Users (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Nine.)

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. ~Revelation 6:9-11

...

Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

~Isaiah 1:13-17 (KJV)

...

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out!

[Repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

I saw this shit when I got up this morning.

Apparently, Fucker Carlson is trying to platform Joel Webbon and his neo-Calvinist crap.

I've written pretty extensively about what I think about Joel and that kind of women-abusing Taliban-like newfangled Fundamentalist religiosity but let's start here.

I've also written a few times about how I met my ex-wife, and pretty extensively about that relationship and how it ended.

My ex has Borderline Personality Disorder. I've said many times, on here and out in the world, that Trump basically took her kind of religious crap and secularized it. Except it's not really working out, and at this point most people know that.

I've written rather less about how my ex-wife acted when the writing was on the wall and we knew it was going to flame out. The thing is, at that point, she was rather less religious.

But now I'm starting to see what I saw from her then, creep into Republican politics, too. She had basically entered kind of a fugue state that I referred to at the time, accurately but crudely as "Eat, Sleep and Fuck mode" ESF for short. I called it that, because she didn't want to do much of anything else. She'd stopped trying to find a job and seemed mainly concerned with hoovering up all the resources we had with her various habits.

Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? ~George Carlin

We naturally spent most of our few mutual waking hours arguing and fighting and/or using each other for the one thing we still had in common.

My Mom had, by that point, had it up to *Here* with that shit. To the point of not answering the phone sometimes.

I was reminded of that this morning when a buddy of mine pointed out that I'd asked last year "What does Trump want Greenland for, to eat it??"

When the shit was hitting the fan, when things got really bad at the end of January in 2001, I managed to get fired from Walmart along with another (yes, female) associate for...well, it's a long story but considering my home life at the time you can probably guess what happened, at work no less...but we both got put down as rehireable because our boss liked us, but that meant we couldn't reapply for 90 days. 

I went and talked to my old boss in the college IT department right around closing time 'cause I knew he'd be there and quite literally had a job within 20 minutes but it'd be a couple days before I actually started. I spun it, successfully, as a job change. I *Was* going to be getting paid more at the college. I transferred to the cafeteria to keep my full-time hours but a little less money at the end of the semester but then stayed there. My coworker hired in at Dollar Tree (and IIRC got paid every week) but went back to Walmart like four months later as they started doing the actual work to convert over to a super-center, putting up shelves and shit and eventually she transferred back into her old job in Electronics. 

The flip side was, I had a decent job all the sudden, but like half a paycheck from Walmart to get through 3 weeks on

My Mom was hesitant to help because the last time she had, my then-wife had literally stolen most of the money from me and blown it on alcohol and bar food at Karaoke. So, to get by, I went and talked to the pastor of our church and the church got me a $100 gift card and a gas card and my Mom said she would put gas in my truck if there was an emergency. We should have been able to make it on that, if barely...if there wasn't another emergency.

There was.

My wife sold the gift card to a neighbor for $50, then spent that. All while I was sleeping. I blew a gasket when I got up and figured it out.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

I was meeting my Mom for breakfast at the bagel shop in Petoskey before class because she had a relatively-free morning and only afternoon and evening classes in Traverse City. This was the start of February. I pretty much told Mom I was done, just had to figure out how and when to extract myself and make sure I did so with the dog and a few other necessary things. She bought me groceries, put gas in the truck, went to our ISP and paid the internet bill, basically caught up everything that would come due before I got paid again. All the sudden, with an end-point to the crazy, she was all in to help.

But she didn't give me any cash. She'd been going to until I told her about the gift card thing. My wife got hella mad about that, too bad. I straight up told her why.

We managed to struggle-bus along for about 2 1/2 weeks before I finally hit the combo of having all my shit in order to leave and saying the hell with it and getting out. I'd stashed everything I could in the back of the truck and me and Gracie the Schnauzer pretty much decided to go for a walk while my ex was downstairs at the bar. A walk out to the truck, then we got in it and left. My Mom kept gas in my truck so I could get back and forth to class and work until I got into the dorms at the college.

