Notices by John (johnzajac@dice.camp), page 2

The reason bad people are sure that horrific prison conditions and rampant executions will "prevent" crime is that those are the only things that would prevent them from committing crimes.

That's why our failure to deal with the parasite class in a definitive manner over the last 50 years has resulted in the collapse of society: without the terror of consequence, morally empty people have no incentive to not rape thousands of children or commit genocide, among other atrocities.

When we talk about capitalism as an irrational death cult, food waste is a great example of what we mean.

There's no efficiency in the distribution of resources under capitalism: that's right, the *key reason to believe* of the entire economic ideology is absolute fuckwittery. (The rest is, too lol)

I like things like food waste stats because it clearly and dispositively illustrates how fucked the system we live under actually is. To wit: it's impossible to argue that food waste is good.

1/

When I try to understand "degrowth" - which is a term I honestly do not like, but 🤷♂️ - I think about food waste. Rather than over-harvest food in an unsustainable way, damaging ecosystems, we should just not literally throw out 1/3 of the food we produce.

I hesitate because it almost feels like an efficiency argument - and I fucking hate efficiency arguments! But in reality the waste isn't because of efficiency or distribution problems: it's because capitalists need to make money.

2/

The "lack of efficiency" here isn't a "productivity problem" (meaning it's not capitalists trying to squeeze workers for more work for less money), it's *manufactured by capital to enhance their ability to jack up prices by creating artificial scarcity*.

That's right! The "most efficient way to distribute resources" literally *creates* inefficiency in order to milk people for more cash.

That's why I don't like "degrowth" - it doesn't actually *say* what it means.

3/

Like, if you have a giant tumor in your abdomen that weighs 20 lbs, and surgeons remove it, you've degrowth'd.

Degrowth is presented as this incredibly difficult and grave action that we must take, no matter how difficult the sacrifice.

But it's actually getting a giant tumor removed from our bodies.

I know - you have feelings for the tumor. You gave it a name! Despite the whole "imminent death" thing, you and that tumor had a relationship, dammit!

You still got that shit cut out, tho.

4/

I remember reading an article about bullying and reconciliation maybe 10 years ago, and something really stood out:

Bullies almost never remember their bullying.

Of course, a lot of bullied people are shaped forever by their experience. The cruelty of their peers and indifference of the adults teaches them something most people never learn, and their reaction to that lesson is often pivotal in the trajectory of their life.

This is a toot about politics...

1/

Every time I post about the collapse of centrist/Liberal ideology that we're living through, in its degraded fascist forms, I lose some liberal followers. C'est la vie.

🤷♂️

But I've long suspected that the reason I lose the followers - and the reason the Democratic party is so dismissive of and ungrateful for the votes of progressives and leftists - is that centrists are bullies.

And their bullying is so unimportant to them that...they don't see it, even when it's pointed out to them.

2/

Like bullies in the schoolyard, they take the feedback and complaints of progressive/left voters as just weaklings whining.

In their mind, they are entitled to our support, so why should they listen to us? In their mind, everyone supports their ideas, so anyone who says they disagree must be a fantasist, a crazy person, stupid, uneducated, or a whiner.

3/

But centrists' behavior is classic bullying: gaslighting, abuse, denigration, finding one thing wrong and pounding it and pounding it and

you get the point.

All of this is because they're fascists, just fascists 2.0 (e.g. neoliberalism). Power-hungry, indifferent to suffering, full of rationalizations and justifications for their poor performance and moral standing, incompetent at anything but maintaining a status quo created for them by their ideological forefathers 50 years ago.

4/

Understanding that "centrists" and "moderates" are actually *extremists* and *ideologues* and *faithless bullies* was a watershed moment for me in my political evolution.

And while there are extremists in every ideology, on the left they are at least fighting for something resembling justice and equity, not simply the wealth of their owner/operators and their own power.

5/fin

I will say that most centrist voters are just brainwashed, just like MAGA/Teabagger voters. When you ask them if they support UBI, they say "yes but it's impossible". When you say do you support Universal Healthcare, they say "yes but it's impossible". When you say do you support replacing police with social services that actually work they say "yes but it's impossible".

Ad nauseum.

That's why I have trouble hating voters/reg people. They're just marks. You should pity them.

Repatriation of stolen art and artifacts to the people from which they were stolen seems like such an uncontroversial thing to me. But to many (white colonialists) it feels like some kind of unreasonable, almost offensive, suggestion.

I imagine this is because in the West there has always been this idea that, if they're caught, the thief can't keep his ill-gotten gains. But if he manages to transfer all that wealth a mere generation into the future, it's cleansed of its history, entirely.

1/

Dear Liberals,

If you keep electing "moderates" who are fond of panopticon police states (as long as the "right" people are in charge!), extrajudicial executions (as long as the right people are executed!), who take huge bribes from the oligarchs (as long as process is followed!) and who love to use police to shut down political speech (as long as it's leftist speech), this Trump shit will keep happening.

You are hitting yourselves. Stop it.

Best,
Me

I wish some of the people being like "oh my God these billionaires are stealing money" and "it's so scary that *one man*, Elon Musk, controls so much of our space infrastructure!" would let themselves realize that private property is NOT sacrosanct and that Elon Musk exists *at the pleasure of the people around him*. He owns things, indeed, *has money at all*, because *we haven't decided to take it from him*.

There's no Divine Right protecting him and his "ownership" or his "wealth".

If you really don't like the vibe of US reality television (I don't like its vibe at all) I'd encourage you to try out Korean (specifically the huge competition series on Netflix like Culinary Class Wars or The Devil's Plan), Japanese (The Boyfriend, Terrace House on Netflix) reality shows.

It's "cutthroat" but in a completely theatrical way, and for the most part even the "betrayals" are treated by both parties like momentary lapses.

It will make you realize how poisonous US culture is, too.

@skinnylatte

This is why we have a NAS with 4x10TB blades in it full of movies and TV shows we love. Home media server FTW!

The danger from what people ironically call "AI" was never going to be "superintelligence killing us all" 🤡

It was always going to be what it has turned out to be: the total destruction/corruption of all human knowledge on the Internet and the cognitive evisceration of people who use it.

Don't get me wrong: that is, in and of itself, *catastrophic*. We're going to have to basically reset the Internet when all of this is done, and those people will need years of rehab to rejoin society.

Watching US Liberals work through why they think the BLM protests were "useless" and "counterproductive" but the No Kings protests are "inspiring" and "could change everything", without really knowing that's what they're working through, has been a real trip.

Indeed, in the thread on Bluesky the OP (not Bouie) brings AIDS into the picture, and claims that he can't imagine only having "safe sex".

What he actually can't imagine is watching all of his friends die in a 10-year period of a disease that causes their bodies and brains to collapse in real time.

But with COVID, he may soon be able to imagine it, because it will be all around him.

We don't know what COVID does to a body at 7, 10, and 15 years.

But back to Universal Masking, the moral panic of Liberals Who Just Want To Forget So They Can Enjoy Brunch Again.

Did you know that most experts agree that if we ventilated schools, required NAAT testing, and installed HEPA, and everyone was required to mask in public govt offices and healthcare facilities, the R0 of SARS2 would go below 1?

That's right: it's likely that COVID would disappear or be relegated to minor outbreaks if we did minimal shit to prevent it.