#people talk about climate change and capitalism and all that stuff

[moonzzzzi]

Sorry i think any discussion that “AI can be a useful tool!” Isnt relevant or productive until 1-capitalism is destroyed or theres significant changes to legislation as to not allow AI to be a liability to worker’s jobs and rights everywhere and 2- it stops wasting a water bottle and the daily energy consumption of the average US citizen every few prompts.

Any good argument for AI simply does not outweight the negatives as it currently stands. The technology isnt regulated or developed enough for it. This isnt being annoying, its stating facts.

world’s most annoying person: AI is going to destroy the world. one chatgpt query causes one nuclear bomb explosion and nobody is sentient anymore because of too much AI

me: i don’t think that is true

other most annoying person: buy my new AI cryptocurrency printer

[inkskinned]

don't worry, they're joking! they're always joking when it would be something, like bigoted. because i'm not a bigot, obviously, i just vote for bigots - well, they're not bigots either, you can't really call someone a bigot just because they have religious views. this is the land of the free, and it's a christian nation, after all. you can pretend otherwise but let's just be real here; all our values are really based on the bible. anyway, i know you liberals get your panties in a twist - can i say that, or are you gonna cancel me, haha, #metoo - about every little joke he said and every little dramatic political view. oh, fascist this and fascist that. you are online too much, you love the word fascist because it's big and you're just paranoid about things.

well, no, i don't, like, read the policies. i have a life. and so what if they wrote - stop it, it's not a manifesto, okay? he eventually backed off from that - oh the vice president? who cares about that guy, that isn't real power. you're being dramatic, they're just spitballing. everyone makes big claims when they're out there campaigning. he just means he personally wouldn't get gay married. you want him to divorce his wife and get gay married? anyway, even if they cancelled gay marriage - it wouldn't happen, okay? nobody i know really cares about that - it'd be states-rights like those abortions you love so much. and you live in a blue state. you live in like the gay capital of the world. i don't know why it'd be so bad for you, you're borrowing trouble there.

and besides, you're missing the point of his campaign! you people want to be victims so bad you completely ignore what we're really voting for. there are tons of good things that happened because of his name and his policies - the economy, for one. oh stop, just because i can't tell you what a tariff is off the top of my head doesn't mean i don't have eyes. and stuff was better under him! well, yeah, anything good is his work, obviously. what? no, all the bad stuff was biden. and probably also obama. what do you even care about this, anyway? it's not going to effect you. it's four years.

oh my god, not the climate change argument again, i'm not getting into that. i don't care about it. if my house is beachfront that's great news for me. and we don't really know what's causing it. no, i saw you forwarded me those articles and i just laughed. what, do you think i have time to sit on my ass and read shit? huh? well, no, i like reading the babylon bee. they actually had a great article about all you climate freaks. and in the meantime, what do you want me to do? i'm not paying 4 dollars for gas. liberals love to talk about solutions but never pay for the solutions. what do you mean blocked because of congress. you gotta stop with the conspiracy shit.

no, my side doesn't have real conspiracy theories. the vaccine thing is a real thing. besides, you yourself don't like big pharma. just because i have an opinion, suddenly now you think big pharma is great? and this is serious, okay? your mom's friend's coworker has a kid that died from a heart event. i don't want you getting any more vaccines. i regret that you got them as a kid, i'd redo them. what do you mean you'd vaccinate your own kids? are you finally thinking of having some? you know i want grandkids - oh stop, i've never pressured you, i'm just saying that if you're going to get gay married, you might as well give me some normal grandkids to love.

stop, you know what i meant. what? no, he's not going to take away your right to adopt. besides, you could always use a sperm donor, haha, i know your high school ex would love to - jesus! okay! no need to snap. i'm just saying that you don't need to be married to have a kid. the only real benefit to marriage is taxes, haha. it won't change anything. oh my god, no, there won't be a rise in hate crimes. well, it's not his fault what people do in his name! he eventually spoke out against that, anyway.

what do you mean he supported them? i didn't hear him say that. oh. well, yeah, he said it, but like, he's clearly joking.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You should be using an RSS reader

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

[dailyanarchistposts]

The way most people talk about climate change we are led to believe we all have an equal part in creating the capitalist nightmare we live in, but that’s a lie. The unsustainable and extractive nature of capitalism grew directly from the ideological and material foundations of European colonization. We cannot hold the entire human species responsible for that. It’s victim blaming.

The vast majority of waste is produced by the same people and institutions who hold power. Fighting for our planet, the health of our land, our food, our homes, our communities, is where the fight against capitalism and white supremacy collide. Any fight for environmental justice must also be a fight for racial justice because BI&POC are the ones who disproportionately bear the weight of climate change.

White Settler Colonialism Is Destroying the Planet, Not Poor BI&POC

Don’t believe the Malthusian and eco-fascist myth that there are too many people on the planet to care for. This is a lie peddled by capitalists, eugenicists, and people who advocate for genocide. We know that every landbase has its limit for how much life it can support (indigenous peoples have been saying this for hundreds of years), but “overpopulation” rhetoric is overwhelmingly used as a means to enforce colonial hierarchies where wealthy white people can maintain lives of access and privilege while poor BI&POC barely survive.

Instead of telling poor BI&POC to have less children or to stop wanting better lives, we should build a movement to fight climate change which centers racial justice, abolishes capitalism, and forces wealthy, predominately white populations to stop hoarding resources.

Here are some Earth Day facts for tomorrow so you don’t fall for the lies:

Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. (Source: the Guardian)

Black communities are exposed to 56% more pollution than is caused by their consumption. For Latinx communities, it is 63%. (Source: American Journal of Public Health)

97% of waste produced in the United States is corporate waste. 80% of businesses are owned & operated by white people. (Source: “The Story of Stuff” & US News)

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5% of the planet’s human population, yet they are protecting 80% of its biodiversity. (Source: National Geographic)

The world’s richest 10% produce half of carbon emissions while the poorest half contribute only 10%. (Source: Oxfam)

The world’s wealthiest 16% use 80% of the planet’s natural resources. (Source: CNN)

We are not all equally “responsible.” White settler colonialism and capitalism are destroying the planet, not poor BI&POC.

[sagesilentfire]

Hello, everyone. It's so strange to be saying this, but the last part of SAMATFOE is imminent, and we're getting closer and closer to the End. It's been a really fun five years. (Four to ya'll, but I've been working on this for longer than I've been talking about it publicly!) The cast of characters has expanded dramatically, I've gotten much better as a writer and artist, and I feel I've grown as a person too. I won't stop stalking the svtfoe tag or talking about svtfoe after this is done, don't worry, but I have a lot of non-svtfoe related plans in the future, so if you like Sílthéy and her weird siblings, don't stop following when SAMATFOE is over. 

But as for the actual contents of s5, well, I've got lots of plans. We've got a dark magic plague that's an incredibly transparent metaphor for climate change. We've got Mina playing the oil barons and trying to stop everyone from saving the world for her own personal gain. We've got Glossaryck (capitalism). We've even got the answers to a lot of mysteries and character arcs. Like, so many character arcs. It has been incredibly difficult to stuff all these character arcs into this far-too-short piece of fanfiction. But I hope I did that adequately. 

On a personal note, while hiring a beta/sensitivity reader for a piece as massive as SAMATFOE proved impossible for someone who does not own their own money, I have done a lot more research than I had at seventeen. I wanted the monsters to be more than just badly-done allegories for Native Americans – I wanted them to be people with their own culture, history, and ideas. People who are inspired by real-world Indigenous cultures, but, because they're literally nonhuman, are distinct from them. Whether or not they could count as Indigenous is discussed in-text, but I do not come to an actual conclusion because I want my readers to draw their own. It's not my place to say whether colonized space aliens could be Indigenous. And their connection to the land and to magic is drawn from their shared knowledge, not mysticism, and their culture is idealized because a caring godlike entity helped them to that, not because they're better than anyone. I hope to demonstrate that they are all people, first and foremost. Because we're going to be spending time in Septarsis! So much time! And Toffee has officially been promoted to main character status! It's Star and Marcie AND the Forces of Evil, babey!

