Gravity seems extra strong some mornings.
And yellow coloured things seem to whine at a slightly higher octave than normal.
I noticed that most articles have this strange AI feeling to them, I can’t say what specificaly, but I kust know.
Well Max Laughlin thinks that since the LHC went on we switched dimensions or some shit so maybe thats it
WB Yeats thought things were off back in 1919.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Michael_Robartes_and_the_Dancer/The_Second_Coming
We’re on the very edge of a new age of feudalism which, as we speak, is being ushered in by murderous fascists and their axiomatic drive to start civil wars.
A small cabal of billionaires totally stopped caring, or at least pretending to do so, about the common folks. They really want all the money and all the power in the world, and it’s now within their reach.
The “opposition” is either complacent or terrified.Yes I’ve been noticing that for years. Talking about it is always well received on social media.
I’ve also been noticing people’s attention spans and analytical skills deteriorating, as they take as little time as possible to process an item, make a superficial judgement that confirms what they already think, and continue scrolling. The goal of information consumption seems to be to process as many little items as fast as possible, spending as little time and brain power as possible on each one. But talking about that on social media isn’t usually as well received.
One thing that never changes is people’s selectivity about problems they’re willing to face vs ignore.
Also worth noting that this has happened throughout history many times.
What is new is the power a small group of people can truly have due to technology. The algorithms of social media and ai can now push the general populations opinions. Not unlike the propaganda of the past, but much stronger and more subtle. The surveillance of every citizen can be used to squeeze and silence the population on an individual level.
Throughout history, the level of wealth inequality and corruption we currently see often causes a revolt, usually followed by a dictator. But this may be the 1st time in human history that the technology enables a small group of people to prevent revolution essentially forever.
I agree up to “forever”. People with too much wealth and power tend to feel invulnerable until they find out they aren’t.
off how?
Just a bit… Hinkey.
It is off. The US empire is falling, and falling fast. They are lashing out in all directions, and hurting almost everyone. People credit Trump too much for the chaos, that is really frustrating. Yes, he has a lot of power to do idiotic things, but there is an armada of people controlling things and contributing here. Trump is mostly the facade. Never forget that Americans wanted this. They knew what he was, but they still voted for the republican fascists.
The same authoritarian development is happening in a lot of democracies at the moment. It’s honestly very worrying. I also feel quite powerless.
I’ve been trying to grapple with this recently. And I always end up with " well, the macro level might be fucked, but I can still work on my house and enjoy small hobbies and focus on the micro level of existence."
Except the macro issues (higher gas, inflation, ice, climate change, etc) just completely dominates the micro level. What good will enjoying my hobbies do when I can’t get the materials for them and the world outside is burning? Feels too much like burying my head in the sand.
Yes I vote every election, state and federal. Maybe get off the internet? But again, feels like burying my head in the sand. Idk anymore really.
Yeah, since 2014 when they turned the algorithms on.
agreed. i remember when everyone wasn’t pigeon holed into their weird alternative realities and people thought you were crazy for believing crazy bullshit, but now they celebrate you for it as being heroic or something.
Which time was that?
Was that when all media was owned by a few corporations and had complete control of the narrative for decades?
ten years ago.
So when people lived in the oligarch funded alternate reality. Got it.
“look, things were so much better when this indiscriminate murder and surveillance by the police was limited to black and indigenous people, and the 3 television channels didn’t report 99% of it! I didn’t consent to get colonized!”
It’s been off since covid for me. 2020 is where I lost a lot of faith in humanity. Masks off (literally) on selfishness, greed, fascism, and anti-intellectualism. Corruption blatantly on display. Decorum and civility have taken a massive hit. It’s been downhill since.
Masks off (literally) on selfishness, greed, fascism, and anti-intellectualism.
If only there had been a higher delta in survivability between the vaxxed and unvaxxed, the pro-plague nutters could have removed themselves more thoroughly and effectively from existence.
Unfortunately far too many of them still walk among us.
2016 for me. The moment a person like Donald Trump can win a presidential election is the moment that decency was completely dead. The worst people were suddenly empowered to be as terrible as they want to be. They felt justified in their racism, bigotry, disrespect for others, and hatred. It’s only been stoked more and more since then. Then, yes, Covid was the gasoline on the fire.
whats funny is it happened close to brexit. I had a friend were I was making fun like but I will be sober in the morning thing because we would just have the term and be done with it but then I found out it was not so temporary.
