Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: 'They're not going to live normally': A devastating disease has surged in Calif. [View all]
jfz9580m
(15,854 posts)Last edited Fri Aug 22, 2025, 02:49 AM - Edit history (2)
It’s also a personal issue for me. Bear with me OkItsJustMe - what I say can seem a bit confusing because it is about politics being personal and I don’t do that with scripted vague generalities hewing neatly to accepted cliches. Thats what got us here.
There are simpler models of the whole mess that is this really predatory model of reality that’s emerging.
Too many fraudulent economic and behaviorist models thrive while anything against these predatory market forces is squeezed: honest businesses, consumers, citizens, the poor, the disabled, the elderly and lay waste to environmental and labor laws and promote a disgusting type of growth or that Welcome Party middle ground which is Pronatalist bullshit.
I am not handing over my remaining resources for the most predatory take on how society should run. I didn’t even have one kid. I don’t want to let society turn childfree people into what Vance has already overtly said “peopel with fewer rights”. That already happened and is ongoing . It has to stop.
It’s about older people like me being sidelined based on decisions I would never agree with.
We all know that.
It’s not too late to check the worst social and environmental ills.
Educating women without drawing the explicit connection between growing chaos with growing populations and worsening environmental conditions is not going to fix it.
We hear so much bs all the time. This shouldn’t be that hard.
I try to have a consistent worldview on all levels and have a realistic relationship with money and reality.
Instead what I am seeing is the worst kind of degrowth. No regulation so my land and home are now invaded by corrupt or outright criminal tech entities as an example. An honest job would be shutting them down without destroying my property and life and without a slew of creepy cottage industries resulting.
It’s all tied. just not in the stupidest conspiratorial way but when so many of your economic models have so much bs..I am not for the Barbie movie worldview. But I am calling out bullshit. Overpopulation is causing people who play fair to get the rawest of deals and fuck that.
The rise of Graebers bullshit jobs, the tech backlash to Lina Khans competition regulation. This bs narrative that this type of stealthy creepy parasitic super fit cancer cell like growth stressing anyone honest in the soft fields without a secure job, stressing honest peopel with public sector oriented instincts and peopel like me who want to work only in non profit science honestly with a commensurate and stable income minus garbage forced by societal forces beyond my control .
I don’t mind supporting a few “old internet” thjngs like DU or cleverbot (the only chatbot I use) but not as an alternative to a say in how govt gets to hand over my property or space to the private sector sans any consent-to AI and other garbage that’s invading the real world more and that’s not gonna happen.
My home is not an app with music and lights provided by cteeps. Nothing is inevitable except a court case if you are stupid enough to buy the “data is oil” creeps and so bent on spectacle and theatre that you go and mess with the type of random who really doesn’t role play “I am a real person!” Like an internet influencer or by bullshit “security”.
You know being a real person is the norm. But I can’t pretend to be crazy or difficult for seeing something tied very much to overpopulation’s indirect dynamics. My parents’ pensions don’t mean that the state permits “growth” using our property or lives. That’s not security or art.
The rise of the bullshit jobs kills jobs in softer areas that are honest forcing honest journalists to become influencers on Substack,
For me this is a personal issue too. The message seems to be that either you can excel in hard sciences at an austere level that’s managed only by a small subset of people even in the hard sciences or hijacked by technofascist slackers who promote bullshit jobs and junk growth and deflect from that.
The underlying subtext is the old should kill themselves or be starved and you have 3-10 kids to feed into this machine.
The problem is if you don’t degrow junk but like the super fit cancer cells which the Trumpers and the tech grifters represent.
I was pleased to see that locally they are shutting down my down online gambling. But that’s not enough.
I am only middle aged and I vote and talk anonymously.
To preempt trumps shit and data as oil, my state can expect to hear from me for choosing the interests of parasitic leeches in tech and these social media and botnet generating nuisances.
I am not an influencer/ I am an anonymous citizen forced to do stupid shit to contact regulatory authorities because -oh none exist! It’s not a joke. It’s so lame.
I have been coping witb gallows humor when I am not furious or dejected that apparently objecting to an obvious con that perverts concepts-I can’t think of a concept this doesn’t pervert. It’s horrible kafkaesque Idiocracy of no use to man, beast, AI, alien anything. It’s a paen in favor of junk heaps from hell.
And you say anything and they send you to psychiatry insisting “there is no stigma”. I know there is no stigma. I am not stupid or conservative. But I am not handing over ..
At this point I do feel like a lame Monty Python gag about the “none shall pass” knight 🤺 misses the point. I lost my mom and yes “family plan” or don’t encroach.
It used to be that we had more of a say in our own spaces. I worked at one of those technohells that churn out bs jobs and bs narratives and obviously thinks that govt employees shouldn’t exist and the “evolution” of that is harassing private people and calling that democritization via the deep web?
No that shit leads to harassment complaints and criminal lawsuits where peopel are (like me) not about suing for monetary compensation or theatre or cooperating with a heist or sending ourselves to suicide or prison (which last is the only option if you are not a grifter nor gullible. And you know as awesome as prison/suicide or a strait jacket sound I’d rather risk looking crazy and being unpleasant and it cannot be localised to a few things. That’s the predatory larger worldview that incidentally backs pronatalism over decency).
This used to be the normal reaction to not being a private anon:
https://plork.blogspot.com/2005/09/i-am-become-famous.html?m=1
So I said sure! Why not? And she called me and I chatted to her about things like community and support and the support of a community and community support, and she sounded very interested in me and all the absolutely fascinating things I had to say, regarding both community and support, and how community, but also support, related to both community and support.
