I got hacked on Facebook (2018), stopped using Instagram (2019), quit Reddit (2023) & Xitter (2025).

Now I have only books (lots of audiobooks), Google Keep (own thoughts and pics), Lemmy (random thoughts), and Bluesky (microblog).

My input and output are much healthier, the people I interact with (when actually people) are nicer, and I generally don’t feel doomed.

Well, yes, I realize the world is fucked, fucked up, and fucking crazy. I’ve reduced by orders of magnitude how toxic it is to my headspace because I’m cutting out the worst of the dreck and engaging with more objectively real information. I’m not in screaming echo chambers populated in the millions. I’m happy if I get 10 responses to a post. Updoots are incidental.

Its like leaving L.A. to settle down in Schitt’s Creek.

Correction: charging two people…

— in the same store, in the same plaza, on the same day, at the slightly different times (or not!), discriminating between them algorithmically —

different prices for the same item…

• So much for early 2000s “price matching.”

• So much for benefits to loyal customers.

• So much for knowing your grocery budget.

• So much for the “neighbourhood store.”

• So much for people being anything other than another resource to mine.

Everyone, everywhere is just a “rational consumer” guided by the “invisible hand” and “voting with their dollars” so that “the best products” emerge.

All of these axioms have, in the fullness of time, proven false.

Falling Down is the American Dream turned nightmare.

I’d submit that — in 1993 — the one that struck me as being the most similar was Demolition Man. Not the Sly Stallone character in comparison, tho. The Dennis Leary character was more a 1 to 1 analogue of the non-conformist pushing back on a system that deems him “not economically viable.”

Later, 1998, I’d say that The Way of the Gun (wri/dir Christopher McQuarrie) does this well. I know, I know, low scores on RT and iMDB, but this movie still works for me. Even the opening scene, which sets up a world of reprehensible characters perfectly. It’s a rock-solid neo-noir western helmed by a the writer of the Usual Suspects (and a long string of Tom Cruise projects including M:I 5,6,7&8.)

I’d also toss in Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. A man, who has a code, undertakes to address that which he sees as unjust while moving through a world that wants to exploit him. And, American Beauty (1999) (tw: Spacey)

By the late aughts and early '10s, in the wake of the total meltdown of the global economy, Margin Call (2010, only economic violence) and Killing Them Softly (2012). “Now fucking pay me.”

From TV: The Wire and Breaking Bad fit the bill.

Continuity, governed by the script supervisor, is designed to be invisible.

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” ~ God Entity, Futurama S03E20

Books/Magazines/Podcasts:

• No Logo by Naomi Klein

• Adbusters by Kalle Lasn

• Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev

• A New Train of Thought (though somewhat ham-fistedly) by Various Writers

• Ashes, Ashes by David Torcivia and Daniel Folkner

• Reset by Roland J. Diebert

Fitting the description of movie/show:

• Mr. Robot

• Utopia (UK version)

• Killing Them Softly

• The Big Short, Margin Call

• Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

• 3-Iron (Korean film)

• Parasite (Korean film)

There are several documentaries and short films

• The Corporation by Joel Bakan, Harold Crooks, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott

• Who Killed the Electric Car?

• The End of Suburbia

• Man by Steve Cutts (3m47s)

• Nuggets by Andreas Hykade (5m06s)

• The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

Also, you might search for films about “corporate malfeasance”.

• Michael Clayton (top pick)

• The Insider (top pick)

• Erin Brockovich

• Dark Waters

As an introvert, it’s actually easier for me to talk to strangers. Fewer attachments, lower risk thresholds, can bail when I need to. Mostly it’s jokes or insights, comisseration and comedy are easy roads in.

Expecting, or pursuing the establishment of, human rights as a subjugate group or “subordinate” class.

deleted by creator

Um… has this series jumped the shark yet?

호박죽 (ho bak juk, pumpkin porridge). Many a cold morning in the ROK, this was my breakfast.

Actually, a lot of my comfort foods are porridge based: cream of wheat, corn meal porridge, steel-cut oats, rolled oat oatmeal, oatmeal and raisin cookies.

If it’s America… Again, the following:

• target practice

• cheap / unpaid labor

• scapegoating

• entertainment

• political wedge issue

• cannon fodder

• general purpose exploitation

• status symbols

• enemy images

Six-hundred twenty-three days later.

“We cannot afford for Lebanon to become another Gaza,” António Guterres Secretary-General, United Nations, June 2024.

Less that I took this to be the worldview of Card’s books. I’ve also read Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.

More that there are operators in this world who, on reading this, see this as rationale and put it into practice.

Also: Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Greed. Ignorance. Intolerance.

Your workout, food, or personal hygiene regimen.

Exploitation, expropriation, or extortion.

