"finest silks and linens’ washed in orphans tears and the blood of martyrs.

No thanks - I know where he’s been.

In Britain our most powerful parties are competing to kiss Trump’s massive arse - our Prime Minister ‘likes and respects Trump’. Honestly, Starmer, get a room! Ugh! I am sick of being shamed by my politicians.

I hope Canada elects leaders who will tell Trump to get lost. You need Zelenskyy energy. You deserve it. Give ‘Uncle Spam’ hell, Canada!

A world at peace, true peace based on justice and happiness not enforced by oppression and brainwashing, is my hope. It’s what humans need. It’s what I need :-) I would prefer democracy, votes, laws, regulations, social norms all coming together to deliver that. Right now, it is others who are ‘moving fast and breaking stuff’ so my puzzle is how to slow 'em down and mend stuff before it goes too far to save anything good. Can I do that without violence or not? I prefer not but is it my choice? I am not the powerful one here, it’s the guys with guns and nukes who are running this show, and they seem hell-bent on violence. Do I let them roll over me or take a stand, however token? I am old enough to remember Tiananmen Square protests and that guy standing in front of a column of tanks asking the soldiers to go back to barracks and not brutalise peaceful protesters. I witnessed the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. I ask myself have I the guts to do as much? Will I be a coward and let the tanks roll? Just being honest and thinking aloud. And worried, very worried, about where things are headed.

I tried creating a Steam account and was blocked by the revolving captcha security thing - took days to try to get help from their customer care and by the time they got back to me I had lost interest. I spent the waitjng time researching Valve and I decided they are not an ethical business. Made me sad as I loved the idea of a customised-for-gaming-on-console linux OS and liked the look of the hardware. But Valve is a monopolist and has too much market share and too many users and thus too much power - USA politics today shows how big a risk that is. Valve supports unethical business models like ‘rent game to play’, AI-generated junk games and IP violations so it debases game development and hurts indy developers, live-streaming games which is bad for environment. It promotes ‘easy access/always on gaming’ and is thus profiting from addiction-to-gaming, which ix a MASSIVE problem and few gamers admit it. It’s an American corporation and I distrust American corporate culture. Most of which might be said of other console/platforms so its not just Valve/Steam, I feel wary of but the whole industry. I bought a second-hand Switch so did not help Nintendo/Japanese corporate power directly. I bought a bundle of 2nd-hand games on sd card with minimal download content (except for ‘No Man’s Sky’ which constantly updates). I am trying to be an ethical gamer - limit my time gaming to stop me becoming an addict etc. But I admit I am compromised - I spend too much time gaming, being retired its easy to lose track of time. Honestly, I feel like a vegan who wraps bacon in thick wholemeal sandwiches and pretends they are not really eating pigs since its mainly bread. I am ‘a work in progress’.

“If anyone says they’re a libertarian, I just shrug and leave.” - Atlas In His Own Words

Drum roll, ting on the cymbal! Lol!

I think it would be easier to just get WW3 over with and see how the dust settles!

I switched to Linux on my laptops years ago. Recently, I retired and started playing video games like Skyrim. I play on a Nintendo Switch. I considered playing Skyrim on a laptop so I could use/build mods. I bought a laptop with Windows 11 and spent forty minutes removing the bloat, ads, spyware, ai nonsense, and other dross, fixing it so it did not ‘update’ to restore everything I deleted, and installing my preferred alternatives (browser, search, email etc). It reminded me why I hate Windows almost as much as Mac OS (which is even more controlling). Microsoft have hundreds of engineers ‘enshitifying’ everything. It is more than a full-time job trying to stop them and block their ‘improvements’. I am retired. I have better things to do.

