CORY DOCTOROW is a science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist. He is a contributor to many magazines, websites and newspapers. He is a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honourary doctorate in laws from York University (Canada) and an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; he is also a Cornell University AD White professor-at-large, a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. In 2024, the Media Ecology Association awarded him the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.
His novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), Verso Books (UK), Beacon Press (US), SCRIBe (UK), Titan Books (UK) and HarperCollins (UK). He has won the Locus, Prometheus, Copper Cylinder, White Pine and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.
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Note: The Canine of Ages, Velveteen, is doing great and getting the worship and bacon-treats she deserves. She is angry our current weather systems have prevented walkies. Apparently, she also likes to husky-wail to Katy Perry, which I suppose at least matches Perry’s alleged pitch.
Let’s get back to screaming at Republicans.
Somehow, possibly due to various cursed objects I have unknowingly acquired over the years, I’m sick again.
And I fucking hate this pigshit elemental, her stupid pig-soul and her nasty pig-fuck feet which are, somehow, the most normal and relatable thing about her. So this isn’t going to be some well-researched 5000 word essay to touch the depths of your vulnerably human heart and fill you with big feelings about humanity.
I’m just going to tell you why Marjorie Taylor Greene is sounding vaguely sane these days, and not quite as much like an Innsmouth cultist wharrgarbling her way through DC like. Well. A white lady space laser.
Remember when this kind of thing was mainly what we did online? Pepperidge Farms absolutely doesn’t remember, but will gladly monetize your remembering.
Ok, so yeah, I get it. She’s sounding vaguely able to be allowed out on her own recognizance and not like the chittering mating grunts barfed up by the Chaotic Evil lovechild of a Beholder and a bottle of peroxide.
And everyone Wants to Believe. Because in the 20s, believing a Republican heart has grown three times its size due to finally seeing the error of their ways requires pretty much the same mindset as actually believing, point for point, Fox Mulder’s pinwheeling, luminous wet dreams in the 90s.
I’m socially liberal, just fiscally conservative! That’s a real thing that makes sense and you need to respect it!
Fucking stop it. DO STOP BELIEVING. SHUT UP, JOURNEY. IT’S FRIDAY AND I’M TIRED.
Is she still insane? Oh, she probably never was. Just an adulterous asshole who loves nothing. Is she still conservative? I mean, is she still the aforementioned pigshit elemental trying to turn the rest of the world into her personal pigshit trough upon which to endlessly gorge? So yeah, still conservative. Is any of this genuine? Shut up. Don’t be stupid.
Is she aiming for a foothold on a leftie grift instead of the infinite rightie blood-money mine that disgorged her? Doing the thing that was so lucrative Back In the Time Known As the Day when any semi-decency-curious Republican was hailed as a Lion of the Resistance? It might be a good thought, but the pipeline is not quite so well-greased anymore BECAUSE WE’RE ALL EXHAUSTED WITH THE LIONS BEING TRASHPEOPLE IN LION-SUITS.
Plus, look, I don’t know how to tell you this if you don’t already know, but the left, being not so much into capitalism, is also not so much into paying for things. And the right is super into that, because they have wild fever dreams every night of they themselves being the One Who Knocks Gets Paid For Being a Superdick 24/7. So…probably not, when MSNBC is the only even plausibly non-rightwing dinosaur-channel and Hasan can’t even electrocute a dog on camera without woke snowflakes quietly wondering if maybe there was another explanation.
More different, and more upsetting, wharrgarbl
Is it all about running for President and/or Senate?
Ehhhh. Maybe that pissed her off. Maybe it was a good excuse. But that’s not what’s up. She’s an idiot, but she’s not actually stupid.
And that’s the most controversial thing I’m about to say.
Come now. Let us be civilized men. We all got the memo that America hates women so much they would literally vote for fucking anyone over a woman. The Xenomorph from Alien. The resurrected corpse of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. An LLM originally trained on Hanna Barbara cartoons and nothing else. Willy Wonka, post-human-trafficking trial. God damned Pennywise from IT. Anyone.
It is I who am eating the dogs and eating the cats! But what you gonna do? Vote for a WOMAN? Lol. Let’s Make the Nostromo Great Again!
No one doesn’t know that, including the Eternal Ruiner of a Perfectly Good and Universally Recognized Magic: the Gathering Acronym, Marjorie “Tool Time” Taylor Greene. And I don’t really think she gives a shit about the Senate on any level beyond “I’m tired of doing the whole ‘democracy’ thing every two years, six and I always get re-elected sounds way better.”
Nah, here’s what she’s up to.
Why mess with the perfection of this description? Aslan knows where I’m at. When there was only one set of paw-prints, that’s when He was stomping fascists.
Hey! Do ya know what’sfun?
Being the very well-paid performatively crazy asshole in a room full of normies who continually clutch their pearls at your antics.
Do you know what isn’t really any fun at all?
Being the performatively crazy asshole in a room full of performatively crazy assholes, each of whom stands to acquire more money, power, and fame the more bugfuck unearthly gibbering lunacy they spout in the direction of the Chief Clown of the Evil Clown Car, who just loves getting sprayed with a firehose of madness on the daily.
When the Jewish Space Laser lady is having to compete—AND LOSING—for the coveted position of the loudest, most uncouth, most unqualified violently fascist maniac in a massive shrieking, writhing pit of unqualified violently fascist maniacs?
Aw. You guys! She has the Sad! She has to actually work instead of just brain-barfing up whatever hot liquid poison she found on 4Chan and calling that policy. Working SUCKS! Especially when you don’t get any credit for all your hard grinding for the master. When he doesn’t even see what you do for him. How you abase yourself. How you sacrifice every part of a normal life you ever valued. When you lay yourself naked on the altar of Satan for the pleasure of His Name and Satan himself looks upon you for just an awkwardly long time before intoning:
Nah.
Here’s something I bet you have heard of: the work/life balance!
Poor baby bear! That must suck.
Wasn’t it just so much more fun when any time she randomly mouth-sharted in the direction of a recording device it made the national news and went viral on all the totally-not-astroturfed social medias? Man, what a great gig. I wish I could make millions not doing my job while feeding narcissistic sociopaths the half-digested remains of KiwiFarms like the hideous All-Mother of a Thousand Seagull-Young.
But now?
Lil’ Templeton the Rat isn’t getting any attention. She doesn’t get to rip words she barely understands out of the internet and hand them to someone way smarter to actually make something out of these days. She actually has no voice at all in this administration, and Baby’s First Bratz Doll really thought she would, for the same reason, apparently, FUCKING WAY TOO MUCH OF AMERICA thought they would.
When Trump hates the precise kind of human I am (eg a woman, a poor, brown, gay, and/or literally everyone who isn’t him), my big snuggly protective bear daddy doesn’t mean me! I’m special!
When Trump specifically looks me in the eye, tell me he fucking despises me, personally, and says no to all my dreams, I still won’t take any actual action against him, even words. Because words can hurt, y’all!
It’s gonna be basically like the first time when a bunch of crumbling establishment dinosaurs were running things and I’ll still skate by.
Oh no, my lady! This time, everyone in the administration is an unqualified, constantly-hallucinating, bonkers-racist/sexist/whatever-you-got Temu Renfield who can puke about locally-sourced Atlantis-flavor adrenochrome, and, so sorry for our players at home, that’s not even the current meta anymore!
So she can’t stand out. She can say the most unhinged spatial-anomaly-level battered star-shit and frankly, it’d rank like fifth in the news of the day. She’s been outgunned by Actual Vampire Peter Thiel. When a dude who controls half the internet and is just frankly and publicly acknowledged as a person who imbibes the blood of other persons to extend his own life is building his Barbarossa Dream House inside the right (I mean, what, he’s gonna choose the left?) ear of the President of the United States, where a dumb stegosaurus-toed bleach blonde bad-built butch body bitch gonna go from there?
Well. As it turns out…she did find a way to be the craziest voice in the Electric Bugaloo administration. By sounding vaguely normal and sane.
That IS the craziest thing you can do in TrumpWorld. Just sound a little normal. Get a Business Female Blow Out and wear a Serious Person Black Suit. Go on The Shows and just say regular fucking shit because out of that hellsphincter it sounds like Karl Screaming Marx come back to bless us and lift us to the light.
SOME PIG
Also, just between us Normal People, look at those anchors looking at her exactly the way a dog looks like a cat that’s suddenly acting like a dog.
It thinks it’s people!
Oh but isn’t it curious how everything that ichor-waterfalls out of her fang-hole like one of the Event Horizon Latin demons makes national news again.
Funny, that.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has not changed her act one fucking bit.
It’s just that sane is the new crazy in the Grand Guignol Theater of Vampires that is the second Trump Administration.
She just can’t get attention for barn owl screeching about Jewish space lasers anymore (in part because half the left would believe her) so she’s done the only thing no one else who works for Trump these days is willing to do, the single bridge too far: pretend to have normal opinions about issues, expressed normally, in normal media, which, coming from the political fucking equivalent of LARGE BLOODY MARGE sounds like soothing nature sounds because we’ve spent the last ten years non-consensually subscribed to WORLDTOILET TERROR TORNADO SOUND EFFECTS.EXE.
Marge is short for Marjorie. We all know that, right? RIGHT?
The report is this Clairol Zombie is semi, tepidly, tentatively, coyly saying things Bad Dad wouldn’t like if he ever heard about it, which he doesn’t because, let’s be real here, she’s not hot, for Mar-a-Lago standards of hot, and that’s all he cares about, because he told her not to run for Senate.
SO SHE ISN’T GOING TO RUN.
Oh, what a new leaf this fucking stump has turned over! This crawling sycophant, on her belly before the Serpent King. She’s a free citizen! Run, Forrest! But Papa Ubu said no, so she grovels and obeys—but on the school playground, she can’t even bring herself to whisper: Teacher sucks! she just mumblessomething about the juice selection at the cafeteria and expects to be seen as a badass rebel who’s really showing true leadership now for some reason.
