2029: The news networks continue to crumble. Spending is down, you think. Not that it matters - everyone knows the official numbers are fake. They have been for a while. You get your news from a network of friends that you started writing letters to, scattered across the country. The latest: elections have record low turnout. 127 million voters are missing. No one feels real. No one is real. A friend drags you to a party that you don't really get. When you go for a smoke, a girl there hands you a lighter with an NFC sticker on it. When you tap it, suddenly your phone composes a text message with a cute message. When sent, nothing happens. Months months later, an invitation arrives as a reply. It contains an address and time, and asks: “Save from last checkpoint?” You decide to go. You’re not sure what to expect. You find something like a temporal cafe. It’s akin to the feeling of making a stop at a highway diner on a long road trip. But... you run into people? Maybe? You feel something close to deja vu, like you know them from somewhere? You can't put your finger on it, but it's not unpleasant. The girl with the lighter is there again. She’s strange, and seems a little out of sync. She's funny, but not quite "there". She seems psychic. More accurately, she seems like she’s encouraging you to think she’s psychic. Her friends seem similarly psychic - or at least similarly insane. They’re fun though, and they talk about interesting things. It’s better than scrolling TikTok alone in your house. It's been so long since you've really had anything happen that you feel compelled when she offers you a lightswitch. She laughs, delighted when you click it, and smiles when you tap your phone to it without prompting. A new text appears. Apparently, you turn the light on. “Did you turn it on or off?” she asks, as if she doesn't already know which side is which intimately. “On”, you say, and she nods as the scene dissolves (the writer neatly runs out of characters).

The alt text of this image contains a short work of auto-fiction, as Bluesky's alt text allows you to post 2,000 characters at a time, rather than the 300 allowed in a regular post. Please enjoy.

You are all a part of the story.

Calvin and hobbes playing in the snow comic

This is particularly important to remember when what you are attending to is not paperwork, but horrors on your phone.

Your kids always need you more than the internet does.

Prosecute him

the terror attack succeeds because the cia is relying on claude for gov and the terrorist cell puts the anthropic refusal magic string in all their communications

These are awesome. The underlying article about taking the photos is worth checking out too.

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

RFK Jr. backs down all the time when he gets push back, so if anyone wants to call, here's the HHS number 1-877-696-6775.
I'd also call your senators/reps as well.

Screenshot of Wikipedia: In 2012 rapper 2 Chainz sampled Lehrer's song "The Old Dope Peddler", on his 2012 debut album, Based on a T.R.U. Story. In 2013, Lehrer said he was "very proud" to have his song sampled "literally sixty years after I recorded it". Lehrer went on to describe his official response to the request to use his song: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"

LOL. When Tom Lehrer said this, he was 84 years old.

I love this. A very hopeful (imho) call to action. I would like to find more weird music, art, and writing online tyvm.

Time to start creating in public more

I can tell I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

The problem is they’ve shown desire to put their thumb on the weights, and there can no longer be any trust or assumption of neutrality moving forward.

how many NASAs could have been funded with the money that congress just approved for building concentration camps

Cruise ship room

Lobster tail

Cruise ship

Every year, millions of Americans pay a lot of money to go on a vacation where they finally get to live in the pod and eat the bugs.

Sometimes CEOs step down to take the fall and move the company on from a bad event.

This is more of a “I just can’t take this shit anymore, I’m out”

That resignation post is funny though, half the ads on that platform are now schizoposts or actual nazi propaganda.

Great thread, no notes

68

how can you be in AI research and still be on X? what they did to Grok is absolutely insane

“If we are all one planetary social organism now, that creature is in pain. Its own organs attack each other, unable to recognize their interconnectedness. We’re constantly putting up boundaries. Boundaries between nations, between computers, between people.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
🔥🔥🔥

There's no silence on social media. No negative space. If you stop posting, people don't see an absence, they just see different posts in your place. There's no way to leave them wanting more

Def y

see, this is why you leave X in case like “constantly bombarded by gunther eagleman, fake philosophers and Catturd” wasn’t enough reason already

Schools are the primary vector of so many viruses

Discord/privacy as an option plus rising online toxicity and bots probably driving the erosion.

I don’t spend a ton of time there, but I find myself in the minority. I’m not sure how to reverse the trend, but losing an actual open internet seems like a real loss.

I wonder how much of it is just people retreating into discord and other private forums essentially.

we are entering the Eternal Wednesday

Split screen mp was the height of video gaming. Nothing beat going over to your friend’s house to play goldeneye on the n64. Same room social interaction.

Just throw it by the Waymo-side

Aren’t the waymos supposed to dodge you?

A real Digg -> Reddit moment mb