deleted by creator

i like to say something like, “this country was constructed from the very beginning to be ruled by a tiny, powerful elite who claimed ownership of nearly all the land and a very large portion of the people. the strategy ability of a small group of rich people to frame the issues of the day and indoctrinate a great many others to repeat and enforce their values has been here for a long time.”

i grew up and lived in “inland” FL for 25+ years. i left after a particularly bad hurricane season. my area took a hit early on that year, but was otherwise calm and rainy with power outages rarely lasting more than 48 hours for each of the multiple hurricanes that year. i worked for a statewide utility company though, and it was a nightmare. everything was fucked all summer. it took weeks and even months in some places to restore communication. the amount of frenetic scurrying that goes on behind the scenes to keep things rolling smoothly for utility consumers is underestimated by everyone who hasn’t seen it.

over the last few decades of being several hundred miles north and actually inland behind mountains, some of my friends who stayed use this logic… “oh, well we’re 30 miles inland and at 50’ above sea level. sea level rise isn’t a big deal.” as though being adjacent to catastrophe is some kind of protection from catastrophe.

the failure of civic infrastructure in a massive metropolitan & densely populated area has knock on effects that cascade outward. displaced people overwhelm social services while they wait for transportation to whatever community is offering relocation assistance. utilities share infrastructure and resources. opportunists move in to feed on desperation. florida is entirely a malarial zone and the big events will be in the warm/rainy season. denge, west nile, zika will all explode when people are sheltering in tent colonies waiting on government assistance that will be late to arrive, if ever, while the truthers throw bricks at the malathion trucks because they think it’s giving everyone nanobots. my point is the disruption of sea level rise will not be contained to low lying areas. if the habitability of everything from Miami up to West Palm becomes dubious, that’s over 6 million people looking for a place to stay, fresh water, and something to eat.

this is a map of persons filing for FEMA aid as being displaced by Katrina, estimated at 400,000-1.3 million people:

there are of course other differences between NOLA and Florida, but one of the ones floridians should keep in mind is that all mention of climate change and sea level rise have been vanished by executive order from state agencies that would theoretically be in a position to buffer some of the worst impacts. having worked in public service for over a decade, i can tell you that working inside a state that has a government openly hostile to the established science of your services has an attrition effect on the people who work to provide those services. they burn out faster than normal and they leave to go somewhere they are not shit upon. they go somewhere where trying to help people with honesty won’t cost them their future.

i could see them all completely falling in line with instruction, except some third string writer who caught it on his phone and blew the conspiracy wide open as a guest on The Adam Friedland Show.

and then everyone on TAFS gets into a helicopter accident in Medford, NJ.

Where I come from
everybody dies in a helicopter crash.
Me and all my friends live a simple life
cookin’ to death in helicopter gas.

she signs on as VP and begins covering for Joe at various, tightly-scripted campaign appearances. the entire media apparatus comes together to insist all of us for her turn and during a live event, like an SNL appearance playing herself next to Kate McKinnon as her twin, when she is pumped full of B12 and medical grade amphetimines and pantomiming playing a duet on a piano, the curated crowd is glowing and chanting it’s love for her, some critical neuron cluster for inhibition depolarizes and she starts singing the N-word in dementia-powered ecstasy.

the control booth is too surprised and awestruck to dump out of it before the delay runs out, and a full 4 seconds of it hits the airwaves.

the newscycle tries to convince everyone that it was a russian deepfake hack and that it didn’t actually happen. but it did. and within 12 hours everyone with access to a screen has seen it.

lol hell yeah.

the influencer phenomenon is something i understand but also don’t understand. like, as soon as someone identifies as “an influencer”, doesn’t that immediately undermine their authenticity because some corporate entity is paying them to peddle something? it would be much more potent to go the route of subtle product placement, imo. “oh that guy who makes cool wood sculptures always uses that brand of chisels” etc.

