Prelude to the Apocalypse

[orange808]

Hundreds of millions of healthy people walk the streets quietly carrying two kidneys. They need only one. The head-scratcher is how to get kidneys from the people who have one to spare into the people who need one.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yq4uCWtQE24

[BryanM]

... it's to the fucking point that Bush administration guys are getting concerned about the inhumanity on display here....

... I'm revising my guess on Biden's chances down to ~8%. Maybe Trump will go on a murder spree in a Wal-Mart and chop up some kids with a machete, or something. Otherwise the couch is winning hard in the Biden vs Couch contest...

It was funny watching that old Matt Taibi interview with Will Menaker. Old events we forgot about get referenced, like Biden's eye bleeding. How innocent they were that they didn't know the primary would be rigged. Unprecedented ratfucking done in the open.

Biden, for decades, never could get above 1% in the primaries. He was a non-entity, Ron Paul was a hundred times more relevant. The only reason he's where he is, is because the Obama administration elevated him. The same reason Harris will be the next nominee.

From start to finish, all of this can be blamed on the Clintons and Obama. 13 years of Trump. Maybe an eternity of Trump. Until humanity goes extinct.

Age of AI and the signalome, and these are our politics. Gotta love it.

[Sima Tuna]

I'd put it at more of a coin flip on Biden vs Trump. Remember that Trump lost last time and he didn't have incumbent advantage. Trump has to his credit the see-saw effect of our two-party system, as immortalized by the immortal Ben Garrison. I'll repost it, since the thread keeps bringing it up:

[BryanM]

Hillary's "get over it" line is such a perfect crystallization that demonstrates "Democrats are paid to lose."

This woman is 76 years old. She should have some working semblance of how to talk to other human beings to get them to do what you want. Her husband is rather proficient at the artform. If you think she has a higher IQ than a turnip, a couple of operating brain cells, then you have to admit to yourself that she knows what she said increased Trump's odds to win.

If you don't believe that, then you have to think that she's either stupid, or has her head up her own ass. (Both very probable.)

And of course, you have to be aware that she did not reach her current position from merit or public demand. She was placed there. Elevated by the capital class. And they continue to invest in her.

Why? Are these most powerful men on the planet dumb? Did they see her blow billions of their dollars and lose to Trump, and think to themselves "Well, she just got unlucky is all. Darn that Comey! She'll get'em next time, she's still worth investing more money and attention into."

Or did she not fail at all? That maybe the people who own society are not absolute morons. Did they get 100% of what they wanted from her, and she's still delivering? Widening the margin of Biden's defeat this November, and getting more republicans in seats?

It annoys the hell out of me how obvious and brazen it is. And that there are people who pretend to not get it.

Nine years on, and my "The republicans are spikes, and the democrats are Megaman jumping into them over and over again" metaphor remains as rock solid as ever.

No wonder I'm on team DOOM//accel. My p(DOOM) is at 60 to 80%, and I still think accelerating is the right thing to do. Get it over with already.

I can't believe I used to think it was good to "be informed" I would give anything to never be informed again

[To Far Away Times]

Hillary is a jack ass. She worked in lockstep with the DNC and Wasserman to make sure the primary in the lead up to the 2016 election was a pre-planned coronation ceremony. You can smell the arrogance from across the country. She was uniquely qualified to lose to Trump and she took the opportunity and ran with it.

[orange808]

I've touched on this before but: revenge isn't self-defense.

[BryanM]

The chef guy doing a 180 on the genocide thing once it was his people that were murdered, is such a typical example of a human. Tens of thousands of civilians, hundreds of doctors, journalists and aid workers... doesn't matter, until it's he and his that are put into the grinder. Must feel terrible, how they served themselves up for the slaughter, had every indication this would happen, and they told their killers right where they'd be...

---

On more optimistic news, this "NaNot" stuff might be a miraculous cure for tumors. Supposedly more comprehensive than apheresis, which itself is pretty impressive. They're hoping for human trials later this year.

The whole thing reminds me of that Star Trek scene where McCoy is disgusted by the barbaric treatments the people in the past used to treat cancer.

I always feel a little sad when I'm watching an interview of something I think could be massively important, and notice that the view count is like "150". Humans really do not like science.

