Prelude to the Apocalypse

[BulletMagnet]

Mainstream republicans are done with Trump, as far as I can tell.

Every time I hear someone say this, this resumes playing on an infinite loop in my head.

The Onion, of course, sums it up as succinctly as ever. As does this.

[BryanM]

I thought Reagan was largely to blame for changing the dynamics of the political landscape, and Clinton's rightward shift was a response to that (aka his only way to win.) Notwithstanding both are trash of course. Who was the last good President, even? FDR? Carter?

Goldwater is extremely influential in cementing the current dictatorship's aesthetic range, but saying the N word has always been popular with white grievance politics so he's hardly the grandfather of our society. These characters are largely just sock puppets placed over the head of the hydra.

There's a decent argument that John Quincy Adams was the only good president. Man gave a shit for the powerless, congress blocked him at every turn. And also was part of an anti-illuminati party for a while. (That was something politicians were allowed to do back then?!?! Just imagine today's sockpuppet saying a bad word about Davos "economic" meetings or whatever.) Was there anyone so based?

Liberal historians would call him "ineffective", but I think being "ineffective" (aka, not doing it) at enacting a Trail of Tears or what have you is very laudable.

[orange808]

Fitch's downgrade is a huge boost for Trump and "Reagan Democrat" neoliberals. The neoliberal that pulled the lever doesn't want "better governance". This is about overcoming resistance and permanent austerity.

Rich baby boomers love it. They know all their benefits are guaranteed. Fuck everyone else. Same old boomers. Time to fuck the poors. It's also time wheel into the chambers of power on life support in a wheelchair. Baby boomers can't ever let the next person have their turn, because they are cunts.

As for Trump, he represents boomers perfectly. He embodies an entire generation with every action and word. Boomers are Trump and Trump is boomers. They are one.

[Sima Tuna]

It's crazy to me how much time has passed, yet the reigns of power have yet to be turned over to the next generation in any capacity. It's just boomers boomers boomers. They get older, so every management position gets older too. Nobody gets a drop of power or control without appeasing the Boomer Bloc. Not only "fuck the poors" but fuck every generation younger than them.

For all the faults of younger generations (cringey social media behavior, "not wanting to work" etc) the boomer greed and tight-fisted reigns on power are far more egregious. I'd happily take a lazy CEO over an actively malicious one.

Obviously #notallboomers, but the ones in power certainly act that way. Nothing the common man wants ever comes to pass and that's because we don't really have representative government. We have gerontocracy.

[orange808]

Dianne Feinstein's daughter has power of attorney over her legal and financial affairs. She can't manage any of her daily responsibilities, but she's a United States Senator that's involved in making important decisions for the nation.

Fuck.

[BryanM]

The Chappo guys always humble me with their ability to be snappy and succinct:

It's like they're asking them to replace their favorite movie star for the role of the hero, and expecting that to work. Yeah, we're totally gonna recast Harrison Ford or Charlton Heston or whatever. >_>

Looking at these people's actual lives is often kind of terrifying. Remember how we were talking about p-zombies earlier? There's this report going around that DeSantis spent a ~9 hour flight to Israel staring at the seat in front of him. Not reading, watching, working on or playing anything. No chit-chat. Stare at seat. Stare stare stare.

AI does a better job at pretending to be human than most of these people. You know that Asimov story about a robot being elected president of Earth? I'm sure the Freemasons will flood the system with them when they're at that level. Things will be exactly the same as they are now politically, but the WWF show will be a lot more exciting. Robots can be atomized and replaced the next day with an exact clone, after all.

Idiocracy was a utopian vision for the future.

[Sengoku Strider]

People who've been around him say DeSantis is almost certainly on the spectrum. I can believe it, a lot of the strange expressions he makes, like the Joker smile in Japan, come across like a guy whose advisors have trained him in neurotypical politician behaviour but he doesn't quite have it down yet. It also might explain his black & white worldview and intolerance for difference.

His wife is hot though. I kinda wonder what their relationship is like. Do they have family pudding bowl night?

