While I’m a fan of James Bond and also was impressed with Henry Cavill’s performance in that one Mission:Impossible movie he was in….I really don’t know the specifics of what I’m about to write about.
I know, in vague terms, that something strange is going on with Cavill and I’m just too lazy to do much investigation.
But one thing I do know is that, for some reason, Millie Bobbie Brown allegedly had a “strictly professional” relationship with Cavill on the set of Enola Homes. This is curious because why would she go out of her way to note such a thing? And why would Cavill be so distant?
There is a lot of bad buzz about Cavill about things that if you’re all that interested in, you can look into yourself. But, let’s just say, some of abrupt changes in Cavill’s career may be explained by these bad vibes.
Who knows. I still half want him to be the next James Bond. He would be great.
Well, it’s time for me to redouble my reading about the rise of the Nazis in Germany. My Traditionalist relatives — who I love dearly — totally lulzed the idea it’s possible my fears about bloggers such as myself being forced to register with the government.
So, I think my alarm over MAGA being American Nazism is valid. I’ve found myself reading a lot more about history — especially the Nazis — and Great Men. I need to understand how to live through what could be Very Interesting Times starting sometime between now and, say, spring 2025.
What do I think is going to happen?
I honestly don’t know. Maybe nothing is going to happen. I’m always wrong, afterall.
But the idea that my conservative relatives would not realize that I, personally, could run afoul of our new American Autocrat, whomever that may be. I’ve long suggested that my Traditionalist relatives have one Red Line — ME.
And, yet, given how much they are lulzing the prospect of me NOT being a Good German ike them, I definitely seems like I may be on my own when the crisis strikes.
I have to prepare myself for either going underground once we’re an autocracy, or I’m going to become a domestic political refugee. If it’s the latter, then, I suppose it’s possible that I might be able to make a name for myself within Blue ranks.
That sounds rather delusional at this point, but in times of civil war and revolution, strange, unexpected things are known to happen.
I’m well aware that just because a state lawmaker thinks up a bill, doesn’t mean it will ever become law. But given how of American politics runs on “vibes” these days, I think it’s only fair that I can grow alarmed about the following bill proposed in the Florida legislature.
If this bill became law, then bloggers who wrote about state officials would have to register with the government. It’s not so much the law itself as the mentality behind it that alarms me. It definitely gives us some sense of how much MAGA loves autocracy and if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis becomes POTUS, there’s every reason to believe he will be receptive to some sort of law similar to this on the national level.
He’ll rationalize it somehow, but somehow, someway, it’s possible that at some point starting in 2025, bloggers like me will have to register with the government.
I am not going to do this, whatever the consequences.
I’m prepared to go to jail. Be sent to a camp. Whatever. I. Am. Not. Going. To. Abide. By. A. Law. Like. This.
First, it is highly unlikely that the United States will have a civil war. And, what’s more, if we have one, it’s probably going to be because Trump is the Republican nominee and that, unto itself, forces Blue States out of the Union.
But, let’s speculate on what all the MAGA Republican cocksuckers are obsessed with — the idea that MAGA is going to demand a National Divorce and, as such, cause a Second American Civil War.
It’s kind of difficult for me to even imagine how this might happen, given how politically ascendant MAGA is at the moment, but, for the sake of argument, let’s try it.
The most obvious straight line scenario is Biden wins re-election and that, unto itself, causes states to leave the Union — probably starting with either Texas or South Carolina. I still struggle to imagine any scenario whereby we have the long-hoped for “MAGA Revolution” whereby good olde boys, en masse, pick up their AR-15s and start shooting, “every liberal they see.”
I still believe, at least at the moment, that any Second American Civil War we have will happen at the state level, just like the first one.
But there are some high-level complications to such a clear-cut scenario. One is, Biden — and Trump — are both so old that that potentially throws some curveballs into any future history predictions. I could see if something happens to Biden between Election Day and Certification Day that might be the type of complication that leads to a civil war.
Another possibility is DeSantis gets the Republican nomination and Trump leaves the party, splitting the Republican vote. That is another way that I could see Red — rather than Blue — states leaving the Union and starting a civil war. That would give us a replay of 1860’s election where Slave Power was so divided that they they lost against Lincoln.