But there's a lot of characters here. So, for the second and final time, 

Dramatis Personae:

Star - Star doesn't know what to do. She has everything she ever wanted, even if she doesn't realize it. She has no future responsibilities, having passed that to Eclipsa, but she is still special and important, being the most powerful magic-user ever to exist and the only one who can fix the dark magic, and Toffee doesn't even seem to hate her. Sílthéy does, though, and that is a sticking point. Star is much less oblivious now, though even her oblivious former self would probably pick up on the bad vibes Sílthéy is actively sending her way. She wants everyone to see how hard she's working to make everything better, but Sílthéy doesn't, and that is unbearable. Add that to Shinjai avoiding her and Marcie growing distant, and she has very little time for introspection, even if that would help fix things.

Marcie - Marcie is done with Mewni. She can't believe she believed the Butterflys' lies for so long. She's going to devote herself to Septarsis as fervently as she did Mewni. She just... she doesn't want to bother anyone, or take anyone's time. Why should she get attention paid to her, when there are stronger and smarter magic users out there who could do so much to actually help the world? Marcie is small and useless, and clearly so easily tricked. Better to work on herself before she brings anyone else into her orbit. Also, Star keeps making bad decisions, and Marcie's boundaries are pushing her away too... maybe it's better to do everything alone.

Ludo - Ludo is having a great time! He's earned the trust of some of the monsters in the Avarius village, his plumbing has been fixed, and Pemma is teaching him how to use the Avarius Beacon! Certainly nothing bad is going to happen to him or anyone he cares about! :D

Buff Frog - I'll confess here: Buff Frog is not a huge part of s5. He'll appear in the finale, but he's not a fighter anymore, and lives a peaceful life in Septarsis. He still has fond feelings for Star, but he's not too worried about her. She's strong, and he has twelve young froglets to take care of. She'll be fine on her own... right?

Toffee - Una'met Co'tzin-Nekohtzaca, Last Child of Old Septarsis, The Forces of Evil, Kéta'cha For the Dragon of Space, is doing FINE. They're definitely not five bad seconds away from a total mental breakdown, definitely not, that would be bad for everyone involved, and they are a calm, peaceful, certified not-doing-bad-things-er. The fact that everyone is almost certainly going to die a horrible death from dark magic is fine. They just have to cram thirty-plus years of training into the rapidly-dwindling time before the entire multiverse is dead. They barely know Star Butterfly, except that she's too good for things like "basic training" and "reading." How are they going to do this? And why won't Sílthéy tell them why she caused this in the first place? Well, they do know one thing, which is they can't tell Star about that.

Jackie - Jackie is done with Star Butterfly. She's talked to... someone, and done some digging, and that only served to verify the book she was given in s4. She doesn't know anything about Mewni save for what the book told her, but she can't believe that she trusted the family that doomed her dimension.

Janna - Janna doesn't like this apocalypse. No chance of survival is boring. So she's going to do what she can to help out. Also, she's been keeping her own secrets, secrets that might hold the key to survival.

Tom - Tom isn't angry anymore. He's not angry at Eclipsa for keeping Miquiz locked up, he's not angry for the Butterflys for spreading the dark magic that's thrown the Underworld into chaos, he's not angry that he keeps being left out of things. He's. Not. Angry. Anymore!

Moon - Moon didn't kill her mother. She didn't. It was Toffee, Toffee who couldn't come up with some loophole, Toffee who couldn't forget a conversation that happened when they were a child, Toffee who aimed the arrow at Comet's chest. And her holding onto anger isn't what's driving Star away from her, it's Toffee. They're the one driving her daughter away from her! But as cold reality and remaining dark secrets loom behind her, her brittle facade is beginning to crumble.

Glossaryck - Glossaryck misses when he and Star got along. Yeah, he's destroying her dimension, and everyone in it, and her, all to win kudos from his family, but it really sucks that Star won't give him the time of day anymore. He used to be her wise old mentor! Geez, she was going to die anyways, that's what mortals do! Might as well get along before it happens!

River - River is tired of being left out of the loop. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know what to do. Moon barely speaks to him, she's always busy with Eclipsa, or whatever. But he might be the thing Moon needs, if she would only let him in.

Angie - Angie doesn't know if she should have had Mariposa. Sure, Mari is wonderful, and she loves her, and she DID NOT have a baby to replace Marcie dear god why were the svtfoe writers like that – *ahem* but the multiverse is ending, and Mariposa is just a baby... she didn't want to bring a baby into this world just to have them all die.

Rafael - Rafael is worried about Star. He's worried there's nothing he and Angie can do to help her. He's worried about Marcie. She seems really stressed about the dark magic. But he's the calm, goofy dad, so he's going to keep being that, and praying it'll help somehow. 

Mariposa - Mariposa is fresh to the world, and doesn't understand much of anything yet. But everyone is worried she won't survive long enough to understand the world at all.

Kelly - Kelly is chilling. Apparently Star and Marcie are off on a trip to Septarsis, but that's none of her business as long as art classes and hangouts with Nova and Jorby go well. She might drop by to visit, though.

Miss Heinous - Saint Olga is dead. Miss Heinous's one reason for existing, her greatest love and greatest enemy, the robot who raised her, is dead. What does Miss Heinous do now?

Meteora - Meteora's doing great. She's won popular opinion, she's training to be a true Crown Princess, or at least a high-ranking official, if Sílthéy's democracy takes off. She's stepped into her role as a leader, far more than her mother could claim. But that's fine. Not everyone is suited for leadership.

Eclipsa - Eclipsa has an albatross around her neck. She is doing her best to ignore it, to be a good queen, to love her people, but... she cannot get away from the child she killed. Would it be easier if she was just always evil, not done one evil act out of rage and grief? Well, she knows what happened to her mother. What does she do now?

Globgor - Globgor is doing his best. He's a little miffed by Sílthéy mistrusting him, as her first big act of s5 will be to demonstrate how little he's valued as a Legitimate Voice of the Monsters, but really, who can complain. There's so much else going on, who cares if he fades into the background?

Shinjai - Shinjai gets the wand. Shinjai does not want the wand, and the circumstances surrounding her getting the wand are ridiculous, but she gets it, and she hates it, and she can't control it. Unlike Star, her inability to control the wand makes her not want to use the wand at all lest she hurt someone with it. Oh, and Star keeps wanting to teach her fun spells now that she's been handed this nuclear bomb of a magic wand, and Shinjai does not want to deal with Star. She hasn't forgiven Star. She doesn't want to forgive Star. She'll ignore Star as much as she can, and focus instead on Alice and the teen militia, which is much more fun. She loves Alice. She loves learning to fight, learning to battle the most dangerous people in the multiverse and win WITHOUT the help of a wand. She'd be doing great, if her past would stop knocking at her door.

Rasticore - Rasticore's worried about his partner. Una is fraying at the seams trying to fix everything, and he has the feeling they're not telling him something. But what else is new? He'll wait. He has friends to make, a new teenage militia to help train, and a Miss Heinous to keep from destroying Septarsis stone by stone. He's endlessly patient. When Una wants to talk to him, he'll be there for them. He just... has... to... wait...

Mina - Mina is trying to destroy the world. She doesn't tell her followers that, no, they don't even know the dark magic is a thing, but she wants Glossaryck to win and the Solarian Age, of which she is the last remnant, to end everything with it. So she'll destroy the world, and fulfill Solaria's dream of taking the Forces of Evil with her.

Lilacia - Lilacia is, somehow, a spoiler. Like, legitimately, the Princess Formerly Known as Ponyhead's role in s5 is a spoiler, and not for magic power-up speech cliché reasons. But she's still her dumb, ditzy self, of course.

Still Unnamed Mystery Character - "Stella" is still mysterious, but I promise you we'll get who she is and her backstory in this part ;)

Alice - Alice is wary of the new Mewman presence on the outskirts of Septarsis. She knows why they're there, but she's still extremely suspicious. She does not want them to hurt Septarsis. But she doesn't know that the true danger comes a little closer to home.

Teyauh - Teyauh is also a spoiler, but she'll be there!

Linda - Linda loves her wife, and will follow her anywhere, but Teyauh will have to accept that her knees don't work how they used to, so Linda will have to follow in a suit of POWER ARMOR, BABY!