My ex-wife descended into a Pentecostal religious mania that so far as I know has barely abated 25 years later. She spent like the whole weekend trying to call me. It was creepy. All the sudden, my ex had to figure it out for herself and from what I heard she did so in some pretty manipulative ways. 

Also everything was a conspiracy or the fault of Demons and she had done nothing actually wrong and was Saved for suddenly adopting this violent cult-like religiosity. From where I saw things; Well, All the other people she screwed over or who had to deal with her at that point came out of the woodwork and finally started telling me all the shit she had been and was doing. I wasn't the only one screwing around. And it just got weirder from there while I rebuilt my life.

But, the fact of the matter is my actual lived experience is that cult-like extremism and religious bullshit always comes down to Glorification of the Self and Lusts of the Flesh. If these fucking people can't eat it, fight it or fuck it they don't understand it, much less want it. 

Red: The Sisters have taken quite a liking to you. Especially Bogs.

Andy: Don't suppose it would help any if I explained to them I'm not homosexual.

Red: Neither are they. You'd have to be human first. They don't qualify. Bull Queers take by force. That's all they want or understand. But if I were you, I'd grow eyes in the back of my head.

Andy: Thanks for the advice.

~From the film The Shawshank Redemption.

This is pretty much how my partner's relatives that she was staying with for awhile conducted themselves, and from what she's said her cousin is in jail now (for DV against his MOTHER) and her aunt got back with the abusive ex that she'd just left. Such wonderful people. Meanwhile my partner has her own house now, has reconciled with her parents and life is busy but good.

Look at how all these Calvinist Weirdos (for example) conduct themselves. A hell of a lot of them, like Pete Keg-Breath, are open motherfucking drunkards and I can remember when the same fucking people would throw you out of a church for that...because it happened to me. They're also apparently mostly adulterers, raging bigots and wife-beaters who think everything is a conspiracy and nothing is their fault. Like, honestly what's even the damn point??

Like, I've really started to wonder if Trump, a lot of these MAGA dudes and Republican men in general are all closeted. As Trump's inhibitions decline it seems like about the only thing he really waxes eloquent about are big strong manly men...ew. I don't even care about regular gay dudes. I'm not that way, I've never hated them, rather like more than a few that I've known, but I'm a straight guy, for the last year or so, with a side of Demi-sexuality and having figured that out I finally feel, I don't know...right? So I can't even imagine...or maybe I just don't want to.

The truth is I think it's worse, a lot of these guys aren't gay, bi or straight in conventional terms. It's like dudes in prison, they'll just stick it anywhere that'll let them. I had a friend apparently like this.

It seems like if these guys are that way even if it's just some kind of weird RWNJ pansexual crap, it'd just be easier to be themselves and make peace with that etc. You'd think, but that'd require thinking.

But apparently that's too hard, and they want to use whatever power they can to make everybody else miserable, too. I couldn't do it.

A lot of them are also pedophiles or into some other creepy, weird or wrong shit or they don't like consent very much and that, civilization can't live with. Thankfully, these fucking people's efforts to cover up the Epstein files are failing, as is their running cover for Trump's failing health.

One way or another, sooner or later the rest of us are going to figure out how far down the rot goes.

And there will be consequences.

Trump isn't the problem. He's a symptom of larger internal rot. Tucker isn't religious, he's trying to cover up wrongs by using religion.

The problem is that, too often, religion is perfectly fine with being used.

And maybe that's the goddamned problem.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

Now that religion isn't working all that great and since they've failed to push the country into civil war and even their own side is slouching toward a simple Fyre Festival-like collapse, they're going hard after "Authority" and "Mythology" as if they can just arbitrarily declare Trump a god and have no one argue with them or some shit.

Like that's really what all this dumb bullshit about trying to "protect" the Reflecting Pool National Swamp is really about.

But that won't work either.

And then they're gonna try to kill their way out of this situation, only then to find out that the rest of us can shoot back and one hell of a lot of us aren't willing to throw everybody who's "different" from these fucking CHUDs narrow idea of "People" under the damn bus, especially not for Donald Trump.

But Republicans, for the most part, would rather watch the world burn than admit they fucked up.

But they don't really even believe in Trump, they just saw him as a convenient vehicle to get Power.