[Sengoku Strider]

I remember Bryan called Andrew Yang Kodos once regarding his "not left, not right, but forward" speech, and that stuck with me because it was pretty bang-on. Politico had an editorial from the former press secretary for Yang's Forward Party describing how it works, or rather doesn't; she directly calls it out as the Theranos of political parties. She's mainly attacking the idea that you'll inspire people to vote for you and unite a country by standing for nothing (she calls it the Seinfeld Party, which is also a pretty sick zinger TBH). Maybe it's still too early in the day for me, but the nonsensicality seems even deeper than that:

I Saw the Hollowness Inside Andrew Yang’s New Third Party

At a time when the political arena is marked by anger, vitriol and deep polarization, empowering local leaders and placing transparency and common-sense solutions over ideology are especially attractive concepts.

But in practice, that’s not what happened. When the Texas chapter’s executive committee (consisting of local community leaders) adopted a February resolution supporting an exception for rape/incest to Texas’ abortion ban, Forward’s national leadership amended it and told the executive committee that they were to set priorities, while allowing candidates themselves to set their own policies. As a result of the disagreement, the chairman and several members of Texas’s executive committee resigned.

The Kodos thing comes back to me, because this party seems to be run by aliens looking down at the tiny Earth from space. What I think their goal is: Everyone gets what they want locally, then come together nationally with the understanding that they're all under the same tent.

What reality is:

1. All those anti-incest and anti-rape pregnancy people are still there in these states, nobody lives in Nowhere, USA. They make up massive swaths of the population even in the reddest of states, and probably significant but relatively quiet chunks of the republicans as well. They're still not getting what they want. These are not the people with extreme views that the Forward Party claims to be moving away from. And they're not going to suddenly transcend ideological duality and unite in an American uni-mind by how wonderfully non-partisan this is because the Republican Party weren't the ones doing the thing they hate.

PICTURED: America moving not left, not right, but forward:



2. Let's say in the Forward worldline, Arkansas allows abortions for incest but not rape. Those Texas donors are now furious at the national party, because they gave the national arm money to create a Godless Hell on Earth right next door. Meanwhile, Arkansas has also passed a law instituting mandatory assault firearms and demolition training for all children 2 & up, because Glenn Beck told them China has secret CRISPR super soldier armies in Mexico they need to be able to defend against any minute now. Now the Calfornia donors are freaking out because they're giving piles of money to raving lunatics. Why does anyone except the confused people who think true neutral is a legit real-life alignment remain donors?

PICTURED: Ordinary everyday Mexicans crossing the border, heading directly for Stone county, AR:



3. Why do all these same people with disparate views suddenly come together at the national level in congress? Because now those angry people who hate you are not only in the same room, but in the same party trying to hash out a budget and healthcare. How are you not creating something completely dysfunctional in which coalition is nearly impossible?

PICTURED: Congressional ways & means committee meet to review proposed funding for trans-only firing ranges:



4. Speaking of national, how do you create better ethical national policy if your response to the very simple and straightforward question "What are your ethics?" is "Forward!" Like, I feel like we've decided that might matter before.

PICTURED: Corrupt partisan hackery:



This whole thing seems so airheaded, as though Yang looked at Air BnB and said "Of course! So disruptive! It's democracy 2.0!"*

*It would be more like build 3.7, and it would crash a lot.

[BryanM]

Politicians saying nothing really is an eternal kind of thing ain't it. The Simpsons writers didn't get that joke from nowhere after all. Everyone else thought "Kodos!", too... too many jokes are becoming real...

Frederick Douglass mentions one of these "middle of the road, appeasing no-one" goons in one of his autobiographies. Centrists just really hate conflict or having to have an opinion on things, don't they.

Being aware of this is really only useful for when you're writing a personals ad (or in another position making a sales pitch to somebody); I've read like two of these that were any good in my entire life. Everyone's either so afraid of being themselves or clueless for the kind of person they're looking for; this is supposed to be someone who's supposed to become a major part of your life! Surely you can imagine the kind of person you want to be with, and can write a letter of introduction directed to them and not some vague "everyperson" that doesn't exist. Yeah of course you like walking on the beach and doggies; everyone with a soul does, fuck face!

... where were we. Doomsday? Oh yeah, it's always doomsday.

Texas taking away paid water breaks is quite deliciously evil and doomy. I mentioned the cacti carking over from the heat, right?

----

In the AI field, this "don't worry man" faction has this one guy I find particularly irksome. A man by the name Yann LeCun.

