Despite the rise of electronic books, works published in codex format are still very popular. Some even still have hard bindings.

No one likes scrolls anymore.

When he’s a teen he’s going to (likely) be super horny and angry, and most people are going find him annoying. In ancient, ancient, ancient times, this is when he’d go on walkabout, live off the land and eventually steal a girl from another tribe, a) we’ve stopped doing that, instead letting him go through adolescence at home, and b) Our post-Christian (post-Paulean) culture thinks sex is icky and he’s a perv for being too horny to learn math.

This is when he’ll be tempted into the incel movement, especially if his school hits him with no sex ed, or abstinence-only sex ed (which is still a plague in the US). You’ll have to teach him boldly and candidly, or talk to Planned Parenthood about a way to explain everything from flirting to courtship to consent to protection.

I haven’t had the teenage girl experience, but I’ve heard it’s super easy and super arbitrary for her to be branded a slut. The whole patriarchal system is against her, so if she seems to have either a brain or ambition, her teachers, family, ministers and police officers will peg her as a feminist and future-childless-cat-lady. On the other hand, if she wants to be a tradwife (or pretends to) then she’ll be seen as boring.

Also when she’s in her mid teens, she’ll be intolerably cranky, and it’ll be very easy to want her to get managed by the other parent or go away or something.

Also remember in 2012 the Republican party could not find an interesting candidate among its own, and finally resorted to Romney, the president of a private equity firm (that sinkholes functional large companies while pocketing loans and assets, thereby creating wasteland in the economy – it’s way more evil if less spicy than blowjobs from young staffers)

The same thing was happening in 2015 when Trump did his sales pitch (which really resonates with low-information voters) and he literally stole the Republican party from under the principal candidates. Remember that through 2015 they screeched about how he was going to bring the GOP to ruin, and turn it into a fascist cult of personality that worshiped Trump as a God-Emporor-Shuggoth-Thing. All of these predictions eventually came to pass, and with a couple of exceptions (that got ousted or died) every last one of them bent the knee for the general election.

Much of the US is under a thrall that is exacerbated by a) A trillion-dollar propaganda machine that dominates viewership (and has ruined masculinity as an identity – at least to me) and b) That the lower rungs of the working class can no longer survive under neoliberalism (e.g. late stage capitalism) and so the Democratic party as it is has nothing really to offer them. They’re dying anyway, so why not vote for the face-eating leopards?

According to Knitting Cult Lady, the exceptions they extend to Godhead Trump will not be extended to his replacement. If J. D. Vance becomes president, no-one will like him, and he may just get knifed by his own staffers in the situation room.

Trump Cult collapses from within is not on my bingo card, but I’ve seen it on other cards.

Complicit with the genocide in Palestine by Ben Netanyahu’s regime (and by prior Israeli administrations) does make it pretty evil, yes.

It can’t be reformed from within, and requires a great deal of reform (much the way justice in the US requires extreme levels of reform).

Sadly, the only alternative we’re given in the US is the GOP, which is so much worse.

TBH, given the current state of affairs, I’m having doubts of the capacity of the human species to civilize, at least at our current tech level.

AOC? Yeah, she was pressured by Pelosi that if she didn’t vote pro-Palestine-Genocide that Pelosi and the Democratic party would unperson her and make sure she would never see a committee assignment in her life.

Then they didn’t give her committee assignments.

After Carter, the Democratic party ratcheted up all the lockdowns to make sure anyone actually interested in serving the public would be forced to eat at the kids table. Anyway, she changed her no vote to present after Pelosi talked with her in the back room.

DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!

This is the my problem with Marvel Snap, which has a (simplified) betting system like poker (a player can retreat — fold — at any time.)

So when my opponent is doing their thing and I realize I’m going to sweep the board, I feel sympathetic and dont snap (raise)… even if they snap, in which case I know they’re happier losing four cubes than eight.

Gloves go off when they use Goblins, Ice Man or Scorpion, which attack my turf directly, and I get pissy when they Juggernaut or Leader at the wrong time, and an ancient, long trained master of MtG (sober, now) my synergy combos are atypical and catch rivals often by surprise.