I want to personally apologize to Amanda Seyfried, who never deserved to be part of anything adjacent to Congressional Garbage Disposal Greene.
Yeah, nope. She’s just doing whatever she can to stand out. Not because she’s in danger of losing her office. The empty streets of brainfuck Georgia aren’t going to vote for a Democrat, heaven forfend, am I right, fellow Graboid-spawn? Because she’s addicted to the dopamine rush of being hated like pure fire by everyone who doesn’t worship every twitch of her non-Euclidean feet.
For someone who was stuck as an unemployed CrossFit greaserat (YEP) before sacrificing a lot of really nice goats who loved their babies to get elected to Congress, that dopamine rush is beyond any heroin addict’s deepest fantasies. It really didn’t matter how anyone felt about her, she was seen. She was verifiably real. The existential void of profound meaninglessness was kept at bay, as long as people were saying her name online, every second on-the-second.
Now the existential void of profound meaninglessness absolutely has Trump’s blessing to run for Senate in any state it likes, as long as it’s cool being the little spoon in the ruins of the White House every night. But Margie doesn’t.
Don’t listen to this hoof-brained labubu hanging off the right’s rear-view mirror. Don’t give her the curious-dog look. She is a creature of social media, farming engagement like the oozing algorithm-incarnate she longs to be.
Miss Marjorie’s just finding out what all conservative women (and, on a long enough timeline, men, too) find out: once they’re done using you to hurt everyone like you, you never existed.
OMG LOOK! I got through all that without saying the word Nazi!
She’s a Nazi, though. She just thinks her shirt ain’t brown.
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Before today, I had never heard of Zoltan Istvan, California gubernatorial candidate in 2026. I only discovered his existance when one of his posts, about bringing Universal Basic Income to save people from AI-driven job extinction, appeared on my Facebook timeline.
Being the author of this essay and several posts about the realneed for UBI and the realdangers of AI, I decided to have a look at his program (Web Archive copy) and... couldn’t believe what I read in the AI and UBI sections. As the plot for political satire, they could be OK, but as real political programs... they’re funny in all the wrong ways.
Reading suggestion: for your convenience, this post is divided in two parts. The first one, “What Istvan proposes”, is a full copy made today of the AI and UBI sections of Istvan’s program, plus a few other points from the same page, with each point numbered to reference it later. The second part, which starts with the “In a nutshell...” paragraph, is my actual critiques. I suggest you just skim the first part and focus on the second, going back to the first to check some points when needed.
What Istvan proposes
THE SPECTER OF AI & CREATING AN AUTOMATED ABUNDANCE ECONOMY
AI will surpass the intelligence of humans later this year.
During 2026, tens of millions of humanoid robots will be mass produced that are both smarter & more physically agile than people.
By 2027, they will start dominating most workplaces, & by the end of the next California Governor’s term in 2030, they will replace half of California workers.
Soon after, they will replace almost all jobs anywhere, destroying the fabric of society as we know it. Yet no politician has a plan how to stop this imminent economic & humanitarian apocalypse. Zoltan does.
Zoltan is an expert on AI, having advised Presidents, world leaders, and policy makers about it. He specialized in AI ethics at graduate school at Oxford and spoke about it at places like the World Bank & World Economic Forum.
Zoltan will help enact laws that protect ordinary people from the effects of AI, robots, and automation. He wants to harness robot labor to dramatically reduce human work loads, creating a plan for 1-2 day workweeks for people. This is part of a grand plan he calls the Automated Abundance Economy, where people work less but have more free time and economic resources than ever before.
As part of this plan, he will make sure within his four years of being in office, every California home will freely receive or be leased at least one full-sized humanoid robot that cleans dishes, cooks food, does laundry, helps with driving, babysits kids, watches pets, and goes to work for people, when possible.
He will implement a Universal Basic Income for all US citizens that are legally living in California. This will offset the effects of AI taking jobs.
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
Long before Andrew Yang brought Universal Basic Income to prime time, Zoltan was touring the country telling Americans they must embrace a basic income because of coming AI. This continues to be a huge push for Zoltan’s campaign for California Governor.
On Day 1 of being in office, Zoltan will work on establishing a permanent Universal Basic Income for every legal US California citizen, setting a national precedent for the country.
Zoltan is amenable to any means to establish a UBI, but will focus on the use of taxing robot and AI labor that take human jobs, as well utilizing government land, resources, and crypto.
Zoltan plans to dramatically reduce crime, arson, and homelessness around the state via a basic income. It’s well-known that less crime occurs when people feel they have enough money
Other ideas in the same page
[Who is needed is] someone who can find ways to use technology to totally reimagine what it means to live and work in the coming AI world
Implement new technology all over California that can spot hidden guns and weapons, utilize facial recognition, and predict violence and crime in perpetrators before it happens. Have police drones ready on a moments notice around cities to quickly fly to help stop crimes.
In a nutshell: same old, same old
Where, and how to begin? Maybe from the ultimate police state, which is literally what point 3.2 proposes. You can have a fairly accurate idea of what point 3.2 would be like in practice, by trying to watch simultaneously these three movies:
Surrogates, 2009 (people interacting with society only through... their remote-controlled robot lookalikes)
Civil liberties and human rights aside, there are basically three problems with Istvan’s program: it isn’t new at all; it’s completely unrealistic; it gets the meaning of work and life backwards, and their practicalities wrong.
Under the hood, almost nothing of what Istvan says is (point 3.1) a “total reimagination of what it means to live and work in the coming AI world”. Not at all.
Seriously. There is nothing new there, just the same old childlike, really narrow-minded sermon that the Andreessens, Musks, Thiels etc... of Silicon Valley have been preaching for years: “any tech we and we only can conceive and control is practically and ethically unavoidable, by definition. It’s TINA (”There Is No Alternative”) all the way down baby, so give us money, quick!”
From that program, the Automated Abundance Economy (point 1.6) that Istvan envisions seems a rerun of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”, just with all the money, power and credit left to the the few already in charge: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine Big Tech stamping on a human face - forever.”
Lack of real sociopolitical imagination aside, what Istvan proposes is way more environmentally and geopolitically unsustainable than the cinematic Matrix, if not physically or economically impossible. You just have to re-read points 1.1 to 1.4 to see this:
artificial “intelligence” will surpass human intelligence “later this year”, which as I’m writing this means less than two months
right after that, tens of millions of humanoid robots will be produced in just twelve more months
Speaking of robots, instead, there are two things to notice here: first, Istvan doesn’t say that software will “will replace half of California workers” by 2030 and “almost all jobs anywhere” soon after. That may be remotely (very remotely) plausible, but Istvan explicitly says that “humanoid robots” will do that.
Which is baloney, because in any advanced society that actually exists or would make sense, the only workers that any intelligence would replace with humanoid robots are surely much less than 50%, likely way less than 10/15%.
All other workers who could be sacked, instead, would be surely replaced, as it has been happening for decades now, by much cheaper generic robots or by even cheaper software running on some server. Only a really, really stupid ruling class would do otherwise.
Even ignoring money... I keep seeing reports and warnings that large enough amounts of all the raw materials needed to build so much more electronics either don’t exist to begin with, or won’t be available without unbearable environmental or geopolitical costs, a.k.a. even more wars.
Promises or warnings of millions of humanoid robots are just like promises or warnings about the Metaverse, or private cars and smart homes for everybody: prove that they can happen without making an even bigger environmental and political mess, or shut up. Istvan, instead, says (point 2.3) he’ll fund UBI by taxing robots that cannot exist (not to mention crypto, which is another can of worms that cannot explode soon enough).
In general, even if Istvan sincerely believes them, all those“AI and robots will...” certainties are marketing-speak, with little to none visible bases in reality. Trump saying he’d end war in Ukrain in a few weeks was more believable, really.
Speaking of work and life practicalities
Look again at point 1.7: “every California home will freely receive or be leased at least one full-sized humanoid robot that cleans dishes, cooks food, does laundry, helps with driving, babysits kids, watches pets, and goes to work for people, when possible.”
The only advantage of such arrangements would be that every family could ease their frustrations by finally having something that looks human to boss around in any moment, not just for sex. Really powerful selling point, really bad for public mental health.
Four crucial points that Istvan DOES get right
Yes, even if it’s buried under all the crap above, there is a lot of good in that platform (the parts in Italic are actual quotes, the rest are my comments):
Force conglomerates to deal fairly with the public? Yes, please. Now. Regardless of AI. After all, it’s conglomerates who were the first AIs
Avoid toxic cultural crusades that few Democrats care deeply about: wise words these are, in the US and anywhere else
[The best way forward for education] surely involves more emphasis on real life education and the learning of trades: YES! Let’s get rid of dangerous education myths!
UBI is an idea whose time has come. But it deserves better champions, who understand that we don’t need UBI “because AI”. After this AI crashes, AI done right will be one of the technologies that may finally make it feasible, but we all deserved UBI regardless of AI, well before AI came along. Continues here.
15 minutes cities: no, Istvan doesn’t mention them, but since he is for reimagining what it means to live and work, I’d really like to know if he’d like 15 minutes cities or, as too many still do, hate them for unexisting reasons
Final advice to Californians, and everybody else
As it is today, platforms like Istvan’s are hilariously unreal, but they do try to address serious issues. To do that right, demand proposals that refuse fake AI and AI myths, give UBI the right place, and are generally grounded in reality and fairness, instead of Wall Street speculations or futurist daydreaming. For more food for thought that would help you see beyond the smoke, follow people like me (read here to see why I say so) or, for the financial or more US-specific angles, Dana Blankenhorn.
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Note: We will return to politics and business as usual tomorrow. I just thought you all might like to know how the epic Oregon Tail journey ended.
