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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 19:45:57 JST Charlie Stross

   Thought for the week ahead:

   The death spasms of a dying empire are ugly and dangerous. Also, they look very far away for a very long time until suddenly they're all around you.

   All my plans for the future are now as provisional as they should have been in February 2020 ...

   • Embed this notice
     Cavyherd (cavyherd@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 19:56:05 JST Cavyherd

     in reply to

     @cstross

     In some ways, the worst of it is the grief for the loss of the future I thought I was growing up into

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     Graydon (graydon@canada.masto.host)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 21:28:23 JST Graydon

     in reply to

     @cstross The machinery of empire is fine.

     (No one is giving up fossil carbon, agriculture remains totally dependent on fossil carbon. The core mechanism of control is as strong as ever it was.)

     What we're seeing is a change of ruling class from people with established political and social ties to factions in the imperial heartland to mammonites exalted by wealth and whose social ties are synthetic/cultic. (The analogy with Constantine's conversion is not distant.)

     Charlie Stross repeated this.
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     Graydon (graydon@canada.masto.host)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 21:29:29 JST Graydon

     in reply to

     @cstross This is bad, but it's not inherently unstable nor inherently likely to fail nor inherently something that diminishes the might of the empire. (redirect it, sure.)

     The 1920s US had a major round of "there will be genocide until an unambiguous white majority is restored"; the 40s US set up the post-war institutions on the basis of highly inclusive principles.

     The difference now is the combination of the (ambiguously controlled) panopticon and the ongoing agricultural collapse.