2021 is gonna suck hard

Naturally it will because everyone is ready for a break... and they won't get it. Face it, folks from here on out its gonna get worse in new and different ways. Better in some, sure. But ol' Robert A. Heinlein's Future History seems to peg the Crazy Years.

Which means what? It's like we suffer the fate of our defeated enemies, but on delay. Right now, America is going through a Soviet collapse.

Kurman you're crazy. Despite the pandemic thing, the It which is the global economy is more ravenous than ever. Talk about invasive species.

We can have a temporary downturn, but appetite is there, especially more so with the poor aping the rich in consumption and a vast new middle class throughout the world island.

Democrats worse nightmare, the Stock Market takes a shit and Trump capers around like an Oompa-loompa crowing I Told You So! 2022. Republican house, or return to Republican Senate, or both, which means Biden has about two weeks to do anything.

He's not going to do anything. Oh, he'll send out a shitload of executive orders, but not much in Congress. 

Mitch will see to that. Even as Minority Leader, he is the severed head of a snapping turtle. 

So, stuff happens, but nothing happens. Until shit happens.

Expect more suicide bombers like our Tennessee friend. Expect more vigilante justice from incompetent white people like Killer Kyle Rittenhouse.

Socialism made Killer Kyle kill. If he ain't ought'n got that stimmie check of $1200 smackers, he'd have never gotten his peashooter. And I don't see anyone hiring Killer Kyle for security without a pop gun.

I'm actually pissed at the boogie bois* in his posse what should've realized he was a stupid child and looked out for him. They should have kept the baby elephant inside the perimeter. But no, my suspicion was they was all baby elephants. White elephants. Whyte elephants.

Whyte. Whyte sounds evil and witchy, which.. nah. White people ain't witchy. Goth, but not witchy.

Will we have our first domestic terrorist nuke? Nope. 

A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear

 A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate An American Town by Matthew Hongoltz-Hettling

Short Review: Bears Make Better Libertarians Than People Do

Longer Review: This is the story of still another failed attempt at American utopia in the state of New Hampshire, plus some bears.

Back in 2004, the town of Grafton was targeted for takeover by a ragtag group of libertarians and like-minded folk. They almost succeeded, and the result is what you would expect when all sorts of public goods are starved of taxpayer funding: infrastructure collapse and the inexorable turn towards tribal chaos of factions.

New Hampshire proudly retains the idea of well-armed rugged individualism that goes back to the time of Revolution. I find it amusing that so many right wing authoritarians assume that America is just a slight push or tug away from Marxist dictatorship, without realizing that this requires a level of organization and planning that Americans are simply not capable of. Hell, the Russians weren't capable of it, and they had a Ministry of Terror, a gulag system, and a network of personal spying to attempt it.

Libertarians pride themselves on logic, so when the Freedom folks met in a town hall meeting with Grafton residents, the amount of hostility towards liberation surprised them. No amount of internet bulletin board arguments seemed to win over these emotional and irrational rural bumpkins. The fact that the Freedom folks did not anticipate the acrimony and suspicion suggests that their argument was based upon their own illogical and unrealistic premises.

So the Freedom folk do what all liberators do. They took over the town. (Notice a pattern? Scratch a Hippie, find a Nazi). They immediately inserted themselves into positions of authority, grabbed every lever and button of power they could find, and shut the tax collection system down hard.

The result? The Free Town of Grafton fell apart. Roads and bridges fell into disrepair and remained unplowed in winter. Buildings burned down for lack of a coordinated public fire department, shut down of the town administration due to lack of funds, and a huge migration of bears.

Quick note of explanation: the bears were there due to state policy and popular sentiment. At the turn of the last century, New Hampshire was thoroughly domesticated and prosperous, with nary a stick of woods remaining in the whole state. Circumstances, both unfortunate and intentional, caused the fortunes of the state to wane as farmers abandoned their freeholds, industry moved to tax havens and cheaper labor, and traders grew more and more short-sighted. Add in the environmental movement of the 60s and 70s, and you end up with a state that soon returned to the dark medieval forests of pre-Revolutionary times. Which the bears loved, and since people think bears are people, people loved as well. 