Also, if you are in America, you have an election tomorrow, and every year. Please vote. Until all the results are called, I’ve lowered the monthly subscription price 20% and the yearly almost 40% (to get to $42, naturally) so that we can head into the absolute Underdark monstrosity the midterms promise to be holding hands and screaming ourselves hoarse together.
But for now, I give you a small happy thing.
After the straight-up saga of Velveteen’s incredible journey east, I thought you might like to have the happy ending. In case you don’t follow me on BlueSky where I’ve been uncontrollably...oh god, am I about to use the word “squeeing” for the first time in years? I suppose I am. Uncontrollably squeeing about this magical creature. Wow. I hadn’t really though about how rarely I see the word squee these days compared to ten years ago, let alone fifteen years back. That feeling sort of...retired as things got to be the way things do currently be and look like they’ll continue to be.
But what else can you do when a gorgeous absolutely stained-glass hearted anime wolf-fox is suddenly just hanging out at your feet all the time?
So yeah, it’s been a “wait, what” of a week. Days just...went somewhere. We’ve been so busy making our costumes and other Halloween House Business--AND SETTLING OUR NEW DOG INTO HER NEW HOME.
Not that she’s needed much settling. I am not exaggerating when I say Vell is the most well-behaved, gentle, loving dog I’ve been lucky enough to be around--and the most well-behaved, calm, and quiet husky I’ve ever ever heard of. I’m so used to puppies, and years of work ahead with a new one, I hardly know what to do with myself but just start teaching her new things, because she’s just no trouble whatsoever, only joy. I keep telling my sister-in-law that her dad must have been so good at training dogs because she is basically a human in a fur coat. Last night I even took her to the island bar (American Legion Post 142!) and she was sweet and peaceable and chill until the Chiefs lost, then she had an inexplicably strong number of opinions to share. In a conversational tone and volume that could never bother anyone.
I’ve never met a two year old husky I felt like I could take to a bar and actually relax myself. She can even be off leash (with some guidance, she’s still a sled dog and she always feels like runnin’) in the woods with me. THIS MAGIC DOG.
From the minute our fifth and final leg (Independent Teapot, first names redacted for privacy) brought her home and she laid down on my feet, Vell has just seamlessly made herself a part of our household. By day 3 she knew what time we leave for school in the morning. She’s chosen a spot in the house. Last night my 7 year old hugged me and she gently pawed us to let her in for a group hug--then jumped onto the pile and licked our faces silly. She’s even super respectful to the cats! Who are not respectful to her in any way, shape or form! And are LIVID with me for what I’ve done to the universe itself by allowing a dog in it!
On Friday, one of the kindergartners saw us and SCREAMED to the entire student body: ATTENTION EVERYONE! BASTIAN AND THEIR DOG ARE HERE!
And in about half a second, these kids lined up along the fence, without anyone telling them to, to have a turn petting her. As of today, Vell has started howling greetings to all “her” kids on the playground as soon as we crest the hill between our house and the school.
I mean, I’m sure she’ll misbehave at some point...oh! She did swipe a slice of cheese (aged habanero cheddar thank you very much) off my cracker when I went to get a glass of water. Not the whole thing, she just delicately de-cheesed the cracker and looked around like it was a deep and unanswerable mystery no one could ever explain. That’s the worst thing she’s done. I took her to a neighbors house where they get the neighborhood dogs together to play before work in the mornings and even though the other pups were all young, thus pretty rough, and one puppy continually grabbed her face with her paws, she never so much as growled.
Also, she sings. Well, she’s a husky, obviously she sings. But she only sings to songs she likes, and so far...how do I make anyone on the internet believe that the dog that came to me by chance, tragedy, and magic, who I did not raise or influence at all, loves Rocky Horror and sings along to every. single. song.
The Childe is over the moon in love. I came downstairs a few mornings ago to them petting her gently and whispering: “You are precious as a diamond, more good than good. The most appreciated dog in the whole world.” They’ve been singing a lot of This Is Velveteen to the tune of This Is Halloween as well.
Obviously, we are just beside ourselves with love for this gorgeous mythical beast who lives with us now. There’s times when you just feel so lucky--and I thought I felt lucky that five wonderful people were willing to drop everything and help this dog. I had no idea what a special girl she really was. Every driver said they wished they could keep her--I almost can’t believe we get to.
We are so lucky.
And we’re helping her get over all she’s been through. She’s still grieving. The very first day I walked her to school, she saw one of the dads with a thick plaid overcoat on. Vell howled and bowed and whined to him. I texted my sister-in-law and asked if her dad wore a lot of plaid. She called me at once and asked why I said that. I explained, and she said that her dad always wore this particular plaid overcoat because the cancer treatments left him cold all the time. Little things like that come up and it breaks my heart. She hates going upstairs and avoids it if she can...because her dad had a one-story, no stairs. We’re trying to soothe her as much as she soothes us and convince her that she gets to stay with us forever.
I told my kid that if we’re lucky and take good care of her, she could easily still be around when they graduate high school. This will be who Bastian always remembers as the dog they had growing up. Dogs are funny like that. If you’re a dog person, and I am, they curl up around eras in your life. 10-15 years. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. And there’s no remembering those years without the shaggy friends who were your constant shadows. I moved to the island where I live 17 years ago Saturday. I moved here with two dogs, both of which are buried on the island. They were my heart in furry form, and Vell isn’t going to be any different, I can tell. She’s our girl. For always.
There is still some magic in this world. We make it, together, when we care about things outside ourselves just a little more than necessary. When we see how big small things can be. When we try more than we have to. Magic was always small, and quiet, and always hard to pull off, that’s part of what makes it magic. And I refuse to stop believing in the good just because it’s small and quiet and hard. Just because the bad is loud and big and easy to find anywhere you look.
Some of the best things I know about are small and quiet and hard to pull off
She sat on my feet the whole time I was writing this.
I’m gonna try so hard for this dog. For my life and my community and my child and my people, all the little worlds I’m part of. For my family, chosen and blood, for my sister, for the man in the plaid overcoat this dog will never forget. So many people tried so hard for us. Thank you so much to the saints who got in a car (I hope we all stay in touch on the group chat! We’re family now), and thank you again so much to everyone who chipped in to cover expenses when I know all too well how tight all our belts are right now, and everyone who’s followed this saga and taken something from it, because these days, rays of light, in whatever shape they occur, are more precious than a diamond, and more good than good.
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Twenty-six months ago I shared what we should all learn about online publishing by none other than Prof. Katharine Hayhoe, who was named one of America’s most effective communicators on the threat of climate change by the New York Times in 2016.
In that post, I explained how and why Prof. Hayhoe’s strategy of “effective communication” was instead really fragile and could backfire any moment, because, in a nutshell, it consisted of:
Just an invitation... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
get an account on as many social media platforms as possible
post as much as you can on each platform...
but optimizing every bit of “content” for the platform on which you will post it
Now, how could that strategy possibly be wrong? Isn’t that the same thing that makes thousands of “creators” really influential and rich? Sure it is. And yet, it is a dumb, shortsighted strategy because, as I wrote in 2023, “depending on any platform that is as unaccountable as a sovereign rogue state to “share” anything relevant is anything but smart for both sides of the page, publishers and readers.”
For concrete examples of “rogue state behavior”, check out my 2023 post. The news now is that, when I wrote that post, Prof. Hayhoe had already been suffering the limits of her strategy for five years:
Quoting from what she posted on Facebook yesterday (emphasis mine):
“In August 2018, Facebook decided to label “clean energy” and “climate change” as politically sensitive topics.”
“Not only that, but they did not allow me to register my (already verified) account to post on those topics. In their opinion, a climate scientist was not qualified to comment on climate change: but pages that registered as political entities were!”
“As a result, this Facebook page essentially froze, and most of the people who followed this page could no longer see its posts.“
“Now, something seems to have changed in the last few weeks - which is surprising and amazing news!”
The unsurprising news, instead, is that...
that page that has been frozen without a decent explanation for more than seven years could be frozen again tomorrow, which wouldn’t be surprising at all
the same could happen, in any moment, on any of the other platforms where Prof. Hayhoe publishes unique content, while as of today the last post on the only “platform” she can ever control, that is her website, is dated... 2018
publishing unique content on any unaccountable walled garden that may and will silence you whenever they feel like it will always be the opposite of “effective communication”
What to do instead
The really effective...Nah, scratch that: the only sensible strategy that every online publisher should practice, and every follower should demand by whoever they want to follow is and remains POSSE:
Publish Once on your own website, and only then...
Syndicate what you published Elsewhere, on as many platforms you want, but...
always including the link to your original post (even if that means the abusive, unbelievably idiotic practice known as “links in the first comment”), in order to give your followers a way to read and comment without being subject to profiling and censorship
By happy coincidence, I posted just this week a short, simple explanation of why RSS is THE way to share and get news. Read it to know why you should abandon social media now and get news only through RSS. The only exception to that rule would be the only other technology that is just as really advanced as RSS... because it’s non-proprietary. Yes, I’m talking of email.
Email? Sure. Blogs by email, that is
Another way Prof. Hayhoe proves that I’m right is her final invitation to follow her through email:
“if you’d like to algorithm-proof your content, follow me on Substack and you will always get my weekly posts directly into your inbox.”
The only thing to change in that sentence, because it’s really important, is to replace “follow me on Substack” with “follow my blog“. Calling a blog hosted on Substack “a Substack” is like saying “I wrote a Bic pen” instead of “I wrote a letter”: it’s really, really wrong. Substacks are hosted blogs syndicated by email, period.