It is a downward spiral. Worry, loss, wory, loss, worry andvmore loss.
Loss of future perspectives, worry over basic needs, losd of health, worry over future of kids, loss of mental health, worry over wars, etc.
Oh yeah. Not sure how much is a us in particular thing. I think the last thing I complained about here is paper towels but I really feel like everything. Absolutely everything is just not working as well as it used to. I blame worker reductions and things just not being maintained as well. I think they are requiring folk to do more such that they can’t do it as well and they have lost knowledge on how things work but penny pinching on maintenance. Combined with little to no real oversight and by and large inspection is done internally and that is a good place to pinch pennies. I sorta feel like the country is going like the soviet union. Its like we talked about how inefficiently they ran but they still had cities and people working their jobs and going about life. Similarly we do and people are like see its fine because things are still happening. Its such a slow degredation.
I think it’s mass anxiety caused by uncertainty across the board.
Political uncertainty as far right and authoritarian movements pick up speed in various democracies.
Labor market uncertainties due to companies tightening their belts in the face of economic uncertainty, and trying to replace workers with AI.
Economic uncertainty due to wars disrupting energy and supply chains and the looming specter of recession/depression.
Geopolitical uncertainty due to several ongoing wars and several tense situations that could devolve into actual conflicts, not to mention the major paradigm shift happening where the US is actively ceding its position as a global leader to China.
Climate uncertainty as we refuse to address climate change and burn mountains of coal to power plagiarized chat bots.
The weirdest part is everybody is for the most part pretending everything is normal while silently being anxious on their own.
Honestly glad it not just me that realizes everyone is pretending
Honestly a lot of people around me are not pretending when you talk to them. They acknowledge it. They just dont know what to do on an individual level, trapped in their individual situations.
That’s been my experience as well. A lot of discussions that used to be an occasional hypothetical now happen more frequently and are a lot more brass tacky:
- what do we do if the federal government collapses / splits? Flee or hunker down? Either way, where?
- How are we going to get food and water over the next few years?
- how do we keep ourselves and our neighbors safe from the snatchers?
- how do we maintain supply lines for medications over the next few years?
We are all long on questions and short on answers. but the questions are bubbling up to the surface more quickly as more people catch on to the fact that the US is out of control. Donald Trump is literally building a bunker compound, or trying to anyway. He’s not leaving that office without a fight. The situation on the ground in the US is bad right now, but it’s going to get a lot uglier before it gets better.
I told my wife i was feeling really anxious today. I think that freaked her out more than anything. She was like, “but you dont get anxious!”
Well damn love, today I am.
It’s the opposite for me. If I told my spouse I was feeling relaxed and calm she’d start to get worried.
I’m seeing it. A lot of people are shutting down discussing it anything…usually with the line of …I don’t talk politics.
The best you can do is remind them that their voice counts. They count. That we are communities that outnumber the rich and oppressive. That they can take small protections with their privacy.
We are not powerless.
Those are symptoms not the problem.
The problem is we’re densely packed and scarce on resources. Humans adapted for that, because we populate insanely fast and would constantly hit the limit that land could support.
The downside is that adaptation was us killing each other in the absence of natural predators.
It’s all wired up inside of us, like the same neurochemical that causes group/family bonding making people (especially men) have very strong negative feelings about anyone they weren’t exposed to when young, because those groups didn’t make the cut for “in-group”.
None of this is new and it shouldn’t be shocking.
The oligarchs have been exploiting it for centuries. Everytime there’s one dude with everyone else’s money, he’s always pointing to an out-group member and blaming them.
We don’t have time to treat symptoms anymore, we need to fix the actual problem: oligarchs.
We have natural predators, they’re called billionaires. If your natural adaptation theory were true, we’d be instinctually wired to kill billionaires. But if we are, something is causing us to not.
The true problem is memetic. The billionaires and kings built memes to control us. Liberation will require a cultural shift. We need a culture of action and a culture of entitlement to what we deserve. We need to kill the neoliberal mind prison.
Who told you I would not eat one on the spot? Could do the blackout rage defence as well, and it would probably pass.