Nova - Nova is part of the Nuxalkmc, an Indigenous tribe native to the Northwestern Turtle Island, and she loves that about herself. Now that Kelly and her dimensional scissors are here, she can finally explore the multiverse to find new places and see if they're anything like home. Septarsis is one of those places, and she loves it at first sight.

Dr. Edevane - Dr. Edevane is a doctor. He and Toffee have a lot to nerd out talk about together. He will be useful, too.

Dennis - Dennis is busy reigning in dozens of siblings, including Ludo. It's a busy life, but a happy one. Nothing bad whatsoever will happen to him! (I'm lying)

Chloe - Chloe doesn't know this "Star Butterfly" person, but she's very suspicious. But man, Mewni would be such a cool place to visit... so much magic! ...No, she needs to concentrate on being mad. And she is mad. She wants Earth to be like Mewni, like it deserves to be.

Hekapoo - Hekapoo doesn't like her dad's plan. He says it'll work out, it's fine, but the plan is... questionable. She doesn't like it. And she definitely isn't getting conflicting feelings about puppeteering her brother around, either...

Rhombulus - Ṯ̶̡̧̧̡̧̠͉̻̦̜̭͚̰̪̣̬̠̦̲̹̯̯̮̹̰̺̣̳̬̳̬͙̙̞̹͚͖̼̲̰̼̻̭͇̘̻̹͔̝͌͐̀̇̓̀́̄̇̓̊̚ͅH̶̛̠̽̎̇̽̉̃̔͒̽̈́͌͝Ȩ̸̢̧̛̛͔̭͍̪͈͚̮̘͙̭̳͍̺͖̗͇͍̘̱̉̽͑̆̌̓̆͛̓̌̈́̐̾͑̅͂͗̔̽̌̋̈́̎̈́́̓̓͌̆̄͐̀̋̅͂̒̓̔͗̈͊̊͆̄̒͘͘̚͘͝͝͠͠͠͠ͅ ̷̧̪̰͈̺̯̳̙̳̹̙̣͔̗̜̫̗̲̠̙̝̠̯̻̯̩͈͇͉̞̙͙͈̲̻̹̰̳̣̤̣̀́̐͆͜͜͜ͅͅK̵̨͎̙̩͓̘͇̳̩̲̝̳̼̖̯̘͖̹͙̪̰͙͔̤̭̘͖̖̪̬͓͚̫̦̝̠͍̙̊͛̏̈́͛́̒̈́͂͜͜͜͝ͅÍ̸̡̧̨̨̥͍̮̮͇̟͈͙̩̥͙̥͖͚͉̬̟̻̹̰̟̘͓̪̦̹͈̺̤̜̣̺͉̘͕̮̲͓̳͍͈͍̜̯̯̘̪͙̩͛́̐̆̈́͗͋̔̐̒̌̚͜ͅT̵̨̟̲̑̅̑̕̚T̶̨̨̨̛̞͖̻̖̞̹̜͉̦͓̣̠̗̘̣̺̲̹̘̻͎̤̝̤̜̞̜̳̭͎̲͙̮͓͕̼͇̘̃̈́̑̅͐̆͛͊̎̀̈́̔̐̂͛͒̎̕͜͜Ę̴̟̻͍͓̲̙͙̬̺̖̘͎̺̯͐̍̀͊̊̃̃̐̒̊̽̅̉̒̇̎̒͗͆̓͋͂̍̎̈̓́́͌̈͌̕͘̕̕͜͝͝͠͝͝Ņ̷̡̥͕̞̘͙͇̪̺̯͕̪͖̗̙͖̭̻̳͙͖̯̺̟̳̟̪̼̤̞̘̯̘̥̏́̊̾̓̀͐̑̈́͛͊͜͝͝͝S̸̨̨̨̡̤͕͚͈̻̯̫̯̦̖̣͈͔͉͚̠̪̮͚̳͈͇̯̱̯̙̙̬͎̝̪̬̦̙͇̝̲̤̰̃͒̓͒̾̀̋̎̊̈̀́̐̎̇͜͝ͅ ̵̧̧̛̣͉͕̤̻͔̰̜̺̮̘̞̠͓͚̹̗͒͐̽́̆̈́́̏̀̎̋͌̔́̌͗̎̍̉̀̃͌͂̎̽̿̃͂̎̽̌̈́̄́̀́̓̿̅́̎͆̾̆͑͌̔̿̑́́̕̕̕͝͝͝M̸̢̡̨̭͓̘͙̟̩̦͎̤̟̮̤͍͔̝̑̀̅̊̑̊́̂̈͑̽͋̃̑͋͐̆͆͊̈́́̋͑̋͜͝I̸̡̛̖̺͇͎͕̗̹̦̦̻̻̙͈͔̮̭̤̺͚͙͙͖̱̙͚̣̼̠̺̘̐̄͋͒̒͗̎̓͐͗͛̊̀̓̄̅̆̇̐͒̄̌̔͗̒̎̃̒̊̍̋͐̊͛͘͠͝͝͠S̴̨̡̡̨̲̖̺̭̺̱̰͎͓͇̰̙͙̩̯̺̖̲̥̜͖̦̙̹̜̻͙̠͉͇̲̲͍̞͚̭̯͕͋͐̌̾̈́̄͐̇̔͜͝͝Ş̴̢̨̢̝̬̤̯̗̞̳̟̞̲̠̮͇̻͙͖̻̜̺̘̑̑̆̈́̇͋͗͒͒́̅́́̚̕͝ ̷̨̡̡̛̛͚̩̣̠̠̹̘̟̼̘̤͇͖͓̙̺̙̮͚̫̺͖̠͇͙̏̆̋̆̀̅̓̔͋̐̐͛̃̾̃̿̓́̑̇̏̈̉͊̂̍̾͑̐̈́̀̑͑̈́̏͗̇͋̀̆́̍̊̃̀͐͘̚̚͝͝͝͠͝ͅͅḨ̶̨̧̻̺̟͚̠͍̗͙̗̹͇̗̦͔͕̮̦͖͔̝͚̟̖̖͉̾̔͒̓̋̀̔̅̿̈̑͆̀̇̇̄̈́́͋̿͐͆̔̂̈́͋̈́̊̊̈́̓̈́͋̕͘͝͝͝I̷̡̡̢̨̹͎̼̻̖̗̭̫̩̣̬̻̦̠̗̰̥͕̗̟̯̰͉͙̯͖̦͚̟̖̞͍̦̙̯̲̲̖̲̲̜͚̓̍͜ͅM̶̧̡̢̧̧̙̥̭̲̖̦͙̘̙͈͓͖̩̜̦͍̦̘͍̘͕̳̜̱͚̥̹͓͕͉͔͕̫̺̮͕̳͖͉̭̺͙̠͖̥͕͖͙̜̉͑͛̎̓̈́͐͋̐̀̏̊̀̽͋̈́͊̄͌̋̌̐̓̄̉̓͒̕̕͝͠͠͝ͅͅͅ

Reynaldo - Reynaldo looks and looks and he does and does, but he does not win this bet. It is the thing he wants most, that he will do all sorts of terrible, horrible-things-that-make-him-want-to-throw-up to get. What is it? 

Omnitraxus Prime - Omni will do anything to protect the multiverse. Including trusting zir dad, who is looking more untrustworthy by the day, and trusting Mina, who was never trustworthy in the first place. Mina has much more training than Star, and strong magical ability from spending three hundred years close to the wand, and it's the best option... right?

Necahua - Necahua is a mess currently, and being a mess leaves you more open to mistakes. Uh oh! Una still loves them, though. 

In fact, I made a short story in my creative writing class about the relationships between Una'met, Necahua, and Cayeto, since I feel they got overlooked in the main story. Yes, no one in my class had any idea what was going on. I'll post it next, before chapters 1 and 2 of s5.

Cayeto - Cayeto is also in the short story. He doesn't play a huge role in the main plot, but he is just another reason Toffee does the things they do. He died hoping that Una and Necahua, specifically, survived, and Necahua died, so he does not have the best grip on reality.

Xocochiapal - Xoco is the de-facto ghost leader of the ghosts now. No legislation without representation, right? Toffee does most of the work, but she's in charge when they can't address a thing right away. She was right despite everyone else blindly going to their deaths, and now everyone knows it. She also was the highest-ranked Septarian to become a ghost, and her hatred of the Mewman occupation is a clear and strong motivation.