In case you’re concerned about the “Substack promotes Nazis” thing:
boycotting or shaming people simply because (like me!) they where forced to temporarily (1) host their blogs on Substack is really shortsighted. I already explained why here and here
in my experience, by far the biggest, if not the only way in which Nazis can get money and exposure on Substack is if you use Substack in the wrong way, that is through the app
if everybody used Substack blogs properly as I do, that is: if everybody read Substack posts via email, and only used comments to those posts or search engines to find more interesting Substack-based blogs, Nazis could publish all they want here, and their only way to be seen would be handing leaflets door to door
Non-paywalled popularization like this pays my bills. Thanks for supporting this effort via paid subscriptions, or any other means.
1: about my blog, which will outlive Substack
My blog, the Stop!, contains more than one million words of popularization of digital issues like this, without any paywall or user tracking. It’s been always online since 2007 and will remain online, completely readable, long after the disappearance of Substack, Facebook and anything like that.
Above all, the Stop! will contain everything I first published here on Substack, because that has been my plan since my first day here: write and keep every post in Markdown format on my own computer, so that I can move them all to the Stop! in any moment, automatically. Every Substack writer should do this.
Last but not least... popularization without paywalls like this is how I pay part of my bills, and I’d really like to do more, but doing it more regularly takes a lot of time. Please check out my archive and these endorsements to know why you may want to make a paid subscription to this blog or, even better, support my work in any of these other ways. Thanks!
Just an invitation... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Note: A brief respite from politics to tell you about something beautiful happening over on BlueSky. Something very relevant to the essay that started this whole Substack. A new political piece is forthcoming, I’ve just been gravely sick.
Also, between now and Election Day (11/4, and yes there is an election this year, there is one every year, and your local elections have vast consequences) I’ve lowered the monthly subscription price 20% and the yearly almost 40% (to get to $42, naturally) so that we can head into the absolute Underdark monstrosity these midterms promise to be holding hands and screaming ourselves hoarse together.
Oh my god what a month this has been!
If you follow me on BlueSky, you may have seen what’s been happening over the last five or six days...and now that it’s really, actually happening, I want to tell you all about it in greater than 300 characters.
Also, I got COVID (again) and have been so brutally sick all month I feel like I disappeared off the face of the earth, so it’s quite understandable if that’s how it’s seemed. My lung capacity is still floating somewhere around month-old birthday balloon and standing up has become a fascinating challenge, but I’m slowly getting better.
Just in time for an old-fashioned internet miracle.
I’ve been so busy organizing the logistics of said miracle that I haven’t had time to post about it for everyone who wasn’t up at 11pm however many nights ago this started.
THIS IS THAT POST.
So my sister-in-law Amanda and I are very close, she is a wonderful human and the “in law” part stopped being a thing awhile ago. And her father died about two weeks ago. We knew he was sick, and that the end was on the horizon, but this was much sooner than expected, and there hadn’t been time to put everything in order.
And he left behind that beautiful baby up there, a 2 year old snow-white husky.
Well, sixish days ago, Amanda called to check up on me because of said falling off the earth, and we got to talking about random things. I mentioned how badly Bastian has been wanting a dog, and that I’m trying to hold out for a year because I just can’t handle training a puppy right now.
And my sister said “uh...how do you feel about huskies?”
Now, she had no way to know this, but my first dog of my own was a husky, and when she was two, a very awful landlord of mine forced me to give her up or lose my housing. I found her a wonderful family and she had a spectacular life on a literal farm, but it broke my heart to lose her.
She sent a photo, and I had such an odd feeling, one I’ve only had once before, when I first saw a photo of Lord Byron. My hindbrain just went oh that’s my dog, the way it had once thought oh that’s my cat. And she’s not a puppy. And despite being a husky, she’s a pretty chill and gentle girl. And I never got rid of most of Sage or Grimm’s things, or the dog bed and toys I had for Fiona, a border collie I was long-term dog-sitting until a few months ago, so I wouldn’t need to buy anything...
But at that moment, I really thought there was no way it would be possible. My brother’s family lives in southern Oregon, it couldn’t be further away. And according to Oregon law, if you don’t own your property, any animals found will be taken to a shelter--my sister couldn’t get there in time to claim the dog. She was on a five day hold, and that’s about all the time we had to figure it out. So the usual ways (cargo plane ride, various non-profits who relay rescues around) were either unworkable because of the needed lead time or so expensive to do on such short notice. I told her I’d look into it but I wasn’t optimistic.
I spent most of the day finding out just how much it would cost to fly her to me in any of the methods I knew of (good god) and was on the verge of calling Amanda to say I just couldn’t manage it when it occurred to me: back in the day you’d ask the internet if anyone knew another way, and someone probably would. You just don’t anymore because it feels like everything has to be politics on the social medias these days.
So late at night I explained briefly to my BlueSky followers and asked if anyone had any ideas that wouldn’t cost me Every Money.
Genuinely, I just wanted some guidance as to how people do this with rescues. I wasn’t trying to get people to solve my problems for me--I didn’t even cross-post to all the other sites I use since the Great Twitter Diaspora, that’s how much I wasn’t trying to rally anybody to my own cause. I just didn’t know what the steps I should be taking were.
I didn’t expect in any way for the Old Millennial Internet Spirit to fucking activate.
People started saying “Well, I can drive her to x if you can get her to y and cover expenses...” and a chain started forming that could almost work to get her here. Except for the middle of the country. There just didn’t seem like any way to bridge between Idaho or Montana and Minneapolis, where the next westernmost volunteer was.
Then Linkwood Anarchy Hub appeared, and said he could take her all the way from Portland to Minneapolis. Stormzand said he could pick her up at the shelter in Eugene and get her to Portland. SimonsFolly said he could take her from Minneapolis to the New York State Line. RisaWolf said she could get the pup from any NY state border to New Hampshire, and IndependentTeapot said she could bring the girl all the way home from New Hampshire.
And these amazing, kind, generous, thoughtful, beautiful human beings leapt into action so fast that that very smug-looking pup up there who clearly knows how lucky she is, left the shelter Saturday afternoon and is cruising through Idaho as I type this sentence.
(If you want to contribute to expenses, and you do not have to, everything is so tight these days, but if you want to, here is Paypal and Venmo)
And to my knowledge, I have only interacted with one of the Pawshank Redemption (credit: Stormzand) crew on a long-term basis and was following before this Incredible Journey started. They just...saw something happening and wanted to help. And love dogs. And might possibly be saints walking among us.
I genuinely can’t believe this is actually happening. I’m pretty sure Bastian doesn’t actually think we’ll have a dog next week, even though they’re excited. But I told them not to set their heart on it when I asked now they’d feel, despite wanting a border collie, about a beautiful white smallwolf. Because I didn’t know and personally doubted if we could really do it in time. So I think they’re still in “don’t get your hopes up” mode.
But the hopes don’t need to be kept down anymore. The Puppy Express has departed on its Reverse Oregon Trail journey and could be here as soon as Tuesday night.
I know it’s not much in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t solve any part of the hellscape we’re all living in right now. And of course I’m thrilled because I get a puppy, but it also filled me with so much hope. We are still, some of us, who we always were. We are still capable of small marvels and caring outlandishly.
I think it’s gotten easy to forget we used to do this all the time.
Not necessarily the internet at large, and believe me, I’m well aware the pre-algorithm internet was anything but an endless vista of peaches and sunshine, but the geek community part of the internet. Which, believe it or not, hasn’t been all of it more or less since Usenet. The bookish, SFF, community-minded people who identified as geeks, not to make money off a new demographic, but just because that’s what we were. Who used social media to make genuine human connections, to craft things and be silly and make stuff, not because of some grindset, but because they wanted to. Before the incredible waterfall of human creativity the internet allowed to come into the light of day became just more content. Before the proto-oligarchs saw what little people were doing with their free time and saw the possibility of using it as bait to lead us all into the data-gobbling joy-disposal algorithm-driven online life keeps trying to become.
There was a time that you’d see crazy stories like this on Livejournal or Facebook or Twitter really often, people going out of their way for each other. To save someone’s house or business or pet or child. To get a faceless corporation to listen to someone they were screwing. To get help and information during disasters of all kinds. To tell each other about things we loved and find others who loved them too, or who might if they heard about it. To try a new way of doing art and making delight. I’ve been part of so many of these stories, sometimes as a helper and sometimes as a person who needed help.
But as more and more of the world has needed much bigger help than any small group of kind hearts can do alone, and as corporate grey goo has spread further and further into every digital space to enshittify, monetize, and exploit genuine human connection and creativity, and as so many scams of so many kinds have crowded out real voices, it’s gotten hard to find sparks of that old internet “let’s put on a show in the old barn and save Christmas” spirit. It’s easy to be cynical, and what’s shoved into our faces by the algorithm is meant to create that cynicism, to keep us separate and alone and too anxious to look away from the data-gobbling joy-disposal that online life is becoming.
I was having coffee with a new friend in town as this was all starting to come together, and she shook her head and asked me: “How are you doing this? How is this happening?” I laughed a little. It’s been so long since I made a new friend who doesn’t know my whole history! And I explained what was happening, and why I have the kind of followers I do online, and finally said: “I don’t know, the internet used to be a different sort of place, and when it was, I was a different sort of person, who made and did a lot of things and built a little universe or two...and when you pour your soul into something for a long time, sometimes it comes back to you in strange ways...so I guess maybe somewhere deep down, that place didn’t go anywhere.” And I thought to myself: maybe that person didn’t, either.
Maybe those little universes didn’t. Maybe nothing went away. They just got older and sadder and buried by the algorithm for being insufficiently profitable. Not gone. Just sleeping.
Maybe we can just choose to have it back. In small ways. On our own terms. And the thing about small ways is that they tend to add up.
Maybe unshittification is possible.
So I know one lonely dog whose owner died doesn’t change the world. It doesn’t make anything better on a big scale. It’s just a dog and a writer and her kid struggling with everyone else. But it’s changing my world. And helping me to remember that little, small, connective actions like this is what built that online life and made anyone want to be part of it in the first place. Which is, so sadly, what made all those techbro Decepticons want to eat up all that energy and enthusiasm so they could digest it into numbers in their bank accounts.
