And How Many Petulant Letters Embedded In Well-designed Structures?

In the first years, herds of over a hundred pigs would sweep through the farms and homesteads of Indian territory in eastern Oklahoma, devastating the land and driving rural people into nearby towns. They quickly armed themselves and formed militias to fight the hogs, but progress was slow. Over the next decade they pushed herds out of open land and into more vegetated areas. The hogs found enough shelter and forage in the forests and shrubland to breed at still alarming rates. Hunting parties started regularly scouting open ground for any pigs daring enough to venture out of cover. Over time these parties became more systematic and economical, figuring out how to anticipate and capture entire herds. Although they still had no usable farmland, the people developed efficient butchering and processing techniques and found safe routes through the landmine fields to trade for Texan crops. Initially devastated by the hog invasion, the east Oklahoma nations eventually fought back and carved out a niche for themselves in the new American order.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

Eyes on the future, the past is fuel

Dig deeper, burn hotter, run faster

Don't think about what was here yesterday

Don't think about what won't be here tomorrow

#childrensrights

I think one of the most damaging ideologies towards children is the conviction that having children isn’t a calling but a moral obligation.

Doctor House * is a real doctor * not a real house

Doctor Worm * not a real doctor * is a real worm

Rome in its Republican period was undoubtedly the predominant military force of its time. Something about its religious and military practices, combined with its republican form of government, made the Romans do war unlike anyone else. For this post, the most important point I want to make is that Rome conquered most of its territory as a republic. In its imperial period, Roman territory did grow some, but ultimately the Empire was unstable and fractured into multiple autocratic states.

In 1789 the Estates General met in France. Called by the king and then elected by the people of France, this body rejected their monarchical mandate to address the state deficit and instead wrote a new constitution for France, establishing a democratic order on the European continent. The kingdoms around France reacted to this affront to monarchical power by bringing troops to French borders. Fired by nationalism and democratic enfranchisement, the new French state mustered an army exponentially larger than any of its neighbors. The wars that dominated the next twenty(ish) years of European history would see the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a large expansion of French territory.

During World War II the United States mobilized to an enormous degree to fight European fascist states and the empire of Japan. Huge numbers of young men were conscripted to fight, entire industries were devoted to military production, and all over the nation families rationed food in order to support the war effort. This just twenty years after women were granted the right to vote. At this point the United States was the oldest democratically elected national government in the world, invoking its national fervor for the cause of mass violence. In the half century after and then some, the United States dominated the world economically and militarily.

All this to say that for a very long time democracy and military power have been bound together. The most democratic nations have been the ones able to muster the largest armies, engage the most industrial production, demand the most sacrifice from their populations. On a geopolitical scale, democracy has meant power.

But here's the twist, and what terrifies me about the current moment: with the rise of machines and machine learning, and the consolidation of server ownership into the hands of just a few oligarchs, it's unclear whether that power dynamic still holds. Drones and other remote, even autonomous, technology have made both factories and battlefields less human. The human crowds that filled Roman or Parisian plazas can be atomized and identified by automated surveillance networks. Mao says that political power flows from the barrel of a gun. What happens when the guns aren't in human hands?

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

Batman: dystopian fascism

Superman: utopian fascism

Iron Man: techno-fascism

Captain America: nationalism

Spider-man: anarchism

if you've ever used the London Underground you might have noticed that it often gets uncomfortably hot. the reason for this is actually that its builders dug too greedily & too deep and as a result the trains are very close to the fires of hell. hope that helps.

In 1971 Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Jimmy Carter assumed office during some of the economic and geopolitical turmoil that followed. Reagan took office, radically changed tax policy to benefit wealthy people, and ushered in a boom era in the economy. He handed off power to his vice president Bush, then Clinton took over during the Internet boom of the 1990s. Bush 2 started the Iraq War, ushering in an era of heavy US military involvement in the Middle East. All US administrations from Truman onward involved themselves in affairs of that part of the world. Obama inherited and continued that era, his main domestic accomplishment being a health insurance for all system that expanded and subsidized the private health insurance market.

Trump came to power and held it until the Covid-19 pandemic. His administration lowered taxes on rich people, disrupted US international agreements, and appointed a large number of judges. The murder by police of George Floyd sparked a wave of protests that occupied major cities for months leading up to the 2020 election. Joe Biden won with a tenuous legislative majority and governed the country during four years of adaptation and recovery from the pandemic and the nation's response to it. The democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 elections.

Donald Trump won the election of 2024 with a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He invited Elon Musk into the White House and cabinet meetings, and gave Musk unprecedented access to data systems across the federal government through the newly created DOGE. DOGE began directing the firings of masses of government workers, actions that were challenged in the court system.