Tecoloa - Tecoloa is the voice of reason. The good one. She died protecting her elementary school class from the worst of the heat, and that caring nature has translated into protecting everyone she can. 

Sílthéy - Sílthéy is a character now, and OH BOY is she happy about it. She hates Star and will never get over it, and she loves to remind Star of that fact. She feels immense guilt for what happened with Septarsis, and will never get over that, either. She is a mess, but she's been hiding her messiness for 0/0 years, so she's a pro. And it's not like anyone here can stop her from being a mess, can they? So she'll go on being a mess in her corner, and she'll be fine. Her hobbies include storytelling, dissing Star, and doing the most bizarre stuff in the background of any given scene. She owns her weirdness. She's annoying, but that just makes her more fun to write.

Mocel - Mocel is mad at Eclipsa. She's mad at all Mewmans, really. She cares a lot about Miquiz, and she hates that he's locked up while she, with her lightweight ash body, can sneak out whenever she likes. The world isn't fair, and she knows it.

Miquiz - Miquiz is dying a second time. The dark magic wound on his chest is expanding. He doesn't want to leave, not without seeing the sun again, but he may not have a choice. He doesn't want to leave without saying something to Eclipsa, but again, no choice. He doesn't know what to do.

Tecolo - Tecolo is just vibin. He wants to see Ludo again, and he will, but he's mostly busy having fun with his dead and living relatives after centuries floating in the void.

[not100bees]

A lot of hay has been made about the term omnicause but I think it is quite useful in that in a lot of progressive, leftist, communist, socialist, whateverist spaces, ultimately weigh all progressive causes by the threat that they pose to capitalism or how well they can help install communism/socialism/anarchism/whateverism. That's why a lot of progressive spaces have moved away from gay rights towards amorphic queer whatever. They've moved away from gay rights such as gay marriage, anti-hate crime, anti-discrimination stuff because that doesn't advance the cause of communism/socialism/anarchism/whateverism. They've moved towards queer theory which they view as destructive towards the status quo in favor of installing whatever their preferred whateverism is. It's also helped by the perception that especially lesbians, gay men and transgender people are seen as, on some level, bourgeois and frivolous because of a very very very long very old tradition of associating sex between people of the same gender and cross-dressing as upper class, again frivolous. When you care about lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people not being discriminated as a goal in and of itself that is seen as suspicious because that doesn't really advance whateverism. You can see this with a lot of climate activism too. It's not really on some level about stopping climate change, it's about installing whateverism. That's why a lot of climate activists are so opposed to technological solutions for climate change. Because that would be cheating because it's not installing whateverism which is ultimately what it's about. I'm not saying that climate activists don't have genuine existential fear of climate change but that on some level or another it is about whateverism ultimately. I did focus on LGBT people because that is something I feel qualified to talk about but I think a lot of this also applies in some way or another to racial Justice, feminism, and the fight against antisemitism All of which I am not qualified to talk about.

[alpaca-clouds]

Climate is Changing. What can you do?

Okay, lemme talk about one thing. I do know, that there is a lot of climate depression happening and I absolutely can understand it. Because this entire situation is horrible. The weather is getting more and more out of hand. And while a lot of media stories focus on individuals, the truth is of course, that individuals have only little influence.

Even if everybody (who is physically able to) stopped using a car and never again stepped inside of a plane, it would not even save 10% of our CO2 emissions. Because most of it comes from industries or all sorts. And while, sure, if you have unlimited money, you could choose to aquire stuff from CO2 saving industries, most people do not have that money.

And yes, that feels very hopeless. And it makes a lot of people to just lie down and accept everything that is happening. But I am too stubborn for that.

So... What can one do?

Well, for this you need to understand one thing: Under capitalism money is talking. And no, with that I do not mean "vote with your wallet", because that is bullshit and does not work. Rather I mean: "Be so much of a nuissance, that it is costing them money."

Now, look. I am not necessarily a big fan of the "Last Generation" and "Extinction Rebellion", mostly because they just do not attack capitalism enough, even though capitalism is the base cause of the entire climate change. BUT... They do understand the idea at least. When they stop traffic and things like that, they do damange to the economy. Basically everything that stops the economy from hobbling along is doing damage and it forces the people in power to take notice at least. (Now, it should be noted, that, indeed, doing damage against property - especially against the means of production - also would be very effective. Theoretically speaking and such.)

But I also understand, that not everyone has the time and ability to partake in such demonstrations. So, what can you do?

Well, the obvious answer is: Partake in politics. Be it actively, by joining a political party, or passively, by writing to your elected representatives on a regular basis. Both can help to make your voice heard.

But there is also the smaller things, that are not entirely individual. Mutual aid of all sorts. Be it cooking for people in your neighbourhood, helping people repair their bikes or their clothing, or indeed sewing clothes yourself, if you have the ability. Just look what the people in your neighborhood or your friends need. Again, we need to build communities, because as communities we are a lot stronger.

And to be quite frank: Building community is also helping against climate depression, even if the impact might feel small. Because it gives you a support network.

I know the urge is strong to just give up. But always know that when it comes to climate justice, we are not only fighting for ourselves. We are not even just fighting for humanity. We are fighting for this planet and every living being on it.

So, go on. Build communities. Offer mutual aid. Become politically active. Be a nuisance. We owe it to this planet and ourselves.

[furiousgoldfish]

How do I decide a career field?

I mean my entire self esteem, self worth and self confidence is destroyed. I hate myself. I don’t think I’m capable of doing anything. I like art, even though it’s very hard for me to do I’m pushing myself to explore as much as I can. I am thinking of going into data analysis but it’s so overwhelmingly scary for me.

I have an MD, but i can’t pursue it because of my mental health issues.

Okay so I might not be the best person to talk about this, because I figured out that career just isn't important to me when I'm just trying to survive, so I don't think any field is worth chasing or putting effort into, for me at least! Job is just something that gives you the means to get survival resources and that is it.

Otherwise I really relate to what you're saying, I also don't feel like I'd be good at any field, don't feel like I'm made for anything and can't see myself doing anything specialized seriously. It's also very difficult to choose a field when you've never gotten to try bunch of things, never had experience doing stuff and you don't really know what you'd enjoy, what you like, or at least what doesn't feel too stressful, overwhelming and impossible.

It's incredibly impressive that you have a MD, that alone signifies great endurance, persistence and intelligence on your part, and it's awful that mental health issues prevent you from doing anything related to it (I feel the same tho, my degree is in the closet, never seen or used at all lol)

I think the best way to decide is to talk to people who work in various fields and ask them what their day-to-day work is like, and figure out where you see yourself, where you fall in easily, or at least what seems doable, not too stressful, not overwhelming. What doesn't make you hate yourself. I'm just doing cleaning but I couldn't be more pleased because it's very obvious when I've done well and it's so low stakes that pretty much nothing can go wrong. Nobody ever complains either. In fact yesterday I got a text message from a client saying I did amazing, I mean that kind of stuff is ideal to my mental state.

I think we're raised to believe that our career needs to be something very significant, something that creates a place for us in the world, the proof that we're useful to society and that we made something out of ourselves! We need to show off our success and our identity needs to be tied to what we do. And we need to be good at it and make a difference in the world with it.

Well in the current capitalistic climate, this is bullshit. The only socially useful jobs are the ones which get no recognition, no social acceptance, no praise, no acknowledgment, in fact you're looked down upon if you just do manual jobs that are incredibly necessary to keep the society going.

The jobs where you can reach high success and high paycheck - are the ones that make rich people richer, and that is not what I'm about. I mean it's not what anyone really wants to do, but it's the only thing that is considered successful and admirable, and I hate it, don't want to participate in it, makes me want to run away from capitalism.

And also it's a myth that you need to be really good at your job because people do bad jobs constantly and get paid and they don't feel bad at all, lots are bad on purpose and use their jobs to do evil, and get away with it, so there's no pressure to be perfect at your job. If it gets done thats all that matters.