Bro we evolved to live in groups of a few dozen people and be hyper focused on physically present danger. How could an early human possibly conceive of billionaire; someone who personally holds more wealth that hundreds of millions of people.
There’s no neoliberal mind prison. People just focus on physical, tangible threats (a lack of healthcare, food prices) and not the vague concept of some guy with 9 zeros in a bank account who’s causing it (often indirectly with 2+ degrees of removal). We need to wake up to the fact that no shiny ideology will magically spawn cohesion among 8 billion people.
Republicans are defunding the schools so that people don’t have the intelligence to connect what they see and what they know. So they aren’t smart enough to see the connections.
The world is fucked, so someone fucked it. Everyone in the world can figure that out on their own, the logic is inexorable. The question is how various ideologies deal with that truth. The Democrats lie to us and say things are fine actually. The Republicans say it’s the gays and the foreigners fault. The centrists say it’s just complicated.
But the fact that Fox News can blame it on immigrants? Yeah, people feel something wrong in the world and they’re looking for someone to blame. Ideology and culture are what’s stopping people from blaming the rich.
we need to fix the actual problem: oligarchs.
the problem is, nobody is angry enough yet to do what needs to be done.
there is no peaceful solution to this problem. as soon as the oligarchs stop deserving to live in houses with unbroken windows and unburnt lawns, we’ll be ready for the solution.
Correct
Well fuck me, that’ll do it
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Everything feels normal to me, is this a US specific thing? UK here.
Sure we have problems but nothing much worse than any other time in my life.
I’m sorry to say this as an outsider looking in, but from looking at the news coming out of the UK and listening to people talking, the UK has had it pretty rough for most of the last 2 decades, if not beyond that. That’s enough time for some adults to feel like it’s been bad for most, if not all of, their lives.
People always complain and want better. But look at the good sides and put it into perspective - we have one of the best minimum wages on the planet and healthcare is free.
UK standard of living has been declining for years.
Where isn’t?
I don’t think complaining and wanting better is a bad thing though. If anything, I often find that a society that doesn’t complain and say things like “it’s better than nothing” often ends up with something shitty and putting up with it for far too long. Sure, appreciate the fact that we have what we do, especially cuase there were people that fought really hard for it, but we mustn’t get complacent.
Things fall apart more. Everything is breaking down and nobody gives a shit because there’s soo many things breaking at the same time.
In the chase for efficiency offered by computers and internet, everything from physical products to services are now depending on some broken code that only works when conditions are optimal. The systemic dependency between seemingly unrelated events is insane.
At least in the US, a big factor is wondering just how fucked up things are going to be on November 4. Or if the puppet masters will conspire to cancel the general election entirely. Makes it hard to plan for the future, wondering if an actual revolution is unfolding.
Nah, i dont think they are that worried. They are already in full gerrymander mode right now to get ready for it. The other option could happen, but that one will really have people looking so I am sure they would rather avoid it as much as possible. Its the nuclear option.
I get the feeling that things will simmer until October-ish, and if they get the hint that the vote might not go their way, things will start to happen very fast. A conservative will abandon democracy before their party.
There’s ultimately really no reason for them to completely dismantle democracy. Republicans know they can lose big in 2026 and 2028 and still regain power in just a few years. It’s already guaranteed that whatever Democrats get elected won’t really do anything to change the circumstances that resulted in Republicans winning. And they will not prosecute Trump and his co-conspirators for their crimes. And Democrats don’t offer the working class anything, so the Republican message of “we’ll make other people’s lives worse to make your life better” resonates with people. They’re the only party actually offering to help people.
There’s just no reason for Republicans to abandon democracy all together. They’ll happily tilt the scales heavily in their favor, but completely abandoning democracy would mean civil war. And they’re already doing quite well in our existing flawed democracy. Why risk it all when you’re already winning?
Ultimately living standards are declining because of increased wealth inequality. And Democrats aren’t going to do anything to fight that. So Republicans at most will be out of power for another cycle.
Republicans don’t need to destroy democracy. They’re already in complete control in our current system. And Democrats, if elected in 2026 and 2028, are already promising to do everything in their power to make sure MAGA returns to power in 2032.
You talk as if republicans are logical, rational, people…
