#anti dystopia

[nando161mando]

If you want to know why people have lost faith in capitalism, this might help

[shutinthenutouse]

[daybringersol]

its actually insane how everything we buy now is just. unfinished. every clothes. every cloths. just. loose threads everywhere. ripped fabric. i should be able to get a refund, but i need this thing, i need something like it, something that will fulfill this purpose. what am i gonna get instead ? another crudely made excuse of a product ? an actual thing that will cost more than my rent and has a forty percent chance of being just as shoddily made ? everything capitalism has ever promised us is rotten, nothing more than mold dust & worn out wishes hanging by loose threads. im done.

[feminist-space]

Tweet by Briana Mills, LMFT, dated June 22, 2024:

"The term 'cost of living' should radicalize you."

[whereserpentswalk]

You were born to be a sacrifice. When you first exited your mothers womb the oracles decided that would be your fate. They tattooed your hands and forehead so everyone would know.

When you turn twenty, they'll take you to the church, and they'll set you on fire. And then when your body is burned they'll give your ashes for the angels, and the angels and saints will be proud, and bless your community and family with great riches. Or at least that's what they say.

When you were young it didn't seem to mean anything that you were born to die young. Nobody cared, they just saw you as another kid. But it was always there. Adults would ask other kids what they wanted to be when they grew up, but they'd ask you what you would do once you were a ruler in the court of heaven. They'd tell other kids about marriage and sex and having children, but for you that would just be for other people, you'd die a virgin.

And at a certain age, you were removed from school. Because they said you wouldn't need it. That you shouldn't be wasting your time on such things. And you didn't understand, but you understood that all your freinds were upset that they wouldn't see you anymore. Not as much at least. And people talked about you so much differently from then on. You weren't complimented as strong, or as smart, or as ambitious, you were pretty, and pure, and brave, and dutiful. And everyone talked about how proud they were of you, how wonderful it was that you were going to die for them.

They were so nice to you. They gave you so many gifts and jewelry. You got to spend all day inside playing video games, and you got the best toys and got to go to movies and plays when you wanted to. Soldiers in power armor would bow when they saw you, and robots and cyborgs would turn off their lights. And you sat at a special place in church, and the clothing you wore was diffrent then everyone else's. And people talked about how wonderful you were, and how pretty you were, and how much they loved having you when they knew you wouldn't be on this world for long. And they were so proud of you when they showed you the platinum clothing you would wear on the day of your sacrifice. And you didn't understand why but all of the compliments sounded sad.

As you grew older things changed. The other children went through puberty, but you didn't, they gave you surgery to prevent it, ans told you how pure you were for not producing blood or seed. And you were old enough to understand that you would die, that you would burn, and it would hurt, and that nobody really knew for sure what happened after peopled died. And you saw a sacrifice, and saw the pain they were in, and there weren't any angels, there were only priests watching and chanting, and the smell of burning skin.

Your parents and family started to care much more how you behave. To make sure you're polite. To make sure you're a good sacrifice, who the angels will like. And meanwhile while all your other freinds are going to college, and talking about becoming artists, or starship pilots, or scientists, you know you'll only ever have one ending. But still, everyone loves you, and you don't have responsibilities, but still sometimes you think about how much diffrent life would be if you were born differently.

You've started meeting people who've left the faith, or people who didn't grow up in it, people who believe in diffrent religions or in no religion at all. And your heaven seems less and less certain every day. According to imperial law you're allowed to be sacrificed, but if you choose not to they can't force you. But if you choose not to you can never be a part of your faith again, and your family will be disappointed in you forever. All your family and community, everyone who you ever knew, will consider you a failure, a coward doomed to hell for not going through with what the cosmos planned for you. And all that pride and joy they felt about your fate would be replaced with anger that you never became what they were so happy and proud about you being. You don't think you believe in heaven anymore, but you still might choose to die, if it means they're proud... it's what you're raised to do, you don't know who you'll be if you choose to leave.

Better choose fast darling, it's only a few months away now. You don't want them to be upset.

[sparksinthenight]

If the economy NEEDS workers working in degrading, dehumanizing, dangerous jobs where they have very little power, then you need to get a different economy. Any world that relies upon the exploitation and abuse of the workers needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt. We can make a society where no one has to work a job that’s physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally, or environmentally unhealthy or unsafe for them. We need to create that society.