Another quick note: bears are not people. They are forward thinking, possessed of long memories, alarmingly clever problem-solvers, observant of habit, theory-of-mind types that can think like people, get in the heads of people, but they are not people. To look in a bear's eyes is to see they are quite alien. I'm sure the bears think the same of us hairless primates.

So, and not surprisingly, bear problems became a problem. This is not to say the libertarians (and all the eccentric kooks magnetically attracted to them) were responsible for the bear problems, but they sure didn't help. Within the decade-long failed experiment, there were two horrific bear attacks (no fatalities) which resulted in indifference and victim-blaming from the state game wardens, and a gamut of responses from the town, ranging from a vigilante posses slaughter of bears, to those who would dart, tag, and radio-collar the bruins.

The ongoing (legal and illegal) slaughter of bears did nothing long term to solve the problem. Despite the culls, bear numbers grew, and the bears became bolder and bolder. There were also people who fed the bears. One in particular, Doughnut Lady, ended up with a twice daily food pantry service for dozens of bears. Passers-by were alarmed at the woods filled with nothing but bear around her house. Often times, people wondered why the bears did not eat her, but I guess it just goes to show the average bear is more patient and less short-sighted than the average human. The bears knew they had a good thing going, and you don't fuck that up by killing the golden goose. This is not a great insight, that if you feed wild animals and do not molest them, they are willing to tolerate you. See: cats.

I should note the human tragedy of Tent City near Grafton, those survivalist types who preferred Paleolithic freedom. Problem was, that ship had sailed with the Neolithic revolution, and also these guys were extremely ill-equipped in both mind and body to handle the intellectual and physical rigors of the lifestyle. Plus, they kept their cars. So, the result was the liberty to live in squalor and shit in buckets, scrounge for donuts and fresh water that had not been shit in, like living in a Syrian civil war tent city (note to the current right wing batch of civil war advocates, you'll die of typhus in about a month).

The bears became such a problem for the dwellers of Tent City that they opted for a solution strangely reminiscent of Donald Trump's efforts along the southern border of the US. They built a wall. They built a big, beautiful barrier to keep the bears out. So, yes, the freedom seekers hid and huddled in squalor behind barricades to seek a level of security against the very Nature they desired to live as one with.

Long story short, failed experiment. But fear not, libertarians have upped the ante and now are pushing for the Free State takeover of New Hampshire, but with all the statist trappings they now find acceptable, like property taxes and zoning ordinances and fire codes and the amenities that go with it: public pools, libraries, tennis and basketball courts, playgrounds, etc. And hardly any bears at all.

Daddy? Where does money come from?

You think money grows on trees?

Money grows on tomorrow's trees.

Made by ape-shaped monkey bees. 

Money grows on tomorrow's trees.

Here's an essay that first was on Twitter by Richard Murphy on Brexit. This economist makes the same point as Debt: The First 5000 Years author David Graeber, that money is a promise. More than a token of labor. A promise implying future certainty, abiding physical limits.

The smartest thing we did was get off the gold standard and tap into monkey bee land. 

These Internets are making me HANGRY!

I was introduced to the Internet in 1994 and my productivity went to pathetic.

I finally got a smart phone in 2012 and now I am dumb as fuck.

I would be willing to bet that if you did a brain scan of me in 2009, and one now, you would see the non-deterioration would be the fear and anger centers, which have grown alarmingly.

The frontal lobes? Ooh. Bad. Although they say psychedelics promote more neural growth.

Social media is our Krell moment. You know, Forbidden Planet? Monsters from the Id.

It's almost all bad and here we are stuck in it. Although a lot of parts are fun. Sounds like drugs. Bionic drugs. Electrostimulation and psychdelic-teledildonics. And all the accoutrements. Wearables, of course. No chips in my brain. Although wearables affecting my brain, suggest remotes. Remote manipulation of brains is a concern.