that ClimateTown guy did an episode about gas stoves years ago, and the section on a marketing strategy proposed for the gas lobby to pay “influencers” of highly specific demographics to make cooking with gas seem cool/superior, with such grim/hilarious characterizations as

• hispanic millenials
• design enthusiasts
• promising families
• young city solos

… and basically how cheap it is to go this route, because influencers are wildly cheaper than media buys for ad campaigns, professional video production, actors, etc.

anyway, after seeing under the hood, the only thing that makes sense for this as a strategy is that it’s too cheap not to do. but, when i’m watching some kind of content maker that has a native ad sponsor, my automatic assumption is that the thing they are peddling is probably trash and they are literally only this to make the rent or whatever.

a sense of entitlement the young now seem to have in abundance compared to their predecessors

well, all the material entitlements have been cut so the young are trying to get by with memory and vibes. 40 years of telling them they must “do more with less” and now you’re mad they’re doing it?

revolving lines of credit are generally rigged so that the user pays extra for the convenience or the perception of convenience. for every one user that is getting the most out of the deal, there are probably 9+ that are getting screwed.

especially in an economic downturn when more people tend to start carrying balances of unsecured debt at high interest.

it’s so easy to slip off of good discipline and end up in crazy debt with these credit lines.

literal credit cards.

here’s an article (aimed at the capitalist/investor class) about what they call “co-branded” cards and their “value”
https://www.tdsecurities.com/ca/en/co-brand-implications-for-airlines-credit-card-issuers

Airline co-brand credit cards have become increasingly more important to the airlines, which appear to have more leverage than the card issuers. The economics to the airlines from these programs are also typically based on revenue sharing, which is in their favor.

We believe airline loyalty and co-brand credit card programs are undervalued in the market. One U.S. airline has disclosed that their co-branded card contributed U$6.8B in 2023 revenue; and the company management believes this can grow to U$10B by 2030. We expect to see other airlines making earnings contributions from co-branded credit cards available during investor days later in the year.

here is a nerdwallet review with recommendations for 5 different credit card lines offered by United Airlines (scroll to the recommendation after the Chase Sapphire card)
https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/credit-cards/united-airlines-cards

the value proposition, as i understand it, is loyalty within an airline network. the cards generally come with travel perks, like access to swank dining lounges in certain airports where there are tons of comfortable seats with chargers, free food and drinks. i traveled with someone who had one and they could get us all in with their membership. it was ridiculous. all i could think was how the entire airport could be like that, except they make the rest of it shitty on purpose.

and of course the “points” towards travel and upgrades, which are often 2-5x when spending money at the airline. the first article discusses in more detail what the airlines get out of it, but generally rewards programs tend to induce more frequent purchasing especially because points can expire. not to mention, they can be shifted to induce making reservations during times where demand has slacked. and the very “best” cards have annual fees, which more or less offset any of the costs of the perks for a typical traveler.

you have to be a pretty hardcore, big spender to really churn the shit out of those programs to make your money back… and at that point, you’re probably exactly the kind of customer the airline wants to lock in. not to mention, you’ll push others who travel with you be on your flight, probably, if its family etc.

you may not transfer your earned points for cold drink upgrades as a member of the Subway Conductor Platinum club to any other sandwich tier and if you do not lower your voice, i will summon the restaurant police and they will escort you away from the service counter with extreme prejudice where you will lose your club membership and forfeit all earned points. and this will go on your credit report and your name will appear on the national Do Not Feed list.

love to see this truly advanced stage of capitalist development, where firms recognize the true profitability comes not from doing the thing that creates the good or performs the service… but instead turns into a mechanism for the development of financial products.

some pod I was listening to brought up how airlines make more money on their credit cards than their airlines. can’t wait to see everywhere become a bank offering their own boutique financial services to access their goods and services. a highly efficient use of everyone’s time and effort.

i remember a planner guy in like 2010 explaining to me how china’s ghost cities were a terrible no good failure. this was after one of my “bits” where, when someone identifies themselves as an “urban planner” or “regional planner” here in the states, i give them a bit of a cartoonish side-eye and say, “are you trying to tell me there’s a plan at work here? [optional: because i call bullshit]” while gesturing to everything around incredulously. it’s generally a hit with actual planners, but this guy got a bit incensed.

