the US, we have white nationalists in the White House committing mass murder right now. We also have millions of people who are not fucking okay with that. This nation is a couple of bad years away from tearing itself to pieces.
Germany has neo-nazis at the gates, and there are tons of people eager to let them take the wheel.
France barely avoided handing the country to Le Pen.
The UK has a real far right extremist problem, too, and they have for a long time.
There's a common thread.
4/n
This creates a super toxic, swirling mess, because now there are actual antisemites using legitimate criticism of the genocide in Gaza to sort of backdoor a lot of their hateful, anti-Jewish rhetoric into the conversation. And when that gets called out, they have a perfect motte and bailey setup.
There were thousands and thousands of Israelis protesting the war last year. There are also ultra-nationalists in Israel who are cheering for the genocide. It's a complex fucking situation.
3/n