All these people are nothing but shitty little users, no better than the fucking CHUD who owed me 3 packs of cigarettes by the end of Air Force tech school...but that's "Okay" if you're the right kind of Republican or have a billion dollars? 

We had best stop tolerating this garbage.

As for the rest of you?

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

Eight

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

Chomp Chomp, Crunch Crunch (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Eight.)

You take a drug, right? The chemicals, they rush through your body, rush through your brain. And the sensations, you want the sensations again and again and again, but let me tell you, you can also get addicted to grief, to guilt, to hate. Because when you feel dead inside, even bad sensations make you feel like you're alive! ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E5 "The Straight Life."

...

At last, they’ve come for me. I feel their lives, their destinies spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path, played out on a world not their own, will end soon enough. Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of revelation bringing new clarity, and in the midst of confusion, he will find her. Enemies brought together by impossible longing, enemies now joined as one. The way forward at once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin, but in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into the many, and then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning. ~The First Hybrid, From Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

Last night at work, I saw some idiotic "Christian" account on Threads expounding on the glories of *Checks Notes* Pete Keg-Breath and how "Christian" he was because he said "Removing God from schools opened the door to spiritual darkness."

Bro, I used to know a lot of Baptists and Calvinists and shit. I can remember when they'd throw you out if you were an unrepentant adulterer and a drunk with a history of shitty behavior. But I guess Sin is OK now as long as you're a Republican??

Also; No, this is America, not everybody is Christian. It is not the responsibility of the State to teach religion. If you don't like that...you can always send your kids to Christian schools! It's not the State's job to do your job as a parent and protect your kid from "Spiritual Darkness." That's on you.

I was an 8th Grader the first time I set foot in a public school in 1987, for comparison. The actual reason that was the case is my Mom figured I'd get a better education that way because I had issues (undiagnosed ADHD that was diagnosed in 1984) and it turned out she wasn't wrong. Note it's possible my partner's kid could end up going to Catholic school starting in the fall since she's switching schools anyway...the way we've been talking we're going to let her decide where she wants to go but it basically comes down to which is the better school and she's already thinking about her future and from where she can get into a better university. Note: Kiddo is not religious. She's just thinking ahead.

Not legends, not myths, facts and reality and too much intelligence for her own good sometimes.

These Fucking People don't care about that.

Hell, while we're at it, all too many of them don't seem to care if they get paid properly in the present. I'm gonna have to run the Oklahoma minimum wage hike getting voted down by my coworker tonight, he's from there, but I'm pretty sure I know what he'll say, He'll point out that Oklahoma is pretty much at the bottom of all the educational metrics. He's pretty clear about nobody in Oklahoma thinking ahead very much.

I mean, hell, where they do think ahead, even that is often only narcissistic self-aggrandizement without any concern for how that may affect other people...until it ends up affecting them, of course.

I don't have to tell you, drugs ain't the only things to get addicted to. Some people mainline their work, some people... snort ESPN. Some people needle-pop gambling. There are those that shoot up junk foods, fine wines, Cohibas, baby. Some people get hooked on love. And like any fiend on the street, you always need another bump. Just one more bump, man! Just one more bump! ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E5 "The Straight Life."

Then they don't want anything to do with their own ideals or the life-choices they convinced others to make.

And the Pope of course, is rightly calling this shit out.

The idea that there basically is no Sin if you're a rich Republican is dangerous and stupid. More to the point it demonstrably gets you bad leadership.

Also, historically people who believe they and their political, religious or social movement are Without Sin end up being consumed by their Sin.

And that's exactly what's going on with the Republican Party right now.

Pete Keg-Breath doesn't care about the Lord, he only cares about religion to the extent that he can use it as a vector to hurt other people, and it's the same with pretty much any of these Republicans that are left.

They think themselves without Sin, because they think they believe the "right" things. Thus their Sin will consume them. I'd argue it is already. Chomp Chomp, Crunch, Crunch, motherfuckers.

These fucking people's Sin Nature is eating them like the Zombies eating the horse at the end of the first episode of The Walking Dead.

And it's turning this country into a laughingstock in the process.

Someday we're going to need it to have been otherwise, but *Checks Notes* People Were Stupid.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.