So if you can find anything that just fulfills the purpose of getting your survival resources to you, go for it. If you feel like data analysis is what makes you pleased and happy, go for that. If art makes you feel good, you can do that too! You don't have to have only one job, you can change jobs multiple times during your life, it doesn't need to define who you are, you are not here to serve the society, you're here to survive and you can do your job for yourself only. It's supposed to serve you, not the other way around. You don't exist only to do your job. You exist to be safe, and happy, and fulfilled, and safe. A job is supposed to do this for you, and it doesn't matter which one, as long as you're not being tormented by stress and fear, it's fine.

So what I'm trying to say, the world should not pressure you into making a quick decision, you should take your time trying out stuff and finding what works for you, and what doesn't make you feel awful about yourself. And also if it helps, everyone has a sort of a low confidence when only starting! Everyone is bad at everything when they're starting. Confidence will come with experience, when you see yourself getting better at something trough the years, you will get a chance to gather some faith in yourself and know you're doing well. You can follow any interest you have, regardless of how well or bad you're at it, as long as it can secure you some income. It's okay to be bad at first too because everyone is kinda bad at first.

Also, I've seen some people incredibly confident in their work while doing an awful job at it, it was pretty scary. Like they were doing active harm to society and didn't understand how anything actually worked but boasted about how capable they are because they were picking up a high paycheck. When I think there's people like that, and then others are worried about not being good at anything, it makes me stunned. I truly believe that no matter what you do, you'll never do as much harm as some high-paid people out there.

I hope you don't have a horrible time deciding anon! It's a difficult spot in life for anyone, so don't worry if it takes a bit of time or if you choose something and then quit, it just brings you a step closer to what you actually like doing, and it's a good thing to try things out and pick out the one that works best for you.

[meredoubt]

I'm extremely far left in just about all respects, and won't budge, but I gotta admit: having multiple people in my life who work in the declining medical/firefighting/EMT fields (in terms of support, and aging workers) does give me pause. Maybe it's because I'm rural, and can already see what a declining town looks like in terms of infrastructure. Idk man.

Public works and services (at least in my area) are not showing that "people will still want to work," on stuff that actually matters, like healthcare, education, emergency services, roads. Rural hospitals are being gutted, particularly maternity care. A vicious cycle, because declining birthrates means the hospitals don't cross the 50 kids per year threshold that justifies their existence, which shutters the programs, which means the healthcare gets worse in the area, which makes it less appealing to move there, which means lower birthrate, etc etc ad nauseum. Like, sure, some of that will be mitigated when capitalism falls or everyone is covered by UBI or whatever. Right. Like passionate doctors will live there or make the trek out to the boonies or whatever. But it still wouldn't be enough.

And I do care. I care because cities are not what I necessarily want the future to look like. We need to be realistic that "green cities" are utopian, and will barely qualify as cities. Most of the changes to make them green will gut a lot of the benefits of moving to higher population centers, and then it's just...less benefits, but with the addition of being crowded. There are pros-"it takes a village" i think these days makes more sense as "it takes a city," given the isolation in rural areas. Like that idea only really can take root in close quarters, and thats not rural or suburbs anymore.

To be clear, i don't want suburbs, either, with HOAs or whatever. But cities are not great, environmentally, either, even if letting many rural areas RETVRN TO NATVRE or whatever is I think good. But it's like...idk. Studying mortuary really has me thinking about how even the "greener" options of all our alternatives for everything aren't enough. Cities aren't enough, they've got pros sure, but massive cons. Anticiv shit isn't enough, but in societal ways, in the ways that encourage human adaptation/evolution. And that does matter. Not our numbers, but that we continue to evolve, in subtle ways. We've settled at a solid blueprint. But I'm always looking ahead towards climate change, and past that human extinction, and past that Sol's collapse, and I'm just. It's far ahead. But the way immortalists talk, they want to mitigate our bodies. That concerns me. Life, death, human consciousness. These things are all so fragile, so tied to our physicality, in such a delicate ecosystem.

I just worry. Foolish, long term worry, but I do.

None of it is enough.

I'm not one of those freaks who's like, concerned about demographics or overpopulation or whatever. But I do have some concerns about a worldwide aging population that requires care and support as a majority, regardless of whatever system we build. Capitalism obviously exacerbates the problem because it created it, with it's cancerous need for growth. But.

I don't know. It's collapsing empire, I'm aware, but some part of me looks at the talked about replacements or alternatives and finds all of it-all we've built, and our lofty ambitious pipedream blueprints-to be woefully wanting.

And you know. I don't like humanity, often. But I do love it, whatever it looks like, in 100 years or back 1000 or forward to whatever our descendents could look like, whatever could be after homo sapiens. Our potential.

Repair the world is on my mind, more than usual.

I just don't think any of what we're doing will be big enough.

Demand it be.

[the-legendaryphoenix]

I honestly don't usually talk about serious stuff, but I feel I need to say it. Ive been having thoughts bottle up for the better part of a few months, and I have to put them all somewhere.

This will be somewhat disorganized, but I need to get my thoughts out there. These are also the deranged rantings of a college student that is up at 3 am due to an inability to sleep, so feel free to take all this with a grain of salt.

I talk about capitalism, socialism, power structures, future worries, AI, emotional issues, climate change etc in this essay here. If you're sensitive to those kinda things, feel free to ignore this/block me/avert your eyes. I won't mind.

Yall are not beholden to magically change the world. It's nearly impossible to. Mass societal change almost always come from grassroots movements. There's ... no other way to change society otherwise.

Take generative AI and all. Before 2023, it was just this novelty and a toy that only a few people took seriously. Fast forward a bunch of companies tinkering with it and more eyes slowly getting drawn to the tech and boom suddenly we got trade unions like SAG AFTRA having to throw the video game voice acting industry to the wolves in order to get protections for actors and writers. We didn't get that outta thin air. It was a thing that was built up over time, before suddenly exploding like this.

I'm not entirely convinced AI shit is purely a product of capitalism. AI is just another step in humanity's forever quest to optimise the fuck out of everything regardless of whether or not there's a soul left at the end of it. This would happen under capitalism or socialism. The government - no matter how many social programs they have - is not your friend. Corporations are not your friend (we're in this kind of AI mess because corporations wanna make a quick buck remember?) If it weren't to make money off the backs of artists under capitalism, AI would also be used to generate endless propaganda and distractions by socialist states in order to stop the transition to communism & remain in power. (Think something akin to 1984) Both corporations and the government are wolves in sheep's clothing at absolute best.

Im not saying socialism couldn't work or that it's worse than capitalism. I just dont think socialism would magically solve all the worlds problems at the snap of a dictator's finger. Alotta that has to do with power structures that will be talked about shortly. Also, socialism cannot exist in a democracy. If the people choose their leaders, then the leaders have to constantly farm support from those that help them get elected. And it's not really socialism if some people are getting more than others. That's just our current system but you got authroitarianism instead of democracy. And don't point to systems like those in Scandanavia. Those are capitalist countries. The amount of government safety nets does not change the fact that unless the government has complete control over the entirety of a country's economics, its not socialism.

Due to how power structures work, I don't think violence and/or revolution against the elite will solve anything. Violence would only give them a reason to pull one of their many strings to get a government or private organization to crack down on the rest of us. No one rules alone. There's always got to be others that do the work that leaders cannot physically do themselves. This means that Authoritarian leaders must always give money/favor and or turn the other cheek to the ones that help them rule, and that represenatives must be open to favoring their supporters. If that means the government/leader/whoever ignoring obvious problems, then so be it. And for revolutions, the citizens cannot complete one on their own. The millitary has to allow it. And the citizens do not exactly get to choose the next leader. The Americans won the revolution only because the British had to deal with economics and morale. Had they had unlimited money in their vault and the troops were always raring to fight, the Americans would have lost.

Anarchism would circumvent a lot of the needless power structule bullshit. But as long as humanity has desires, there will always be some method of control over a group of people. Anarchism and communism are amazing ideas on paper. I just cant see them working.

Going back to my main point, its likely that none of us will be able to change the world. At the same time, the world can change you. A lot of my views on politics, friendship, and life in general have shifted since I started studying at college. Through this, Ive come to also realize that getting all worked up about stuff is an exercise in futility. Reblogging posts doesn't change the world. Doomscrolling through reddit and tumblr hashtags doesn't magically solve all problems that you see in the world; it just makes you lie awake at 1:45 AM feeling horrible and all. Wondering if living is still worth it gets you nowhere. It just makes you feel like complete ass when the anxiety passes and you wonder why you were considering such things after seeing an image with impossible geometry/the wrong amount of fingers/inconsistent everything.