This solar freakin' roadways video has 22,000,000 views, though. It's not a cure for cancer. And it's complete nonsense. But boy, it sure is entertaining to watch, eh? And that's what really matters...

---

In dystopia news, I just discovered you can rent an office space for $8 an hour in Japan:

Spoiler

[BulletMagnet]

I've been quieter than I frankly should have been lately (I can only really, really hope people have become aware of the Republican Study Committee's 2025 budget proposal on their own), but just to check in with the "voting is for sillies" crowd, just in case anyone somehow thought that "mainstream" conservatives were somehow not on board with absolutely any ridiculous excuse to appoint Trump dictator for life, allow me to educate you.

[BryanM]

I'm sure my vote will flip Oklahoma right on its head.

It doesn't matter. If it's not Trump, it'll be the next guy the democrats throw an election to. (Which they're paid to do, and are very excellent at.) If one person being elected president is the difference between the apocalypse happening today or a couple years later... then it's maybe time to old yeller this doomed, evil country.

If you want to do something that means anything, go attend democratic committee meetings and make their lives 0.04% more miserable. Those people protesting at the Clinton-Obama-Biden fundraiser are the true heroes.

Like orange always says, the measure of how "good" a person is, is how much they're willing to personally sacrifice for no gain. These people making their lives much worse in order to make these evil fucks slightly uncomfortable for a couple minutes put us keyboard warriors to shame.

"If they take away your vote, there's only one thing you can do: vote!"

...................... wait, that motherfucker literally took away my vote..... I guess the irony is lost on the liberals.

BulletMagnet, we already have a dictatorship. The capitalists chose fascism over giving people healthcare.

You'll drive yourself crazy if you think you can have any impact on the big things. It's like looking at the Sun and feeling like you can move it, because you can observe or understand it. If this is what the people who own the greater part of humanity want, it's what they'll get.



.... ugh, I can already see our post-election posts on this topic. I'll be like "democrats have successfully succeeded in killing democracy. Keikaku accomplished." And you'll be furious at republican vampires for being vampires, and leftists being leftists despite there only being like five of us. (To be fair, our smug nihilism must be pretty damn grating to those living in a fantasy land where there's still hope. Once again, allowing myself to feel hope in 2015, 2016, and a tiny bit in 2020 were some of the worst decisions in my life.) Ignoring that the Arab population in Michigan wasn't thrilled at voting for Genocide Joe over Dictator Don. And that it's blue collar normies that cost the Dems Pennsylvania again...

SMH. Genocide Joe will lose. Dictator Don has already won. Hope's for the hopeless, stop torturing yourself.

This is the inevitable result of lesser evilism and the ratchet effect. And it's only going to get worse, because they're going to continue to make people's material conditions worse. There's no mechanism within politics for anything good to happen. Even when the young people inherit the electorate, the only ones left alive will be the assholes. It's how the system works to protect itself.

There's reasons why this is the apocalypse thread.

A frisky lop-eared stray proves he's anything but "yellow" when he protects the family farm and saves the life of the boy who adopted him.

[BulletMagnet]

I and numerous others have noted that for a significant portion of the electorate there appears to be literally nothing Trump or the GOP can do - shift wealth upwards, take away bodily autonomy, badmouth vaccines during a pandemic, destroy the environment, outright reject democracy - to ever lose their support.

In similar fashion, I am increasingly convinced that for some people there's nothing the Dems, odious as they are in countless ways, can do - end junk fees, allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, invest in vital infrastructure, fund the IRS to audit billionaires, outright cancel medical and college debt - to ever persuade them to consider the radical notion that "neither option is worth completely dedicating oneself to, but one is not only infinitely more likely to serve as a foundation to build more substantial progress upon but also, objectively, doing more good as is than the other."

But hey, the people whose banks deliberately cleared their transactions in the order that would incur the highest overdraft fines and the women forced to carry their rapists' babies to term will understand, because pretending nothing actually matters is just too much fun.

You might say that they'll just have to get over themselves.

[BryanM]

In similar fashion, I am increasingly convinced that for some people there's nothing the Dems, odious as they are in countless ways, can do

You're right of course. But the can part is a consequence of having the same employers up their butts as the republicans. They're paid to lose. When Trump cuts the taxes on capitalists again, the democrats will keep it in place.

