American Progress by John Gast, 1872There is no evolutionary concept of ‘progress’. There’s just adaptation. A crocodile is no more ‘progressed’ than a bee, nor has a human made more progress than a dinosaur; they’re just adapted to different environments. As Charles Darwin didn’t say, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that ...
The Substack prospectus image put through MidJourneyVenture Capitalists keep discovering that there’s no money in writing in different ways. Photos, videos—fine—but writing is immune to VC. Blogger, BuzzFeed, Twitter, Medium; Substack is just the latest example.Having failed to raise $100 million from investors who are better off investing in higher interest rates (the God-tier scam), Substack is trying to raise ...
via TankNutDaveFossil fuels are, by our definition, not renewable. While we won’t technically run out for a long time, economically we will. The last veins simply won’t be profitable to tap. This leaves us with a choice. Use our last fossil fuels to transition, or fight over them. Given that the ruling White Empire is historically greedy and genocidal, they ...
The great German apocalypse artist George GroszFossil fuels are—by popular definition—not renewable. We don’t have 100 million years and 100 trillion plants to bury solar energy in liquid batteries under solid rock. Fossil fuels were a one-time inheritance from our dead ancestors, and we’ve blown them all in a few generations, on coke and Ferraris. It was a good run, ...
Tom Murphy, Jr.; https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitionsEnergy and Human Ambition on a Finite Planet is a fantastic (and free) textbook. It teaches physics in the most fascinating way, describing how, precisely, we’re fucked.I’ll get to how fossil fuels are bad, but for now I’ll talk about how they’re good.Tom Murphy, Jr.; https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitionsFossil fuels are incredibly dense and powerful energy sources. A vial of ...
A ruined signpost mostly buried under desert sands which reads the word ‘GOOGLE’. It’s a zoomed out view with a city in the background, in the style of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Midjourney remains illiterateThe point of search is finding, and Google increasingly fails at its core job. I increasingly use AI for questions I used to go to Google for, ...
The Brown Sahib by Tarzi VittachiInclude us in what? Colored people and women have always been included in the White Empire at the level of slave and brood mare, and now they are the level of Prime Minister and CEO. But this is merely moving up within the White Empire, not moving out. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are not revolution, ...
a robot drinking a glass of black oil in front of a dystopian industrial background in the style of Rene MagritteThe natural and artificial worlds are literally two different worlds, created in the way different worlds are created. Through a climate shift. Sometimes this shift just happens, and sometimes it’s literally the new world taking a shit on the old. ...
Artwork based on the Rage Against The Machine song, “Know Your Enemy”Well-meaning people reflexively denounce countries like China, Russia, and Iran. They are autocratic, they are dangerous, they are human rights violators. But where does this reflex come from? What do people within the White Empire really know about these places at all? Only what they’re told, and they’re told ...
Ronald Reagan waiting for Henry Kissinger in hell. Joe Biden will join them soonAs US President Ronald Reagan said, “The top 9 most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the [US] government, and I’m here to help.” As US Secretary of State (effectively Secretary of War) Henry Kissinger said, “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, ...
Welcome my son, welcome, to the machineAfter years of bullshit, the new crop of AI is worth the hype. Text and image generations actually save time (ergo money) and effectively pass the Turing Test. Servers have finally become servants, capable of taking orders. These are 3 ways I have used AI to actually save time and improve my life:1 | ...
AI imagining something we forgotOur ancestors understood the universe much better than us. They simply saw it more. Modern technology has completely whited out the night sky. Satellites and background interference are making observatories on Earth useless. We might have the exact gas composition of the universe written down somewhere, but we can’t see shit. And we think ourselves masters ...
René Magritte, Lot 113: Rene Magritte watercolorThe greatest trick White Empire ever pulled was convincing the world it didn’t exist. The next greatest trick White Empire pulled was convincing the world that it had clothes. Marvelous raiments of human rights, material wealth, democracy. All draped over nothing, of course, nothing to see here, but draped so beautifully. Try them on ...
Alice and the White Queen. Art by John Tenniel (1865)The crazy thing about living under the largest, most rapacious empire the world has ever known is how little we know about it. It doesn’t even have a name.The White Empire masquerades as the rules-based order. Whose rule? Never answered. It calls itself the international community, which always seems to be ...
Priyantha Udagedara, The HunterIn the old days, squabbling feudal elites sold Sri Lanka out to the colonizers. We call the colonizers Dutch, Portuguese, and British, but in truth it was private companies who paid protection money to the crown. One feudal lord would feud with another, and then ask the white men with guns for help. And it worked. They ...
King John from the 1979 Robin Hood animated filmIn the future, insomuch as we have one, people will look back on raising interests like we look at blood-letting. Doesn’t work, makes things, worse, and shows no understanding of the complexity of the systems involved. I won’t get into the abstract theology and unproven assumptions of mainstream economics. I’ll just talk ...
In the mafia, you ‘make your bones’ by killing someone. It’s generally essential to getting ‘made’. In the oligarch media, it’s the same thing. Ted Turner’s CNN ‘made its bones’ on the first Iraq War. Embedded with the US troops, gleefully watching cities get bombed. Imperial media today is embedded with US spy planes near China, gleefully hoping for WWIII. ...
We don’t just burn fossil fuels. We eat them and fuck them. If you’ve ever eaten food or used vaseline as lube, you have both eaten and fucked fossil fuels. Almost all food is made using fertilizer, which is made using natural gas. Some food, like ‘truffle-flavored’ oil is literally made with petroleum. Fossil fuels, far from being ‘fossilized’ are ...
The first photograph of the hand of God, 1986My daughter wants to stay up and I’m putting her back to bed. “You know the best way to sleep?” I said. “Go to sleep!” She said she can’t sleep, but I tell her this. “You never remember the moment when you fall asleep, but it always happens.” Sleep is that cusp ...
Look at us, gawking and looted gravesSages hark back to the ages. They revere their ancestors. Ancestor worship is the oldest form of worship, and for good reason. It’s good. Today, alas, we revile the ancients. We call them silly and superstitious. We think ourselves incomprably more advanced, while we roll the whole ecosystem and smoke it in one drag. ...