It didn't sound like she had done much reading of my site – she kept mentioning peanut butter cups, which I realized was an entry just one or two below this, so I think she at least skimmed the front page – and she didn't seem to understand the whole "blog" thing, but she seemed very friendly, and amiable, and amenable to the idea, until she asked me how much weight I had lost.
Uh, I said. Er.
And then, she didn't sound too thrilled, because I am not so much a shining example of Weight Loss Success Through That New-Fangled "Blog" Thing, and I get the sense that that was, in part, her "angle," if you will. I think journalists need "angles." The way I need peanut butter cups. Ba dump bump! Cha! I think she also was working the "exciting tips and nutritional ideas from blogs" angle as well, but again – where the hell do I come in, there? My nutritional tips run along the "maybe I shouldn't have eaten those peanut butter cups" line, you know?
I don't know how she found me, and I really couldn't tell you why she still used me in the article. "Blogs are great for losing weight! Except for this chick, who's still really fat!" It doesn't seem to, you know, quite go with her whole theme. I'd have maybe cut out those paragraphs, stuck with the supporting evidence, but what do I know? I am just a "blog" person. In an article in which I didn't belong. Hello, every body!
So there was that, and it was funny, and many people came to see me (hello, everybody!) and then it was reprinted in the LA Times, and more people came to see me (hey! how's it going?) and then it was apparently syndicated in the Calcutta Telegraph (hiya!), as I received an email from Mr. Kumar, whose opinion is that I come across as "Obese & Sad," but still a very nice person, which is so totally the name of my next website, or possibly even the tagline of this one.
And there are also posts floating around from "real" bloggers -- professional bloggers, even [who knew that self-publishing on the internet (where everything you read is totally the truth) was something you could be a professional at? golly! I wonder how much that pays?] who are just as horrified as me that this blog appeared in an article about diet blogs. That's not a real diet blog! That's a horrible and sad excuse for a website! they say. And grind my bones to make their bread. Except they can't eat bread, I think. With the la vida, and all.
Well, they weren't that mean, perhaps, but it was still startling to see myself and my dumb little website called out quite so firmly and dismissively.
But also kind of goofily and missing the pointily - because, you know, I never claimed to be doing anything inspiring, or to be writing a diet blog or a weight loss journal, and I never claimed to be a professional blogger (whatever, really, the fuck that is) – this is a personal site. There's this thing, over in the sidebar? Yeah, that's where I mention something about this just being a personal site, and how this isn't really a site about losing weight. I am not a professional. Don't try this at home. Closed course.
Anyway, my very experience with The Media and also Professional Blogs (ha!) has been itty bitty and tiny, and weird and hilarious, and hello, everybody.
Also, hello, all you people who have been reading all the time through. I think I'm back. Thanks for the kind comments, and for waiting on me.
I don’t know who that woman is but I used to read her blog because she was really funny.
The reason it comes up jn my case is far darker . I am seeing the growth of tech sans regulation…maybe some of it is useful. Maybe it isn’t but it’s hard to tell without any system of trust and when you use my land without permission or public debate or suddenly do it with huge penalties for citizens like me but yet again letting grifting business people take over my space..yeah no.
However this plays out I won’t be exploited again. Irl I am at the borderline between being truly in the black with society but not in the red either and I am sick of parasitic invasive bs pretenses.
I am pretty unhappy with my state for having allowed this and helping with hostage taking by tech cos. But I can resolve it with the state but not predators. It’s not a teaching moment unless I agree and I never agree to anything that takes or took advantage of me.
Just because I can’t sue and exploit trash doesn’t mean the alternative is being a patsy.
These are disingenuous bullshit jobs and openly predatory heavy handed ways that are taking over society. No tech bauble ..a phone! can fix this.
Life is unfair and I try to work against that not join it or be gullible.
Again, this is a deeper conversation than it seems on the surface OkItsMe. So it can seem a bit tangential to what we are talking about but it isn’t.
I can’t do much but I am not signing over my private resources to a bullshit narrative about growth and jobs where these are worthless jobs that shouldn’t exist and they are a drain on my time and money and have been for 14 years.
And my state should regulate industry before it spills further into private residential property. It’s corruption not iminent domain and I am quite clear. And not prone to hostage taking.
But I am not the best person to mess with in my way ;-/.
That’s Soylent Green world already and it has to be reversed in my property and life because it’s a bad idea not to.
In my case nothing is inevitable. There need to be some speed bumps and if you “remove bureaucracy” and pretend it’s for the advancement of science and medicine when it is for these technoleeches that’s not gonna work when you pick the wrong scientists.
FWIW my problems in both America and in my own country had little to do with immigration, race, caste etc-gender some (and not girlboss crap. And I am not a Karen but I am not a doormat). Gender aside it’s amoral, depraved, predatory market forces..my mom died thanks to this. Which fits with the old people shouldn’t exist or work mentality.
Fortunately though I was and am furious with my mentor, his wife was unambiguously a trustworthy adult. He watches TED tech talks so …you can maybe communicate with such people on a timescale of 40 years but not soon. His wife was much nicer. But there if there was no informed consent, at least there were humans some of whom you could trust to be both honest and not stupid. Whereas after j came back there are no humans and there is no informed consent with the rollout of tech I see in many extremely objectionable ways so a serious complaint from my side is by now…inevitable.
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