But in theory, if they were actual human beings appointed to their place by sortition or we lived in a country that wasn't evil, sure. They could do things that would be overwhelmingly positive and overwhelmingly popular. 60-40 elections, all the time. They did it in the past, before Bill Clinton purged the party and turned them 100% into Ronald Reagan republicans.

It will be interesting to see if Trump will genocide harder than Joe. The only way that he could is by deploying our military to help. Or by nuking Gaza.

And of course, the current topic of this thread: The Iran war. You... are aware that Netanyahu wants to instigate our war with Iran, right? You're not one of those TV sheep following the current fad they tell you to care about, that aren't aware of the goals and incentives of all parties involved, right?

You're talking about means-tested marginal relief, and we're over here watching the end of the world.

----

On the voter side of things, try to look at things from their perspective. The only people who care about the genocide are the hippies, genociders, and genocidees. Nobody else cares. It doesn't effect them personally. The same is true of Trump's tax fraud, it didn't make the price of their groceries more than double.

Everything's shit and only getting worse. Many tossed Biden a vote hoping things would go back to "normal". And it turns out "normal" is the people at the top get more, and the people on the bottom get less. Who'd a-seen that coming, eh.

Hasan Abi's recent rant about the supreme court is a perfect encapsulation of how fundamentally fucked everything is. Blocking student debt forgiveness with every excuse under the sun ("Wouldn't be fair to those who paid their debt in full. Just like it wouldn't be fair to cure cancer to all the people that it's killed."), but the people who got PPP loans? They didn't even have to ask, it was a given they wouldn't have to pay it back.

Yeah sure, I don't want to live in a theocratic hellhole. But like I constantly keep saying: I have no power whatsoever to prevent that outcome. Maybe you should go nag the people with all the money and all the power who're supposed to "defend" us from becoming that. Maybe they could do something about it.

They "could", but we both know they won't.

In "normal" times, when a house is on fire, the guy in charge gets blamed for it. The only reason they have a chance this year is that the republicans are so bad.

You're always going on and on about "why do republicans still win elections?!?!?" but you never ask yourself "why do democrats still win elections?!?!?!" While our president is supplying weapons and money to help a genocide. To a degree that Ronald Reagan, bad as he was, never did.

Nothing about this is "normal".

----

And of course I'll never vote for genocide or to give the banks more money. It's purely symbolic, but not giving consent to such things are crucial to my emotional well being. You're a "I'll vote for more concentration camps, as long as it's one less than the other guy" guy. You don't like feeling like you have no power. I get it, we all cope in our own ways.

But surely... surely there's some small part of you that understands genocide is a line too far for some of us. And even for those who it isn't, we'd have to feel like there's some real hope of things getting better, to get us to spend $20+ of our time and money to go vote?

There's a reason the voter participation rate correlates so strongly with affluence. They have the money and free time to spare to go do it, and the more money they make the more their interests are represented. They have means to do it, and the incentive to want to do it. It isn't complicated.

[Lord British]

Iran War. When.

[BryanM]

Fuck me, this really might be the time. The propaganda is hitting the drums, priming the machine to go.

It always baffled me 50% of us here said it wasn't going to happen. This thing we've been told all our lives is going to happen. "Do they think we're all gonna die before that happens? ... but even the doomers think extinction isn't that close... no, they have to seriously think it's all bluffing? .... this is some serious hardcore denial...."

My own gut feeling was 2025-2026ish, and that it probably wouldn't happen if we could get past 2030 without doing it. Since so much of the old regime would have died off.

I guess they really did have their hearts set on it, and need to see it happen before they cark off...

....Only nine results on "future President Marjorie Taylor Greene" on google... oddly low awareness about the future... maybe that'll be the next poll question....

Quotes from the internet about tertiarily related topics~ Gotta keep the subject matter light in the doomsday thread...

I once had a job I didnt do for 2 years. I was an alcoholic at the time and eventually, I became incapable of doing the job - NO ONE NOTICED for 2 years...!!!

And I was paid a VERY good salary - it would deffo be over $100k in todays money

On the topic of bullshit jobs, a fellow talks about his bullshit job.

White collar guys get rewarded the most and pay the least. Manual labor guys destroy their bodies and they get peanuts in return. The reward you get for being an "essential" worker.