somewhere around like 2018/2019, after i had become more informed about China in a historical/material context, i started telling anyone who would listen that they were blowing us out of the water. like we would soon be throwing turds at the sun and hooting at each others’ genitals while they were doing star trek type shit. which is barely an exaggeration anymore, and the hits of their social and scientific achievements keep coming. but good luck convincing anyone that it’s because they invest in their people while we invest in the administration / protection of our capital formations.

could they even get that many to sign up? like, maybe if they gutted statutory-universal healthcare, ended post-secondary education stipends, and banned rent control. i could see that driving enough young people to stand in line for “a way out”, but if they did it all at once, i could also see those moves blowing up in their faces.

cuba is the mother of all mindfucks for america brain. literal stray dogs in havana get more material support to exist than humans in the US.

i managed to get to go on a research/information/knowledge/cultural exchange through a short-lived university program for a few weeks, doing homestays almost the entire time, mostly havana, but travel around to communities in the western half. this was during the very minor relaxation of relations during obama. literally everyone else on the trip was a shitlib tenured labor aristocrat treating it like a tropical vacation, i was the only underpaid, soft-funded staff member. i only managed to slip onto the trip because they didn’t have enough commitments at a critical point and one of the cooler faculty mentioned it to me, but of course i had to find my own funding inside of a few days in an institution at full austerity mode. i found a little and said i would cut a check from my personal money right there for whatever the difference was. apparently that embarassed my shitlib, overpaid boss and the other purse-string holders to unass the relatively minor amount of cash from the existing travel/professional development funds.

i was the only one that did the “homework”, reading about the specifics of the embargo, practicing some conversational cuban spanish, etc. the guy who made our arrangements was from the states but had been living down there for like 15 years. he wasn’t overtly political in conversation with the group, but he and i were the only ones that could discuss topics like adults. word got around, any time any of the other travelers had questions about the embargo or material provisioning of housing or property ownership worked, if they couldn’t find our guide, they would ask me.

what i noticed was that there weren’t destitute people. there were no walking wounded, sickly people with untreated disorders shuffling themselves to/from their shifts. no “sleepers”/unhoused. it took the others at least a week to notice, because they had trained themselves not to see them in the states. i was there for mayday, and i only saw cops once. 3 very young people in loose fitting shirts, no weapons, piled into a very tiny little fiat looking hatchback (one in the backseat). they were slow rolling somewhere early in the morning and did not look serious at all or even glance at the pile of pale skinned ameroids on the corner.

the city and streets are always busy (though the afternoon quiets a little from the heat), but not packed with cars. people hang out on benches and other spots everywhere (what we call loitering in the US) and smoke tobacco, chatting the day away. the nights are the busiest times, open house parties at random residences, lots of plazas where people congregate and play music on speakers and dance, kids skateboarding around monuments but no one is shitty at them and they aren’t shitty to others.

the buildings are not lined with advertisements, but the walls have murals and there is public art everywhere, critiquing machismo, the commodification of che, or celebrating the revolution. the visual field looking around the city is busy with color and life, but not COCA COLA, MET LIFE, M&Ms, FIDELITY. that, admittedly, took me days to recognize as advertisements are things i’ve tried to filter out mentally. others noticed once i pointed it out.

i wish more working class americans could see it with their own eyes in a relaxed travel way, instead of how it seems like it’s mostly the domain of affluent libs with no critical perspective, only going so they can stunt on people back home about having the social capital to go somewhere restricted. but, obviously, that is one of the benefits of the embargo system for empire, to keep us ignorant, uncertain, and afraid.

it was explained to me that having the support of Jim Clyburn, the 83 year old man at the top of the extremely gerrymandered 6th congressional district of South Carolina, was effectively the same as having the support of all people of color in the united states.