You're not given the secrets to life, the universe, and everything on a silver platter. You have to find them yourself. Even if the world/circumstances are determined to make you miserable. You still have to find what's important to you. Ironically, I did get that from somewhere else, namely Pokemon Scarlet... but I also practice Catholic Nihlism, so its also an independent thought I came up with myself. [God gave me the right to choose what meaning I derive from life so I'll do it damn it!]

To clear up worries AI, there's always going to be human soul in some form of art. Think of indie productions that literally do their own thing; regardless of what the market dictates. Think of local artists that perform in your local theater, make paintings for your local museum/gallery, and writers that just sit down one day and write down what's on their mind. In that regard, AI's a tool. Genuinely.

Ive witnessed my friend use it to brainstorm/assist in some pretty difficult narration/dialogue for their fanfic. Ive used it myself to brainstorm some of the more complicated logic for some of my programming projects. You can use it for good things actually.

It's like a hammer. You can use it to help you build a house. You can skip the hammer and use screwdrivers and also get a good house. But you wouldn't want to build a house entirely out of hammers for multiple reasons. If AI doesn't prove to be a passing fad, market forces might start working against it. Think of how many people are fed up with disney and marvel's bland formulism that still has humans behind the wheel. If they add AI to rush things to the big screen at breakneck speed, people are prolly not gonna waste their time anymore. They're probably just gunna not give studios their money. AI is extremely controversal too. The fact that alotta people aren't just rolling over and taking it is a good thing. [The deal SAG AFTRA signed sucks I get it but its kinda easy for VA's to just... strike. They can deny the use of AIs trained on their voice. That's ... something.] (There's also the whole studios pushing for NFT thing and how that was a collosal failure. Its kinda an apples to pears comparison, but I'd thought it was still relavant.)

I know Ive been kinda hard about human nature too; but cmon. Most people are great once ya hear them out. I met my 2 best friends from all of us willing to listen & work through the others' problems. Even strangers can be great. I can randomly spark up small talk with people Ive never seen before at college, and it always comes out great. Most peeps aren't chronically online! they love talkin in person!

Humans have the power to work through a lotta stuff too. Hell, even the most frog-in-a-boiling-pot thing known as climate change is being worked on. Assuming no further reductions in emissions are made, we'll end up 3 degrees warming at the end of the century. That's ... dangerous, but it's an improvement from Around the 2010's when climate change WAS apocolyptic. We were on the 4 degrees timeline, and we will not go back there unless we ACTIVELY try to. Even in the worst case, humans and nature are very stubborn. Things absolutely have been worse in earth's history. Things just happening faster that's the problem.

Though if you do wanna make an impact, local politics and conservation are your best options. You may not be able to change stuff nationally or globally, but local stuff does make a difrerence. (Also the point above about local indie artists :P local really is the best huh?)

Starting local also has the advantage of being grassroots. People respond better to changes in their local community than those from the feds. It also affects how they vote, which in turn affects who leads nations and all.

Hence, my point about grassroots, huh. full circle.

You don't have to change the world as you don't owe it anything; but if you feel like it, go for it! Form a small group! Be a force for change!

I know its a bit contradictory to originally say stuff about posting doing nothing, and then for me to turn around and do all this; but I make my own meaning :P. (Ain't nihlism awesome.) I also just mostly needed to collect my thoughts to share with my friends.

I don't have anything else to say right now, so thank ya if you read this far. Means a lot you took the time to read all this.

yeah, have a wonderful day. :3

[pleuvoire]

i feel like following people who are really into nature and posting about wildlife has given me a new window on ecosystems and conservation and stuff that following marxist bloggers and stuff who are of course concerned about environmental impacts of capitalism but don’t specialize in that sort of thing hasn’t

like after lots of seeing Leftist Bloggers post about how north america is basically one big parking lot which is bad, it’s been really refreshing to see people talk in depth and detail about l their love and passion for native species and the efforts to keep them alive and how many of them are living all around us. i feel so much more of a sense of hope from this, it reminds me of when i read braiding sweetgrass. the other day i saw a post talking about the impact of climate change on the global south that was like “ecosystems in the imperial core are basically dead (but they aren’t in the global south)” and i felt like wow that’s kind of shortsighted why don’t you follow some wildlife enthusiast blogs. i feel like that sort of perspective, to act like Nature where you live has basically been mostly snuffed out by capitalism and what remains are just sad dregs that doesn’t even merit the name and what a tragedy that is, is in itself a sort of micro-doomerism and emotional distortion. and i feel like being made more aware of the sphere of people who post with great enthusiasm about the bird species they saw today and the native plants they’re cultivating around them has been far more helpful to me and given me a clearer idea of what sort of community work i might like to do if i get the chance

though the tradeoff is that since wildlife bloggers usually don’t have the kind of political awareness i follow political blogs for, i get a lot more “we need to hecking vote!!” posts on my dash now. but you win some you lose some

[intoxicatingimmediacy]

Daveed Diggs Talks 'Extrapolations,' the Impact of Climate Change, & Halle Bailey in 'The Little Mermaid'

In his interview, Diggs best explains Extrapolations by saying, “one of the particular things that science fiction is great at is extrapolating ourselves a little bit, like moving a little bit ahead of our current moment.” In Burns’ episodic series, we see the uncomfortably-near future in digestible Black Mirror-esque vignettes that show all mankind has accomplished like humans on Mars and the cure for cancer, yet the planet itself is crumbling around us. Diggs tells us Burns looks at the bigger picture by zeroing in on personal stories, with a touch of whimsy in dreamlike sequences in which Diggs will tap into his musical roots, and discusses the repercussions of our inaction we’re seeing today.

Transcript under the cut

COLLIDER: I've seen the whole series, it's fantastic. I'm really happy that it was made, it deals with incredibly important subject matter. I'm assuming that's the reason why you got invited or was it just because you saw Scott Burns’ name on the screenplay?

DAVEED DIGGS: Maybe a little bit of both. I mean, I read the two episodes that Marshall is in and fell in love with the story of that particular character. So, yeah, it was the kind of art I want to make that is trying to do something greater than the sum of its parts, and then also it was just a great script.

Yeah, this is also the kind of show that I want to promote because it deals with the most important stuff that we could possibly deal with, you know?

DIGGS: Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I've been thinking about this a lot today while speaking about it, is just that it feels a little silly to create a big splashy show to be like, “Climate change exists,��� which feel like table stakes, but that's the problem, it is table stakes. We're not forced to look at it a lot, it just is the world that we're living in. So I think one of the particular things that science fiction is great at is extrapolating ourselves a little bit, like moving a little bit ahead of our current moment and then being like, “Look at yourself. Look at the choice that you're making, and this is the consequences of those actions,” and that's something that this genre is so good at. So, yeah, it's a good use of it.

Also, the show does a really great job at focusing on real people, like just people living their lives, as well as the big issues that the world leaders are trying to tackle, all in one series.

DIGGS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was my favorite thing about it really was just these very personal stories. Then, some of the folks we’re looking at are also world leaders, you know? But we're still involved in their personal drama. Some of them are scientists, but we're still involved in their personal drama. [There are] people's jobs and there's the world that we live in, and then [there are] people. Everybody is just people, and we all experience so much of the same things.

One of the things, I think in one of your episodes, it's a very powerful shot of the congregation sitting there all wearing boots–

DIGGS: Rain boots, yeah.

Because our nation is flooded, and that's just the future that's coming.

DIGGS: Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah, that image and that not-too-distant future if you're at what now is about sea level, that's not an unfathomable thing, and it's happened in some places in the world already. That Miami would be in that position is not… is something that building developers, they're already thinking about, right? That land is becoming unusable because it is going to be underwater. I think another thing that the series kind of subtly hints at is that capitalism is a few steps ahead of policy in these discussions always, right? Because it is a better machine and so those are the people out there doing the research being like, “Hey, this is going to be underwater now so if you're going to sell it, you better sell it fast. It's gonna be way harder to sell this when it's underwater.” That stuff is scary.

