Kaiser Exterminente

lol, so we end up on a payment plan, which is where where we’ve wanted to be for four months, but now a bunch of lawyers get paid. Unbelievable

But I’ve only ever worn my pants at my hips!

Where there pants

If your natural waist is the point where your abdomen is narrowest, mine is comfortably above my belly button and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in any age bracket below “decrepit” where their pants there except as a bit, but I’m sick of my (modest) gut hanging over my belt

These are the questions he doesn’t provide direct answers to, but he does encourage an attitude of “it doesn’t matter, you do the right thing, side with the righteous against the wicked, and fight for a better future, because lord knows nobody else will”

The questions the series asks overall are “does or should knowing that an event was deliberately created or triggered affect our decision-making as it occurs”? “At want point does a society stop developing reactively, and begin being pro-actively, willfully developed”?

The way he uses such a plausible future to restate intractable questions about consciousness, personhood, personal and social responsibility, government, and human nature is really skillful. The answers he gives are satisfying, and even comforting, which is where I get… itchy

Overall, it’s an astonishingly plausible work of speculative fiction. If the technologies we’re so excited about right now (true AI and consciousness uploading) are viable, and if western hegemony declines rather than completely implodes or explodes, everything that happens is totally plausible

than making claims about current issues.

Iirc, he even mentions nazi zionists at some point in the second or third book. He touches on Israel elsewhere, too, but falls short of taking a position. Disappointing, but unsurprising from a book that seems to be more focused on presenting a believable future in which to explore big old questions

His understanding of the present seems flawed at points, but only in same way the elite consensus is flawed. It feels like even there, only in the ways and at the level where that consensus is the determining factor, where that consensus is incentivized by real conditions.

What I’m saying is hits me center mass twice and once in the head and then does it again once I’m down.

It feels like it was written by an LLM from 50 years in the future running on Iain Banks’ preserved brain, trained on internet communists’ and parapolitics posts instructed to write a story about interstellar colonization with STEM bros as the target audience

Re-reading Ken MacLeod’s Corporation Wars, and I cannot overstate how much I think of this trilogy.

I’m seeing about 5x as much about the NYC mayoral race as I want

Been getting big into less common (pseudo)grains. Buckwheat and sorghum in particular. Need to try amaranth more, but I don’t have a sieve fine enough to rinse it appropriately.

You did me a spook disappearing from twitter, btw. Became increasingly concerned you died for weeks

I’m lucky that none of my bosses know anything about pest control, so when I say it took an hour and a half to do a unit, they have no choice but to accept it, especially given the results I deliver

I see it all over on the operations side, you have to dehumanize them to get through the day, that or already be ideologically and morally committed to the work, but the system really grinds that out of you over time.

I believe it’s because you can’t do the work and see them as people. You have to either be or become evil to evict someone knowing that you were their last chance and they’ll probably never be able to formally rent a place again

It’s insane to tell a guy who works for and has given you no reason to believe he’s acting in bad faith that you’d rather evict him and DEFINITELY not get the money than just let him get his shit together and get it back to you.

So now we’ve gotta go to an eviction hearing tomorrow and be like “Can you please give an actual reason or even better stop being assholes and just let us set up a payment plan like we asked?”

MPHA denied our reasonable accommodation request (defined in the policy handbook as a means to change the rules to accommodate tenant need) because it would require them to change the rules.

Like, come on man. Zuck knows how to make a katana. You think just because they don’t go on MTV Cribs going “hey MTV here’s my security setup” they don’t have one?

Like, dude what? Peter Thiel is trying to turn the entirety of Greenland into a bunker. You think he doesn’t have bolt holes to bunkers in every home he owns? Why would you not?

I mean, yes? Obviously? They’ve dedicated billions of dollars to preparing for what happens after climate change makes civilization unrecognizable. You don’t think Elon Musk has dropped 9 figures on a self-sustaining bunker of some kind?

So this is where all the people whose posts don’t make me insane or want to kill myself went.

Looking for a get rich quick typa deal, you know, a “real simple job, nothing can go wrong” style of activity.

All I do everyday is struggle

I hope he runs for something again. I may actually show up to his events to try to goad him into a fight. That’d be really cathartic to me