But, again, I just don’t see Reds starting a civil war because I just don’t see MAGA allowing any Democrat winning the presidential election in 2024. It seems as though the most likely endgame is DeSantis is the nominee, Trump backs him and DeSantis is America’s Putin.
And, yet, MAGA Republicans have a huge boner for a National Divorce where they serve the papers, so I will talk about it some more.
The key is Trump.
Trump is not a historical Great Man, but MAGA Republicans are so frothy these days with their rhetoric that it seems as though Red States are primed and ready to leave the Union given the proper excuse.
I still don’t believe there will be a Second American Civil War. You may want to leave the country, yes, but it won’t be because of violence.
They say there’s nothing worse than a dry drunk and with that in mind, I won’t say that I’m going to stop drinking, but I am going to manage it. I’ recently turned 50 and it’s really beginning to hit home that I have a limited amount of time on the planet.
As such, I want to free up some time by not being drunk all the time.
The thing about booze is everyone comes at it from a different direction. Some people think that, by definition, if you drink at all you’re an alcoholic. Meanwhile, I’m of the opinion that my drinking so much has been the result of just pure old laziness.
I feel it’s possible — not probable — that I’ve entered a New Era in my life because it’s really hit home how precious every moment of life is. Something about turning 50 has rattled my cage some.
I have a lot of plans and, yet, I’m not getting any younger. And, what’s worse, even if somehow I miraculously did become a success late in life, the whole context of that success would be different. Sure, I might finally reach my dream of being a fucking smug bi-coastal Twitter liberal looking down on the Poors of middle America as I jet between New York City and LA, but….I will be an Old.
It’s not like I can experience New York City as a wide eyed and bushy tailed 24 year old…ever. The closest I ever came to that situation was in Seoul. Even then, I was in my 30s.
I think…what’s happening is I’m beginning to feel some regret? Is this what it feels like to be an Old?
Anyway, I hope to use my new quasi-sobriety to get a lot of creative work done. I’m not prepared to make any grand pronouncements about how I’m on the wagon now, I’m not.
I’ve begun to see some signs that the #NeverTrump movement may be beginning to buckle at little bit now that they don’t have malignant ding-dong Trump to rally against. I saw a headline from The Bulwark, a major #NeverTrump online publication, suggesting that DeSantis is “not worse than Trump.”
This is totally wrong.
First, some context. American democracy is so fragile at the moment — in large part to Republicans not even believing that we ARE a democracy — that, by definition, I believe our next Republican president will be America’s first autocrat.
One way or another, the moment we have another Republican president, that’s it for American democracy. We’re going to slide into a Hungary-like situation where we’re no longer a functioning democracy. There are two ways this might come about.
There’s the brazen — when President DeSantis demands a Constitutional Convention for what sounds like harmless reasons that goes rouge and ultimately codifies MAGA into the Constitution. and there is far more subtle, insidious version.
So, I could see either that the years 2025 – 2033 are a huge struggle over what a Constitutional Convention is going to cram into the Constitution or it could be that we wake up to Speaker (Veep?) DeSantis in 2033 while he figures out how to get the Constitutional Convention.
This is what Putin did, ultimately, and given how popular authoritarianism is within Republican ranks, I don’t see why this won’t happen to America, too. It could be that someone like DeSantis could decide that the fucking so-called “Resistance” is simply too weak to worry about and he will consolidate power in such a way that he gets everything he wants while Morning Joe commentators whine and complain — but ultimately aren’t able to do anything.
DeSantis is worse than Trump because he’s young and focused and knows how to use the levers of power to get what he wants in ways that Trump is too lazy and stupid to do. Though, I will note that if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee, the chance of some sort of Second American Civil War increases dramatically.
So, DeSantis is far, far worse than Trump and if he’s elected the great fleeing of Twitter liberals will begin and they’ll all sit around drinking white Russians in the south of France, telling me how great MeUndies are on the podcasts.
They key thing to remember is there is a window of opportunity for a startup to come up with a replacement for Twitter that embraces and extends its existing UX. I propose that a startup cherrypicks the best UX elements of Usenet so you give users what they don’t even realize what they want.
One issue is, instead of little banner ads, you could have very specific full-page ads woven into a thread on a subject where users could buy goods and services without going to a new Website. That’s where you would make your money and that’s what would make the whole thing worthwhile.
A use case would be that a user creates a very-specific Group devoted to, say their favorite TV show — maybe The Last of Us.
