New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
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@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I'd prefer to compost them, better for the environment.@HighlandLawyer @cstross
And poison the soil? -
New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross I reached the conclusion over a decade ago that humans range ethically over the entire spectrum -- from basically* 100% good to basically* 100% evil.
Key point: evil people exist. I tend to get pushback when I use the word "evil" ("I don't believe in the supernatural!"), so maybe "completely selfish" is a better term in some contexts.
...and then one is rather forced to reach the conclusion that the global wealth/power system is or has evolved into (since at least Reagan/Thatcher) something which rewards "the worst of the worst" (once again, every accusation is a confession).
...and that the element which has most enabled this shift or intensification is the power that technology creates. (I could go on at length about this.)
Key point: humanity isn't inherently bad or self-destructive; we just haven't learned how to keep the problem-children away from the dangerous stuff -- because there didn't used to be so much of it, and it kind of happened rather suddenly, speaking in terms of cultural-evolutionary timeframes.
So the problem now is twofold: (1) how do we keep the bad people away from the dangerous things, and (2) how do we prise their greedy little fingers off those things in the first place?
These aren't easy problems to solve, but (final key point) I do think they're solvable. We just have to get enough people really understanding the problem in these terms (assuming I'm not wrong), and working together on solutions.
a noted foot
* allowing for error-margin and the fact that no real thing is ever perfectly in accordance with any ideal
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@cstross I wouldn't put anything past Epstein, but Gates has given enough evidence of somewhat-benevolent intentions that I'd at least _consider_ the possibility that he just picked a very bad way of saying "how do we get rid of _poverty_?".
I too would like a world in which there are no poor people, provided we can get there by making the currently-poor people not-poor and stopping new people becoming poor, rather than killing existing poor people and preventing anyone being born who might turn out poor.
(Of course there might be elements of both. It could be that Gates genuinely wants to eliminate poverty but some bit of his brain wants to do it because poor people are an untidy nuisance rather than to benefit those people, and sometimes that leaks out into his words, and all that could be true even if he wouldn't ever actually go for mass murder as the, er, final solution to the problem of poverty.)
Obligatory link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE
Gates is personally, actively evil on a scale seldom seen. He's responsible of millions of deaths during the pandemic, and the sequestering of lots of pharmaceutical advances that used to be freely discussed between research laboratories.
Willing to kill every poor person aligns perfectly with his history.
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@feorag I suspect that when it eventually comes to that, you'd be lucky to get 5% from the liquidation.
At least the $1bn ballroom could be used as a warehouse, but even then it's probably got terrible transport links.
An awful lot of the "money" is either in the form of objects which are expensive to make but of limited utility to non-billionaires, or largely illusory -- how much is Tesla actually worth as a company, if there's no billionaires to buy it? Probably not the current market cap.
@darkling @feorag The point is not to "fund government" since any country with a sovereign currency can never run out of money, so the conversion percentage really doesn't matter. The point is to remove power from a bunch of toxic psychopaths, so that the government can perform its basic function of stopping its citizens from dying unnecessarily
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@trademark @jsl Labour is pursuing a bunch of very unpleasant policies—institutionalizing transphobia, banning sex education for kids, banning immigration, social media surveillance, reclassifying free speech as "terrorism"—to say nothing of pandering to the far right and running a massive rearmament program (the latter might, alas, be necessary this time round). They're trying to recapture the Tory voters who have deserted for Reform. They're going to turn Labour fascist if they continue.
@cstross @jsl As I said, if it turns out to be true THIS TIME, it will be a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Assuming what you're saying is true, I would guess that Labour's leadership must have seen what happened to the most left-leaning US president ever and decided to overcompensate in the other direction. In the current situation I would recommend you spend 95% of effort on warning about reform and the remaining time on whatever labour is doing.
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@cstross @SoftwareTheron we could also do a lot of things a lot cheaper if we actually assigned the costs properly. Excess air travel would be self correcting if it had to cover the full costs for example.
@Colman This is the conclusion I have also reached. TLDR: all mineral extraction should be taxed at a rate sufficient to cover the costs (best estimate) of fixing the environmental damage caused by how it is processed and used.
(...and the revenue generated thereby should be used to, you know, fix said damage -- or reuse/recycle materials as much as possible to minimize it. e.g. pay people to repair and upgrade electronics, rather than grinding them up and sending the results to the poor side of town, locally or globally. Pay people to repair clothes and furniture. Pay for recycling plastics that aren't "cost-effective" to recycle. Pay for research into better ways to recycle things. Dump billions or trillions into mass transit, because it's so much more efficient than cars. ...and so on)
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@jsl @trademark @cstross What you're missing about "the left" in the USA is that (1) for the most part, they don't exist, still victim of the purges of the 1950s; and (2) the only reason we (a pronoun I use loosely) seem disunified is that the strategy of the Official Opposition
️ is to throw out test balloons of which vulnerable people to discard this week, then when opposition to *that* is led disproportionately by folks most directly impacted, then scream "you're tearing us apart." -
@cstross @jsl As I said, if it turns out to be true THIS TIME, it will be a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Assuming what you're saying is true, I would guess that Labour's leadership must have seen what happened to the most left-leaning US president ever and decided to overcompensate in the other direction. In the current situation I would recommend you spend 95% of effort on warning about reform and the remaining time on whatever labour is doing.
@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
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@HighlandLawyer @cstross
And poison the soil?@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
It's their ideas which are toxic, not their flesh. But if you really want, put them all in a rocket & fire them into a lunar impact with enough velocity to create a crater visible by eye from the Earth, as a warning to future generations. -
New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116108349700425602
> The class war has turned hot. And we're all on the losing side.
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross
But.You cannot give up on self interest without consequences, no matter how much you dislike self interest looking like helping other people...
In fact, I'd argue it's *very quickly* unsustainable if you're left to your own devices.
I just hope it's quick enough.
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Gates is personally, actively evil on a scale seldom seen. He's responsible of millions of deaths during the pandemic, and the sequestering of lots of pharmaceutical advances that used to be freely discussed between research laboratories.
Willing to kill every poor person aligns perfectly with his history.
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@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
@jsl @trademark Labour has drifted sharply to the right ever since John Smith (leader before Blair) died suddenly in 1994. The last even remotely non-right-wing leader was Jeremy Corbyn, who was hounded out of the party in 2019 by the ratfuckers who backed Starmer.
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@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross I was just thinking the other day that efficiency *is* fragility and, conversely, that redundancy is an aspect of resilience.
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@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?
@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.
It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.
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@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I'd prefer to compost them, better for the environment.@MedeaVanamonde @cstross @HighlandLawyer too many toxins getting into the food supply.
Dissolve them in piranha solution, and use the liquor as chemical feedstock. -
@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.
It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.
@cstross @trademark The media's bias is indeed something I had to learn is true
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross Wow what?! This is the first time I've seen that quote.
I mean the charitable read is "how do we end poverty" but even then that is a HELL of a way to phrase that if so?! And it's hard to give these people the benefit of the doubt rn