Every time someone posts these dumb rebuttals to the notion that Sotomayor should retire strategically I think of the ALAB podcast episode where they're discussing the RGB situation and I think Andy says something along the lines that strategic retirement only makes sense if you have an ideological goal and that while you'd expect that to be true of a political party on its face it's obviously not if you allow the other side to steal one of your nominations that's gifted to you (Scalia) and don't even try to play the game with RBG. The fact that you don't see the value in doing so is proof you aren't fit to be described as a political party. Doing politics is your raison d'etre and if it isn't, you aren't a political party."

Not saying anything that isn't completely understood by everyone ITT but I will say I must not be completely grounded in reality because it still surprises me that liberals are so goddamn dumb. I've met some truly stupid chuds but never one as completely braindead as your garden-variety liberal.

(Almost nobody blames Ginsburg for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but she's at least as culpable for it as Trump. Seriously, fuck her in particular.) (Hey, some propaganda about Ginsburg. The bullshit mill shoots its bullshit everywhere, eh. Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch are perfectly aligned with her values.)

(And while I don't personally blame Biden as responsible anymore than the regular dem, do remind yourself that his personal belief is anti-abortion. That's his words, not mine. He's not exactly upset whatsoever about Roe v Wade being overturned.)

A stark illustration that "the people who didn't defend abortion will defend abortion" is a rather silly grasping at straws. Desperate nonsense of someone drowning in the ocean, with nothing else to grab onto.

That's why I talk a lot about Microsoft/Google/NVidia taking over the world with their robot army. Bringing us into an era of techno-feudalism. If you want some desperate hopium to grasp onto, grasp onto that. It's at least technically feasible.

Because everything else is a fairy tale.

[BryanM]

... Okay, so the worst part of this "Orifice.ai" thing for incels is it was made by a Bryan. So I need to preemptively get on top of this: I didn't make this thing.

.... I know you don't believe that, but I really didn't!

A guy going by just the first name Bryan

I know this is highly suspicious!

: (

[BIL]

I was 95% that wasn't you innovating ghastly new hentai technologies, you'd clearly use your BryanX rebrand (｀w´メ)

[BryanM]

... I fuckin' woulda. Just to make fun of Musk and his love of all things X. He's actually been rather restrained about it - only naming two companies and fourish children with it. Though I think that's more due to their mothers putting their feet down about it. ...Except for one excessively permissive lady.

... which is only more evidence about how Grimes is almost the perfect woman. If only she wasn't stupid enough to ruin her life with a horny shithead and then become a nazi as a coping mechanism for her poor life choices. Just another demonstration of the abominable manic pixie dream girl -> nazi pipeline. (Perhaps... perhaps we all start our lives as manic pixie dream girls, only to have our reality reshape us into cenobites?)

Anyway, the Cybertruck has been a gift. Imagine blowing hundreds of millions and years of potential down the toilet for a meme. It's ingenious, when your business strategy is pumping up speculation on your stocks and not actually making cars. Unfortunately memes only last a couple weeks, which is why he has to flail all over the place with new gimmicky nonsense to keep people's attention.

... it does spook me out that this Bryan_ guy is like a mirror image version of myself. Less lazy, more impatient, and the opposite of a volcel who'd make the "companion" robots as a scheme to help accelerate human extinction.

... I'm not entirely sure the weird incel stuff isn't a sales strategy. But his insane screeds are just too legit. All the replies of absolutely baffled people going "... how is this supposed to increase the birth rate??? ... won't it do the exact opposite of that???!"

Oh man. The end of this age of civilization is crazy.... as dumb and stupid as anything you'd see in the old movies. Not a day goes by where there isn't something that'd fit right in with Robocop or Starship Troopers...

... It's the start of the Iran War and we're talking about talking perv boxes here...... checks out...

[Sima Tuna]

What's bad about making out with my Marilyn Monroebot, mom?

Only neonazis care about birth rates anyway. I'm never having kids and it's thanks to my own parenting being shit. What, I'm gonna inflict myself on some poor kids? Everybody always told me growing up, "you'll want kids when you're older." How much older do I gotta get? I'm too old already.