They saw what it was worth, and have done an excellent job making us forget that.
Thank you, Puppy Express Gang, for reminding me. For being amazing. For helping my family--my sister Amanda is so relieved that not only is this good girl getting an absurdly spoiled home, but she’s staying in the family. And I hope that somehow, somewhere, in some tiny way, a part of her dad sees how many people came together to look after his dog.
Thank you all, for putting on a show in the old barn.
I am so humbled by all of this. This care. It’s the little light of Fantasia in the dark. At least, that’s how it shines to me.
I’ll end by telling you about that little wolfie’s new name. Because to me, it says all of this in one syllable.
See, I had every intention of naming my next dog Pilot, after the Brontes’ dog and the wonderful Farscape character. But I wasn’t sure. It didn’t really feel quite right for this dog.
Yesterday, as I was wrangling the Puppy Express Group Chat whilst also chatting with the bartender at the place all the islanders go to wait for the next boat. We talked about the music playing, which was prime vintage 2010 indie rock, and about the old internet. Everything I’ve been talking about. We laughed about how no one wants to admit they liked this music now, it’s too sincere and banjo-y to be cool. And, you know, not often does a Good Thing just come out of my mouth without editing and rewriting, but I said: “For a little space, between irony and despair, we were very briefly allowed to like things. We thought things were going to get better now, for about half a second.”
So we were already Deep in Feelingsville when I told him about the dog and he started sharing stories about his own childhood dog--and offhandedly mentioned The Velveteen Rabbit.
And it came to me.
Some of you may remember the story of my then-6-year-old’s reaction to The Velveteen Rabbit. Not in all my days will I ever forget it.
Before I read it to them, I warned them: “Just so you know, I love this book a lot, but the ending is super sad, okay? Just don’t want you to be shocked.”
But when we got to the end, Bastian had the biggest smile on his face. “Mom, why did you say that was a sad ending? That was the happiest ending ever!”
I stared at them. The Velveteen Rabbitdevastated me as a child. I cried for hours. In my tiny mind, back then, I was the rabbit, abandoned and alone and unremembered.
“But why is it sad?” The little one who has never been abandoned said. “Everyone got what they wanted! The rabbit got to be Real, the boy didn’t die, they got to see each other again, the rabbit got to meet that AMAZING fairy and the other rabbits accepted him when they were so mean before! Where is the sad?”
Later that night, I thought about that dumb dress from the Late Modern Internet. The one that some people saw as black and blue and some saw as white and gold and they’d all go to the mat for the colors they perceived. And the thing was, if you remember, that if you looked long and hard enough, or switched your angle on it in just the right way, you could see the other color, but it was almost impossible to switch back once you’d done it.
And for me, The Velveteen Rabbit will never be black and blue again. It will always be joyful gold. Everyone got what they wanted. And they did, at that. It doesn’t escape me that this dog could easily still be with us when Bastian graduates high school. That we’ll look back and say: wow, remember when all those people crossed the continent to bring her to us? Remember when you loved The Velveteen Rabbit?
God, what a story. And stories are all there is. Moments and stories add up to a life.
I bought my child a necklace made from the illustration of the fairy in the book. I put it around their neck and said: “I got you this so that you never forget that the way you see things is precious and unique. Sometimes in this world it’s hard to hold onto that, to hold onto such a big heart when everyone is telling you to make it smaller. But the way one person sees things can change everything. Can even change sadness into happiness.”
This is Vel. Short for Velveteen. Because if you look at something a little differently, something you really thought you knew and understood, and try to remember believing in things and in people, just one little shift can change sadness into happiness.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this breath of magic and connection blowing some light under the door in this dark, uncertain time. I will never forget this. Neither should you.
It’s all just us. The internet, the world. It’s just us, and if we choose to, in the tiniest ways, we can choose to keep our focus on each other instead of wherever it is the money men want us to look this week.
Maybe sometimes the tiny ways are all we have. Just because they’re tiny doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
Tiny adds up.
Welcome to Garbagetown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Explanation:Liber Liber is an Italian ONG founded in the early 1990s, whose mission is to promote the conscious use of ICT in the humanities. To pursue their mission and pay their expenses, Liber Liber also sells books, music and other products online. The text that follows is my translation of a call for help about a serious problem with PayPal that Marco Calvo, president of Liber Liber, made on Facebook a few hours ago.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and don’t know enough about Paypal to verify what happened or make any judgment about it. However, having followed Calvo and Liber Liber for decades, I know Calvo knows much more than me about e-commerce with or without Paypal, and am pretty sure he wouldn’t say what he says without good reasons. So, thanks in advance for anybody who will help Calvo, me and everybody else to know what to do with Paypal when something like this happens again, and how to prevent it.
Getting fined because scammers found you
Says Calvo:
A few days ago, the Liber Liber shop received many orders from US citizens. Too many and too close together to be normal.
I believe these purchases were made by scammers for testing purposes: buying something from our or any other online shop immediately tells whoever is doing it whether the transaction was successful or not. So, I believe the people behind this were testing thousands of stolen credentials, just to see which ones were still valid, and then get all the money they could from the corresponding accounts.
Anyway, I immediately reported the anomaly to PayPal, but the dialogue with their AI ended up in PayPal blocking my login credentials, rather than solving the problem.
Several days later, after various vicissitudes, my credentials were restored. However, not only the anomalous orders persisted, but many US users obviously began disputing the charges.
I have no problem with that, because as I already said those purchases were undoubtedly made by scammers; the problem is PayPal is withdrawing €16 from our account as compensation for each of the transactions they authorized. €16 per transaction, and there are hundreds pending...
It seems clear to me that this is a serious flaw on their part, because:
it was PayPal that withdrew money from those users’ accounts
it was PayPal that (or should have) verified the buyers’ identities
it was PayPal that sent us their money
Obviously, we have no problem whatsoever to give back to Paypal all the money that we received (without any wrongdoing on our side!) for those illegal purchases. But pocketing €16 for each chargeback transaction is absurd. It’s their vulnerability, their mistake. They make a mistake, we pay.
When I finally managed to speak to a human operator and explained the problem, he rather brazenly denied it. He also denied that PayPal has security vulnerabilities, and insisted on demanding €16 for each transaction.
I chose Paypal because I was convinced that they would take care of verifying the buyer’s identity, verifying their genuine intent to purchase, and checking via username, password, and two-factor authentication that everything is OK.
Evidently, this isn’t the case. Not only is PayPal denying the evidence, but they’ve also failed to comply with the legal requirement to report a breach of their systems. At least the operator didn’t mention it, and I haven’t found any evidence online.
Is there a lawyer willing to help? Or a journalist interested in the story? I think it’s important to raise awareness of the problem, because right now it is affecting at least hundreds of people in the US but it’s likely that sooner or later, other scammers around the world will also begin exploiting this PayPal’s vulnerability. In the meantime, I’ve had to block all orders from the USA, including the good ones, to limit the damage. But I’ve already started to get orders from fake Italian addresses...
Since you’re here...
What you just read is the actual call from Marco Calvo, which I offered to translate and publish here to help him and everybody else with the same problem to figure it out. But since you are here... please spend one more minute browsing my archive, subscribing if you like what you see, and sending suggestions or requests for more work like that to mfioretti@nexaima.net.
Note: Usually, this Substack publishes a main essay that’s free for all, then a follow-up digging deeper, and usually angrier, for paid subscribers.
However, given the level and number of threats on my life and livelihood after my essay about Charlie Kirk, in which I said nothing fucking wrong, I’m posting this main essay under a paywall, just to avoid another enraged anthill of bullshit so soon. I like sleeping through the night. It’s fun. This isn’t a permanent change, I’m just a little cagey after last time. Thanks for understanding.
I loved roller coasters when I was a kid. And I mean loved. What’s not to be completely fucking hyped about when you’re nine? Adrenaline, loud noises, crazy lights and music, speed, and the weird awesomeness of feeling like you’re in danger while knowing you’re actually totally safe, you paid money to ride this ride, and your mom is waiting outside the gate with your funnel cake and a shitty toy from the fishing game.
As an adult, while my brain still thinks FUCK YEAH LET’S DO THE DEVIL’S COLON, my body now knows full well how it feels to be seriously injured, knows it’s mortal and machines are fallible, and it’s no longer a blithe and bonny idiot made of bubblegum, stem cells, and superballs concerning the answer to the equation of speed + gravity + fragile sack of talking blood. So I always think I want to, and then when the ride tips over into freefall my stomach tenses up so hard for the impact it’s sure is coming that it physically hurts. I still go. Obviously. My kid-self internalized roller coasters are awesome don’t be a wimp just as hard as my grown-up self has internalized but I do not wish to ow.
But it’s not the same.
And more importantly, my love of roller coaster was always firmly rooted in the idea that I wanted to ride the ride. The restraints were for my safety, I had cleared the height requirement, we came to the carnival on purpose to do this, and if I chickened out while waiting in line, I could just leave and go pet a goat or something.
But now we’re all strapped into Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth’s janky fucking 19th century Imperialism-a-Whirl, the restraints are to keep us from doing anything about what’s about to happen to us, nobody is tall enough to handle this shit, and if we don’t want to do this anymore because the loop-de-loop track is clearly shredded, shooting sparks into a pile of dry leaves, and ends in a fifty foot drop into a puddle of spent nuclear fuel, well, too fucking bad for us, the operator sold the control board and drank a fifth of Dr. Prepper’s: Supermeth Splash.
These fucking people.
Hey Pete. Take your shirt off, Peter. It’ll impress the generals, Peter. You’re so ripped, Peter. And your tattoos will make your speech sound even more totally normal.
