Prelude to the Apocalypse

[MJR]

And of course, one GOP senator is already using that as an excuse to leave NATO.

Might be worth noting that this was a single private company, not the Norwegian government. So isn't this just the free market at work?

I doubt that it has any difference to MAGA cronies

[BryanM]

Been keeping an eye on Claude Plays Pokemon this week. The li'l guy's awful at it and keeps getting stuck in loops, but you get attached to anything if it takes long enough. I know the rematch battle he had with the rocket grunt's Raticate was the most hype pokemon battle of all time:

> Opens with Pikachu. "I should switch to my best pokemon!"
> Switches to Wartortle, giving the Raticate a free hit.
> "Debuff moves are good!" Uses Tail Wag, giving the Raticate another free hit.
> "Time to use Water Gun!" Wartortle dies like a chump without doing any damage.

It took him an entire DAY to break out of the Mt.Moon loop to fight this guy. I felt the deepest despair, and thought he was 100% toast. But the dice rolls after that were great: The Raticate let the Pikachu Thunder Wave him by choosing Tail Whip, lowering his speed so he'd move second and also lose turns, the paralysis kicked in enough, and Claude's wimpy weak pokemon were able to seal the deal. Was crazy.

I think of the entire thing more in terms of StackGAN. It doesn't matter if the chatbot has some extra tools, it was not designed to do this. Its spatial reasoning is especially garbage, and I think some simple spatial mapping as an intermediary layer could do wonders. It's what we do after all, we don't go off of raw vision but an annotated, abstracted blob of data derived from our vision instead.

Still was surprised it could find the backdoor whenever it'd get stuck in the 'badge man's backyard' loop. It reminded me of how I got stuck in Yang's castle in Final Fantasy 4 as a kid. There's no visual indication of an exit, just tiles of what is normally a wall.

This thread isn't about a literal apocalypse. The title's meant to be tongue in cheek

for everyone except Bryan

This exchange from 2021 is the kinda thing I'm talking about. I was shocked at the idea that there were guys here who weren't on the trolley yet! Never even occurred to me. There's material problems that will reach a breaking point within the next couple decades or so.

A particularly extreme example of doom denial would be the guy who wrote the following:

-----Quote-----

The Death of An Empire comes Swift and Mercilessly

Virtually everything which has been done in the past two weeks has been varying degrees of illegal, from “oh yeah, pretty illegal” right up to “this is so fucking illegal we can’t even put it into words, because something this illegal happening was considered to be outside of the realm of imagination.

---End Quote---

Some stuff about how the elites think this is the end and are cashing out followed, along with some guesstimates about climate change timelines. And he removed his article because he didn't like that it was popular with 'cult'-like people. (I assume he means the Collapse crowd.) Despite the gist of the matter being rather accurate.

The power of the tech companies was brought up on the last page. So let's talk about that.

Around seven companies make up ~40% of the stock market. These are Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. You saw the CEO's of all these things standing behind the orange man at the coronation. This is where the bulk of our labor's value is being dedicated towards. (I personally think it beats spending it on tulip/real estate speculation.)

Whether any specific elite believes that they can really manifest the machine gods is besides the point: They all think this is the end. Only a decade or two left.

Thus the united consolidation behind republicans. Thus the grabbing everything they can while they can, and culling the population as much as they can get away with.

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole

Some say The Onion is prophetic, but really you just have to draw a straight line from how things are going. I do like how Trump's basically a real life Gil Fulbright, the guy who promised to do his crooked backroom deals right in front of your face.

but what Bernie Sanders says, do Americans listen to him? Or do they pretend nothing is happening? Do they think he's a liar and that Trump is right?

Bernie and AOC are pretty much the only politicians doing jack shit. Tim Walz at least uses effective words.

Sanders has been having these rallies, and... a huge number of people have been going to them. It's just like it was when he was running for president, it's nuts.

And it sickens me he's probably not going to run again. It takes like 12 years of TV presence to become a viable candidate if you're not coronated by our overlords. I remember tons of black women in interviews back then shutting down the possibility of voting for him because they 'didn't know' him.

Maybe he'll take one last swing if the primary polling is good, things are dire enough that he might feel pressured to.

Remember it's like the opposite of AI. This is the best things will ever be.

---

Some of the protests have been very cool and based, like Chris Kluwe's. (Big props for his Tecmo Bowl shirt. He plays Magic The Gathering, too!) Others are cringe and lame, like the republicans chewing out their representative for all the veterans being fired. One of them even saying "I know you care about veterans" which was insane. What... what evidence did he have for this claim, exactly???

Conservatives will always be willing to meet Trump at his lowest point. There is no depravity, criminal act, or ethical failing they will not support as long as Trump is behind it.

George W being a perfect example. My favorite punching bag David Brooks would give the man weekly coverage by providing his brand of 'reasonable, intelligent' republicans a flimsy excuse for continuing to support the man, no matter how indefensible the topic in question was.

And then W's approval with liberals skyrocketed back up because he sat next to Michelle Obama one time.

We really are like LLM's, programmed with words with the last few thousand words carrying the most weight. 'Attention is all you need', indeed. ...It's really hard to feel any sympathy for us as we spiral into the abyss.

[BulletMagnet]

One of them even saying "I know you care about veterans" which was insane. What... what evidence did he have for this claim, exactly???

You don't need evidence when you have conventional wisdom, i.e. stuff that's been repeated so incessantly for so long that anyone who doesn't bother to dig any deeper assumes it must be true. As I mentioned in my last post, Republicans continue to claim the "we love and revere the Constitution and the Founding Fathers" label even as they enthusiastically back an administration that's openly dismantling the separation of powers and imposing an authoritarian regime. How? Well, everyone just knows that's what Republicans always are, and must be.

One particular comment that Mike Johnson made in the last week or two speaks to this, boldface mine:

Medicaid is hugely problematic because it has a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. Everybody knows that, we all know it intuitively. No one in here would disagree.

Does every piece of data we have tell us that Medicare and Medicaid are orders of magnitude more efficient than the profit-driven private sector of our health care system? Who cares? Everybody knows otherwise.

[Sima Tuna]

We need to spend way fucking more on medicare, if anything, considering it's one of the few strands of civilization holding this damn country together. It's why adult children can afford to work instead of caregiving elderly boomer parents. It's why elderly boomer parents can live somewhere with 24/7 nursing staff available to keep them from falling and starving to death. It's why disabled people (including veterans) can live at all. Medicare, medicaid, SNAP etc all need to be massively expanded to meet the spiraling demand for social safety net improvements as every last nugget of wealth is ruthlessly milked from the middle class and never returned. The very LEAST the robber barons can do is leave us some free basic unit of living (especially if they won't pay a living wage), even if it's not pretty or pleasant.

The savings target that Republicans have for Medicaid is not achievable simply by finding untapped sources of fraud (if there are any) or even by applying a work requirement. The ONLY way for Republicans to hit their savings targets with Medicaid is to remove a massive number of people from the program. Their goal is to get most of the people currently on Medicaid off of it and give them nothing. That is the way they will get their savings that they intend to turn around and blow on increased military spending, fat tax breaks for Musk and other 1%ers and new crypto scams (where Musk, Trump and cohorts will use insider trading as they have been doing to boost the value of specific coins they hold in large quantities so they can then sell them for massive profits, leaving the market holding the bag.)

Big ups to anybody who invested heavily in any of the cryptocurrencies that the new crypto reserve is planning to buy up. The value of your memecoins has increased dramatically. Especially massive ups to the dude who leveraged 50-to-1 to borrow crazy amounts of memecoins right before the announcement was made of which 5 coins would be prioritized. suspiciousFryface.jpg

[To Far Away Times]

According to NPR, the average American will lose $1,300 per year from the Trump tariffs that went into effect today.

For a family of four that’s over $5,000.

Republicans, I sure hope all that bigotry and racism that you got in exchange was worth it.

[orange808]

Big ups to anybody who invested heavily in any of the cryptocurrencies that the new crypto reserve is planning to buy up.

We have to get back into power.