I don't have earbuds. I have cans. And honestly, there are times when I get the magic of electronic telepathy. Oh my god you're in my head get out of my head! That human voice connection is fun. The video also and fine through AR glasses. Bring on the AR glasses with subtitle and zoom lens.

Our brains are oozing out into our technological Oosphere, a Diaspora, and now is not the time for that.

Right now the Oosphere seems to like Hothouse Earth. We being Icehouse Apes is not so good for us.

I'm Icehouse Ape-centric but not stupid.

We've killed half the world since I came into it. To kill the other half is beyond stupid. I'm an atheist and aint no ghosts, but I recognize life, us , Earth as alive and sacred. And the murder should send me into righteous wrath. And does. And yet I do nothing.

But honestly, how much would I do? I'm lazier than Trump. I'm not doing anything,

Consider: Jeff Bezos currently worth $181 billion dollars. Median USA worth is $97,300.

Average height of men in the USA is 69 inches. Nice!

$97300 is to $181 billion as 69 inches to X inches. Solve for X.

Answer: Jeff Bezos is 2025 miles tall. He (or the Mecha he pilots) is his own moon. I'll bet you he wants to live as long as that.

Meanwhile the numbers are in. In 2016, 53% of white people voted for Trump. In 2020, 57% voted. 

This is all white trash civil war, white backlash v4.2, 

We don't need the world's interference. We got us a decade to go full retard. And we will!

Humanity is a Hellmouth

I want you to place thumb and index finger on your forehead like you have a theatrical headache, and you are touching the adult parts of your brain. The funny thing is, the adult parts, in area, are about the size of your thumb and finger pads.

The adults in the room part of your neocortex is just the current guess, but this is an area size that many animal brains possess easily. Animals are not stupid. Not even slime molds and bacterial mats are stupid. Corvid, primate, elephant, dolphin and whale brains more so aplenty.

So why are there no adults in the room?

Actually there are because there is an iron law related to energy expenditure and threat escalation.

Life never grows up. If we are the only life, then behavior being scale invariant, we shall populate the cosmos like a slime mold on... anything.

Just like poker, the bigger your grubstake... Like it or not, we could be just one tiny cell in a slime mold.

Humans are primates, therefore animals, but something else, we hope. Heroes of the Blob. or keratin.

In college, I wrote a paper for astrophysics I got a D on. Lunar Robot Farms. I'm sure if I search through this memory hut, I wrote about it.

So, the idea is a von Neumann self replicating system of robots that you drop like seeds on the Moon. (A crucial assumption is that there are significant backup resources for the initial robot wave).

The best model, I said was the foxes and rabbits classic Lotka-Volterra equations where the robot farms are the rabbits and the Moon is the fox. Assumption otherwise being, the food will not put up a fight.

If that's the dial, food puts up a fight, 

    then zero is classic exponential growth of virulence. A forest to be burned, a field to be scythed. A         #Moonbase to be won.

Crank the dial to 10, and

    let the convoluted nonlinear skirmishes begin, aka turbulence.

Should there be an 11? But only if there is a -1.

Is that possible? Well, on sounds systems, it means reversing compression and rarefactions, and yeah you can do that.

Point being, godamnit, if that's it, if we just gonna colonize the cosmos like a virus, then I'm all for pursuing -11.

Interior: Garage laboratory, two men standing admiring a biomechanical horror of an electric guitar sitting on a purple velvet manikin hands stand. In the background are shelves of computers blinking lights, and cable anacondas leading to big amps. The larger of the two men reaches for the guitar, but small guy, me, places a hand on his shoulder, 

   BIG GUY

"It goes to minus eleven"?

JOHNNY

"That's what I said."

BIG GUY

(grabs the guitar, starts to noodle) "What does that mean?"

JOHNNY

"It reverses Entropy"

   BIG GUY

"Ga-ga-goo? Mama!"