Oh, in full disclosure, I’m playing for free, even though each paid season nudges the power curve forward slightly (making it a teensy bit pay-to-win.) I’m poor and when I say I’m a sober MtG player, it’s because I was a total addict and miss it like Bilbo misses the One Ring.

Reagan stared the dissolution of union power by firing all the air traffic controllers, an event from which we still haven’t recovered from in 2025 since ATCs take a lot of training, so all the ones we have currently are overworked and pulling a lot of overtime along with their short pay, scant benefits and 1980s era equipment.

Actually, Reagan was the salted bomb that spelled the end of the United States, and it’s just been dying of radiation poisoning since. Reagan was a product of television evangelists like Jerry Falwell organizing churches into a Republican voting bloc (with abortion access obstruction being their unifying issue). Why? Because they didn’t like nonwhites in their religious academies.

…And before that, industrialists who were really sore about FDRs New Deal. (And to make the implication explicit, said industrialists were totally happy with Americans living in shantytowns, Hoovervilles and eating flour paste to survive while dying of malnutrition. This is the great that MAGAs want the US to return to.

So really, America and the rise of the fascist autocratic MAGA movement is a whole bunch of greed and bigotry all the way down, and if I were reading it in a fiction story, the society deserves to fall. But I’m in the middle of it and it sucks to be the little people while the high lords play their games of thrones.

No, at the moment, we have to vote defensively. But we had to vote defensively in 2000 and couldn’t and it got us here.

And to be fair there’s a trillion-dollar far-right propaganda machine that sucks up the majority of viewership. So yes, in fact, a lot of influence is assuring we’ve learned nothing and will continue to do so until our own necks are in the mire.

It may be too late now. But it may have been too late in 2016. It may have been too late in 2000.

Fascist autocratic dissolution of the society is not the only great filter we are facing. An overwhelming amount of work must me done to reverse the FUBAR, and the people are not yet ready for it. Nor are they ready for the horrors of war, famine and pestilence (transmissible diseases like measles), all whose hounds have vaulted their slips.

At this point we need to create a mechanism that allows public pressure on a party.

Switching from FPTP voting (one-person, one vote) to something else will allow for other parties to have a chance but that will take time to brew.

We’re not ready for sortition (selection of officials by lottery) but that would end the career of politicians. And having barbers and coal miners govern is better than what we got now, even if they’ll need a lot of handholding, and an institution to swat away lobbyist pests.

The voters really did a number breaking open Pandora’s jar in November. It’s a fine mess they’ve brought upon us, and one we may not survive to clean up.

So about two years ago, my libido switched to working not at all. Its previous stage was working-half-assed for most of my adult life. Psych-meds were (and probably still are) a factor.

I kinda hoped it’s going to be wheeee! I’m ace! GARLIC BREAD!

Alas, no.

But I now have two noteworthy phenomena:

The first is I’ll look at something erotic. Usually porn. There’s lots of porn available, and my brain goes this is important. It means something to me and tries to decipher it like a 70s era acid rock album cover or a Salvador Dali painting. It’s not titillating… not quite. It’s like someone gave me a post-hypnotic suggestion years ago and I accidentally came across the triggering image, but that subconscious code is faint and sepia now and gives me strange impulses.

The other phenomenon is when my brain goes HORNY and I’ll look at porn and it skips right over it. HORNY! It’s like the zombies deciding Homer Simpson doesn’t have enough brains to be interesting, there’s no sexy in these curves. Nor these. Nor these. Everything is all wrong! This is super frustrating, and sometimes I’m compelled to keep looking for the stimulus that has the right pins in the right order to turn the lock.

I understand Leon now, Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!

Sadly this was a factor in my separation with my wife. We still see each other once a week for dinner. It’s a zesty blend of complicated and tragic, the kind that happens while society collapses Titanic sinks.

Nᴏ Wᴀʀ Bᴜᴛ Cʟᴀss Wᴀʀ