Seven

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

665, Or How I Learned To Fuck Up The Apocalypse (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Seven.)

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

If any man have an ear, let him hear.

He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity: he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he speaks as a dragon.

And he exercises all the power of the first beast before him, and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

And deceive them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13, King James Bible.

...

Everybody's worried about this Y2K problem. Come 2000, the computers are gonna have a nervous breakdown. Planes will fall from the sky, the water supply will dry up and the Pentagon will start shooting nuclear warheads at Canada. Some predict that prison doors will automatically spring open. But I got the solution: A do-over. At the stroke of midnight, it's 1900 again and we get to do the whole fucking century over. I mean, let's face it. We didn't do such a hot job the first time around. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series Oz, S3.E8 "Out O' Time."

I saw this last night.

Apparently Jeff Bezos thinks humans should stop using water so Tech Bros can use it to cool down their AI computers and shit.

First off, fuck no.

Second, also, fuck no.

Third: I was a Christian End Times Prophecy Guy at the same time as I was an IT guy working for a dial-up ISP here in Northern Michigan, also during the run-up to Y2K. In roughly 1998-2000 It was my second job, my other job was I was a line cook. Wanna bet which of the two I was sure would still be there on January 2nd of 2000? 

Hardest of all the hard passes. Fuck You. No is a complete sentence.

Look, even in my fairly agnostic current form of Christianity I accept that God created Man, not the other way around. Man cannot create a god in his image and have it be anything more than a useless Idol. 

Or, to put it a little more bluntly to these Tech Bros who think they're gonna create a "God" that'll solve all their problems while the rest of us die of dehydration and starvation...Have Fun In Hell, Idiots.

What happens when somebody comes along and unplugs your god? What happens when there's widespread civil disorder and civilizational collapse because of your bullshit and the power gets knocked out?

Oh, that's right! Power grids weren't really built intelligently, they mostly just accrued over time. 

God...until the power goes out.

By contrast, I've read the Bible, hard copy, zero RAM required and you can read it without a quintillion megawatts of electricity. I find it easier, cheaper and better for the environment to just loosely believe in, ya know, God.

It doesn't get any better when you know a little.

Or care about what's actually in the Holy Books.

And these people don't. Think about that.

I've heard these fucking people make occasional noise about reusing US Navy submarine reactors from scrapped ships to provide on-site off-grid power...well that does two things. #1 Ok, it buys you about 10-20 years depending on the reactor but #2 You're also gonna have a couple of US Navy nuclear engineers and a gaggle of enlisted ratings come through about once a month during that whole time and do an Operational Reactor Safety Inspection...and on an old system, at that. Plus swarms of maintainers if there's a system casualty of any kind...

Oops.

Yup, Maintenance issues, nuclear materials. That's four words I don't like hearing together and I say that as a US Air Force bomb wing veteran. Yeah, I was just a Security Police troop, but I was responsible for the security of the damn things and the bombers that would have carried them if the shit ever hit the fan.

Fuck that.

Now imagine a nuclear accident at your local data center that no one asked for or needs and which is already inflicting technological desertification on the surrounding area...

YOU try sweating through an airbase defense training exercise at PSAB in the middle of the Saudi desert and doing it in full MOPP-4 gear (and the standing order was if you ain't gotta piss you ain't drinking enough water!) because somebody thought Saddam Hussein had a fresh weed up his ass about something and tell me how you like it. That's the world Jeff wants for other people.

I've had heatstroke, it's no fun.

I'll note Jeff Bezos isn't going to curtail his own water usage.

How about we don't risk apocalypses (plural) to basically just power Chatbots for a Tech Bro fad that'll probably be over with in a year or two, that most people hate, and that has actively caused harm to people that I care about?

Yeah, that's right, ChatGPT negatively affected my partner's mental health back in January. It caused a whole big crisis that topped off one that was already ongoing.

All any of that shit does is recycle what's fed into it like any other computer and when it's thus chock-full of the same biases and prejudices and shit as the people who programmed it had? That's a problem.

Yeah, that's probably not going to result in some Machine God that's gonna save the world. It'll tell you you're fat and victim-blame and then want more money for giving you the privilege of its bad advice...or more of whatever the damned things run off of, anyway.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984. 

