Brutticus

If you catch site of a bear, spread out your arms and legs (and use any jackets like frills) to make yourself as big as possible, and make as much noise as you can.

Do Not Run Bears can run at like 40 mph

As far as it being cold, a water bottle left out at night can get cold. An insulated bottle left out will stay cold through the hottest part of the day

Buffy Supernatural Smallville The Arrowverse stuff

I dunno man. I just couldn't get into the serialized urban fantasy pretty people vs monster of the week genre, even thought it feels like it should be right up my ally. I used to play a TON of V:tM and WW:tA, and Im all about camp and community theater energy. I liked some of the other Whedon stuff at the time, like Firefly. And I'm a life long fan of all things super heroes and I even respect Arrowverse from a far for its commitment to its status as a multimedia project (before the MCU, even).

More recently, some similarly themed shows have been made and I got into them way more; What We Do In The Shadows and Stan Against Evil, and I think maybe the magic sauce was that I would have liked the energy paired something less earnest and more tongue in cheek. All of these shows also had the issue of really annoying fandoms. Its probably the reason I couldn't lower my hackles around Doctor Who.

Nah fuck that. They did this. This isnt Trump vs Everybody. The camps are already up. they dont get come back feigning ignorance without even apologizing. They just want a pre 2015 status quo.

I came here to post this

I grew up in the 90s. My parents got me into a really rigorous k-12 program where we were easily the poorest family. My parents were dealing with work and chronic illness and I was floundering academically. The school social worker nice enough but this was the era where they put boys who were bored in class on ritalin. My parents found a letter I was about to send a friend with some (admittedly overwrought) prose about how much I hated it and got alarmed. They sent me to therapy to get a second opinion. That happened over two years, and once I left that school, I was okay. That worker was really good, but I was a kid and I was just dealing with an external stressor.

When my mom died, I started losing track of days, and taking very risky behaviors. Mostly I would meet strangers for anonymous, sometimes unprotected sex. My family and friends noticed I was spiraling and after a few months, my dad insisted to start therapy. We could only afford to go to a local religious org. I didn't have much say in who I could see, it was all students working on racking up clinical hours, there was constant turnover so the rapport i would build with one was vaporized after maybe 3 or 4 months. Looking back, I realize at this point in my life I really needed a male therapist, because I was making it weird with the female ones, especially since they were, as mentioned, students, and about my age. In the end, I got annoyed with the turnover, especially after my favorite one left.

But my self destructive behaviors got worse, and I didn't resolve any of my grief. I got bored with school and started working in EMS. Everything was a pressure cooker. I was working nights, so I didn't see my friends or family. Management was hostile and full of middle aged white dudes (in 2015!). My coworkers were a bunch of catty assholes. The work was fast paced and brutal and precise and I watched a lot of people, including kids, die. I didn't have time to indulge myself. I barely had time to eat. I made it a year, but I should have left before. I considered hiring a prostitute. I considered suicide. I didn't want to my coworkers know (they were gossipy, and our turf covered the counties mental health crisis center, so they would have seen me eventually).

When I left, I went back to school and I was surrounded by slightly younger college girls, so I started getting a little crazy. I considered killing myself. I didn't want anyone to know, so I looked into suicide kits, and actually got a VPN with the intention to order one and just have it hang around until I was ready. This first concrete step kind of horrified me. I had health insurance at this point, from Obamacare, so I found a real therapist. I saw this guy for five years. It was really great. I worked through all the trauma and grief in a way that felt safe and healthy. He eventually "graduated" me. I felt really proud. I still do.

I know finding the right therapist sucks, and would suck even if we didnt live the hellscape of late capitalism. but I do think that if you find someone you vibe with, it can get better.

Little trick they taught us in CIA

I remember this scene ends with the tidal wave of maple syrup but I cant remember what episode.

OH NO I KILLED HER!

Is this the Hurricane?

As far as I am aware, crypto and NFTs are worth nothing. We might see the Federal gov prop it up for a little longer, given how much the industry contributed to Trumps war chest in 2024, but I don't expect it be actually worth anything.

I was using "Block chain" as a generalized term for what could be called "the NFT" bubble which absolutely was a thing in 2021, kick started by that Beeple auction and continuing until... roughly Dan Olson's 'Line Go Up' video. Bitcoin had obviously existed long before this. But the under tones were that crypto idiots were pitching was that it would replace all regulatory bodies with web3 block chain technology. They wanted to put all records, including Banking and property records (obviously) but also things like medical, employment and educational records as well, including educational and employment accreditation earned. There are a lot of dimensions to this (that are all extremely dystopian), but I feel confident calling that a tech bubble, with the exact same paradigm shift mentality that underpins the thought process underpinning AI right now.

I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I do think it will burst. It reminds of the ludicrous claims made about the last two few VC tech bubble trends, like VR and Blockchain. The hype wasn't that it was a useful technology. It was that these were the new paradigm shifts. These will change how society fundamentally functions. Obviously they didn't. Obviously those bubbles burst.

Part of the reason, I think, is that the current round of venture capitalists made their fortunes on the internet itself. It was the paradigm shift, and it toppled the way people had done things for a hundred years in a way that can't really be described to anyone who didn't live through it. It colonized and conquered every space humans went, and became ubiquitous. Retail stores found themselves under siege by amazon. Video stores found themselves obsoleted by streaming platforms, cable TV and movie theaters fought for relevance. It made some men richer than God. A computer in the palm of your hand, allowing you access to the totality of human knowledge and the collective of human communication. It was like the fucking ansible.

Those structures have calcified now, and the internet is at its limit for integration. So tech bros latch on to ever more destructive technologies named after ever more dystopian sci fi, figuring that throwing a billion at any random project is worth it if pans out once again, and it becomes the next paradigm shift. The problem is that all the projects they try to elevate are mostly just ways to disrupt existing industries and reform them under their control without worker protections. Uber operated at a loss for 15 years just to turn taxi driving into indentured servitude. Mark Zuckerberg was obsessed with VR because his primary competitors owned a hardware platform (so Google owns Android, Apple Iphone etc) and he needed FB to have one too. Being a tech bro, the reason he pitched as meeting software was to undermine commercial real estate. NFTs were an attempt to disrupt central banking. AI is an attempt by Silicon Valley to cut highly paid tech workers from the payroll.

Sorry, this post got away from me. This is the part that has a bubble timer on it, I believe. LLMs produce garbage code, and garbage art. It has inflicted immediate, incalculable harm on people real lives. Eventually, I believe (if the current world order survives anyway) lawmakers will clamp down on it.

I don't think the VCs care much about the infinite incalculable loss. But there's this idea that (I think) Robert Evans introduced me to. He noted that Fascists love the infinite lie machine. Fascist governments classically controlled the media, and Russia has demonstrated what a wonderful weapon of war LLMs really are. That alone terrifies me. Its worth something to the worst people, and who knows what might happen if say, Peter Thiel wants to continue underwriting it so that way he can, say, direct fascist uprisings against governments that try to regulate him, or I don't know, portray striking workers as domestic terrorists.

It certainly is a problem to be sure. but it was like that before Mangadex.