It’s much more clear, especially if you read the book, that JP is about accountability. All throughout the book, as shit’s going sideways and people are dying, everyone’s playing hot potato with accountability. At the end, Grant forces Genero into investigating a wild raptor nest with him, in spite of Genero’s protests that he’s “just the lawyer” because somebody has to take some accountability.

this is You Kiddin geometry

yeah, catfish can be pretty unpleasant.

yeah, not a fan; I thought it tasted remarkably of how piss smells.

It wouldn’t change anything, might even make it worse because then he could shit talk about “see? I survived!” Folks like this by default see themselves as the exception rather than the rule.

Unbelievable. It’s so jarring to me to have been raised on the western mythos of the arc of history bending towards justice, only to see right wing assholes the world over, at every level, having their moment in the sun, literally murdering poor people for laughs.

I mean, yeah. I’m glad he’s suing, this is bullshit and never should have happened at all; this would be grounds for impeachment and worse in a sane world. That said, we all kind of knew this, right? Donald even bragged about it at one point; the cruelty is the whole point.

I mean, let’s just drop allllll the pretenses here and call a spade a spade. We’re speedrunning both imperial decline and final act of the death of the republic. That means that what’s happening now isn’t so much the end of things taking shape; that dye was cast arguably as far back as neoconservatism and the death of the Soviet Union. No, what’s being shaped now is what comes next, and so far, it’s looking like a freak hybrid between neo-feudalism and neo-mercantilism, leaning more towards mercantilism imo, with a whole new nobility class formed purely off the basis of who holds the money and the assets right now. I mean, this should and would never be allowable under the republic, but the republic is dead and they’re just doing a little puppeteering with the corpse at the moment, while it’s handy to do so.

Let me be totally unambiguous here: the republic is dead, there is no going back. Even if we have elections again (lol, lmao) and even if they swing super hard left and even if we get a bunch of Democrats who are serious and result-oriented, and even if those Democrats actually do want to surrender the tools of fascism (unlike their predecessors), it’s going to take decades to walk back the damage. Before anyone will be able to feel the results of the course reversal, people are just going to get pissed and vote the next batch of right wing assholes in who’ll finish the job. The wounds are too deep, too grievous, and our political establishment is too captured and lacking in vision and intestinal fortitude. The republic is already gone in all but name, and what’s coming next will ensure that the people who sponsored it death are enshrined at the center.

If that’s not the world you want to live in, then you need to start networking at a local level, working with likeminded people across your local and state, and probably start working on secession movements. We’re going to have a very narrow window between the death of the empire and the birth of the monarchy to determine what kind of world our children inherit, don’t let it slip past. Get out there, go to city council and county supervisor meetings, join secession initiatives, get active and start seeking people out and networking. If we work together, we can at least forge a better tomorrow than what Zuck and Bezos have planned for us.

I wonder what the breaking point will be? I worry that we’re still a long, long way from it.

I think this is a really insightful comment that adds more depth to the conversation than the original article does. It definitely feels like we’re living in a society where all subconsciously agreed, to some extent or another, that we owe each other nothing. That doesn’t seem like a sustainable way for a society to be.

I dunno, I’m mixed on what the author is talking about here. On the one hand, it’s really not good to have any half of society just checking the fuck out; I think that the loneliness epidemic, regardless of gender, is a problem that is both real and addressable. On the other hand, what the author is pining for here is, imo, best left in the past. The kind of social norms she’s missing sound really unhealthy/toxic to me, and like they don’t really benefit anyone. I half expect some shit like this in Project 2025.

The mod engine is supposed to be an eye-watering 700gb. Holy fuck. I’d considered trying my hand at some mods, but, uh… that might have to wait for me to pop another drive in my machine first.

I’m glad they shipped when they did, messy as it was. They really needed to just get something out the door, before it ended up permanently stuck in development hell.

stealing refug.ee, as one myself

I did, while in high school and well before I realized I had ADHD and probably autism too, given the familiar behaviors in my diagnosed kids. That’s relevant because I had to work hard at learning social norms and conventions for stuff like interviews. Wal-mart offered me the job anyway, but I missed out on it because I missed the call and kept forgetting to check my voicemail.