Holodeck future with Nappster-downloaded suckbots sounds like a better ending than what this shitty human race deserves. Anyway, global population keeps rising.

[neorichieb1971]

I think Trump will win. Biden won last time but he was an unknown commodity at the time. He's been in power now and I don't see any energy from him.

Its interesting because under Biden the world has gone a bit more downhill than it was when he took office. USA is more in debt and not slowing down, wars on 2 fronts, exiting Afghanistan in a "don't be late" kind of fashion. Under Biden, the enemies seem to want to poke at the USA and see what the reaction is. The USA is doing ok economically but its a far cry from what people want. A lot of jobs don't pay shit anymore and I Feel inflation has broken the wheel of society. And we still have governments supporting AI, further automation and what not. Its funny, because the education curriculums are exactly the same as they were 60 years ago.

Won't it be funny a whole bunch of folk learning how to do something at great cost, only to see AI, automation doing it in 3-5 years time?

My job will be gone soon, I have another IT friend who's job is at risk in another company (American owned), my wife works for Morrisons supermarket (American owned). I have a friend who is currently unemployed.

But, on the bright side, Universal Studios is setting up shop 10 minutes drive from me in Bedfordshire UK. Maybe I can be the mascot guy in the funny outfit. My home town is the Bitcoin HQ of Europe, still has plans to build a movie studio down the road and Universal Studios wants to build a park right next to it. I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't already happening.

[Sima Tuna]

I think Trump will win. Biden won last time but he was an unknown commodity at the time. He's been in power now and I don't see any energy from him.

Its interesting because under Biden the world has gone a bit more downhill than it was when he took office. USA is more in debt and not slowing down, wars on 2 fronts, exiting Afghanistan in a "don't be late" kind of fashion. Under Biden, the enemies seem to want to poke at the USA and see what the reaction is. The USA is doing ok economically but its a far cry from what people want. A lot of jobs don't pay shit anymore and I Feel inflation has broken the wheel of society. And we still have governments supporting AI, further automation and what not. Its funny, because the education curriculums are exactly the same as they were 60 years ago.

Won't it be funny a whole bunch of folk learning how to do something at great cost, only to see AI, automation doing it in 3-5 years time?

My job will be gone soon, I have another IT friend who's job is at risk in another company (American owned), my wife works for Morrisons supermarket (American owned). I have a friend who is currently unemployed.

But, on the bright side, Universal Studios is setting up shop 10 minutes drive from me in Bedfordshire UK. Maybe I can be the mascot guy in the funny outfit. My home town is the Bitcoin HQ of Europe, still has plans to build a movie studio down the road and Universal Studios wants to build a park right next to it. I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't already happening.

I bitch about inflation constantly. Well, price increases, if not exactly inflation at this point. The average voter can definitely tell they're paying a lot more for their essentials since the Trump administration. The price for everything is crazy right now. I'm not talking about "oh, well my job pays me a ton but everything also costs a ton." Nah, man. The job pays the same or maybe a bit more, but everything costs out the ass. So real wages are shrinking to nothing.

It's gotten to the point where I've had to swear off a lot of little things. Occasionally going out to eat... What's the point? The price has risen so much that it's like $50 or more for a couple people. I'm sure as shit not getting $50 of enjoyment out of a premade meal. And I can damn sure get more from the grocery store, even if prices there are also higher than they were.

I've had to change the way I look at food. A lot of stuff I buy is based around sale prices or what's good (and cheap) locally rather than what I feel like eating. But even then... $2 for a head of iceberg lettuce when them shits used to be $1 each or less. That's just a small example of a price doubling during covid and never going back down. Personally, I never thought of a head of lettuce or a loaf of bread as "luxuries," but when the bread is $3.50-5.00 a loaf when it's not on sale...

The average Burgerican who eats out all the time (I know plenty of people like this) is spending $15ish per person on every meal.

As for other expenses, god forbid if you have to repair something. Cost of materials and labor are nice and high right now.

[BryanM]

Pft, yeah. Check out this current article churned out by the regime's media:

Millennials and Gen Z's trendy new splurge: groceries.

Just calling it "inflation" is a kind of blatant mind-grooming.

One of my theories about the price gouging is everyone in charge of this stuff were too baked out on cocaine to realize they can charge whatever they wanted to. And too busy with hookers (many of them even of legal age!) to care if they did.