It would be one of many other similar Groups devoted to the show. But through data mining, you would know what people in that Group were interested in and you would place a full page ad in such a way that it would be unavoidable as people were going through the thread.
Remember, because the basic building block of this proposed service would be full page Posts with in-lining editing, that really expands what you could do with ads.
I was so busy thinking about how a recession might cause the widespread adoption of AI that I totally missed a scenario whereby a Hollywood writers’ strike was the thing that caused it to happen.
The Robots of Hollywood.
So, the thinking goes, should there be a major, long-term Hollywood writers’ strike, the studios might, out of desperation, begin to experiment with AI-generated TV and movie scripts. This sounds pretty dystopian and hysterical, but it’s exactly a shock to the system like a strike that might cause the adoption of AI to write scripts.
And, remember, the issue is — new technology just has to be good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough.
It will be curious to see how things work out. It could be that AI just isn’t developed enough for my fears to become a reality. And, yet, I suspect if a writers’ strike lasts long enough that someone, somewhere is going to at least try to see if they can avoid using human writers altogether.
I’ve finally concluded that I’m totally and completely wasting my time to think about this idea anymore, and, yet I have gotten at least one ping in my Webstats related to this, so, lulz, let’s waste some MORE time.
A sample of my vision for the UX of a Twitter replacement.
Also, it definitely seems as though there is a very, very narrow window of opportunity for someone to actually implement this idea. I’m a dreamer and a writer so, as such, it’s better if I just stick to working on my novel(s) rather than spending years learning how to code something that will ultimately be replaced by a combination of the metaverse and chatbots.
Ok, the key selling point of this concept is is brings back some really cool UX concepts that we somehow lost when Usenet finally succumbed to porn and spam and porn spam. The cool thing about Usenet was you had a full page Posts that were robustly threaded in the context of Groups. What’s more, you had in-line editing.
Usenet
Now, obviously, some of this sums up modern-day Reddit and that would be the thing most people would initially compare the service to because no one remembers Usenet except for weirdos like me. And, in real terms Reddit is the closest approximation to Usenet that exists.
But the implementation is really ham-handed, at least in my view.
Imagine if everyone when they went through on-boarding was forced to created both public and private groups devoted to not just grouping their friends, but also creating the equivalent of really robust Facebook Groups combined with Twitter Lists.
And there would be a lot of innate redundancy in the system, to the point that Groups would be seen as disposable. This would, in turn, reduce the likelihood of not only a Group growing too large, but also the sort of in-ward looking thinking that alienates people who just want to discuss a topic without having to lurk for weeks while they read the Group’s FAQ.
That’s a key element of Twitter — there is almost no learning curve. One can just jump in and start tweeting. The downside to this is, of course, this makes it far easier for trolls and bots to flood the service.
Anyway, if you establish a service where you have a full page Post with in-line editing and robust threading, I think it would be instantly popular. After, of course, people stopped trying to figure out why you had just re-created Reddit (which you hadn’t.)
There are so many cool things you could do with the UX of this service. You could push entire pre-formated Webpages into the service that Users could pick apart via in-ling editing. You could have some sort of profit sharing agreement with content providers whereby they push into the service complete Webpages with their ads already in the pages.
Or something. Something like that.
The point is — none of this is going to happen. While there IS a very narrow window of opportunity because of the current Elon Musk-generated instability at Twitter…no one listens to me.
It has occured to me I am looking forward to a future where all media is design and personalized for us all on a individual basis. I struggle — and I mean STRUGGLE — to watch ANYTHING on Netflix. I just can’t find anything at all that interests me that I haven’t already seen.
I think, of course, that some of that comes from how difficult is for me to consume media as opposed to produce it. I find myself producing a great deal of writing every day — not that any of it is usable relative to my personal expectations.
Anyway.
It would be nice sit down in front of a TV, have the set scan my face to figure out what my exact mood at that very moment is and then sit down to watch a two hour movie with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin in it, or whomever. I would have access to thousands of actor’s body scans that my digital personal assistant could use to pump out very specific entertainment that I might actually watch.
But that’s probably a decade or so from now. We’re going to have to wade through a civil war / WW3 before we get cool stuff like that. Hopefully, we won’t bomb ourselves into oblivion to the point that we never get to enjoy such “cool stuff” once the Fourth Turning / Great Reset is over
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