I did not enjoy playing games with a laptop (hurts my arthritis, I prefer using a console and an easy chair) and resented having to reverse engineer everything I installed to keep it running but without sacrificing my privacy so the laptop now just sits in a drawer. It amazes me that anyone still tolerates Microsoft products, or any of the monopolists stuff. Why is anyone still using google search or chrome browser, why bing or any of it? Why is anyone still seeing adverts? Why is everyone still being fed by algorithms? You must chose this - but why? I always sought out better and if it did not exist, I built it, and if I could not build it, I did without. There is a lot of dumbing-down around technology. Back in C20th, we used to build our own hardware, write our own software. We were skilled hobbyists (later I got an M.Sc. to reinforce my hobby skills with theory and even ran a business for a while as an engineer). Around 2000 +/- five years, the monopolists offered ‘help’ in the form of WYSIWYG editors to write code for us or ‘click buttons to register your account’ platforms to host content for us instead of us running our own websites (blogger, wordpress, facebook, twitter etc). They dumbed us all down, farmed us like animals for data and used clickbait to get ad revenue and undermined our politics, culture, even changed our sense of being human. Now old folk can build resources but younger people can only consume. We have to re-skill and resist the seduction of the easy and free-to-use. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Never trust a tech bro, whether USA or any nationality.

Personally, I want to ‘jail break’ my Switch and make mods for my console version of Skyrim. I can’t do that now as it is illegal but when they bring out the Switch 2 and the old console is ‘obsolete’ and they stop trying to get money for Skyrim, I reckon we tinkerers will get a chance to re-purpose the old console to play the old games in our own way. I reckon some exciting engineering is happening amongst the recyclers and re-purposers rather than amongst the corporates. I only buy second-hand for ethical reasons and to save money. I always install my own software based on AOSP or use a more ethical distro or alternative to the commercial options. I always debloat or degoogle or remove unwanted stuff. I wish that kind of personalisation were more common. There is a zero sum relationship with tech: either the technology controls you, or you control it. I urge you to control your own tech. Don’t be enslaved by it. I feel I am in a minority in wanting sovereignty over my damn phone. It makes me sad.

I play Skyrim. In that rpg video game you can be an assassin. After you kill Grelod the Kind, a child abuser, one of the children she tortured says:

“Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities.” - Runa Fair-Shield.

When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy? I can see how bumping off many crazy men (and right now I can only name male dictators but I guess women could be just as bad) would make the world safer - well, safer if we assume it would not trigger a backlash and WW3.

Maybe we could assassinate Kim and North Korea would rejoice not set off nukes? Maybe we could assassinate MbS and the Saudis would just shrug and appoint a new Crown Prince with a less murderous tendancy towards journalists and dissidents? But could we assassinate Putin, Trump, Xi, or Modi and not release hell?

If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?

Note: this is a thought experiment - outside Skyrim, I never killed anyone, never worked as an assassin for hire, and have no desire to change that fact. I just want to read your thoughts on this topic - I think we’ve all wondered if there is a shortcut back to normality in face of current events but are we fooling ourselves?

Left founded the Labour Party in UK, was excluded by Centrists for most of last century, has never been able to gain political control for pushing radical change since 1945. If you try to make Dems your vehicle, it will destroy you before you reform it. Your plan is a false hope, I’m sorry to say.

I think it makes more sense to found your own political movement. That matters more than parties. Especially in an emergency when what matters is survival not manifesto promises or campaigns for elections that, realistically given Trump’s lawlessness and declared intention to reign as monarch and founder of a dynasty, might never happen.

Feed, house, heal each other - Americans already do that, just look at community responses to recent natural disasters like California fires - ‘ordinary people’ can help each other and often do so better than the government. This is a crisis for USA but also an opportunity for citizens to make an alternative society, invent new ways of working, new ways of meeting needs, inspiring creativity and innovation, creating an economy that really takes care of people instead of making some creep more wealth than he could ever use in a hundred lifetimes. Do for yourselves what the state has failed to do. Build another nation inside the dead carcass of corporate America. Be ready to take over when Trump’s coup and the fantasy of representative democracy finally dies. Emerge as a radically different society.

There’s no point trying to reanimate the old America when it brought you to this crisis and would do so again in future you ever let it. You need your own Plan 2025. I used to think like you, now I think anarchy is probably the best strategy. Do not gift your power to others, least of all charismatic leaders or political parties dominated by careerists, lobbyists, and corruption. When in crisis, do not carry on as normal. In crisis the best hope of survival is to do something radically different. Science shows, 80% of people cannot recognise a crisis and cannot innovate. You must be in the 20%. Cultivate boldness!