1. Government seizes control of coins.
2. Wait two years. Leave money alone.
3. In two almost simultaneous transactions: sell all government coin (essentially a rug pull that will destroy the market cap) and mint as much new coin as mathematically possible using the addressing system, afterwards. Air drop the new coin to every wallet--essentially making every single wallet (no matter how much coin they held) worth the same practically nothing.
4. Laugh. Poof! Everyone's money--besides Uncle Sam's--is fucking gone in seconds.
5. Post something like "Have Fun." on the White House social media.
6. Seriously. Laugh a lot.

[evil_ash_xero]

Delete

[BryanM]

One thing the whole 'would you have a tech CEO's child' thread reminded me of was that story of the Russian oligarch who offered to pay for women's IVF treatments, completely free.

... With the condition that the children you would be having, would be his children.

It's a dark place, man.

I don't know what the hell he is doing

It's not complicated. The elites want another huge recession. They can snap up capital for pennies on the dollar during those times. Those at the tippity-top of the food pyramid aren't harmed whatsoever by these things, quite the opposite. It only hurts the non-human bottom 99.999% of people.

Like I just said, they think the end of the world is close. Literally.

Another thing that's cropped up is the whole 'Russian asset' thing. The question 'If he really was a Russian asset, how would anything he would do be any different than what he is currently doing?' really stuck with me.

People obey the people cutting their paychecks, and he does have a bit of Russian money. Maybe destroying America is the whole point, and not just a happy accident of buffoonery, eh?

This wouldn't be happening if the Dems hadn't fucked the border up so horribly. And if you find that racist, fine.

I guess it is, if you can't specify how exactly the dem border patrol police are materially different in any way than the republican border control police. Like they fire the entire force and re-hire it every election or something. It just doesn't make any rational sense.

If you think we coddle border-crossers who commit crimes and give them harems of our women and free drugs and welfare, well there's no argument against that. It's all stuff going on inside your head.

I'm gonna get hammered

Not really man. We're all in this bucket of shit together. Those who don't die will have to give birth to Elon Musk and Bill Gate's children. For eternity.

You've been told to focus and care about distractions your entire life; they love to prey and exploit people's insecurities. You're a victim as much as the rest of us are, whether the social grooming effected you more or not. Whether you choose to accept it or not.

[Sima Tuna]

Notice how fast the "path to citizenship" was dropped by both parties, despite the majority of voters supporting that idea.

Pretty much tells you everything about the border situation. There are solutions but those in power do not want to actually employ them.

[orange808]

This is humanity.

Great scene, because the rest of the film is missing the most important part of our idiocracy: the malice. We are malice and stupidity unleashed--the true sum of all humanity, a hooting and hollering mob of fucking morons.

[BryanM]

The sad thing is there are lots of people who want to do good in the world, despite the completely fucked incentives. I know regular people who actually give a shit about the homeless and volunteer time toward social care. Tons of nerds get into academia wanting to make the impossible possible: cure cancer, procure energy more sustainably, provide a solution to the protein folding problem, create a benevolent machine god, etc.

The numbers say you're an idiot if you don't become a wall street quant that works toward making a marginally better money-shuffling algorithm. But some people want to make this shithole less of a shithole. To have their lives to actually mean something.

Notice how fast the "path to citizenship" was dropped by both parties, despite the majority of voters supporting that idea.

That line 'They do the jobs we don't want to do' is some libbed-up bullshit, but it is unfortunately true. The life of a field worker is something NOBODY SANE wants to do. Sun damage to your skin. Damage to your lungs from breathing in pesticides - and if you've VERY unlucky severe birth defects in your children. Arthritis in your back and hands. If you can do anything else, you do anything else.

One moment I always remember is when I was in grade school and a classmate, Teresa, said that my mother looked 'young'. And I was confused at the time - I'm a second child, there's nine years between my brother and me; my mother was around her forties at that time and looked like it.

But over the years I began to understand the comment better - The fields were packed with men and women in their thirties and forties that looked like they were in their fifties to seventies.

As far as I know none of my classmates do field work, though I'm sure a few here and there might have fallen into it. Second generation Mexican-Americans, they all spoke english, at the very worst they all always had the option to take advantage of our communist socialist jobs program: the military.