[alethianightsong]

Bioshock: Why Individualism is a shitty philosophy to build society on

Bioshock 2: Why Collectivism is a shitty philosophy to build society on

Bioshock Infinite: Why American Exceptionalism is a shitty philosophy to build society on.

[nando161mando]

Gary Stevenson: ‘Economists have been all wrong about almost everything for 15 years now’

[long-sleeved-sandwich]

man, fuck joe biden

(not in a republican way but in an anarcho-communist, i’m barely surviving and waiting until tomorrow because it’s pay day to buy bread meanwhile biden wants to send money that could help the american people survive to fucking israel to bomb hospitals)

[sinensis26]

"Oh so you think murder is okay now? You support MURDER?"

Yes. Full stop. Ive spent my entire life watching school shootings happen, seen my country blow billions of dollars on unnecessary wars, and stood in the middle of peaceful protests that get mocked and ignored. I did everything right, and learned that whats "right" simply makes you easier to ignore by the people who hold power.

I grew up in the sweet and docile "Babysitters Club" era, and have watched the next generations cut their teeth on "Hunger Games" and all kinds of dystopian lit. What did you all think was going to happen, when you kept tightening the noose on kids who were reading about revolution between active shooter drills?

I dont like murder, nor do I think most people do. But my god, you cant desensitize a nation full of people and still expect them to mourn their oppressors.

[raqualswonderfunblog]

[feminist-space]

"In a recent study, radiologists in a hospital in Germany were shown mammograms accompanied by “AI-generated” diagnoses (the diagnoses had actually been faked by the researchers, and some of them were deliberately wrong). These trained specialists, some of whom had been practising radiology for more than a decade, spent more than 40 minutes on average looking at the scans. But the “AI” diagnosis often persuaded them to go against their training: they regularly agreed with wrong diagnoses, led by “automation bias”. Having agreed to hand over some of their confidence and intelligence to the machine, they skewed towards trusting it.

Generative AI is currently repeating the pattern followed by social media platforms from the mid-Noughties. It wasn’t clear how much value, if any, the technology would create. Everyone knew it would have downsides. But it was unstoppable, because if the market decides you’re going to take over the world, you probably will. The founders and early investors in social media companies became very, very rich, long before anyone else could decide if they really wanted what they were selling. The outcome for Mark Zuckerberg was a net worth of nearly $200bn. As we are belatedly realising, the outcome for the wider population was a tidal wave of fraud, bullying, anxiety and narcissism­.

Generative AI has much of the same momentum behind it today as did social media. But it offers to replace still more of what makes us human – not just our connections to other people, but the emotions and principles from which those bonds are made. Now is a good time to exercise some consumer choice about whether those are things you want to hold on to."

[yanavaseva]

Today I went to Lidl and realized that they've replaced the overly cheery voice of the lady that reads the weekly promos with text-to-speech, splicing voiceclips of her. It was most noticeable when she read product prices. (Meanwhile they'd raised said prices again.)

Does this mean they've decided to cut spending by replacing voice actors with ai? I hadn't thought much about the ad reads before but now I'm hyper aware that someone that used to be paid weekly got replaced by a machine, and I didn't like it one bit.

[codenamestasis]

When Hitler killed millions of Jewish people (and others who were deemed "undesirable"), his evil was obvious. When the colonizers murdered natives without batting an eye, their evil was obvious. When anything like this that isn't widely known happens, we can spot the evil easily, especially with hindsight.

We're living in a new era of evil people. Their killing and genocides are far less obvious (in Billionaire US) and, hey, they have all sorts of mechanisms to hide behind. They control the narrative via the news outlets that they own, they control our government and they have us hating each other to keep our focus off of them and the wretched deeds they're doing.

Which brings me to Brian Thompson, United Healthcare's former CEO. Did he walk into hospitals and/or homes and put guns to anyone's heads? Did he or his executives pull life support and cackle as they did so? No. They hid behind "denying claims" for profits.. which pulled the life support for them.

