Many people say blood is thicker than water...I don't know. I don't think so. Not mine. Not during my presidency. Once I'm done they will be saying that water is thicker than blood. Water will be like sludge slowly moving through, it'll be so slow folks. My bood will be fast, faster than anything anyone has seen. Faster than water. They won't even know how to measure it. The blood cuff won't cut it. They will squeeze the little ball and nothing happens because my blood is so thin. Pressure is impossible. I put a lot of pressure on my people, my beautiful people and I am very used to pressure. But not my blood. There is no more pressure and my heart beats very quietly because my blood is so thin. Very very quietly. The doctors can't hear it anymore and they say that they have never seen a heart beat so quietly folks. It's the first time in history.
One of my favorite threads of the AI saga is how it's just doing things that were already happening, but packaged as task agnostic live saas. ChatGPT always existed in the minds of capitalists.
The desire for mass produced slop was there all along. People were doing it. Now computers are doing it. It's not a revolution -- it's business as usual. Frankly? That's a fascinating insight!
Reading City of Quartz for an art/game project I'm doing. It's fucking heart breaking reading about all the failed communes and communist groups who were pushed out of the area. I mean say what you want about American socialism, or vague "leftism" (though there were plenty of Mexican socialists in the mix), but people were trying to build a different world. They almost did it too.
I feel like if I could just go there and stare at the empty industry buildings and urban decay long enough, I could figure out why it all went so wrong. It's like LA was the future of US capitalism and it simply collapsed into a black hole of neoliberalism and anti-communism. The essays in the book were written in the 90s so I can't imagine all the shit that's happened since.
Pineapples are cool though.
I came out of the Bush years as a liberal atheist skeptic teen and voted for Obama in 2008. Obama disappointed by 2012 and the libertarian stuff seemed kind of appealing. After all I was a very rational, logical person and didn't understand why people in charge didn't want to do the rational, logical thing. By 2014 I realized the libertarian thing was another dead-end and went back towards something more liberal. Gamergate was not appealing at all. I hated all that shit being spammed on 4chan and reddit. It always came off as sexist and manufactured. I did struggle with the ideas about privilege but not enough to join that clown show. By 2015 I was with Bernie. By 2016 I was jaded. My material conditions degraded enough to make me very angry. Luckily it was also around the time there was plenty of socialist rhetoric in the right places. I simply got lucky in the internet social media paremovedo machine. I bounced off the right pegs to place me in a position where I wanted change and socialism could provide it.
Then I kept finding footholds on bits of theory and history, slowly learning more and more. Podcasts helped out with some of that. Thanks to Trump enough shit kept happening to provide ample examples of why capitalism and liberalism is failing. Then COVID broke everything and that was it.
I think watching the internet be taken over by social media companies and then this engagement through outrage machine being built is kind of like watching industrialization take over the world. One minute you're an artisan in 2003, in IRC, in AIM, on a php forum. The next you're on the street outside of the "this totally real issue that's really important and everyone should pay attention to because it's why your life sucks, not us" factory. In retrospect it's so obvious what all of it was for, even going back to 2008 and Ron Paul's meme machine. The game was rigged from the beginning.
I can't tell what the split on that arterial is. Is that a protected pedestrian/bike lane or dedicated public transit lane? It seems like the 6 lanes on the left are for cars. The right lane on the other side of the huge grass median is for what? There is that nice park/green space as a buffer between the commercial center and the arterial but the only pedestrian connectivity seems to be sidewalks? I wonder if there are any tunnels between the residence area and that green space. There don't seem to be any bridges. Though the residences seem to have some mixed use so maybe it's not all bad if you can still get to the amenities you need without crossing a 6 lane road. Crossing that 8 lane seems like a nightmare for abuela.
I wonder if they would ever encroach on that green space for a highway. That whole band seems like leaving room for future expansion. It would suck to grow up with that park and then lose it to a highway. Even at the intersection it looks like they left room for an interchange.