I think about the fact that I will never move to Florida even if you paid me. For many reasons, but that's one of them. I definitely have to touch on, real fast, your scene partner, I believe her name is Neska [Rose], she is fantastic.

DIGGS: How wonderful is she?

Not only is she fantastic, but the writing between the two of you is just next level and it's really shining a light. I mean, it's just so well done. Can you talk about her performance and the writing of those scenes?

DIGGS: I mean, yeah, obviously those scenes were what got me to do the test. The script’s totally brilliant and it does this thing where she is leading, you know? Marshall is at this somewhat apathetic moment in his life until she comes along and starts challenging him. But she does lead those scenes, so you need an actor who can do, a very young actor who can do that, and she is so wonderful. Day one, I was like, “Oh yeah, it is her scene, that's definitely her scene. I'm definitely along for the ride.” She’s so much fun to work with, and there's the whole dream ballet situation of it too. We got to do a lot of fun stuff together, which is also great.

Was it in the script that they were gonna have you sing, or was it once you got cast Scott was like, “You know, I'm thinking about a song.”?

DIGGS: I honestly don't remember. Yeah, I can't remember. I don't know if it was in there initially, but by the time I got there, I knew it was going to happen. It wasn't sprung on me by the time I showed up, but I think we had some conversations about it where it was like, “Hey, what would you think of…?” I think. Yeah, it's hard for me to remember which came first.

How much of the series have you actually seen?

DIGGS: I've actually just seen the first three. I've read a few of the other ones beforehand, but yeah, I haven't seen the finished versions.

I will just say that it's kind of fantastic. Just throwing that out there. Obviously, like everyone, I've actually heard some good things about The Little Mermaid movie through my little rumor mill of Disney. What does it mean for you to be part of that project?

DIGGS: I mean, I'm sort of stunned. I was stunned that they wanted me to be part of it and then every moment of working on it was like, “Whoa, this is what I get to do right now?” I am also eagerly anticipating the release of it, but what I can tell you is that Halle [Bailey] is unbelievable. I know that because I was next to her a lot of the time while she was learning that role, and yeah, she's… It's really phenomenal.

My last thing for you, what are you actually filming this year? I'm a really big fan of your work and I'm just curious.

DIGGS: Oh man, I mean, some stuff I'm about to go shoot that I don't know where I am with being allowed to talk about it. But movies, back to doing some movies which will be cool, and then yeah, Season 2 of Blindspotting is coming out very soon, middle of April. So, yeah, that's exciting. I’m actually going to go premiere the second season at SXSW next week, so that's very exciting. Yeah, writing a bunch of things. There’s a new Clipping album coming out in the fall. Yeah, a lot of it's going to be a good year.

[thisaintascenereviews]

Rise Against - Nowhere Generation

A few weeks back, I was at Record Head in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it’s a record store that I found recently that I really enjoy. They have great deals on stuff, both new and used, but they also have a lot of overstock that they have at the lowest prices you can imagine. The last time I was there, I made out real well, because I got John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme for $12, Hunny’s latest album for $8, an RSD-exclusive of Teddy Swims’ debut album for $25, and the Target exclusive variant of Rise Against’s latest album, 2021’s Nowhere Generation for $10. I used to pick up a lot of stuff back in the day, mainly because of the price. I’m of the mindset that I’ll check out an album if it’s cheap enough, despite if I’ve never heard it.

Worst case scenario is that the album sucks and I can sell it for about what I paid, if not more, but if I love it, I got an album really cheap. That happened with Cautious Clay’s latest album, when I got it on CD for a dollar last year, but I was willing to take a chance on the new Rise Against album, despite not being a huge fan of them. Make no mistake, I like them, and I’ve been a fan since 2011 when Endgame came out, but they’re one of those bands that makes the same album over and over again. Like Yellowcard, AC/DC, Silverstein, and many other bands in that vein, they have a “sound,” and if that works for you, you’re in for a good time every time, but if it doesn’t, you might just like an album or two and get bored.

That’s how I was with their last few albums, and I never listened to Nowhere Generation, because I knew what I was getting, and it just didn’t seem interesting. I wasn’t even going to review this album at first, despite how I’ve grown to really enjoy it. I wanted to talk about it for two reasons — they just dropped a new song called “Nod,” which is actually quite good, and we need Rise Against right now. I always admired their progressive stances on things, and how they’re for equal rights and standing up for people that don’t have a voice, so with the current political climate and administration, we need a band like Rise Against now more than ever.

It’s weird, too, because Nowhere Generation is weirdly more relevant now than it was a few years ago when it came out. The more I sat with this album, the more I really enjoyed it, and while this album doesn’t blow me away, I still really like it. Their brand of punk and melodic hardcore is still just as razor sharp, especially with really solid hooks and vocals from Tim McIlrath. It’s really the lyrics that do it for me, and after reading about the inspiration behind it, it made a lot of sense.

The band opted to get inspiration from Gen Z, because they wanted to get a feel for what young people are passionate about, and what they’re fighting more, versus talking about the same things they’ve been doing for years now. The title track is a good reflection of that, but this album has songs about AI, automation, climate change, capitalism, and more topics that are timeless, but Gen Z is really passionate about. Instead of the band being like “hey, this is bad,” they’re looking at individual issues, and telling us why they’re bad. Bands like Rise Against, who talk about political things, tend to do that a lot, because they think that they saying something is bad is enough, but we want to know why or what we can do to change it.

This album is a pretty straightforward punk and melodic hardcore record, but what it does really well is hammer in those hooks, and gives you something to think about. This isn’t the best Rise Against album of all time, but if you love this band, I think you’ll love this album. For me, personally, this album feels refreshing, because it feels more topical and interesting, versus the same old stuff we get from them every few years. They’ve never put out a bad album, but they’ve been getting progressively lazier, I suppose, and this album is a kick in the pants they needed. Even their new song is really cool, because the song is about community and just knowing that someone understands and can relate.

[kkikiwi]

240727

i am still in a state of limerence. and i Hate it. i don't even know how to express it. i've told only a couple people.

the thing is, is i think the fantasy has already been shattered. he has flaws. he doesn't seem to agree with some of my views. and i don't agree with some of his views. i can't believe i'm heartbroken over something that never was. and i never took that next step even though i told myself over and over and over again that i would.

i should've never gotten myself into it. i was fine being on my own, now it feels like i'm stuck in the mud thinking about him every day. it's the reason i'm on reddit now half the time. i'm hoping he's on some of the subs that i post on. i was stuck on r/dating-advice for the last month and a half, in a frenzy looking for some indication that he's on the same wavelength as i am. but i doubt it.

i still want to know what he thinks of me. as depreciative as it sounds, i don't think he thinks of me, and i don't think he thinks well of me. abi told me that he wouldn't have spent time with me if he doesn't like me. but he doesn't seem like the type (and he told me himself) to be able to say no. because the easy way out is to ghost me than to tell me that he doesn't want to. i'm the same way.

fuck it hurts. i've been in a bind trying to pull myself out of my depressive state for the last couple weeks. all i can do is tell the people who now know that i'm over it before it even began. i have to nonchalantly say that he wasn't for me. and i'll never know if i like the idea of him or i like him. I LIKE HIM. i like him.

but he wouldn't/doesn't like me as much as i like him. maybe i'm the one who can't read signs. maybe i'm even the one who pushed him away. maybe he doesn't know what to think of me. i can't help but think about what shannon asked the other day. why was she surprised i was still talking to him? did someone say something? is there something i don't know?

the things about him that i liked were his social awareness, we talked about so much stuff, i learned a lot from him and about him (and if you know me, i love learning), i liked that we had similar interests and similar opinions, not all our political views were probably the same, but he does have a sense of justice and morals that i can agree with. but i know he also spends his time on reddit (who knows what sort of conservative/lib white people shit he sees on that half the time?) and primarily has brain rot algorithm on his ig/tiktok. so where does that leave mine?

