I remember signing up for Reddit in my middle school library, way back when we were all still shitting on digg. It’s wild to have seen it fall so far.

My theory, in general, is based on three facts.

1: Climate change is happening and will be devastating. 2: The people in charge know it is happening but are too invested in the causes to stop it. 3: The people in charge, and those with the economic power to make changes happen, do not believe in the intrinsic value of human life, or at least they believe that some human lives are inherently more valuable than others.

Now, there are other reasons for the things happening now to be happening. There’s at least 50 years of history that shows that the right wing and business interests have been quietly taking over, at least in the US, even before climate change became a major talking point. Those are facts that we can just push into the wave of things happening as causing amplification or resonance, not really the core factor right now.

My core belief is that the tech-bro billionaires and some select think-tanks and investment firms are planning for what we can simply call the apocalypse (as driven by climate change) rather than trying to avoid it.

The push for AI is really a push for the surveillance state and data control. They are redesigning the way the internet, communication, and commerce work. The future of computing, in their minds, is cloud-based, with users only getting access to things via a glorified workstation. Information is controlled and given out by AI that tells you what someone said instead of letting you see it. “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” type stuff.

It’s not about making money right now. Right now is the R&D phase. It’s the market-capture phase. Your average user is a beta tester for the infrastructure that will become the new internet.

If you want a good picture of it, you can watch the new Running Man movie. I think it’s a good encapsulation, but it’s still too kind for how bad things will likely get.

Will there be something like the Holocaust? I can’t say. But I can assume that, given the state of the world we are creeping toward, there will need to be a way to dispose of “excess people,” or at least to control those people and use them until they pass. This can be done by war, prison, death camps, or even just plain negligence. If the surveillance state is so complete that you can’t organize and riots are wiped out without even an evening news report, then they don’t matter much.

I think the US is done. There are plenty of stupid people doing whatever they need to do now just to make money, but behind them, just off-screen, are people that I think are working to pick up the pieces after the fall. I could ramble on about that… and China trying to take over the US’s place in global hegemony, but I think it’s more important to focus on the core issue.

Global catastrophe is coming. I know it is more comfortable to believe that our leaders are just greedy idiots. And yeah, some are. Some are even that special kind of stupid where they’re super high-intelligence but low in practicality and empathy.

But the truth is, that somewhere in most of the major nations, there is a report that shows the coming shitshow, and most of them have either realized that things are going to be unavoidably bad or have outright leaned into it.

Do they still put the latest releases in a .exe file?

cool to know! I think Smart and Final might be a regional thing because I’ve never heard of it. but yeah, one of the draw backs of Aldi is that when they get busy things get messy. In general, I love Aldi. It has it’s issues but overall the shittiness seems muted compared to the other big chain stores. I can at least afford the essentials from there and then, when I get special stuff, buy bulk.

I wish they carried butter beans though.

I’m sorry, but you must be a new Aldi shopper. The quarter thing has been their model for ages. Often, you or someone else will just leave a quarter in their cart when they put it back.

The self-checkout is new, but Aldi is one of those stores that actually does pass the savings on to its customers. It’s always 20–30% cheaper at Aldi than other stores in my area. The exception is big-name brand stuff, but the store brand is definitely cheaper. $4 for a 12-pack of knockoff Coke vs. $13 for the name brand at the other stores? It’s a no-brainer.

Edit: I’m not super current on it, but as I recall, Aldi does actually pay its workers well. It’s one of the places that has a reputation as “the good one.” I’m sure it’s not perfect, since it still operates in the U.S. economy, but Aldi has been up there with Costco for its business practices.

I was going to mention this. If for no other reason than to make up for the fact that I was too lazy to switch and it eventually lead to me getting the boot from the private torrent community I was in. I’ll be switching to AirVPN and doing it right again soon.

you leave me and my dark humor out of this

A friend of mine is in a prominent tech position and when I railed off about my privacy concerns about ID laws his response was ‘good, some people online need to be known.’ I was so shook I put the phone down for the rest of the day.

I don’t even know if you can see this since the post was deleted, but thank you for responding and putting real effort into your reply. I don’t have answers for a lot of the world’s problems, and I know I sometimes let my anger speak before I think things through.

I think you’re right that online spaces make it very easy to forget that a lot of people are scared or reacting from limited experience rather than acting in bad faith. I assume bad faith most often because of my lived experience in seeing this toxic rhetoric and division from various interested parties over the last 20 years. Well documented in most cases, the effects of those influencers and systems. It’s difficult not to see them as intentional, even when some entities call them incidental. It’s the optimist in me that believes that they can still be seen for what they are.

I still think some ideas are harmful and worth pushing back on, but I do agree that just treating every person with a bad or extreme take as an enemy usually doesn’t get us anywhere.

I believe it’s important to try to bring discourse back to online spaces and keep discussion alive, both here and in the real world. If I can say that I am one thing, it’s a humanist. We don’t find answers or solutions by just being angry. Sometimes it feels like the internet can’t be salvaged, but there are still some corners where real discussion happens.

I appreciate your outlook, I often think I need to make more time for work in my own community. As much as is happening in the world, the real impact is probably going to be person to person, especially if you don’t have the tools to preach from a podium.

So yeah, thank you.

Dope name. I will follow you past the Cardies’ lines and back.

I grant you, I have my walls up more today than I did ten years ago, but if someone proves me wrong with good data, then I accept that. I just scrutinize my opposition more than my allies, which could be a flaw, but if I’m changing my outlook, I want it to be because of facts, not propaganda.

Very cool that some of the old-school meetings let the infiltrators stay. I honestly didn’t know that. But it’s harder to make that tactic effective in an online environment. The stakes are lower and higher at the same time because you can disarm them in person. Here, they can send people down pipelines that they may never come back from.

This is a good point. engagement itself will increase visibility. The best way to win is not to play…

Too many people, likely including you, use the desire for free and open discussion as a smokescreen to spread misinformation and lies. Worse, we are entering a period of history where well-documented and proven events are being rewritten and erased by bad actors with money. This turns our desire to educate others against us, as the sources of truth are erased and anyone on the fence inevitably ends up finding those new fake sources more credible.

So yes, ban them. After a decent number of warnings about sources and references, they should be banned for spreading bad science. It shouldn’t be instant, but it should happen. You can have an open-door policy without allowing people to scream against your interests.

Do you think old-school socialists, anarchists, and communists just let Pinkertons and FBI agents stay in the meeting and push for bad decisions?

I feel so lucky to have come up on the internet when I did. It was the sweet spot of getting unfiltered news and reports before authoritarian governments and think-tanks started censoring and pumping false information. Back in like 2008, Russian influencers were really saying somethings.

Anyway, I agree.