#depressing cw ?

[snarp]

Majority control of the cohost source code will be transferred to the person who funded the majority of our operations, as per the terms of the funding documents we signed with them; Colin and I will retain small stakes so we have some input on what happens to it, at their request.

-- cohost to shut down at end of 2024 (2024-09-09)

Being very careful never to mention this person's name. What multimillionaire is out there debt-trapping devs to get hold of social media site code?

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

My intrusive thoughts: “Hey, maybe the fact that your University graduate parents wanted you and planned for you was a sign that you weren’t actually a soul which needed to be here. Maybe that’s why you don’t intuitively understand yourself and your likes and dislikes. God didn’t push through to put you here, he just conceded to one-and-a-half mortals’ demands. Maybe that’s why you can’t stand the thought of who your “true self” could possibly be. Maybe that’s why you’re meant to be just a faceless member of society.”

My agnostic thoughts: “Or maybe you’re just tired and hungry and mad at everyone and dehydrated and about to start your period.”

[prospitianescapee]

Also, I am sorry to be rude, but there is another reason that it is maybe not great to be the Bank of Startups, which is that nobody on Earth is more of a herd animal than Silicon Valley venture capitalists. What you want, as a bank, is a certain amount of diversity among your depositors. If some depositors get spooked and take their money out, and other depositors evaluate your balance sheet and decide things are fine and keep their money in, and lots more depositors keep their money in because they simply don’t pay attention to banking news, then you have a shot at muddling through your problems.

But if all of your depositors are startups with the same handful of venture capitalists on their boards, and all those venture capitalists are competing with each other to Add Value and Be Influencers and Do The Current Thing by calling all their portfolio companies to say “hey, did you hear, everyone’s taking money out of Silicon Valley Bank, you should too,” then all of your depositors will take their money out at the same time.

[dumblemonchickenwing]

my stuff, gif warning, oc, depressed face cw

[prospitianescapee]

Johnnie L. Turner got into office in 2020 by means of, basically, identity theft:

He ran against a reasonably-popular Democratic incumbent named Johnny Ray Turner. Didn't do much campaigning - that might have alerted people to what he was trying to pull! Common sort of situation around here.

if you die this way you go to American Valhalla

[snarp]

Individual choices like switching to Linux don't necessarily help with problems like the CrowdStrike collapse, because that's happening due to a corporate technological monoculture created by economic incentives created by dangerously-rich idiots.

You can't expect a bank or credit card processor or etc to make tech decisions that take them out of the monoculture: that's just not what those guys do. "It's not worth it."

Right now, a bunch of people who can't get into Word on their Windows PCs are, instead, on Google Docs on their iPhones, rewriting the same "cost-benefit analysis" they've been rewriting for years, explaining why continuing to use exactly the same set of brittle, closed-source, user-hostile products that literally every other company uses - CrowdStrike and Windows and iOS and Gmail - was and is better than the potential expense/risk of moving away from them. They're saying that it's fine, and this is going to keep happening, and it's fine. Because:

When everything collapses all at the same time: your competitors are part of the Everything. And your own quarterly earnings are in line with theirs. And no one singles you out. You will not play the goat, today. So, it's fine. This is fine. And it's going to keep happening.

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[regularbeans]

am i gonna die without ever being happy? that would _suck_

[prospitianescapee]

[Transcript:]

OneCSeven commented:

what strikes me the most is the absolute inability for Musk to experience satisfaction, to be satiated. He's a hungry ghost. He was up in the middle of the night haunted by the absolute deprivation of only 9 million impressions on his worthless superbowl tweet. He's so taken in by the Skinner box of twitter that he bought it and is making the box-maintainers specifically give him higher numbers. But the whole point is that no matter what number the machine gives him he will feel dissatisfied with it because that feeling is precisely what makes the machine work.

This is the endgame of whale-baiting, right? You make software that's hostile to brains in the hopes a few rich people get poisoned by it and become willing to exchange money for higher numbers. In twitter's case, they got eaten by the whale. They get slack notifications at 2am if the whale isn't getting enough numbers. In a way, the app created its owner. That's a little fucked up to me, more so than the standard Al domination tropes, that a system without agency ends up in control.

this comment on a vid about elon musk was so good i had to save it

[i-am-confused-always]

what I say: “it is what it is”

what I mean: “I have cried about this for hours and have probably self harmed and contemplated suicide over this.

[snarp]

Have unfortunately done a lot of reading on the history of political advertising and fundraising, in my sad sad sad sad life. It's easy to imagine Democratic party failures to be the result of self-sabotage and apathy, of "not wanting to win." 

That's probably not what's happening here. Both Biden and Harris probably did want to win, and probably did believe in most of the policies they were presenting. 

But their platforms appeal to corporate donors: to PACs with infinite cash. That's how they got on the ticket in the first place.

Their right-wing beliefs are repellent to Democratic voters, but from their point of view, we're not the ones making the decisions. Corporate does that, and they try to sell them to us. They view themselves as "just doing their job" - juggling their donors and their demands - and are resentful when more is asked of them.

[prospitianescapee]

[stil-lindigo]

scorched earth.

a comic about a princess who died in a fire.

(this is a sequel to bite of winter, a comic about Snow and what became of her after her death.)

--

creative notes:

--

all my other comics

store

[j0celynh0rr0r]

Trying to get away?

[buggachat]

what if i just wrote 10,000 fics of marinette helping adrien heal from depression. what if i did huh. what if they were all nearly identical fics and incredibly redundant. what if i just kept writing them. is anything stopping me from doing this. would anybody stop me. COULD any of you stop me

[ionomycin]

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