His solution to the AI safety problem? "We'll just make systems that are safe, and not make the unsafe ones." What a smart man. A real genius. He works for Facebook. Real market leaders in the field, you know.

And here I thought the whole "just" thing came with a smorgasbord of fundamentally unsolvable problems. Inner alignment, reward hacking, convergent instrumental goals, getting what you asked for and not what you meant to ask for, getting what you meant to ask for, "aligned with whose values?"; you know, basic things. All boils down to can you really know the mind of something smarter than yourself, so that you're able to 100% trust it to not kill everyone, in all situations. You really don't want a robot theme park to cover the entire planet and make everyone into star trek-LARPing catgirls, marginally better than theme park central control unit SkyNet's world that it'd be.

The golden star of what a gigachad genius this man is, would be this quote from twitter:

Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse has lost over $21.3 billion since 2022.

Pretty funny how financial types don't understand the concept of long-term R&D investment.
To them, R&D investment is "lost money".
It only becomes "lost" if/when you give up on the whole product concept.
But that has not happened.

The Metaverse is the next internet.

I really wish I didn't have to read twitter (I used to rarely visit for comedy accounts and nerd product info), but it's the only internet forum where the only people who matter to the future talk to one another.

There has been some talk about creating a machine<->brain interface through blood vessels. Which is better than drilling a hole through someone's skull. I still wouldn't want any of that shit touching any of my primary neurons, ever. Nor would I want it to touch the internet. But I might let one gafoodle my spinal cord a little bit to play a video game locally.

Not any video game Facebook could ever make. But you know, one that had fun in it? Yeah.

[Sima Tuna]

I don't need to control the Raiden ship with my nads, thanks. Controller is good enough.

You know the first thing people are gonna do with human-internet interface is jerk off to porn anyway, right? That's all anybody does on the internet. They'll configure the interface to send dick shocks or something.

[BryanM]

Yes, the scene from Demolition Man. It's vital technology we need yesterday.

I'm sure someone somewhere will use it to walk on a beach and pet a cat.

[Sengoku Strider]

Now that the Deep State has finally taken the bait by hitting Trump & co-conspirators with a RICO case with 70 charges, it's time to spring the 5D chess trap!



Will it truly be irrefutable? Tune in next week and find out!

[BryanM]

Normally the Iowa fair is supposed to be a firm kickoff to the bloodletting.... but if this is as tepid and foregone a reaction we're gonna get, I have scarce hope for next week's round 1 of Mortal Kombat. Not having Herman Cain or Ben Carson around will really hurt.

I'm already rolling my eyes at the show I'm imagining in my head. You know at least three or twelve guys (the little scrappy-doo guys who have no real chance, little sacrificial attack dogs) are gonna try to attack Don's legal issues, and all Don has to do is shrug his shoulders and say they're all lies.

It's a good time to listen to some Pokemon songs in memory of Mr.Cain. Good vibes, man. Good vibes.

[Sengoku Strider]

Hot damn, the evidence must be charting new frontiers in IRREFUTABLE if even his own lawyers are scared of it.

Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

I bet they must be really worried the case would be dismissed too soon.

[Sima Tuna]

His revolving door of lawyers have been giving him sound legal advice ever since he stepped down as President, and Trump has absolutely refused to follow any of it.

[Sengoku Strider]

His revolving door of lawyers have been giving him sound legal advice ever since he stepped down as President, and Trump has absolutely refused to follow any of it.

Only because they can't decode the Q drops to understand Trump's true 5D chess master plan.

[Sima Tuna]

The dumb shithead wouldn't even BE in court today if he listened to his lawyers.

Pence told him "no, I can't change or challenge the election result for you."
His lawyers told him "play ball with the DOJ and the subpoena. Don't hide anything."

If he'd done those two things then all the charges he's facing right now would have poofed into thin air. If he had accepted the election result and complied with the subpoena, there would be such a tiny, minuscule chance of any successful case against Trump for anything (minus the stormy daniels payments, but who the fuck cares about those) that Trump would be golden. He'd join the respected ranks of other past presidents and he could run again whenever he felt up for it.

Sure, people would still hate Trump, but who cares? He's always made that work for him.

What the hell is the point in paying a small fortune for legal help if you don't listen to them when they advise you? That's what you pay them for, idiot!

[Sengoku Strider]

He's got the Deep State over a barrel now.

"Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings," Trump said on Truth Social.

Therefore, he added, the news conference was no longer necessary.

The irrefutable and overwhelming 100 page report will instead be moved, I believe, into formal Legal Filings, somewhere, at some time, it is preferred, I believe.

Sounds like the overwhelming evidence press conference won't even be necessary! Fuck around and find out, Hunter.

BQQM

[Sengoku Strider]

I should be getting work done, but it's Friday afternoon and my head's not in the game. What better way to refresh than by reading some incisive political commentary of the day's events? And boy am I glad I did, otherwise I wouldn't have realized what a huge win for freedom and humanity as a whole that cancellation was.

Trump's 6D press conference cancellation head-fake saved children's lives, sent Joe Biden to Maui, heroically stopped the deep state-created hurricane Hillary from distracting people, proved climate change isn't real, lushed out hidden face cards, and sent the deep state scrambling while the NSA tracks their total and absolute panic.

And made his digital soldier patriots look even crazier to family members who still speak to them, but nobody said WW III was going to be easy.

Spoiler

Interesting factoid that the media made Trump bright orange for years when he is in fact a lovely light and crispy brown from golfing once a month.

[BryanM]

Whew, I was worried the scroll bar there would never end.

I watched Abigail's dive into Grimes. A lady who fell into a bad crowd thanks to Musk, and baked her brain too much on acid. Basically she's gone full Kanye mode, best friends with KKK guys now.

These are the people closest to replacing the current dictatorship. Even if the fash took full control, they'd only adjust the current one. By excluding any non-white, non-christian person from being allowed to be a capitalist. That isn't a revolution.

There's a part of me that's convinced Epstein's "plans" for the "singularity" might be the most pertinent issue for all of humanity. Considering how many guys in that position think like that. Musk is already doing his own little version of "the plan", limited by frail flesh and constrained by law that he is. If someone like Bill Gates became god, hoo boy.

Maybe the Aamon Animations stuff would indeed be utopian in comparison.

[XtraSmiley]

WTF did I just read. Are those posters serious or just trolling each other?

[Sengoku Strider]

Whew, I was worried the scroll bar there would never end.

And I cut a lot too. But I was still drowning in too much A and solid B material.

WTF did I just read. Are those posters serious or just trolling each other?

100% serious.

That's from GreatAwakening.Win, the hardcore heart of the MAGA movement...at least the ever-dwindling faction that still believes in QAnon 3 years after Trump lost and Q immediately stopped posting and ran off. The guy talking about alienating his family is a very common story, people get sucked into this and can't get out no matter how much reality contradicts them, it functions a lot like a loose cult. I meant to censor the "date f*g" comments, it's how they shame each other for putting concrete dates on when their conspiracies will come true. Because they never do, and it discredits them. More, that is.

[BryanM]

Thanks to my time on tweeter reading nerd talk, came across this little bit of libertarian delusion: Vivek Ramaswamy as a "number two", "obama-like figure", etc.

I haven't even seen if he's a good salesguy for TV or not, but I haven't heard anything great. Not sure how the political party all about the in-group being receptive of this weirdo out-group guy who doesn't get off on stomping on people. The cruelty is the point.

Hopefully he'll take up a bit of the slack, with our loss of Mr.Cain. Those are big pants to fill, and I dunno if his "I'm the monotheist kind of Hindu!" schtick will be entertaining enough on its own.

God, that alone makes it hard for me to believe he'll break 10%+. A GOP nominee that doesn't wear the Jesus gang flair? Pft.

.... man, Pokemon music has really gone downhill over the years eh.

I meant to censor the "date f*g" comments, it's how they shame each other for putting concrete dates on when their conspiracies will come true

Disgusting. Absolute cowards. If you're going to assert claims, you have to offer timelines and probabilities. Nothing is more shameful than non-falsifiable claims.

Even the absolute cowards who keep saying nothing will ever change (despite change being the only thing guaranteed in life) and keep being wrong, and we never shame them for their cowardice for some reason all because they expressed the in-group normie opinions.... well, ok I have even more contempt for them. At least the Q guys have a sprawling saga and lore. You know, an attempt at being interesting.

I'll go on record for this AGI godhead stuff. It feels roughly right that if you glue together about ten or so specialized models on the same scale as GPT-4, you can get something on the approximate level of a human. So in absolute terms we're 10% to 0.1% of the way there. If doubling trends continue, with a doubling every ~18 months, that gives a range of AGI in 5.25 to 15 years.