And then little 'old covid came around, and they had to sober up for a minute. And had the free time to do some hands-on work at their job. Who knew that hookers and cocaine were the thin line between us living, and total annihilation, eh?

----

The U.S. saying it wants a "two state solution" is one of those ridiculous lines of evil bullshit. If you won't even acknowledge Palestine as a state, how could that possibly be remotely true?

It's cartoonish how evil our emperors have been since WW2. If you want to get your country coup'd and a right wing dictator installed in the past century, all you had to do is nationalize your oil.

Or your bananas.

The war with Iran was inevitable. Capitalists can't be satisfied with owning 80% of the world, they want 100%. It's like those paper clip maximizers in those AI safety hypotheticals: power-seeking is an instrumental goal for achieving anything you want to do. (Don't want to compete against another superintelligence that doesn't care about paper clips, after all.) With power, you can do anything. Without power, you can do nothing.

And the only way to acquire power is to make sure others have none of it.

... I think quash used to think a nuclear war with China or Russia was a real possibility, and I used to blow him off as that'd be lose-lose for everyone. MAD and all that. I'm coming around to thinking it may actually come to that some day, utterly stupid and suicidal as that may be.

That maybe the only reason it hasn't happened sooner is some stupid quantum immortality effect keeping us in the blessed timelines. As the ones where we all die, are ones we're not allowed to observe. Some kind of stupid forward-working anthropic principle.

[neorichieb1971]

Just remember, every day there is more money in the world. And its still not enough.

We have a Biden/Trump election which some don't want either.

We have countries setting off rockets, missiles and drones and shaking it off like its a fireworks display.

The west supports Israel because they want Israel to control the narritive in the region, thats the only reason in my book. They look beyond right and wrong for this reason.

Sometime in the future some AI video will show someones will and testament, and it be completely fake and you won't be able to disprove it.

And we keep advancing towards a world where you feel smaller whilst everything else gets grander.

I'm at the age where I have one parent left and is suffering health issues, my job is borderline obsolete and will be gone within 24 months unless my company gives me a sympathy vote and I have no idea where my life is going.

I have booked a trip to Japan soon though. I really enjoy the country and I want one last hurrah before my job takes my ability to go again away.

[BryanM]

Max Azzarello is exactly what hope and caring about things does to a person. I feel really bad his crazy ramblings that are definitely at least in the same ballpark as factual reality are being buried under the label of "conspiracy theories" by the media.

The war is between the capitalists that want to replace everyone with robots, and the capitalists that are willing to placate their half of the electorate with government-mandated wives. Most of us little people aren't participants in this game no matter how much they try to gaslight us into thinking that.

.... fuck, reality really is a shitty version of a Shin Megami Tensei game....

.... and I apologize for bullying denialism too much. Max was someone who definitely could have used some denial in his life. Some minds really aren't suited for gazing directly into the abyss, bare and unprotected...

[Lemnear]

I bitch about inflation constantly. Well, price increases, if not exactly inflation at this point. The average voter can definitely tell they're paying a lot more for their essentials since the Trump administration. The price for everything is crazy right now. I'm not talking about "oh, well my job pays me a ton but everything also costs a ton." Nah, man. The job pays the same or maybe a bit more, but everything costs out the ass. So real wages are shrinking to nothing.

It's gotten to the point where I've had to swear off a lot of little things. Occasionally going out to eat... What's the point? The price has risen so much that it's like $50 or more for a couple people. I'm sure as shit not getting $50 of enjoyment out of a premade meal. And I can damn sure get more from the grocery store, even if prices there are also higher than they were.

I've had to change the way I look at food. A lot of stuff I buy is based around sale prices or what's good (and cheap) locally rather than what I feel like eating. But even then... $2 for a head of iceberg lettuce when them shits used to be $1 each or less. That's just a small example of a price doubling during covid and never going back down. Personally, I never thought of a head of lettuce or a loaf of bread as "luxuries," but when the bread is $3.50-5.00 a loaf when it's not on sale...

The average Burgerican who eats out all the time (I know plenty of people like this) is spending $15ish per person on every meal.

As for other expenses, god forbid if you have to repair something. Cost of materials and labor are nice and high right now.