And that's the entire fucking point. Power.

If immigrants had more opportunities, they wouldn't be as cheap and easy to exploit. Their kids wouldn't feel more pressure to take advantage of that job program. If immigrants were less segregated, people would feel actual empathy for them instead of thinking of them as 'subhuman parasites' in their imagination.

Like everything else, the fash turn everything upside down. The people with all the money and all the power have all the power and all the money. But let's direct that hate toward the people with no power and no money. Like.... the trans!

Yeah, it's the trans's fault that the elite are accelerating into a recession and the reason that Elon Musk wants to turn you into a breeding cow that gives birth to dozens of his children at once. They just have no choice, because of the trans.

(That's something I feel extremely deeply ironic about all of the trans hate stuff. When their god emperor has this as his ultimate goal in life. They're going to be so surprised when they find out they're all going to be turned into actual women in the default instrumentality path we're on right now.)

(Fuckin' really feeling that line right now from And Yet It Understands:

"There’s this thing in probability called conditionalization: the more surprised you are by some evidence, the more you should change your mind in response to it. The corollary is: if you are constantly surprised by events, your mental model of the world is wrong. If you keep making predictions that fail, time and time and time again, you must change your mind. If the frequency with which you have to move the goal posts is down to single digit weeks, you must change your mind urgently."

And nobody is more confused and constantly wrong about things than the fash...

Ash said we all live in a 'silo', while in the same breath saying he wasn't going to read any responses. (I think he thinks we all love democrats because the media he watches says so. While the democrats are constantly censuring and suppressing their people for resisting fascism in the real world.))

... I kind of want the next poll to be 'Are you ready to give birth to Elon Musk's babies yet?!' Maybe it'll be the one that comes after the next one....

[BulletMagnet]

We are malice and stupidity unleashed--the true sum of all humanity, a hooting and hollering mob of fucking morons.

As abjectly frustrating as humanity so often is, I'd caution against applying said frustration with too broad a brush; to be blunt, that's precisely the mindset that the Trumps, Musks, and Putins of the world do their damndest to cultivate. "Good people don't truly exist in this world, human decency is for suckers. Either be the absolute worst or attach yourself to whoever is."

For all the atrocities our species has committed, it's also taken many great strides forward in any area you could name. For every jerk who cuts you off on the road, there are several others who will wave you in at a merge. For every crooked judge there are many who take their profession seriously and do their level best to apply the law appropriately. For every cutthroat pharma executive there are countless scientists who idolize the developers of insulin who sold the rights for a single dollar.

There's particularly good reason to be frustrated and disgusted at the moment; heaven knows I am. But one thing to remember is precisely what the oppressors of this world very much want you to forget: you don't do the right thing because success is in any way assured, you do it because it's the right thing to do.

[orange808]

But one thing to remember is precisely what the oppressors of this world very much want you to forget: you don't do the right thing because success is in any way assured, you do it because it's the right thing to do.

We all do our best, I suppose. I do as well. There's no upside to sharing what's on your mind (with your name attached) or acting out. All that gets you is cancelled.

"The Right Thing" is an increasingly thorny term for me.

Difficult to pin that one down. If you didn't give up anything, you didn't really give anything. We had some musings on that earlier in the thread. And, that feeds back into a lot of complacency from all of us; it's easy to argue that nothing can be done. Maybe... maybe not... ...

[BulletMagnet]

"The Right Thing" is an increasingly thorny term for me.

It always has been and always will be, but I'm willing to venture that a good starting point is "when the people making the world worse for everyone else try to get you to think and act a certain way, don't do it".

[BrianC]

There's a special place in Hell for the cum-sucking worms acting as if Trump and Vance's behavior was anything other than a gruesome humiliation for the United States; I can only hope that other nations that haven't gone quite so far off the deep end as we have are willing and able to display what actual leaders and decent human beings act like in times like these. Jesus Fucking Christ.

That shameless guy with the girl's name (Lindsay Gharam)? He's like Brainy Smurf and keeps flip flopping. One minute he's defending Ukraine and the next, he's kissing up to Trump. Pathetic.

