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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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
The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
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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 @cstross @SoftwareTheron
per Ministry for the Future that problem self corrects when the small planes start falling out of the sky
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@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 I@jsl@hachyderm.io Leftist policies in general are very popular, if the left would just stop the self-harm, they would win easily. Media bias can only do so much, it is not all powerful. Jeremy Corbyn in particular was a much too easy target, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine
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@cstross
It is the intersection of the degrees of selfishness & foresightedness. If your level of selfishness is "the good of all mankind" you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accomodation, etc; if "me and my family" you get traditional aristocratic behaviour; if "me & nobody else" you treat everyone else as objects, which can be disposed of at your whim- mass disposal of the poor on a par with a neat close-cropped lawn.and treating people as objects is sin per Pratchett
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Nuke the Rich.
Eating them is bad for the collective colon@MedeaVanamonde @HighlandLawyer @cstross
But if we ate one a week I think it would start deterring them
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@MedeaVanamonde @HighlandLawyer @cstross
But if we ate one a week I think it would start deterring them
@darwinwoodka @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
Well let's be fair about this: a national lottery. One person a week is to be sacrificed, drawn by lot; but the number of entries in the lottery is the number of <£$¥€> one has, & that wealth will be returned to the national pot. It could be you, but statistically it's much more likely to be a billionaire. -
@darwinwoodka @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
Well let's be fair about this: a national lottery. One person a week is to be sacrificed, drawn by lot; but the number of entries in the lottery is the number of <£$¥€> one has, & that wealth will be returned to the national pot. It could be you, but statistically it's much more likely to be a billionaire.@HighlandLawyer @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I think it might go faster if we just ate the richest one every week though
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@atax1a @javierg @cstross Noted. Is there some analysis somewhere of how that allegedly makes him responsible for millions of deaths?
(I can imagine how it might. I can also imagine how it might have been the actually-most-effective course of action but spinnable as responsible for millions of deaths by people who want to make him look bad. I can also imagine how it might be very impossible to determine whether what he did was actually good or bad either in expectation or in actual effects, which seems to me the most likely situation.)
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@atax1a @javierg @cstross Noted. Is there some analysis somewhere of how that allegedly makes him responsible for millions of deaths?
(I can imagine how it might. I can also imagine how it might have been the actually-most-effective course of action but spinnable as responsible for millions of deaths by people who want to make him look bad. I can also imagine how it might be very impossible to determine whether what he did was actually good or bad either in expectation or in actual effects, which seems to me the most likely situation.)
@gjm this does not appear to be a question in good faith so we're outta here
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@gjm this does not appear to be a question in good faith so we're outta here
@atax1a Obviously you're under no obligation to answer any questions, nor to believe anything I say, but for what it's worth it was absolutely a question in good faith. I don't know exactly what Gates did and didn't do, it sounds like you know more than me, I had a bit of a look and didn't find anything definitive, and I'd like to know more.
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@atax1a Obviously you're under no obligation to answer any questions, nor to believe anything I say, but for what it's worth it was absolutely a question in good faith. I don't know exactly what Gates did and didn't do, it sounds like you know more than me, I had a bit of a look and didn't find anything definitive, and I'd like to know more.
@gjm and we have better things to do with our morning
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@HighlandLawyer @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I think it might go faster if we just ate the richest one every week though
@darwinwoodka @HighlandLawyer @cstross
Or Sacrifice them to Madame Pele on the Big Island.
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@cstross And the thing to understand about being "poor", is that that includes everything up to the very tippy top of upper middle class!!
@cstross @GinevraCat In the county in which I live, I’m theoretically “rich” because I’m in the upper quartile of income here, but people from places like the SF bay area scoff and describe anyone not making multiple millions per year as “poor.”
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@darwinwoodka @HighlandLawyer @cstross
Or Sacrifice them to Madame Pele on the Big Island.
@MedeaVanamonde @darwinwoodka @cstross
Aye, it's good to keep up the old traditions -
@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 @cstross I do not declare myself an expert on UK politics, but the first past the post voting system, and one candidate per election area, makes it very hard for new parties to get started since people rightfully worry about “wasting” their vote.
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@jsl @trademark @cstross I do not declare myself an expert on UK politics, but the first past the post voting system, and one candidate per election area, makes it very hard for new parties to get started since people rightfully worry about “wasting” their vote.
@samantha42 @jsl @cstross The issue is not unique to the UK. In all countries the left is always prone to fragmenting into internecine war. In particular the Weimar republic had proportional representation when Hitler got elected. I wish people would care to actually study history and learn from the places that has avoided this(so far)...
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@darwinwoodka @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
Well let's be fair about this: a national lottery. One person a week is to be sacrificed, drawn by lot; but the number of entries in the lottery is the number of <£$¥€> one has, & that wealth will be returned to the national pot. It could be you, but statistically it's much more likely to be a billionaire.@HighlandLawyer @darwinwoodka @MedeaVanamonde That's going to reap an awful lot of middle-aged/middle-class skulls, though: 3000 middle-aged folks who own average homes (£0.3M each) = one billionaire-equivalent. Might be best to omit the family home from the notional wealth.
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@cstross @GinevraCat In the county in which I live, I’m theoretically “rich” because I’m in the upper quartile of income here, but people from places like the SF bay area scoff and describe anyone not making multiple millions per year as “poor.”
@cstross @GinevraCat And by “in the upper quartile,” I mean “just barely in it.” So I’m probably around the 75-80%, not the 99%, in a mostly rural county primarily depending upon being a commuter country for Reno.