The American dream is over, welcome to the rest of the world.

[Sima Tuna]

I bitch about inflation constantly. Well, price increases, if not exactly inflation at this point. The average voter can definitely tell they're paying a lot more for their essentials since the Trump administration. The price for everything is crazy right now. I'm not talking about "oh, well my job pays me a ton but everything also costs a ton." Nah, man. The job pays the same or maybe a bit more, but everything costs out the ass. So real wages are shrinking to nothing.

It's gotten to the point where I've had to swear off a lot of little things. Occasionally going out to eat... What's the point? The price has risen so much that it's like $50 or more for a couple people. I'm sure as shit not getting $50 of enjoyment out of a premade meal. And I can damn sure get more from the grocery store, even if prices there are also higher than they were.

I've had to change the way I look at food. A lot of stuff I buy is based around sale prices or what's good (and cheap) locally rather than what I feel like eating. But even then... $2 for a head of iceberg lettuce when them shits used to be $1 each or less. That's just a small example of a price doubling during covid and never going back down. Personally, I never thought of a head of lettuce or a loaf of bread as "luxuries," but when the bread is $3.50-5.00 a loaf when it's not on sale...

The average Burgerican who eats out all the time (I know plenty of people like this) is spending $15ish per person on every meal.

As for other expenses, god forbid if you have to repair something. Cost of materials and labor are nice and high right now.

The American dream is over, welcome to the rest of the world.

Is it really, though? I know shit is more expensive in other parts of the first world west, but they also have higher real wages and more social safety nets as compared to America.

America is a first world nation trying to live like a fucking third world country.

[BIL]

Bryan what in the fuck is this (■｀w´■) I saw it and knew you must be able to decipher it!

"MAPLESTORY PLAYER NIRU (LVL 299 AND 99.993% EXP) STOPS BEFORE LVL 300 AND AIRS GRIEVANCES TO AUDIENCE AND CLOSES STREAM"

Is this how people are living ;w;

[BryanM]

Man plays 20 year old video game for over 20,000 hours. Has some complaints. Acquires advertising for his ded game.

If only I could function for so long under so little stimulus. (The solution to his problem is to play a different game! The average career-span of a dedicated player that marries a game is around 2 years! It's long past time for a divorce.)

The world we inhabit is theorized to be an engineered torture device for everyone with ADHD. What you're supposed to do, is spend a few years on developing one (1) skill and then do that one thing for the rest of your life until you die.

If that's not hell, I don't know what is. My metaphor of being trapped in an elon cube and solving rubix cubes all day isn't that far removed from reality. I totally understand the people who want to return to primitivism.

---

Ah, and your favorite punching bag Brianna Wu has joined hands and become an Eve Fartlow kinda fellow. There's a kind of full circle thing there: she's joined hands with the people who used to stomp on her, to stomp on some other group of people even lower than herself on the totem pole.

The Grimesian model that we all inevitably regress into nazis continues to stand up.

[BIL]

Many thanks Bryan (｀w´メ) I tried looking into it, but then ADHD bit down hard, and I was back to enjoying MapleStory Black Label. If I'm gonna take time out of sperging, to watch some other poor prick waste his precious lifespan, I gotta see at least one Wall Punch; preferably with followup Chair Piledriver.

I gotta say though, I feel worse for these cookie-clicking Maple Fucks, getting drip-bled for real money over untold listless aeons. 3: At least BossMan gets those hellacious adrenaline spikes and troughs, massive gain and crushing loss!

Oh well. lol lmao chemicals mirite. 3; We are all forsaken. (;｀w´;)

---

Aha, back to the GG eh. BriBri was always a snake m8! What you're seeing is not regression at all, but the continuing adaptation of an amoral predator.

From the mission files of DEAGLE NATION via WEIGHT WATCHERS.COM (■｀w´■)

Well, "predator" is a bit harsh. Wu is more of a parasite with impeccable stay-or-go instinct. Whatever you think of the faces she's stepping on at any given moment, all she really wants is a nice house and lots of cash to fund her latest Porsche and vintage Williams pins.

Who cannot relate? \(˘w˘)/

Always nice to reminisce on the glory days of Deagle High Command, my old wartime fren. There was a point, five years ago, where TYT Man had her on his Super Sunday Show. "Wow how surprising," I chortled over my schedule of internet war crimes for the coming week.