And then you throw in that these same fucking people are actively encouraging conspiracy theories, illiteracy, medieval-peasant mentalities, religious extremism up to and including Epstein-cult shit that scans to me as basic demon worship, and straight-up superstition peddled as redneck elitism??

Wait 'til some CHUD that can't add 2+2=4 and has to Google basic mathematics causes a Divide By Zero in yo Machine God, that'll be a hoot.

Then throw in what else these idiots will ascribe divinity to, and how much they're willing to lie about it. Trump, for example.

And these are the fucking people programming your Machine God for you? Yeah, that sounds like it's gonna go well.

Garbage In, Garbage Out. That's pretty much the first rule of coding. You have to get it right the first time if at all possible, but because most people can't you run through most likely several versions that aren't all-the-way live before you run the real thing to try and do whatever you're programming it to do for real.

Now imagine it's being programmed by the kind of people who can't be bothered to take out the trash at my partner's work and they'll gundeck the logs about it, too. She went on a big rant about this and I agreed with her 100%. If you can't get the small things right you won't get the big things right. 

I had that drilled into me first by my Navy-veteran Grandpa, then in the military myself, she learned it from her Dad (who is also a veteran) and in her career.

A lot of people didn't, apparently.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Still, I'm imagining These Fucking People's AI super-god as being just smart enough to implement the Mark Of The Beast in conjunction with human politics, but like, that next bunch of judgments that are in reaction to it per Revelations are actually just the result of bad anti-rejection drugs or improper sanitation on a mass scale as ordered by the AI...and since nobody is smart enough by then to problem-solve and do it right or fix it, everybody thinks it's God that did it, rather than good old-fashioned FAFO along the same lines as Russian dipshits blowing themselves up.

I'd say these idiots want to go to Hell.

But the truth is, they'd probably find a way to fuck that up too.

Call it 665.

There comes a point where you either believe in Truth, as a concept, or you don't. Truth is the only thing that gives most people a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

Think about that for a second.

That's why these morons want to turn everything into mythology, so they can turn idiocy and medieval peasant-brain into a goddamned religion. And they wanna have that be backed up by some malfunctioning chatbot??

FUCK THAT. No!

I shouldn't even have to say this, but here we are.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

Six

A bunch of men sit in cells on the brink of a new year, a new century, a new millennium. They stare into the future and all they see is themselves in those same cells. Black or white, here we are on the precipice. We either hang on or we fall off. Together or separately. It's our choice. It's up to us. It's up to you and me. Happy New Year! 

~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series Oz, S3.E8 "Out O' Time."

Crab Bucket (Not Legends, Not Myths, Facts. Six.)

Crab mentality or crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket or pot), is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you." The metaphor refers to a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its effort will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise.

...

Brother Cavil/Number One: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova?

Ellen Tigh: No.

Number One: No? Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.

Ellen Tigh: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.

Number One: I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I - I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws; and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I can know much more. I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body. And why?! Because my five creators thought that "God" wanted it that way. 

~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S4.E17 "No Exit."

...

Nameless One: “Shadow of this life?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “Yes, a shadow. You see, Restless One, this life is not real. Your life, my life, they are shadows, flickerings of what life once was. This life is where we end up after we die, and here we remain. Trapped, caged, until we can achieve the True Death.”

Nameless One: “True Death?”

Dhall, Dustman scribe: “True death is non-existence. A state devoid of reason, of passion, of sensation.” [Dhall coughs] “A state of purity.”

Nameless One: Sounds like oblivion, why would anyone would want that? 

~from the D&D video game Planescape Torment.

I saw this earlier.

The National Swamp is already falling apart.

But wait! There's more...

Apparently, JD Vance and Ross Douthat got into an argument about the Trump administration being "Unchristian" and "Uncharitable."

Duh. For once, Ross ain't wrong. Even if it's a case of Captain Obvious being promoted to Admiral Of The Fleet.

And of course all JD has is to try to talk about the "Tone" of somebody's "Communication" as if that justifies all this evil bullshit.

America, Republicans don't care about you; Except that they have a way they think the Universe is supposed to be, and that they're too good to have to explain themselves, and you, America, happen to be where they live and the place they think they were handed to hammer into the shape that they want.

