We live in a YAF dystopia that is way less cool than most of the storybook ones.

And while every kid's story is their chance to veer away from the usual fate of becoming a corporate cog (laborer or soldier) in a billionaire vanity project, most will just end up stuck like Winston without his nook, or will get imprisoned or will just go homeless.

We're pretty sure it's the Monsanto pesticide and anyone who suggests it is hit with a litigation threat. Curiously, as we're speed-breeding domesticated bees the wild bees are dying out faster, so as the bee population dwindles it also becomes more domesticated and less wild. I know that's a bad thing, but I am fuzzy on the why details.

I'm a brown thumb, and plants wilt as my shadow falls on them, but if you're a green-thumb, plant pollinators, which will help the bees.

Also plant milkweed for the monarchs.

Yeah, but the police don't hover over us in Spinners as in Bladerunner. They still have to chopper from helipad to airport and ride off in air traffic, so less in our faces.

Their superfluous greenhouse emissions fit the cyberpunk vibe though.

The second situation is a fantasy until after we have a communist revolution.

Only because it was taken from the public by Disney, since the courts ceased recognizing the public as stakeholders.

But the Constitutional function of copyright is to create a robust public domain. As that is no longer the function of copyright, we can abolish it. And the only thing that is keeping us from abolishing it is the same obstacles keeping us from abolishing autocracy.

So revolution that bridges the way to socialized art may be more necessary in the immediate future than it appears (whether or not it's easy).

It is possible I've never encountered a tankie. I was accused of bring one on a subreddit for mixing non-critical thoughs in with my criticism of USSR.

Musk remains true to his Disney villain character and I stand by my previous wish for his fate to be:

...eaten by hyenas. Preferably hyenas he had recently betrayed to save his own skin.

At the rate were going were going to get the bad ending which is:

...Chinese bombers over Washington blotting out the sun.

They also invented Catholocism.

But I dont blame Italians for any of these things. I might blame the specific people who invented these things.

I'm glad some ancient Italian figured out butter, salt, minced garlic and olive oil spread on bread is delicious, and would do sexual favors for them in sheer gratitude.

It my current state of five months into a long-term psychotic break, I have the joy of feeling lonely, walking to where people are, and needing to leave immediately, and feeling lonely by the time I get home again.

What a marvel the brain can be!

I still stand by Generative AI being a useful tool. It's just in the hands of big unilateral corporate tech rather than a public state, and artists depend on IP laws to gain profits to live, rather than being supported by a robust welfare state to provide art for a robust public domain.

Related, the post-WWII programs in England that fueled the Rock-&-Roll boom in the 1960s (with the invention and development of the electric guitar). Socialized art is a system that works well!

And yes, we'll probably have to collapse the current civilization and rebuild it with mutant animals before we get there. < sad, disappointed existential dread face >

I'm glad we got ubiquitous smartphones instead of only rich people having flying cars.

Still, I'm promoting way, way more punk in our cyberpunk.

The point of The Terror was to burn the Révolution into the skulls of generations to come by making it so horrible the ownership class would be terrified into treating the working class nicely (this was before class consciousness, so it was the Petit Bourgeoisie that actually formed the Assemblée nationale representing the third estate. They, too, are ownership class, once Marx sorted it all out.)

This is why heads had to be piled high. We were supposed to be scared into civility. But as the early 20th century demonstrated to us, it didn't work, and we still have people voting for far-right parties in order to vote against neoliberalism (which is happening a lot in Europe right now, and is a sound explanation of why Trump still got so many votes.)

That's me.

I mean I still have an [M] on my ID card and have the usual boy-bits and features, but I never really cared — or fit in — when I was expected to do well in sports or defend myself against bullies. I always wondered why dudes were expected to wear drab or identifiable sports colors, or the same uniform tuxedo.

But today I am not a man. Man-null. The boolean opposite of man. Enby or agender when I can tick those boxes.

I've long turned in my proverbial man card.

The definitions of manhood I had as a kid turned out to be simple adulting by the 90s (everyone is expected to do accounting and housework and late shifts). Everyone not in the ownership class (or their police contingent) are expected to act maturely and be responsible.

Exemplars of men include Donald J. Trump, Matt Walsh, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Tate...

...my MAGA loyalist, FOX-news–watching father.

I want to be as unlike these guys as I can.

I have no gender.