People died, people ARE DYING, because of greed that won't stop. We tried changing things "the right way" via legislation, peaceful protests, even lobbying.. but we couldn't beat the cash flow. When people are desperate and they see no other way out, violence becomes the only answer. The only thing these ghouls value more than money are their own lives.

Which is why i must say.. Luigi Mangione is a hero. And just look at them.. they are trying so hard to turn us against him however they can bc they are scared. They see that we see that it's not the right vs the left.. it's the rich vs the poor. In their fear, they're showing us that the life of ONE CEO is more valuable than all the kids who have died in school shootings and all of Brian Thompson's victims, etc etc.. and that's on top of watching billionaires being appointed to government positions, even sadistic ones like Elon Musk. Large scale evil isn't obvious when you're in the middle of it and it's hard to see when they're doing everything they can to hide it from us. We have to keep going. That's my stance.

(And honestly if you couldn't tell that from my writing, i dunno how to help ya >.>)

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT CONDONING VIOLENCE.

[whereserpentswalk]

Somewhere out there within the dark woods of somewhere or another, in days some time past, there was a town. And that town worshipped one god, and that god was a hole.

Yes, a massive hole, at the center of their town. Deep and dark, perhaps leading all the way down to oblivion. Some people said the god lived at the bottom of the hole, others said that the god was the hole itself, or even the shadows that lay within. They had no temples, no alters, only the hole. And the hole of the hole demanded things of them. It was hungry, strangely hungry. It did not have sacfices, it demanded tribute. Taxes in a way. People would scrounge up what little money they had for the hole, and the hole promised back that it would give them good things in return.

There were those who warned them of the hole. The cryptids of the dark forest, and the occultists and demon hunters, and even the deep ones that lay in the dark ocean and the scaled men of the forgotten ruins. But the townsfolk didn't listen, the hole made them feel good. It felt good to give it money. And even though they never exactly saw how the hole must have been helping them. How could it not be helping them if they had given it so much. And soon the hole banished all supernatural things but itself, and the people said the hole was making them safe.

And soon the hole was bigger. What was once the size of a well had grown to being big enough to consume a house. And soon the town changed, the hole began to be its center, the entire town shifted so that all public life was around the hole. And soon those who didn't like the hole, or who questioned it, where seen as evil or strange people, greedy for not wanting to give the hole their money, they were seen as selfish and entitled, entitled to all the hole's benefits without paying their share. It was a tragedy when someone grew up to move out of the town and not follow the hole.

And soon the hole had more and more demands. And everyone listened as it grew larger and larger. Soon it didn't want money, it wanted things too, televisions, automobiles, books, family relics, grandma's ashes, works of art, perhaps even beloved pets. And it became taboo not just to question it, but to feel sad when you lost something to the hole. You couldn't say you missed it, or replace it too soon, the hole wanted you to not have it, you were so obviously wrong to miss it. You didn't just have to give to the hole, you had to understand that it was improving your life.

There was a movement of young people, who wanted to get rid of the hole. But it was too late by then, they had no other gods, no other spirits or creatures, and the hole was as large as a city block. And either way, the town police belonged to the hole now, and they would kill for it, and they would die for it. Some young rebels moved away. But most found themselves not being able to give up their family, their freinds, and their safety to fight the hole. So for a time they pretended to like it, and when you do something, and say something for long enough it can become your truth, and soon enough those who pretended to live the hole truly did love it.

And soon there was no music or movies that the hole didn't approve of. Everyone followed the hole's rules. And everyone loved the hole so dearly and so brightly. They couldn't imagine a town without a hole. When they thought of other towns they imagined that they must have had holes too, and every idea of a place without it was sad and depressing. And as the hole was then a quarter of the size of the town, it was hungry, and demanded not just things but flesh. And people happily gave, it would be weird to not want to give. They gave eyes, ears, teeth, testicles, tounges, fingers and toes and hands and feet and arms and legs. And they didn't miss their body parts at all. And when one day the hole demanded people jump in, and give their lives to it, they didn't mind or question at all, it didn't feel like death, and nobody missed that they weren't there.

And now, in the dark woods, there is a hole where a town used to be. It has eaten the entire the thing, every last inch and citizen of it. It is not satisfied. But it has grown all that it could. And one must wonder if the hole is lonely now, or if it knows that it has done all it ever hoped to.