This week on my podcast, I read “The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh,” a recent column from my Pluralistic newsletter; about the looming economic crisis threatened by the AI investment bubble:
A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual Nordlander Memorial Lecture at Cornell, where I’m an AD White Professor-at-Large. This was my first-ever speech about AI and I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but thankfully, it went great and sparked a lively Q&A. One of those questions came from a young man who said something like “So, you’re saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that’s going to burst and take the whole economy with it?”
I said, “Yes, that’s right.”
He said, “OK, but what can we do about that?”
So I re-iterated the book’s thesis: that the AI bubble is driven by monopolists who’ve conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. “pivot to video,” crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now “super-intelligence.” Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters (“humans in the loop”), which won’t work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging “foundation models” will be shut off and we’ll lose the AI that can’t do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or “discouraged” and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations.
The only thing (I said) that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).
“OK,” the young man said, “but what can we do about the crash?” He was clearly very worried.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about that. I think it’s already locked in. I mean, maybe if we had a different government, they’d fund a jobs guarantee to pull us out of it, but I don’t think Trump’ll do that, so –”
“But what can we do?”
We went through a few rounds of this, with this poor kid just repeating the same question in different tones of voice, like an acting coach demonstrating the five stages of grieving using nothing but inflection. It was an uncomfortable moment, and there was some decidedly nervous chuckling around the room as we pondered the coming AI (economic) apocalypse, and the fate of this kid graduating with mid-six-figure debts into an economy of ashes and rubble.
Next Monday, I’ll be departing for a 24-city, three-month book tour for my new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Went Wrong and What To Do About It:
This is a big tour! I’ll be doing in-person events in the US, Canada, the UK and Portugal, and a virtual event in Spain. I’m also planning an event in Hamburg, Germany for December, but that one hasn’t been confirmed yet, so it doesn’t appear in the schedule below. You’ll notice that there are events that are missing their signup and ticketing details; I’ll be keeping the master tour schedule up to date at pluralistic.net/tour.
If there’s an event you’re interested in that hasn’t had its details filled in yet, please send an email to doctorow@craphound.com with the name of the event in the subject line. I’m going to create one-shot mailing lists that I’ll update with details when they’re available (please forgive me if I fumble this – book tours are pretty intensive affairs and I’ll be squeezing this into the spare moments).
San Francisco, CA: In conversation with Jenny Odell, author of How To Do Nothing at Public Works, presented by Booksmith (Oct 20, 7PM) https://app.gopassage.com/events/29638
It’s been a fantastic 24 hours, I’ll tell you what.
When I put the previous essay, on Charlie Kirk’s shooting (because what else are we even allowed to talk about right now) under the subscription paywall, I felt bad. I always want to give everything away for free, but do enjoy eating and sleeping under a roof, and this time, more than anything else, I was already feeling a bit weird about the utter Cujo-ness of the right leaping tall buildings to seize their Reichstag moment.
Turns out, it’s both a good thing I did, and also didn’t really matter anyway, because speaking at all was enough.
On Friday night, when a tsunami of unhinged violent Purge-hooligan shit came flying at me on X, a site I barely use except to crosspost the occasional quip or promote a new piece of work, I genuinely thought it was because of what I’d posted an hour before, which was this: White on white crime is a tragic epidemic sweeping the country. How many more will we lose to white gang violence and rightwing turf wars?It’s the culture, you know. These white celebrities glamorize a criminal lifestyle & young inner-suburb kids get trapped in the school-to-influencer pipeline.
And I sighed, and chuckled, a little ruefully, because of course that riled them up, the people who cry IT’S JUST A JOKE when their lord and savior tells a reporter about a new group of people he wants to murder can’t recognize satire even when it’s wearing an oversized sombrero with SATIRE stitched on it in neon green fuzzy yarn.
Yeah…so that wasn’t it.
Somehow.
What had happened was—and I say this with an exhaustion no simile can encompass—Mr. Elon Musk his own full-chested self quote-tweeted someone compiling a list of “Microsoft employees” who had “celebrated” Kirk’s death to be marked for retribution.
And my name was right there in the screenshot.
Now, first of all, was that screenshot, or literally anything I’ve said on the topic, celebrating anything? Absolutely fucking not.
It was a screenshot of Andrew Tate calling for Civil War (because that’s perfectly all right) and a comment on influencers freaking out as CEOs did post-Luigi, and a link to the Charles In Charge, Apparently essay right here on Substack. An essay that they definitely didn’t fucking read, because it was under a paywall, so I know exactly who the new folks who got a subscription to read it are (hi guys!) and I don’t think any of the Garbagetown treehouse kids are…uh…regular visitors to FUCKING CLOWNTOWN. We are garbage, not clowns. Sheesh!
Second…do I work for Microsoft? Well, I guess, sort of, if you’ve warmed up and you’re ready for a stretch?
I’m a freelance writer. I have been for 22 years. I’ve worked for all kinds of people—that’s how freelancing works. I don’t work for Microsoft per se, but I have written three short stories, in three years, for World of Warcraft, and thus, Blizzard.
You see? It all becomes clear. Gamergate, as, I suppose, was always inevitable, never left our basement, psychologically speaking. I touched a game or two while being a woman, so I am very fun to try to carve up online. The list started as Blizzard employees (still not an employee) and I guess someone thought that didn’t sounds serious enough.
So long story short, I’ve received a number of threats in the last 24 hours, ranging from hopeful prayers for my personal ruination and “firing” from “Microsoft” to full on death threats. Ooh, and I’ve been called a cunt more in 24 hours than ever before!
I’m a big girl, I’ve been on the internet longer than 22 years, and you know that means I’ve had my share of death threats, rape threats, every kind of threat. I’m used to it.
But this has been…unsettling. X is a much darker place than Twitter was, and I don’t even just mean the amount of porn that poured in with the threats. And what’s happening right now, where the right is calling for wholesale slaughter of any and all liberals and having zero repercussions, but people are being fired for being insufficiently sad about Charlie Kirk on Al Gore’s internet, is through the fucking looking glass, even for America, which hasn’t ever really seen the proper side of the looking glass to begin with.
I’m a tough bitch, but I’ve been shakier than I’d like over the last day.
Has Musk deleted the tweet? No, but the person he was quote tweeting has. Microsoft tweeted that they were taking it seriously and investigating. Have I been “fired”? Not yet, and I can’t be, because again, I’m not an employee, though I certainly could lose my contract. Am I particularly worried about that happening? I’d rather not lose a contract, but if my work for Warcraft was a huge part of how I feed my kid I’d probably…you know…have worked for them a little more.
Am I worried I’m going to be killed, or that the people tagging in the FBI to hit the alarums over a link to a Substack essay that, once again, they definitely didn’t read because it was under a paywall? Not…really? They’d have to take a boat and that’s too hard even for appliance repairfolk out here. And these people clearly have no idea who I am or what I do and just think I’m some random Microsoft DEI hire because they’re all gloating about how fired I’m going to be come Monday, which, even if it happens, isn’t exactly going to devastate my life the way they hope.
But it sure throws me for several recursive loops. I guess I thought that paywall kept me a little safer than it does. Remember how I always “joke” that I do it so you have to pay me if you want to call me a stupid bitch and tell me you’re going to strangle me? Much like everything a Republican says, it’s not so much a joke as the dead-ass truth with no punchline. And I guess just being a woman and talking is enough, they do not in any way have to hear what I say to want me gone.
Good talk, bud
Genuinely love that I’m so evil but that I’m ugly was super important to add. Call the FBI we got an uggo!
There’s more but I don’t feel like looking at their dumb jerkoff fantasies anymore. If someone can, without a flicker of dissonance, call me a terrorist while literally trying to terrorize me into silence, get me “fired,” and dox me to groypers because they don’t like what they imagine I must have said…well. What is there to say?
It’s died down somewhat. I haven’t engaged or apologized, because that’s how we do now. We’ll see what happens Monday, I guess. We’ll see what happens now that the shooter, shockingly, turned out to be a white straight right wing terminally online weirdo sheriff’s son who hated Kirk for not being Nazi enough.
who could possibly have seen this stunning turn of events coming?
In the meantime, I just feel very quiet and anxious. Not as anxious for me as I am for all of us. I’m not sure it matters who Tyler Robinson is (and he’s not dead, at some point people will just…ask him) when the right went so mask-off so quickly and elected officials were publicly tweeting about killing all Democrats. Half the nation. More than half, as there’s more registered Dems than GOP. Because they imagined in their dreams that one liberal killed a podcaster.
They aren’t going to put that rabbit back in the hat. Mostly because they don’t want to, and when I said no one was as excited about Kirk’s death as MAGA, I wasn’t fucking wrong, was I? They’re celebrating. We’re terrified.
This is just…what celebrations look like to Nazis.
They didn’t even read it. But I need to die. I simply cannot get my head around that. I could’ve said Charlie Kirk was my very best friend under that paywall. They have no idea. I’m used to being blasted into space for daring to speak—but usually the blasters do actually know what they’re mad about. No longer necessary, it seems. And that is where we are now. I don’t see a lot of routes back.
Hard to believe these are the same people who think Star Wars is their personal property and a tale of their brave rebellion against wokeism when they’re already at this stage and see no problems, only possibilities
Does that means I’m going to stop yelling about fascism? No, and go fuck yourself, fascists. I started this Substack specifically to have a place to vent about all this that was separate from the positivity I try to bring to the world in the rest of my work. And they’re not done being murderous psychotic hypocritical assholes with the emotional regulation of an electrocuted cat in heat, so I’m not done calling them out.
Back in the time known as the day, if you weren’t getting a death threat every once in awhile, you were barely using the internet. But no one used their real names, so they usually stayed at about the volume and efficacy of a fart in the wind.
But I’ll tell ya. Being told how you’ll die does hit a little different when you have a small child.