[BulletMagnet]

Graham is one of those Republicans who, back when Trump first ran in 2016, was quite vocal in his opposition; once it became clear that Trump's gamble that a sizeable portion of the electorate will refuse to believe their lying eyes as long as you tell them what they want to hear had paid off in spades, he immediately began groveling and hasn't stopped since. He has plenty of company, mind you; both Trump's Secretary of State and Vice President, among numerous others, were previously prominent critics of his.

More disturbingly, many members of the media, and even some portions of the opposition party, have taken a similar tack in hopes of making the transition to authoritarianism easier on themselves.

[neorichieb1971]

We got ships crashing now in Hull UK. And a nice volcano near Naples brewing up for a big one.

[BryanM]

And, that feeds back into a lot of complacency from all of us; it's easy to argue that nothing can be done.

It's pretty obvious there's something that could have been done that would have improved things very quickly, but we're conditioned to not ever advocate for it. We're especially brainwashed to not understand violence is the foundation of all power, because it's really helpful for the violence-do'ers who are have all the power.

Honestly today I'm re-evaluating how likely things are to descend into violence soon. I've been far too dismissive of it - it's a testament to how our brains are emotional engines that I hadn't even given it any serious consideration.

Steven Bannon is literally openly saying shit like "The transition will be non-violent... if the left allows it to be." They're not going to allow us to vote our way out of this, so what do you do? Historically, we lie down and die. Then after a massive shitstorm where like half the population is dead and the survivors are starving, the elites are like 'eh.... ok. Maybe we'll improve conditions slightly. The population of our livestock needs some help to recover.'

"No way they can be that fucking stupid, no way! Don't they know that there's nukes now? It doesn't work that way anymore!"

.... sigh.

Well, here's a photo of the Kenosha rally for those who haven't heard anything about the Stop the Oligarchy tour. Here's to hoping at least some of these people survive the gas chambers once they're online...

[Sima Tuna]

Republicans are running from Town Halls now because there are too many of those danged dirty angry people mad about their social security and medicaid being cut to the bone. Turns out that when you fuck somebody over, sometimes they say, "hey, you are fucking me over! Stop doing that!"

[orange808]

The Dems are fucking morons. I've disconnected almost all legacy media. They really think there's some kind of scoreboard or blame? Not anymore. Doesn't matter what the propaganda the billionaires release to ignorant decrepit baby boomers on their ancient televisions. Nobody watches television. I don't care about their newspapers on screens either. It's still a newspaper and nobody reads that rubbish. At this point, they're tabloids, anyway.

Shut the government down. Shut it down. When the GOP wants it opened, they will bring a clean bill. Their other option to eliminate the fillibuster. Fine. Let them.

If we could somehow get control for even two years, we could do anything. Literally anything and the GOP would be absolutely powerless with no fillibuster--and it's obvious that any majority at all is a 100% mandate from the people to do anything. And I can't stress my point enough. I mean anything. Everything that Trump and company is doing is now fair legal game. Turnabout is fair play. All of their tools must employed against them with equal or greater fury. This is why you don't start a fucking pissing contest in the first place--and it should be up to Republicans to be the "adults" that hit the brakes and stop it. I propose using all the tactics they employ ruthlessly with no end.

All we need is two years and a one seat majority in both chambers. That's a mandate to do absolutely anything. Make them pass that clean bill or dump the fillibuster.

Nobody gives a shit what the internet newspaper or the television talking heads say. Well, nobody that matters... If The Nation, The Guardian, or ProPublica didn't print it, it's fake news. That's a new reality that will continue forever. The MSM era is over.

Resist! Shut it down.

[Sima Tuna]

If a majority means a mandate then single-payer health care is mandated.

[orange808]

If a majority means a mandate then single-payer health care is mandated.

Yep. I'd have the entire private insurance business dismantled and many of their leaders jailed in two years. Given the state of the current prison system and the extreme escape risk for wealthy people, they're going into maximum security alongside the most dangerous criminals in America. Assuming I have a four year presidential term, even a future right wing president cannot erase what happens to them over about 3.5 years in prison with a pardon. They will be... uncomfortable (if they survive).