Your subjective experience of opening a box, playing a video game, or viewing media.

Always a treat to hear the quiet part said out loud.

Though, to remain relevant, NATO is has to appease its in-house belligerent hegemon; especially when that particular orange monster is gobbling up oil-rich nations.

Iran may not be under NATO’s purview, but starving Ukraine is. When UKR F-16s are flying without missiles while trying to defend against Russia, NATO has to try to pry loose some armaments that will, otherwise, be funnelled to the aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.

The world continues to slip toward all-out war. One miscalculation, one over-reaction, one missed signal and the several conflicts will morph into a single, giant kill zone between 16 and 50% the size of the planet — a World War.

At least that’s the nightmare we ought to be working hard to avoid.

As much as I hate this quote and it’s shrewd cold logic, this is what’s bearing down on us:

“The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.” ~ Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

Oh boy. Ill make this as short as I can because I really ought to be off to bed.

Nuclear weapons, since the beginning, foment distrust. Neocolonialism, the Red Scare, and Fuckiteering breeds enemies and blowback. And, Iran, having oil and a spotty history relating to the superpower/hegemon that is America, has denied and actively worked against the “Manifest Destiny” of American supremacy in the world and — regionally — Israeli supremacy in Palestine.

Since 1945, the United States has:

• developed nuclear weapons

• used nuclear weapons at war

• tested nuclear weapons at “peace”

• conducted a Cold War against “non-aligned” states — including Iran for a time — and communists and people who America regards as “other”

• supported Israel as an independent state despite the questionable (read: ethnic cleansing) methods employed to declare the state

• overthrown Iran’s democratically elected government and installed a Shah, “friendly” to US interests and brutal to Iranian people

• developed the Hydrogen bomb

• overthrown several other democratically elected governments, prosecuted wars and police actions across 4 continents…

And that barely gets us to the mid 1950s.

By 1979, Iran got fed up. JFK’s words, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” apply here. There was a revolution, they booted the Shah and took some Americans hostage for 444 days. Somehow, an Islamist faction rose from the confusion and seized power. Marjane Sartapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, helped me with this part.

In the cocaine-addled '80s, the States said, “fuckit,” and started paying Saddam Hussein to go to war with Iran. Iran held the line for 8 years. After that, Hussein became the enemy instead of a friend, Iran sat back and watched the States undertake Gulf Wars I and II under the Bush family’s rule. Meanwhile, the Israeli people have lived in fear of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Palestinians. Harsh words, and a few thousand rocket attacks, against the State of Israel and America’s support by AIPAC are part of the puzzle. And of course, Aljazeera conuterspinning the American narrative from its HQ in Qatar is also a threat.

In the end, Iran DID develop the capacity yo make nuclear energy which they claim is for electricity. US doesn’t trust anyone they don’t control, and haven’t since they achieved schoolyard bully status back in '45. Israel also has, but refuses to talk about, its nuclear weapons, which are a threat to all of the countries Israel has attacked (some of whom attacked Israel in the '50s abd '60s). Again, a paucity of trust.

Since about Y2K, Iran’s leadership has declared a Fatwa against nuclear weapons and swears they will never possess them.

There have been at least two Palestinian uprisings against Israel (2000-2005 and the Al-Aqsa Flood of 2023). There was a period of secular society-led protest that is often overlooked. Hamas changed the charter. All actions have been met with tacit or overt Iranian support for Palestinian resistance. That said, the heavy-handed actions of this Israeli government, and several governments back to 2000, have only made the prospect of peace in the region more distant from reality. Certainly, decimating the population of Gaza in 2 years under the Dahiya doctrine fits the phrase “the cruelty is the point.”

So, amid negotiations to not go to war, the children in the room decided to sneak attack and assassinate the Supreme Leader of Iran. This undermines resistance the Iranian people themselves were mounting against their government. It undermines International law and U.S. own laws about Presidency. It destabilizes the region and will impact the global economy.

Anyway. This took an hour and Im going to bed.

It’s in because, well, I was surprised that Grey’s Anatomy is in its 22nd season.

Its interesting that interactions here center on the one pop-culture element of my comment and none on the others. Yes, it’s a non-sequitur. It stands out.

Is it because the others are all self-evident? Flogged to death? Too controversial? Not controversial enough? Insurmountable?

• Expensive education

• Cities planned for cars

• 5-day work weeks

• Grey’s Anatomy

• Nuclear weapons

• Racism

And I agree with the others who’ve said:

• Fossil fuels, particularly coal

• Private health insurance

Were you there when it happened to me?

I swear, that one Donald Sutherland scene in JFK had me going for such a long time on the conspiracy bent. I thought it was real.

Who knew, it was Kevin Bacon we needed to pay attention to all along.

Worse, it was produced by Alex Jones.