So unless the goldfish use their typical attention span and forget about this in a week, I’ll likely put the next essay under a prophylactic paywall as well, just until they forget my name. And how fat and ugly I am. It didn’t stop it, but it did remove a lot of ammo, and I feel safer that way, just for the moment. I do apologize. I’m not even going to link to this post on the socials, I’ve had my fill of the abuse and I don’t want them to see me addressing it as some kind of victory because I noticed their lunacy.
Nevertheless, that’s about all I’m willing to give those bastards who pretty notably aren’t calling Nick Fuentes a cunt. I’m not going anywhere. You can’t be fired from being yourself. At least not yet.
Wouldn’t it be cool if that were funny?
For now, I’ll leave you with the ray of hilarious hope that was the most recent piece of poo flung at me on that nasty smear of a website. Because, baby, you go right ahead. I love that for you! In fact, I invite all your friends, every single conservative in the world, to do the same. Royalties is royalties no matter what you do with it. Please do go ahead with your powerful, manly, devastating plan to pay me for your piss-baby tantrum.
By all means.
Keep biting those boots, friends. We still have each other.
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Note: Normally, the way this Substack works is I post a public essay, and then one under the paywall to contain all the stuff I either ran out of room to say or was spicy enough I preferred a small barrier to yelling at me.
However.
I got a lot of shit to say about You Know the Fuck What that happened in Utah last night and I am in no mood for the veritable army of suddenly oh-so-concerned, both-sides-are-bad-but-really-only-one-side-tee-hee empathy-demanders blanketing the internet today. Human? Bots? Taking all bets!
Soooo, yeah. This one is for the club members of this treehouse of doom because fuck that and also if one more digital chihuahua tells me what to feel about this I’m gonna start biting.
Let’s get this out of the way: Charlie Kirk was shot last night while specifically talking about, and, as usual, not giving a shit about, gun violence. Yes, I’ve seen the video. No, I’m not a monster, I was shocked, and disturbed, and still am.
See, but then five fucking minutes passed.
I find it just terribly interesting that within minutes of that shot being fired, all I saw anywhere online was a tsunami of scolding about “the left’s” reaction. Stop celebrating! Show empathy! This is a national tragedy you MUST feel deeply about! You can’t make jokes or not care! IT IS REQUIRED THAT YOU CARE. (Just let us hide the leftover balloons and streamers from Melissa and Mark Hortman getting assassinated two months ago super quick.)
I swear to whatever gods get it done for you the word empathy was suddenly everywhere.
And empirically, I’m right. It happened at 12:10pm, and look at that sharp upswing moments later.
I saw thousands of words of this before I saw one word of anyone “celebrating,” which consisted of…mostly posting Kirk’s own words about not giving a shit about gun violence, hating empathy, expressing fear about the right’s retaliation, and then conspicuously moving on to other topics.
DAMN, THE LEFT SURE KNOWS HOW TO PARTY.
In the cold light of the next damned day? Apparently Charlie Kirk was the most impactful and significant political figure in America today! Who knew? And despite it being 9-fucking-11, a day the right has turned into its own personal Anger Holiday, the only thing to be mourned or spoken of is…this guy, who was an influencer yesterday and today, I’m informed, is the most beautiful, illuminated pinnacle of the American intellect.
Frankly, over the last fourteen hours, I’ve come to the conclusion that absolutely no one is as excited about celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death as MAGA.
Note: The way this Substack works is that each public post has a follow-up under a paywall in which I discuss either the spicier things I wanted to say but didn’t want to deal with drive-by sealioning in the comments or ideas I didn’t have room for in the main essay. Paid subscriptions support and expand this space—do consider joining the even-angrier side; I have many folk to feed.
While I was writing about the beautiful dream of Trump probably dying and how the media is handling it, which is to say barely touching it and enjoying a refreshing cool drink on the porch while still basking in the dopamine jacuzzi they filled to the brim by having hounded a sitting President out of his own re-election campaign for much less hyenashit insane behavior; I wrote a line, then kept moving it down the essay hoping to find a space to explore the idea…until I ran out of room entirely.
But that’s what the follow-up posts are for!
So here goes.
The line was this: legacy media no longer reports on threats to citizens or America itself, at least not with any real enthusiasm. It reports breathlessly on threats to the regime. We are no the presumed audience of the fourth estate.
This week on my podcast, I read “By all means, tread on those people,” a recent column from my Pluralistic newsletter; about the way that the American descent in fascism is connected to its abandonment of the rule of law more broadly:
Just as Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” has become our framework for understanding the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, so, too is Wilhoit’s Law the best way to understand America’s decline into fascism:
In case you’re not familiar with Frank Wilhoit’s amazing law, here it is:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The thing that makes Wilhoit’s Law so apt to this moment – and to our understanding of the recent history that produced this moment – is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It’s a way to join the dots between fascists’ business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views. It describes a continuum that ranges from minor commercial grifts to martial law, and shows how tolerance for the former creates the conditions for the latter.
Things are going great, aren’t they? All those problems we were having, the problems that were so bad, so intolerably painful, so fucking urgent we just HAD to turn to Insane Clown Fascism because there was no time to lose waiting for actual policy to work, those problems are all gone now, right? Inflation, crumbling infrastructure, cost of living, wages and the jobs that hate them, Gaza, Ukraine, broken immigration system, broking electoral system, broken media, broken real estate market, broken educational system, broken healthcare system, inflation again, AI creep, homelessness, mass shootings, the Epstein files, gas prices, ancient and crumbling husk of a President, and also inflation?
All fixed, right?
No? Absolutely all of that is way, way worse and no one is even working on any of it, nor will they ever? It’s just been nine months of arresting and torturing random people, yelling fucking cartoon nonsense at microphones, cancelling things that are so basic and fundamental ten years ago hardly anyone realized you could get rid of them, like vaccines and rights, various incredibly famous people clearly and obviously stealing huge sacks of money and data then tip-toeing off with a dramatic shhhh like old-timey bandits, and people wandering through it all in a daze while the media just COMFORTABLY FUCKING RETIRES FROM BEING A THING I GUESS?
Oh, man, that’s so fucking crazy, because I was repeatedly told, by people of all socio-political-economic persuasions, that these issues were so disastrous and so pressing we simply could not elect anyone but…the guy whose only plan for anything is to lower his own taxes, then murder an immigrant.
And I feel like…oh, gosh, it’s just so hard to remember, but I feel like the idea that the President was dummy old, couldn’t speak right, and might secretly be dying was a huge deal a year ago. And also a few months ago. And also Jake Tapper is still yelling at random passers-by about it—because not so very long ago, the age and health of the President of the United States was so cosmically fucking important a household-name national newscaster kicked his own entire career down a well about it, well after that guy wasn’t even President anymore.
Oh well, at least you guys over there festering on the right got your super duper massively important issues addressed by Big Daddy, right? You got Disney to only make exclusively and only Big Strong White Boy Uber Alles media, trans kids banned from JV softball in all 50 states, all women executively ordered to stop excelling and do a pregnant with the nearest 8chan shitposter, and the Epstein files released for all to see, right?
Oh, none of those, either, really?
SO WEIRD.
It’s almost like this whole Ten Years at Donnie’s ride through the fucking Wonka Tunnel of Nightmares wasn’t about anything real whatsoever, apart from securing the freedom to act like a total dick to everyone at all times, which we already had. At least nothing philosophical, ethical, moral, or even particularly political.
Come on, sing along! They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs…
Now don’t get me wrong, Project 2025 is a thing and it has been for a lot longer than it’s had a name. Progress has been made on the “what happens if we just take everyone’s rights away?” front. Shit has been going down, and it is terrible, reeking, authoritarian, bugfuck bonkers shit.
Look, if I said today the administration announced it’s banning all vaccines because vaccines are gay wokeism, you wouldn’t immediately dismiss that at all. You might not even fact-check me. And there’s a whole strain of conspiracy theory that definitely does insist vaccines make you gay and trans, and since the country is by and large being run according to the contents of early internet chain emails and misspelled grandpa memes, that’s not even a particularly wild possibility. Certainly not for RFK (the F stands for fucking brain worms!) who looks and behaves like a mini-Thanos just super excited to snap them kids.
But most of it has almost nothing to do with Donald Trump himself. You know he doesn’t actually give a shit about any of that (other than mild interest in the murder parts) He clearly cares most about the monumental task of spray-painting every available surface with Home Depot brand metallic “gold.”
And he’s, you know, pretty obviously dying.
Or at least having some kind of allergic reaction to existence. Seriously, this guy is stumbling around puffed up like a demonic shar-pei that ate several thousand bees and his entire government keeps growling shut the fuck up he’s fine and anyway the bees were Democrats we’ve already begun construction on Bee Buchenwald and yes we are officially calling it thatyou’re a Democrat bee aren’t you, admit it, admit it! at anyone who so much as peruses the Get Well card section at CVS too long, except for J.D. Vance doing the chicken dance on camera and yelling I’m feeling fantastic, thanks! every time he does the stupid wing-flap.
If I can’t pronounce your last name on the first try I’ll have your whole fucking family killed
Truly, you have done a spectacular job at life if the entire world starts putting champagne on ice and warming up the fireworks because you didn’t post on social media for a few days.
But something bothers me about how this is all going down—other than the 3-5 obvious things.
Is Trump actually at death’s door? Probably? Maybe? He looks like Violet Beauregard stuffed into a half-inflated rubber mask of James Austin Johnson, but evil just loves not dying when it should. Presidents have access to whatever Roswell-derived super serum medicine any lab could dream up, so he could go on for years as a vaguely human-shaped Franzia hooch-bag full of steroids, statins, stem cells, and probably adrenochrome, given the absolute state of GOP projection, that wobbles alarmingly whenever lightly grazed. (SCOTUS would decide that said wobbles constitute legally-binding Executive Orders, 6-3.)
Maybe that’s just what an old overfed vampire looks like past a certain point.
What bothers me is that if the last newsweek had happened in 2019, we’d know.