But then, he compared Wu being challenged by our valiant CMDR JACE CONNORS to a Massachusetts SHUTOKOU DUEL, her fruity Boxster vs his BATTLE PRIUS (lol!), with the plight of black southerners kidnapped and murdered by the KKK (l... lmao?), to much earnest nodding by Wu.

Ka-ching! You should've seen the spread of pins her campaign donors paid for, that year; absolutely enviable. And I don't even play pinball, it's just the craftsmanship, y'know?

So I finished my drink and thought "You know, Bryan is right, shit's already over, let's see where this goes."

And here we are! For now, anyway~

[BryanM]

Endless RPG's at least have the numbers go up steadily. Even the gacha games aren't gambling these days, as long as you keep a decent stack of the game's currency in reserve. Incremental games, like Fantasy Football, if Fantasy Football was cool and had shit like goblins and chainsaws.

Maplestory coming up reminded me of those evil monetization schemes of the late 90's, in South Korean games like Lineage. Upgrading some item had a % chance to fail, and when it failed the item was destroyed. And the more +'s you got on it, the higher the chance of it breaking.

Add that to a Chinese style PvP war game where you also got attrition for dying.. whee! I'll never forget that story of the lady who was a bigshot in one of these games, a war queen of a large faction. Got everyone to stop fighting for a brief shining moment, before the developers cracked down and personally murdered her character. One time she woke up in the middle of the night and saw her husband (who didn't play games) opening lootboxes for her, and felt massive guilt. And broke up with her in-game husband soon after.

Stories like that stick with you man.

(But seriously thank god market competition made them really ease off on the worst of this stuff. The modern $100 games tacking on poorly designed monetization schemes is just a consequence of wealth disparity and what kind of person will pay that much for a video game. It's kind of funny the people who play $0 games have higher standards in the give:take ratio when it comes to profit seeking in games. They actually require hope and being able to get stuff without opening their wallets.)

----

The hustle culture is real. That blue vest guy (Deray or whatever) really cared more about hocking VISA cards, than creating a world where cops go to prison for taking a knee on someone's neck. And I mean I guess it makes sense; it's far easier and more rewarding to sell out, than to try to improve society somewhat.

I agree with Hasan on this one: I respect people who don't give a fuck and say it out loud, then those who pretend to care.

One anon mentioned how weird he felt when he visited hamburglarland and there were so many people putting on a show of being "friendly". I was a little shocked... do people in the rest of the world just act like how they're feeling, like normal people?

Inconceivable.


The Genocide-aid and the attempted theft of Tik-Tok bill shows where our true priorities are. Can't bare another second that we continue to fail at being the United States of Everything.

Right in line with the classics. Always more to come.

[Sima Tuna]

One anon mentioned how weird he felt when he visited hamburglarland and there were so many people putting on a show of being "friendly". I was a little shocked... do people in the rest of the world just act like how they're feeling, like normal people?

Inconceivable.

The west has absorbed the bad parts of Confucianism while judiciously avoiding the admirable aspects of said philosophy! Exceptional!

[BryanM]

At least the Tik Tok ban is scheduled for a little after Trump's inauguration. I'd assumed the democrats would have placed it just before the election, just to be triple-quadruple sure they'd lose. Belts and suspenders and glue and staples. Something as important as losing to Trump can't just be left to chance.

"Biden is really struggling with young people. How can we make his numbers even lower?"

"... ban their favorite website, maybe??"

"... that's brilliant!"

Their strategists always manage to exceed my expectations. They're really good at their job.


~100 million users. Google seethes with lust and greed and envy.

The truly apocalyptic polls will come next month. The Democrats are calling young liberals anti-semites while having them beaten, arrested, expelled, and fired.

Spoiler

^ This metric is insane. Absolutely insane. 63% of Trump voters want Trump to be the nominee. Only 36% of Biden voters want Biden to be the nominee. What the fuck does anybody expect to happen.

Thanks Obama. Ratfuck voltron's doing a splendid job of ushering in fascism. Can't wait to see Harris's performance against nitro turbo hitler.


I guess we already have snipers standing by to murder some protestors. There's always more and it's always worse.