No, none of this shit is based on reality anymore than Soviet Communism was.

So, therefore, they keep trying to impose their idea of reality on the world. How did that work with the Iranians??

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50

For good measure, throw in that Republicans absolutely hate their own voters.

And Republicans hate that they have to ask anybody if they can have power, in any fashion no matter how pro forma or propagandized. They just want to do what they want to do, period, and the higher up the chain you go the worse it gets. The Republican mentality is basically that of a 13-year-old boy who thinks he knows everything...before his grandma gets ahold of him and beats the arrogance out of him with a wooden spoon one Sunday afternoon.

We need to bring back the Ass Whuppin. These fucking people feel too safe to do their shitty behavior.

And they know, yes, they know none of this stuff is going to work. It can't, the world does not work like that, at least not anymore, and you cannot put the Progress genie back in the bottle no matter how many rural white racist dipshits or white Suburban crunchy Yoga moms you infect with Medieval Peasant Brain.

There's a whole rest of the world that first will laugh at you, then stop doing business with you, and eventually stop talking to you altogether and wait for you to wreck yourself, until it gets so bad that UN peacekeeping forces have to get involved and then things get rebuilt on the rest of the world's terms and whatever some dipshit Calvinist from Idaho or Sedevacantist Catholic weirdo from New Jersey thinks about that, they can write on the pad of paper that prison in the Netherlands gives them and call it a Manifesto. Yes, there is a certain class of Republicans who think their shitty beliefs make them next to God.

In fact, to paraphrase Brother Cavil from BSG, they don't want to be human, they think this world is dirty and fallen...they think they know better.

While at the same time people like JD Vance apparently are iffy on the idea of whether or not us mere working people can be "Christian." Fuck you, bro. I don't need your stank ass to talk to the Lord, I can do it myself.

But, far from the higher thought processes of 40 or 50 years ago, modern Republican "Libertarianism" has basically just reduced a lot of people to being basically crabs in a bucket for no good reason, while higher up, privilege and religiosity have turned a lot of "Conservatives" into dumbass narcissists. 

Well, that and there's always the racism, that's the only glue that holds all these assholes together.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Like I keep saying, I can't even talk the way these people talk anymore, and I used to be a Republican.

Seriously though, nobody has to put up with this shit. Not in America, and not in the rest of the world.

They know their ideas suck, and that the vast majority of people even here will never agree to most of this shit.

Social Security, for example, is something most of us have to pay into and thus expect to get, it's part of the social fabric of this country and pretty much nobody but idiot Libertarian teenagers and the most Miserable Bastard old Republicans out there expects or wants anything different.

There's a reason I say that their real Big Plan sooner or later is going to be "Break Off A Piece Of America For Themselves and hope like fuck that they can get all the people that do agree with them to move there." And there's a reason I say these guys are going to try to turn Florida into their own personal Banana Republic. Even that's not ideal, because there's Other People that live there, but it's what they have.

So they'll immediately start trying to price living there out of most people's income range while trying to lure in more rich people. 

Never mind who does the actual work.

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. ~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

Cuz whoever that is, the person doing the work, making lunch, taking out the trash?? 

it sure as fuck ain't gonna be no Little Mike Johnson.

The real issue here is that the whole basis of the current "Conservative" thing is disrespect. Disrespect from people that ain't got no self-respect. 

It's why these motherfuckers literally shit all over everything the first chance they get.

And then they wanna talk shit and use religion to cover their asses? Idiots like MAGA wannabe-rapper Forgiato Blow.

Being Black, or Down's Syndrome as "Punishment from God??" Sorry, bro, but God does not work that way and pretty much every Black person I've ever met is an observant Believer in something. 

More, *Every* person with Down's Syndrome that I've ever met was exactly that, but specifically Christian. My ex-girlfriend's disabled sister was very active in our church. She was the one who wanted to go to the camp meetings and all that type of stuff. She did nothing wrong.

She was the kind of person that if she tried to tell a lie her tongue would probably break off.

And I repeat, God does not work that way.