So, let's assume like the spooky Halloween Christmas story of Dickens, that people will be extinct by the year 2100 unless we change our wicked ways.

And people go meh. 2100? Okay how about 2032. We're going full Soylent Green like full retard. like to plaid.

But I tell you right now, 2032. Extinct by 2032. That's the premise. Too soon? It's only 12 years away. 

Because honestly, pound for pound in terms of great extinctions we haven't fucked up the planet all that much.Throw in some unintended consequences and for sure we could off ourselves. But in a mere twelve years? Not buying it.

And here is the funny ha ha thing. In the 1880's Italy decided to invade Africa. In order to feed their troops, they imported beef from India. The beef was infected with rinderpest (which in humans is called measles). The rinderpest worked its way south from Ethiopia and a decade later 90% of cows, oxen, sheep, buffalo, wildebeast and giraffe are dead. East Africa starved.

English colonists imported massive amounts of harm (HAH!)

FARM animals and most importantly pigs.

English colonists did not know about African Swine Fever because the local pigs and ticks and microbes had found an uneasy truce. And European pigs dropped like flies, but not enough to attain herd immunity. ASFV became endemic in sub-Saharan pigs. 

Fast forward to 2018 when an outbreak of ASFV forced China to eventually slaughter half its pigs.

By Chinese New Year 2019 there wasn't a pig to be found, so the wet markets of China provided meat from peacocks to alligators to snails and hedgehogs. At some point in the past, a jumping COVID jumped into our mouth.

And here we are.

Bit Off More Than We Could Chew

 Last we passed, dear reader, the giant hell monkeys and the gryphon rider had become uncomfortably cooperative and I wondered why.

Oh I see. Found themselves a nice tasty salamander.

A fifty footer. Have fun guys.

Madison's Orrery

I started with this activity primarily to created 3D printed objects, kitbashing and noodling rather than physical rendering. Haven't saved any time or effort and in fact added an additional layer of work.

So one day I said fuck it, this is fun all in it's own little world, who cares about 3D printing? I'd removed an arbitrary rule and opened up a world, or a #vir, a pocket universe in cyberspace.

A sculpt file in Adobe Medium is what I call a #vir, or would be a #vir if the scenes were walk-arounds rather than staged for photographs. 

This series I was thinking of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. Ancient ruins and blasted landscapes with incredibly pungent refugia interspersed. In this scene, giant monkeys accost(?) accompany(?) a wayfarer in a skull dust mask. What do the giant monkeys live on? No ones knows, since they ate everyone.

I make these things to escape the horrors around me. The admittedly low level horrors interspersed with long stretches of boredom. 

This is going to be a horrible winter. 

Well Boomers and Doomers we will test Madison's Orrery once again. Each world state circling a federal sun lasted all of four score and seven years.

And then they strengthened the gravitational pull of the sun.

What they forgot was those world states developed powers and character and kin. Shining California, Oregon and Washington, perhaps the last embers of liberal democracy. Or perhaps, allied with Hawaii and the Deep State, the next step in slime mold experimentation that gets us a seat at the table on Venus.

I say thank all nonexistent Gods for the Deep State. They suffer the ills of organization which happens to all, public or private, yet is uniquely capable of big dick thinking, or big vagina thinking. Or big tit thinking. We need big tit thoughts more than ever.

(Speaking of which, Kim Guilfoyle and don jr should become sex workers and (s)he'd make his own fortune).

So after January 20 everything wrong is the fault of soft penis liberals. 

And the drama queen right wingers are freaking losing everything. Ready to be sent to gulags and reeducation centers. (And yes, we shou;d make them get MBAs before we send them to North Dakota!

Come on QAnon! A Gianforte in charge of Montana? Tony Montana??! 

Dave Chapelle laid it out. Nothing changed. Like we been telling you!

Stupid white fucker. That's me. And that's how I feel if I wasn't white, but doing OK. 

I think I'm on top of things and it turns out I'm sleep walking just like you.

And probably because the AIs can think a million times faster than us.