The first Trump administration was a constantly-rotating zoo display of monsters, to be sure. But they were, by and large, known monsters, who’d monstered their way through previous administrations monstrously, and rolled up their sleeves to kick it up a lil’ notch. They were creatures, but creatures of a long-standing system, invested in that system, with half an eye on where they’d stand in that system in the After Times. I mean, yeah, it’d be totally awesome if they could bring the whole thing down and crown themselves Kings of Eternity, but every step down from that goal was also a win, so they focused on partying while the party was hot.
Which is why they all leaked like fucking colanders.
They wrote tell-all books, they placed blind items, they whispered national secrets to anyone who even faintly smelled of social media clout. And as soon as they were fired, which was all the fucking time, they couldn’t repress their giggles about what an idiotic asshole Large Marge truly was for a second before running to blab it all to the first camera they could find. To the point that regular human people, neither part of the media nor the government, knew about a lot of things before they happened, things it’s literally insane for everyday citizens to know about, like January 6th.
Back a century or two ago when Trump was shot, I dismissed the various conspiracy theories about it being staged because I couldn’t believe a scheme that big wouldn’t instantly spew leaks like a football field full of sprinklers. None of them could keep a secret, surely we’d hear whispers the way we always did about everything.
But we didn’t. So it must have been real.
Oh and by the way, it’s sheerly astonishing how we’ve just helplessly accepted this empty-tabled no-chairs potluck of dork-ass potato-water-blooded failsons corralling us into a corner where we cannot even allow ourselves to consider any idea that remotely resembles a conspiracy theory, even when CONSPIRACIES SO MELODRAMATICALLY BLATANT THE WORLD’S RICHEST MAN IS OPENLY GIGGLING ABOUT DOING BIG CRIMES ON LIVE TV WHILST HIGH AS A CUMULUS CLOUD IN THE OVAL OFFICE are happening right in front of us, with only the most half-hearted attempts to hide them behind THE OCCASIONAL FUCKING HALF-DEAD POTTED PLANT. The President of the United States has repeatedly said Elon Musk secured the election for him with those gosh-dang computers he’s so good at and we just sigh and tell ourselves we can’t think about it or we’re just like them. Trump constantly panics, incredibly loudly, about the Epstein Files and hysterically screeches for people to forget they exist at least once a week, but we’ve voluntarily forbidden ourselves to even entertain the thought that, since he must know his base can’t stop slobbering all over him for longer than five seconds about anything, and everyone already knows he likes young girls, maybe there’s more to this than him being one of many customers. So now we just live like this, refusing to consider that several conspiracies might be underway from the exact kind of people who love doing conspiracies, and have done them before, over and over again, is a required demonstration of notbeing a fascist. So much so that I’ve almost deleted this paragraph three times because I don’t want to sound like those loose pinballs, either. FANTASTIC WORK ALL AROUND.
I’m not just a client, I’m also the President
Anyway, the point is, that was my first tiny little alarm-bell ringing in the back of my head. It’s not 2019 anymore. It’s the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, and this administration isn’t like the last one. Nobody’s been fired yet. I doubt they’re going to be. The people working for Trump Two: Apocalyptic Boogaloo mostly don’t have any real interest in government at all, unless you thought Linda McMahon just really passionately cared about education. For the most part, they don’t come from previous administrations. They’re not keeping their eye on a future in which the system goes on. They’re unearthly-rich tech oligarchs who are betting on AI removing the need for the masses entirely and parentless nineteen year olds named Big Balls and 80s celebrities trying out wildly off-label uses and a festive assortment of nepobabies and just Stephen Miller again because I guess he’s the squirrel-flaying little boy whose Christmas wish created this timeline in the first place or fucking something.
They don’t leak. Because they’re in this for themselves, not America or the GOP or even Trump specifically, except as the car the clowns came in. They’re all on their own individual grift and/or crusade for whatever (evil) cause they (evilly) dreamed about one time at (evil) band camp and felt a new tingly sensation suffusing their souls, which was all the evil.
Last time around, Trump was an unexpected limo appearing out of nowhere to pick up the hitch hikers of the old Republican party and get them to the church on time just when they thought they might have to change. The limo was rented, payments past-due, the muffler was barely holding on, and the floor was covered old stains everyone knew not to ask about, but no one really knew that yet, so they called it the best and most beautiful car ever and off they went.
This time, Trump is a crumbling meth-camper up on cinderblocks with a racial slur spray-painted on the side that will never move again but keeps pumping out product that keeps the addicts coming back: power, pain, and profit.
And I’ve started to wonder if the new Rogues’ Gallery knew it the whole time. That this was less an election than the handshake on a deal.
Because what’s happened here is REALLY odd. Trump is a storebrand freezer bag full of id-ichor, but he is actually the President of the United States, and the White House let rumors that he was fucking dead light up the planet for days before posting a hilariously hamfisted, half-assed, zero effort proof of life photo that made him look, somehow, more dead despite technically standing upright.
If you or I didn’t post on social media for a few days, and people started seriously speculating that we’d DIED, most of us would immediately log on and say we were fine, stop being weird. And the Trump we all know and hate would absolutely respond to any kind of rumor that he was anything less than the star of the new Superman franchise with a full-court media-barf of swaggering, pustulant Garbage Pail Kid villain-monologuing.
But that didn’t happen. Nothing happened, really. Other than things that made it worse, like clips of Trump whimpering about going to heaven and Vance volunteering that he was hyped to do Trump’s job, which, not for nothing, but Pence would never. Why, he’d rather actually have sex with his wife! And if by some chance his room-temperature water got spiked, there would’ve been severe consequences once Pizza the Hut heard about it.
But there weren’t.
It might’ve only been a few days, but that’s SUCH a long time for the Trump administration to let us laugh and rejoice at the prospect of his death. We all know they don’t care about the national security problems with that, but the psychological problems should’ve sparked some kind of response other than “nothing to see, it’s whatever” then “meh, here’s a shitty picture,” if Trump being active, in charge, or alive at all mattered to any of the people he brung to the ball.
The passivity of their side of it is genuinely remarkable. And I don’t think it’s about a distraction from Epstein or anything else, because Trump would never agree to look this weak, no matter how advantageous it might be. He hasn’t even done anything to punish us for openly cheering for his death for days on end. Anything he wasn’t already doing, anyway.
Then again, remarkable passivity seems to be a catching sickness. It would seem to be the motto of the era. It’s almost impossible to believe this quiet, unconcerned media is the same one that utterly detonated over Biden’s debate and continue to throw out wild theories about him even now. But the media is just…fine now. Fine with all of it. With their jobs being boiled down to copy-pasting social media posts for however long it takes for their bosses to figure out how to use ChatGPT and the President zombie-walking across the White House roof looking like RFK’s dead, decapitated whale isn’t even interesting enough to investigate.
If Biden, at any point, looked anything close to what Trump looks right now today, the uproar would blow out your fucking eardrums.
Instead, it’s already out of the news cycle.
Something isn’t right here, but not the way it hasn’t been right for a long time. Either he really is Reaper-adjacent or there’s some other reason he is or will be neutered enough that his own government (and their cute little three-legged rescue media) is acting like whether he lives or dies is none of our business, and barely theirs.
Look, I doubt he’s gone any time soon. I’m sure they’ll pump him full of orphan’s tears or whatever as long as possible. But it’s either bad enough that no one’s talking, or it doesn’t matter enough for anyone to feel like they have to talk.
That deal I was talking about? NOT TO SOUND LIKE A CONSPIRACY THEORIST BUT I wonder if, beyond the ego-wound of losing the last election, this entire downfall of America was a handshake between an already-dying old man who needed to keep his secrets secret, and a dozen different (evil) agendas crammed into an Amazon.com trenchcoat, who all knew that as long as the meth-camper crashed directly into the White House, it didn’t matter whether the driver lived. They weren’t going camping anyway. They never considered any of those problems up top, or any problems at all. They just wanted to get together with their internet buddies and steal everything, hurt some people, and have a go at forcing a future even they don’t want, but fancy they’d enjoy watching from afar.
And you know, much like those gay woke vaccines , now that I type it out, that doesn’t even seem like much of a leap.
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It’s been a real fuckwit of a summer, and between no childcare, a novel deadline, home repair catastrophes, and a bunch of life drama, I've done an insanely bad job with the whole regular upddating thing.
BUT!
The novel is DONE. School has STARTED. The house is STILL STANDING. And peace has returned to my little world. I mean, except for the entire lake of flaming sewage that is my nation and many, many parts of the world. EXCEPT FOR THAT HA HA THINGS ARE FINE.
So this is just a note to let you know I’m not dead (awkward unpleasant proofs of life are SO HOT RIGHT NOW), and I’ll be actually corralling my shit and not letting things slide slowly into the sea so much from now on, starting with a new piece here tomorrow, and every two weeks after that.
AFTER ALL, IT’S ALL STILL FUCKING GARBAGE OUT THERE, ISN’T IT?
See you on the flipside, faithful Garbagetowners. Thanks for sticking around.
Welcome to Garbagetown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Science fiction’s superpower isn’t thinking up new technologies – it’s thinking up new social arrangements for technology. What the gadget does is nowhere near as important as who the gadget does it for and who it does it to. Your car can use a cutting-edge computer vision system to alert you when you’re drifting out of your lane – or it can use that same system to narc you out ...Read More
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newspapers. He is a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honourary doctorate in laws from York University (Canada) and an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; he is also a Cornell University AD White professor-at-large, a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. In 2024, the Media Ecology Association awarded him the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.![[Image - 32385] | WHARRGARBL / Sprinkler Dog | Know Your Meme](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/%24s_!6VGe!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F98ec9506-8caf-4910-8487-0a55aaa1a945_600x360.jpeg "[Image - 32385] | WHARRGARBL / Sprinkler Dog | Know Your Meme")
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