this was why Bernie Sanders had no chance at winning the general election in 2020 despite winning the first 3 primaries and we had to go with Biden (who had won zero primaries), because Biden had the support of Clyburn, the most powerful DNC power broker in South Carolina… which is like boasting about being the best bullfighter in all of Belgium.

are you implying that being a potent gatekeeper for the convoluted primary process might not translate to broad electoral support?

that kicker guy for his commencement speech

i had to look this up. i cannot wrap my mind around a liberal arts school inviting a late 20s guy, who is lavished with lotto money for sometimes being called in to ritualistically kick a ball on TV, to talk to young people about to start their professional lives / careers. absolutely the least qualified motherfucker on the planet from the jump. the fact that he’s a Tier 1 douche bro dipshit should have been spotted from a mile away.

anyway, more to the general thesis of the post (re: women in conservative affinity groups confronting overt misogyny jerks)… it seems like the problem has been around for a while, but the tensions are heightened, which could be an artifact of seeing these discussions happen online, where people just totally pop off unlike IRL. i say this because i was raised in an evangelical community until i separated from it in the late 90s. it’s taken decades to unpack a lot of the values and false self-conceptions i was indoctrinated with, but i remember in the 2000s when i was a single guy, trying to figure myself out and not wanting to be on my own. i wasn’t dead set against christianity and values of sacrifice and tolerance etc., so i tried considering “church” as simply a heterodox community that maybe i could exist in and find someone who shared these values.

my experiences and my friends’ reports of casually showing up to a “young” church / event to scope it out was that it was a meat market / matchmaking ritual for young singles with a high ratio of women to men. like a well lit daytime night club, in that there was a cohort that was there to find a man and all they cared about was that the guy wasn’t an asshole or a drunk. the vibe was one where it felt like all the messaging being dumped on these young, single women was that the only place to find “a good man” was their church. and even back then, the odds were not good for young single women.

i can definitely imagine in the last 20 years with overall attendance down and the contradiction of trying to exist as a human in an evangelical community adding more tension that conservative communities would become even more conflicted and contested as spaces for negotiating matches/pair-bonding.

resist Big Shower & Big Toilet: shit the bed and roll around in it for your health.

gold is for the voice of Kenny Rogers and the wood-fired rotisserie chicken of Kenny Rogers Roasters.

lol i used to work in a call center for a now-bankrupt OEM PC company, doing like tech support for residential customers. it was so funny how many people had installed this on their computer, hated its presence, could not get rid of it, and were constantly being terrorized by its fake alerts. i don’t know what percentage of total national call volume it generated to support lines during its heyday, but if it was more than 20% i would not be surprised.

i bet most are simply not paying attention. america is a distraction + trauma factory. they are thinking about their boss, their friends, their kids, their living situation. their awareness of american empire and its rogue client state is probably some vague notion of a religious conflict in the middle east / “holy land” where there are good guys and bad guys, and for the culturally christian informed by the casual glimpse of a headline, the good guys are israel, because jews/jesus.

to that end, the protests are existentially threatening to the imperial relationship, because the minute a reasonable (i.e., not racist, not in a death cult) person asks, “what is all this about?” and gets exposed a non-hasbara narrative, it looks like something bad that should not be supported. not saying that everyone who asks gets the real story, but it creates the opportunity for them to get something closer than the casual media consumption narrative. this is also why uncontrolled but popular media platforms are a threat (like tiktok). the simple facts / context of this conflict are damning to israel as a settler colonial ethnostate and the US as its patron. not to mention, the capital formations that have bet long on israeli theft and were assured by their government allies that it was rigged to fall in their favor.

it surprised me over these months to see the speed and commitment of the entire system to rally around the rogue client state, watching the heavy handed response to peaceful protests, and the moves to frame anti-genocide speech and aid for families to be regarded as support of terrorism. it’s organized and calculating, but it also comes across as panic button. real power doesn’t panic.

i am left wondering if this conflict is the tentpole around which the contradictions of the US will ultimately unravel.