Once again, AGI isn't your little robot buddy who's not quite as smart as you. It's a horrible relentless machine that'll grind everything into dust.

The chapo guys seem convinced the guys pouring billions into this will fail, because I assume that's what they wish would be true. Humanist world model, etc. In some ways they're as deranged as the Libertarians who think their capitalist policies stripped bare of any humanity and honestly put forward, a sales pitch made without cruelty or kindness, would be politically popular.

[Sima Tuna]

No worries. The Butlerian Jihad will save us and the Spice will flow.

[Sengoku Strider]

He's putting on a bold show, but you know getting punched in the money is absolutely killing him inside. Let's see if he can actually bring himself to pay it come Thursday, or if he just runs off into the woods screaming about mail-in birth certificates. At least he resisted making a not joke at the end. Small victories.

[Lemnear]

so is only for apocalypse in america or everywhere?

[Sengoku Strider]

so is only for apocalypse in america or everywhere?

The apocalypse is global, it's just that the Americans have been hustling hardest to make it happen lately. Like this wealthy Claremont Institute-linked former shampoo salesman who is now acting out his Cobra Commander fantasies from an armed Terror Drome™ in Idaho:

One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” or “APN”, defined as an “organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down” in which the warlord’s responsibility is “the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest”.

NGL if I never matured past being mentally 14 I'd think this guy was awesome for living out my dreams and finally being able to put his bitchy English teacher in her place.

Haywood’s ideas have seen him characterized as an extremist even by others on the far right including former American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, who wrote last December that Haywood was “seriously, batshit crazy” and characterized him as writing from a “Midwestern Führerbunker”.

On the other hand, if the pro-Orban former EIC for the American Conservative thinks this guy is too hardcore, that might be some kind of a red flag. Also kind of a red flag:

The “possibilities involving violence” that APNs might face, Haywood writes include “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it”.

Further on, Haywood writes: “At this moment I preside over what amounts to a extended, quite sizeable, compound, which when complete I like to say, accurately, will be impervious to anything but direct organized military attack”, adding that “it requires a group of men to make it work… what I call ‘shooters’–say fifteen able-bodied, and adequately trained, men.”

These “shooters”, Haywood explains, “can operate my compound, both defensively and administratively”, meanwhile, “I have the personality, and skills, to lead such a group.”

Dr. Mindbender and Zartan could not be reached for comment.

[BryanM]

I'm a little shocked he's swearing off the debates. Don't know if he even has to show, though. If you were guaranteed a job, would you want to waste your time dancing like a monkey for it?

I mean, that's the value he provides his viewers. So I think he's a crook denying them the show they wanna see.

The Butlerian Jihad

The current generation (next year's models) of consumer androids are deliberately made weak (can't even deadlift 100 lbs) as a safety precaution due to their janky minds.. but I'm sure the robowar tanks and murderdogs and anthrax bees will be bulletproof.

What some people seem to be missing is this is an outright war - capitalist empires aren't supposed to step on one another's toes, much. Finance, energy, pharma, etc; all tend to stay in their own lane. This is effectively tech trying to take everything else over. The other goobers are going along with it since they can eliminate labor costs in the short term, but in the long run there can only be one conclusion. One conglomerate will make all the machines, and what use do they have for a parasitic middle man?

They'd certainly have far more power and unity than any group of "organized" labor ever did.

I always think about that old Taylor Swift quote: "The only thing that won't be digital in cyber war is the blood."

so is only for apocalypse in america or everywhere?

Mostly everywhere. We have various apocalypses stacking up on top of each other, so it's hard to dodge all of them.

[Lemnear]

Mostly everywhere. We have various apocalypses stacking up on top of each other, so it's hard to dodge all of them.

yes, this is true...and remember...the Niger will be called Outer Heaven

[Sengoku Strider]

Mostly everywhere. We have various apocalypses stacking up on top of each other, so it's hard to dodge all of them.

yes, this is true...and remember...the Niger will be called Outer Heaven

Holy shit.

It somehow never clicked for me that Prigozhin, the exiled mercenary warlord, was building a home in Africa for his mercenaries without a home. He really is the Big Boss.