Affirmative action but for white morons.
Yeah but steel is heavier than feathers.
New episode drops in a few hours (9PM EST) for the western hemisphere. It drops tomorrow (2AM GMT) for everyone else. Share your thoughts on the show, theories, and grievances.
Episode description: "Carol's new approach to The Others yields unexpected revelations; Manousos finds himself in strange territory upon regaining consciousness."
Use spoiler tags for spoilers
"I don't know how to interpret this, other than to say that industry prevailed in their influence over Congress,"
I don't know how to interpret this other than to say that everything is working as intended.
Can't wait to learn Tyler's family voiced their concerns that Tyler was practicing witchcraft (evolutionary biology) and listening to the devil's music (jazz and/or rock n roll).
Episode drops in a few hours (9pm EST) if you're in the western hemisphere. It drops tomorrow at 2am GMT elsewhere.
Episode description: Manousos begins a dangerous trek to meet Carol. Returning home from Las Vegas, Carol gets creative with her rebellion.
Use spoiler tags for spoilers.
Episode releases tonight (Dec 4) at 9pm EST.
Episode Description: "Carol shares a horrific discovery and learns new truths in the process. Mr. Diabaté lives life to the fullest in Sin City."
Use spoiler tags for spoilers.
White Power Bottom 
I'm building a portfolio so I can try to get a job doing environment art. I have a little bit of an idea how the art-end of game dev works. However I can't help but to think about what games I would make if I was a project director or lead designer. What are your game ideas? They can be as unrealistic or realistic as you like. Big or small.
Mine:
I want to do an immersive sim with retro graphics and homage Deus Ex, Systemshock, and even VTMB (in terms of atmosphere). A grungy cyberpunk game where it's night all the time. I want to bring in TrueAnon type conspiracy stuff to replace the more reactionary elements of DE. Large semi-open world environments set in various locations. The PNW or NoCal for rural forested areas inhabited by militias. Suburban areas with a retrofuturistic 90s vibe. Large high-tech dirty cities. The good gameplay qualites of Deus Ex but updated and with QoL improvements. Though I would probably get rid of the squeenix quest marker and hand-holdy stuff. Make the player have to talk to NPCs and look around to figure things out. I would keep the graphical fidelity comparable, but ramp up the size and amount of stuff in the game. Environments would be full of vignettes and minigames. Make it so that not playing the story is rewarding and fulfilling too.
Another one is a spiritual sequel to San Andreas. Set it in CA, NV, OR, and WA. Set in the mid 90s instead of early 90s. A single open-world. Absolute tons of mini games and side-shit to do. Bring in skateboarding and the real BMX gameplay that never made it into SA. Improve the gang recruitment and territory system. Create real factions between the police, gangs, and feds. Increase dating mechanics. Tons of weapons. More B&E mini-games. Drug selling sim that you can actually scale up and make a business out of. Probably simulate some kind of economy in the game. Deep character customization. Tons of vehicles. Heists. Casinos. Casino management. Street racing. Car customization. Improved tagging. Just tons of content. Again, I would keep the graphics roughly the same, just include more stuff.
I need a city sim/logistics sim game but set in world with a centrally planned economy. The city sim stuff would focus on urbanization and good city planning. The logistics stuff would supplement that and lend restrictions to what you can or can't do. Like cash would in a traditional city sim. Not only would you be responsible for your sims and their city, but you need to create and operate supply lines as well. Like a mix of Factorio, Skylines, and Railway Empire. I have more specific ideas on how this would work, but I've already wrote enough for one post.
Yes. There is not going to be some cathartic cleansing of the US by outside forces. We have to do it ourselves.
Posting this because I think it's very relevant. I don't read it entirely literally because the article is about Western socialists who criticize AES, the people we would call ultras or leftcoms. I think if you take the article's principles to heart you can see a certain martyrdom and lack of rigor even among "tankies." Hexbear has been fairly good today while left reddit seems to be having some struggles.
Sentiments like: