scarecrowbob (u/scarecrowbob)

scarecrowbob commented on Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin hyperallergic.com/curatin... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

dtgriscom · a day ago

Thanks, but watching an eighteen-hour seminar on a book so that I can enjoy that book doesn't seem worth it to me. (Note that "to me"; I'm quite open to being a literary lightweight. My experience of AP English in high school was that it inoculated me against the great works of literature.)

scarecrowbob · 19 hours ago

I eventually dropped out of a PhD Lit program, but damn the AP English syllabus did everything it could do to dissuade me from enjoying literature.

I feel you on not wanting to read stuff that can't be read without footnotes.

scarecrowbob commented on Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin hyperallergic.com/curatin... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

dtgriscom · a day ago

Although I love most of her fantasy works, I found 'The Dispossessed' to be too difficult for me. However, that's probably because her interests were broader than mine.

scarecrowbob · 19 hours ago

As a person actively organizing with anarchists and who has had a lot of long, fraught relationships leading to my late 40s, I found the Dispossessed to be relatable is ways I wouldn't have if I'd read it earlier in life.

I don't know if it's a difficult book, but I can see how it might land differently for me in different situations.

scarecrowbob commented on Google staff call for firm to cut ties with ICE bbc.com/news/articles/cvg... · Posted by u/tartoran

startupsfail · 2 days ago

Right way of resisting is not to quit your job, but to observe, be friendly, and gradually push away toxic people.

scarecrowbob · 2 days ago

An issue with this approach is that engaging in this way can start to reset your standards for "toxic people", and not in the cheerful "I'd like to buy the world a coke" manner.

One other issue I've had when I have tried to do this is that largely the "big" horrible issues with things are systematic rather than interpersonal- it doesn't matter who is operating the "baby seal blender", its operation is both the harm being done and the reason why "baby-seal-smoothies-r-us" operates so unless you cease the very profitable baby-seal-smoothy business the harm isn't going to stop.

Not to say that those issues are universally applicable, but rather to note that when you dance with the devil you need to observe how the devil is dancing with you; if you're going to go that way you need to be really careful in ways you don't need to be careful if you, say, just go work in a situation where the harm you create is less obvious and immediate.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

tremon · 3 days ago

> outside of one small city

We're conveniently forgetting Chicago, Portland, Houston, Charlotte now?

scarecrowbob · 2 days ago

Ah damn, I thought they were talking about the "one small city" I live in in rural CO.

Where where ICE kidnapped a bunch of folk who were legitimate parts of our community.

Where my anarchistic line of "I have stopped caring about the law and have a hard moral boundary that if a person can live here and keep up a house and job and contribute to our community they are as 'legal' as anyone else" is starting to get a real hold even among my historically Democrat-voting friends.

But yeah, I wouldn't forget those comparative metropolises, because I'd figure that the sentiment is even stronger where even more people can see the reality of which humans are being trafficked by the US gov.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

direwolf20 · 3 days ago

Did he manoeuvre himself, or did some other guy manoeuvre him so that guy could stay relatively hidden?

scarecrowbob · 3 days ago

My assumption was that he didn't even intend to win the 2016 election but the ability to launder dark money is so appealing that his avarice combined with the sheer unlikability of HRC to create a perfect storm to blow him out of Florida.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

epsilonic · 4 days ago

They will have machines do that for them, curating collections of dissident files that are categorized by various propensities, then proposing among a range of soft to hard interventions. This is why we're seeing an uptick in the construction of AI data centers (e.g. STARGATE); it's going to get ugly very soon. And before you know it, your social mobility will be dictated by how well you adapt to the narratives they endorse. The fact that they (i.e., the elites) have gotten away with so much depravity, and are now revealing it publicly, emboldens them further to commit the type of oppression that I foresee happening. What we're experiencing now is ritual humiliation at scale.

scarecrowbob · 4 days ago

I mean, they mostly are just picking folks up off the streets cause the folks are brown or have an accent.

I am not sure that even if they could minority report their way into killing off all the future Fred Hamptons, they have either the man power to do it or the mental ability to define an ontology for their little scrye to even tell them who they -should- target.

It is easy to confuse these folks with the mostly competent neoliberal technocrats they replaced, but that's the whole point of this thread, no? Patel and Bongino were more interested in how to win twitter points after Kirk was killed than, like, going and playing g-man, after all.

Also, one of the nice things about living in a panopticon is that it gives the folks running it the idea that they actually know what's going on. I'll take the long bet on the over-confidence and under-competence of these WWF wrestlers.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

epsilonic · 4 days ago

We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.

scarecrowbob · 4 days ago

I mean, my hope is that the kids at the CIA read all my dumb postings here, report them to their old-men quattos, and try and flip me :D

But I'd think that the folks with their hands on the big levers probably care less and less about that kind of thing; I'd imagine it's harder and harder to find the Foucault readers who might even care to collect and monitor dissident views because the newer folks figure all us stupid nerds will show up on flock and get nabbed once they've run out of brown folks to kidnap.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

adventured · 4 days ago

The bumbling dope is the default go-to characterization by the left, they always target intelligence first no matter what.

Bush 1 was a dope. Dan Quayle was a dope. Bush 2 was a dope (until they decided they liked him). Sarah Palin was a dope. Trump is a dope. Vance is a dope.

The left views intelligence as a top tier prize, so they start by first trying to dismantle someone's standing on that.

How likely is it that all of those people are actually stupid compared to the typical voter? Zero chance. They're more likely to be considerably smarter than the typical voter, above average intelligence across the board. Are Bill Clinton and Obama smarter than Trump? Yes imo. But you can't play at nuance in the propaganda game though, so the left always settles on: my opponent is stupid; and they push hard in that direction.

scarecrowbob · 4 days ago

A willingness to break norms could be genius, or it could be a sign that the person doing that simply doesn't understand why those norms are in place.

I think you're both correct to note that attacking the intelligence of a person is both meaningless and a pretty normal liberal tactic.

At the same time, one way of understanding the shift from hard to soft power is the same as understanding Trumps "intelligence":

he's funny and knows how to work a crowd, but it doesn't functionally matter how smart he is because he has so much organized power and thus resources that he doesn't -have- to be smart. Being rich and sociopathic is probably way more effective than worrying about the long games, and everything in sir hoss's life probably makes that fact obvious.

In that same way, my horrors about this shift in power could also be stated as a worry that the folks running the US gov don't feel like they need to have any subtlety or mask on their power because they are more comfortable using dumb, brute force.

And they might be correct in that assessment- they might not need to be intelligent if they can be brutal enough.

Good luck to them and "game on" I guess; 3k troops versus 150k activated but as yet non-violent folks in Minneapolis will be an interesting bit of data for sure.

scarecrowbob commented on CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook simonwillison.net/2026/Fe... · Posted by u/ck2

AngryData · 4 days ago

What makes you think h is smart instead of a blubbering idiot that Mr Magoo his way through life? All the reports from people who knew him personally had very low regard for his intellegence, and that is even before taking into account his repeated public blunders.

scarecrowbob · 4 days ago

That's certainly closer to my understanding of the guy. He really doesn't feel "smart" in any of the usual sense of the term.

It's entirely possible that you can be on the stupid side of Chesterton's fence (to abuse the metaphor) and take it down, causing all the expected havok, and then claim you're excelling at your goals because you just have a sociopathic approach to the world.

Sure, picking up Maduro was well executed... and then he has been replaced with (checks notes... ) "the Maduro Regime".

Yeah, that -screams- competence.

scarecrowbob commented on ICE Begins Buying 'Mega' Warehouse Detention Centers Across US bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/saubeidl

threatofrain · 4 days ago

What is the probability that there shall not be a civil war or coup in the US within the next 10 years? What is the earliest signal to flee?

scarecrowbob · 4 days ago

As somebody who'd rather fight the fascists now, I don't think it's super likely.

Enjoy some wild speculation, if that's your jam:

My bet is that DJT will kick off from a stroke in the next 2 years, the GOP will get beat, and things will "go back to normal". But the Dems will elect some jerk like Newsome and not do the important work of imposing consequences, so this fascist power will return after two presidential terms of delicious brunch (which will fail to make progress on the environment, mass incarceration, immigration, student loan debt, housing, the economy, or anything, really).

AI and small drones will be -even- better at that point, along with an ever tighter network of flock cameras.

The propaganda will be even more solid and the aging/retired gen-xers whose grand kids won't talk to them will largely be interacting with AI-based pals who are making the same kind of pronouncements that Nome and Vance are currently making but in the voice of their first girlfriend from 1987.

Personally, I'd rather see some very extreme change now instead of fighting that fight in 15 years (or, rather, supporting the 30 year olds fighting, because I will be pretty old then).

It's not a very realistic picture of the future though; it could be the case that all this comes to a head soon. It could be the case that soon folks have some real come-to-jeebus moment about Epstein-types and capitalism (hey, it's not Capitalism, it's just croney internationalist capitalism that is the problem bro, we can just implement this anarcho-Reaganist platform, these aren't limitations on capitalists, just "normal Christian Democrat" reforms).

It might be the case that the real limits of 3-5K soldiers operating against an armed and organized city of 100k midwesterners makes it obvious what the outcomes will be if they don't stop pushing their hands.

For instance, when they start busting, say, signal chat groups of suburban soccer moms that have taken up sniping tires and cutting the power to facilities, folks might no longer have the stomach for the kinds of applications of power necessary to prevent the actions of "the people" who have their hands on all the little levers.

It could be the case that the global ecosystem really is as bad as it appears and giant storms break all the just-in-time delivery systems in the so-called advanced but fault-intolerant countries about the same time Ebola Plus (tm) hits, and we all go back to living in the beautiful caves in the pinion forests of my back yard (that's my preferred outcome even though it'll probably kill me).

Hell monkeys could fly out of my butt (that would probably kill me too, but I die in most scenarios I can imagine).

To answer your question, all things equal if you're gonna flee, flee. I'm not, but that's because I don't think there is anywhere to go.