More to the point, sorry to be especially "Politically Incorrect" about things but I can tell you exactly what a guy with a name like "Forgiato Blow" would have got from basically everybody who wasn't some kind of politically correct liberal 30 or 35 years ago, and longer than that, it would've been worse! Probably the only people I knew who wouldn't have made fun of a first name that Italian would have been the Black people, and a last name like "Blow?" 

The jokes write themselves...and that's before you realize he sucks. Dude could (okay, just hypothetically speaking) have been good at something and back in the day people would've still been relentless. I ain't saying it's right, I'm saying that's how it was. You either rolled with the punches and gave back as good as you got (and probably got very tired of shitty people and tried not to be that way yourself, or you turned out to be a monster and ended up in jail) or you were considered a bitch and probably had to move away and change your name to make that shit stop.

I get that a lot of people thought they were doing the right thing changing the culture but the meanness just went online and if anything the bad people actually got worse due to lack of consequences and too many of the good people ended up in their own bubble and didn't start realizing they had to defend themselves until shit was already starting to get really bad. 

There's a reason I say bring back the ass whuppin.

You wouldn't have somebody like Andrew Tate or Elon Musk...certainly wouldn't have them being open about being how they are let alone famous...with the societal standards that I grew up with or the fact that they were backed with a little more force. Not to mention Trump was Tabloid fodder that pretty much everybody hated. I mean, come on.

I shouldn't even need to say this shit!

Instead, I saw Republican standards in particular decline throughout the 1990's and the Aughts while they bitched about moral relativism and situational ethics (even as they became the primary practitioners of that stuff) and ultimately way too many people reordered their moral universe to accommodate men like Donald Trump!

And along the way, they flushed everything else and turned our country into a moral and later literal swamp, and now they'd rather mythologize that crap than fix it. If they can get you hooked on the idea of Aphrodite springing fully formed from the seafoam it's easier to manipulate you into being the crab in the bucket pulling other crabs down so nobody gets out. They don't want sound doctrine, they want excuses.

Sorry, but way too many of these secular liberals didn't do shit about that. I hope that guys like James Talarico might be able to accomplish something, but clearly going high all the time doesn't work.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And sometimes, to defend freedom, you gotta get dirty.

But the idea is not to be a crab in a bucket, not to stay in the swamp. Sooner or later you have to reach for the stars.

But you have to get the small things right first. My partner and I had a conversation about that today because she's dealing with idiots at work. That's the part these fucking people don't understand.

And worse, they don't want to.

We get out of this mess, this crab bucket, and reach for the future Together.

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If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Five

 [The Mandalorian brings together the entire Mandalorian covert after Carson Teva makes a surprise visit and asks him to help Greef Karga's situation on Nevarro when the New Republic won't lift a finger]

Mando: Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga. And those that do fought against him when you rescued me from his ambush many cycles ago on the streets of Nevarro. Since then, he's had a change of heart and has risked his life to save mine as well as the Foundling in my charge. [Grogu coos] I stand before you to petition an intervention. To help rescue Nevarro before it's too late. I am in no position to ask any more of you. However... However, the enemy that decimated this very covert were Imperials, not Greef Karga's bounty hunters. Greef Karga is now a High Magistrate and has offered me a tract of land on his independent world. Perhaps it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome. So our culture may flourish and our children can feel what it is to play in the sunlight.

Armorer: Does anyone else wish to speak?

Mando: It's up to them now.

Paz Vizsla: I do. I was there on Nevarro that night. I fought against Greef Karga and his hunters. I saw my brothers and sisters fall at the hands of the Imperial butchers that hunted us in the sewers. I saw many die to save the life of [gestures to Grogu] this one, tiny Foundling. And now we are asked to sacrifice yet again. The question we should be asking ourselves is, "Why? Why should we lay our lives down yet again?" Because we are Mandalorians! I have had my disagreements with this man, but he risked his life to save my son. And Bo-Katan Kryze did not give up on my child's life even when the rest of us did. These two are asking us to take up arms in the name of a brighter future, and I for one will take up arms to fight by their side. [Mandalorians agree] This is the Way!

Mandalorians: This is the Way.

Armorer: This is the Way.

~From The Mandalorian S3.E5 "The Pirate."