mine is full of the horrors of palestine, palestinians/sudanese/congolese and more asking for the attention of their audience to reach their gfm goals, filter usage, just to get their families and loved ones to safety across the border. that in part is weighing me down. it feels like i'm the only one going crazy with this stupid country funding stupid genocides across the world. and we can do nothing about it. i want to do something big to move mountains and save the people who can't save themselves. i hate that the biggest problem i saw to date was climate change when the biggest issue was capitalism. it sucks. should've been a politician or involved in politics.

i think i felt hopeful in him because i thought i would have someone else to talk to about these things i'm feeling and feel a sense of understanding. but that was probably not the case.

i did seem to line up his personality type as an intj. it has either made me delusional into thinking that he might have an interest in me. or he doesn't and i need to start accepting that at face value. that's the thing too. i thought i was pretty good at reading people's emotions and what they think about me (might have been in part to my overthinking and projecting my self-hatred onto other people loll).

am i too much? i didn't think i would be too much going into this, but now i can feel it because it's pretty depressing and somewhat of a karma for me to be this obsessive over his response time when i don't do the same courtesy for others. shannon has reassured me, jamie has confirmed it, abi made me feel so so much better, but i think i need to close this chapter in my life. i need to be okay with myself again. i don't know what's gotten into me these past few months but it's made me feel like shit when it's all been in my head.

maybe, just maybe. when i'm feeling better and more myself again, i'll ask him out for real. i'll ask if he wants to go on a date, and i don't have to mull over his potential response beforehand and his inability to text me back soon enough (which would mean he's interested) because he'll tell me right there and then.

tell me no, and i'll know for sure, no more questions and overthinking.

tell me yes, and we'll crash and burn like i know we will.

[rosszulorzott]

you can do a novel with characters, with action, with all the pleasures of the novel—while including a political element

you totally can!!!

I was beating the bushes for help in imagining a Martian political economy

i understood it only partly :(

Science has been a proto-utopian project from its very start, which goes back to the Paleolithic. Jameson made a good point just this morning that myth, for the ancients, was an early science attempting to explain the world; rational stories are embedded here. This idea comes out of Claude Lévi-Strauss.

makes sense

Can humans exert a little more power in that world for their own comfort and for the reduction of suffering?

i like the explanation with enthropy, if you want to like at all, you exert power, nothing changes that. i believe being more aware of this would bring better awareness about how we do this and how much we do this

Science is dangerous for capitalism, and it must immediately be bought. Galileo himself was bought, and worked in the armaments industry for the Venetian Republic, among other projects that were military in origin. Since then, one of science’s projects has been to free itself for the good, and point out that the bad is really bad.

science can't stop sciencing, luckily and helpfully :)

As a leftist, I am often dismayed by a confusion of constant category error that says science is just the instrumentality of capitalism. This gives up the most powerful force for good that we have invented as human beings, rather than trying to say, “That’s a leftist project to begin with, and we need to listen to it more.”

word

The anthropocentric viewpoint toward the rest of our own human bodies is foolish, cruel, and shortsighted.

i want humanism to mean this. not restricted to humans but inclusive of all that makes it possible to be a human (just cos i've come to like the word)

Through legislation, could you achieve all of the advantages of a revolution without the disadvantages, by making a Keynesian seizing of the financial system, so that neoliberal capitalism, with its valorization of the market as the only monarch, gets overthrown?

-e?

I can say that my novels are semi-instinctual things that I look at afterward as a reader and see patterns that I didn’t see while I was writing it.

ahha!

Being in a ridiculous small-town meeting about local politics and coming in with a left perspective, although it was boring, was more interesting than watching TV that night by maybe 50 percent, maybe 100 percent. There’s something about human interactions: face-to-face, small-scale crunching through Robert’s Rules, and arguing, and trying to be polite when you’re absolutely furious, or at least indignant. This is interesting stuff. As a novelist, I’ve even tried to represent this in novels, which is harder than hell.

you did it well

If you go out into America today and say, “I’m an anarchist” — I love you. I’m an anarchist, too. In five hundred years, or maybe fifty years, everybody on the planet should have an equal amount of power and comfort and wealth and political power. That’s an obvious goal, and it’s the great anarchist goal. But right now, in the world that we’re in, you’ve got to go campaign for whatever democratic politician opposes the reactionary forces.

it's easy to see in theory, harder to see in the political realities rn

The game of the novel — to try to imagine you’re somebody else — is a very important game. In that, I created a mess. It doesn’t have recommendations. It has case studies that you have to sort out for yourself.

yes and a bit like jim shephard in that

I can imagine that happening — obviously, I did imagine it — but I think that could happen in the real world, because we are closing in on temperatures that will cook people who aren’t protected by electricity. And that will be a game changer in the nation-states where it happens.

i wish i could be sure

It’s almost guaranteed that we’re going to lose the beaches.

:(

[katherinakaina]

Yes, and:

It's not what ethical AI really means. It's what you want it to mean in order to have an extra opportunity to say how bad capitalism is - and, fair enough, it is. But you've just dismissed a whole sphere of philosophy in order to once again make the same political point that your viewers are well familiar with. And it saddens me.

It saddens me, as a leftist-rationalist that the left in general seems to be unable to engage with AI alignment topic on its own terms. It saddens me as a philosopher, that we seem to be loosing ability to talk about philosophy in non political terms. It saddens me, as a regular Philosophy Tube viewer, that you are failing in the same way.

Yes I know, that everything has a political aspect to it, yes I know, that it's important, and that it's a mistake when this aspect is dismissed. And yet, it is also a mistake to ignore all the other aspects! You can't solve AI alignment by explaining how bad capitalism is. You can't prevent AI Doom scenario by pointing to climate change. You didn't solve all the coordination problems by saying: "unionize!". Even if we lived in a carbon neutral communist utopia the problems of AI alignment would still be unsolved. They deserve to be addressed on their own. It's not an either or situation.

On a related note. When corporations are doing regular capitalist stuff, claiming that their product is obviously good and unproblematic, and how harmful are any regulations for everybody, the left correctly points out how it's not the case and that we need regulations, checks and balances and, actually, wealth redistribution. But it seems that a lot of us have generalized this as "always say the opposite of what the corporations say" and it leads to weird places. Now we have a CEO openly claiming that their product is potentially dangerous, that there have to be regulations and proposes a huge economic reform with a progressive taxation system (check who owns most of the land), redistributing economic gains and fixing worst offenses of capitalism. And instead of being vindicated, and taking this golden opportunity to make a huge improvement over the status quo, most leftists are caught flat footed and try to come with galaxy brain takes how it's all somehow a crypto scam and a reverse psychological trick to actually pay less taxes and have less regulations. When you propose UBI in the end of one of your videos, it's a cool radical idea. But when you find out that actually some people in power are in favor of it too, you are immediately proclaim it as not radical enough. As if you are not actually interested in having your ideas implemented.

Please, think about it. Learn more about Georgism. Read "Progress and Poverty". Or at least "The Land is a Big Deal". It may not be the communist utopia we all hope for, but it's at least a huge step in the right direction (and it doesn't necessary have to be the only one), significantly improving the situation with climate change as well (fossil fuels are part of the land). It has tractable way to be implemented and potential support from all parts of society. Yes, you won't be able to look cool while posing with a hammer and smashing things, but it's a sacrifice we should be willing to make. Because what's the alternative proposal? Wait till half of the Philippines are under water? And then maybe marxist revolution just happens itself and leads to a good outcome this time, instead of instantiating more power hungry dictators? Do you honestly think that the risks and the costs of such political program are worth it?

Yes, there is no ethical anything under capitalism, for a specific definition of "ethical". The concerns you raise are valid and the problems you want to talk about, deserve to be discussed. But please, don't use them as a framing device to dismiss other valid concerns, problems and solutions, that may not be your favorites. Not without engaging with them on the object level. This is not a realistic way to achieve your political goals and, most importantly, it's not good philosophy.

AI IS AN EXISTENTIAL RISK IN THE SAME WAY NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE

AI SAFETY MUST BE ONE OF OUR PRIORITIES

We should be the ones comparing Sam Altman to Oppenheimer!

TURN THIS SHIT DOWN

NEW PHILOSOPHY TUBE JUST DROPPED

What's up Tumblr-heads - new episode of Philosophy Tube is here! It's about AI: how it's made, how to make it ethical, and the time someone used it to make nonconsensual porn of me!