Oops! ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Can't pardon the past away, can you? I wanted prison reform before, so it's not my fault. Oops.

Oh yes, single payer could roll out. A lot of of things could happen. I wouldn't be the big softy righties think I am. My executive order put them in the wrong facility? I pardon myself. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[BulletMagnet]

Resist! Shut it down.

Naturally, when presented with the options of "shut government down temporarily" and "dismantle it permanently", Chuck and company choose option B.

It would have been nice if, when Schumer puked out his pussy-ass "a shutdown would let Trump decide which parts of the government stay open" line, someone had bothered to ask him "how would that be any different from what's already happening right now? In no small part because your stated 'strategy' is literally to sit on your ass and let it happen?"

Once again, Jesus Fucking Christ.

[To Far Away Times]

Pelosi, Schumer, and co. are really holding us back.

You can feel them prioritizing the donor class over the middle class in everything that they do.

[BryanM]

I thought my hatred for the Democrats was solidly at a full 100% already, but I guess there's always more room for more hate. Probably comes at the expense of other neurons I need to do things like eating sandwiches and using the toilet.

Not exactly sure why the plan is to dissolve the government before the company from WALL-E has become reality. I mean I could understand if it was a year or two away, but the timegap is way too wide.

They really are just trying to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

[orange808]

List of traitors:

Schumer (New York)
Fetterman (Pennsylvania)
Durbin (Illinois)
Cortez-Masto (Nevada)
Peters (Michigan)
Gillibrand (New York)
Schatz (Hawaii)
Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire)
Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
King (Maine)

They are all enemies of the party and defacto right wing MAGA extremists. They all need to be primaried and removed as soon as possible. There can be no forgiveness.

Throw them out! No more DINOs! Put these old fossils out to pasture on a golf course. Get them out!

[Lemnear]

ah..."U.S. to Withdraw From Group Investigating Responsibility for Ukraine Invasion (NYT)"

what the fuck is going on? You still aren't having any civil war in U.S.???

[Sima Tuna]

I thought my hatred for the Democrats was solidly at a full 100% already, but I guess there's always more room for more hate. Probably comes at the expense of other neurons I need to do things like eating sandwiches and using the toilet.

They really are just trying to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

It's my personal opinion that Trump is a human spitemobile driven by bitter babyrage over the previous lost election and everybody who said "no" to him over the last ten years. So he's in full on "fuck everyone" mode (much more so than the previous Trump presidency) and Musk is being allowed to loot the treasury/set up ancap billionaire paradise as a reward for buying Trump his freedom from prosecution.

I still remember when Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the charges but said, "basically, we have to drop these charges because this guy is our boss now, but we still completely believe he is guilty and we weren't wrong to charge him." What a world!

Some of the decisions of the Trump Administration are so bafflingly stupid that the only reasonable explanation is yes, the Administration is deliberately trying to fuck over as many people as possible within the next two years. And also sabotage as much of government as they can, so that it takes much longer to fix than it did to break.

Historic times. I can't remember the last time a president went this hard after SOCIAL SECURITY and MEDICAID. These are programs even hardcore republican idiots usually will grudgingly admit have some benefit. Trump is working hard to ensure he is the worst president in history. His 2016 term was milquetoast compared to this.

[BulletMagnet]

ah..."U.S. to Withdraw From Group Investigating Responsibility for Ukraine Invasion (NYT)"

what the fuck is going on?

Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet.

In completely unrelated news, according to one watchdog if things continue on their current trajectory the USA will no longer qualify as a democracy in a matter of months.

[BryanM]

I've watched this video like five times and can't stop watching it. Please watch it and join me in the endless abyss.

Jon Stewart scolding people for calling fascism fascism really is a Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear moment. 'Can we call it fascism yet, Jon?' the commenters ask, as we deport random legal residents into slavery for a little bit of money.

Really feels like deathcamps are a foregone conclusion...

Most of us here are millennials, yeah? Do you remember how optimistic things were when we were kids? When the message we kept hearing was 'be cool, don't be an asshole' with all that cheesy hand-holdy 'be nice' stuff, like We Are The World, Doesn't Matter If You're Black Or White, etc?

What the fuck happened, man?