Nonsense and fringe lunacy… like asking for multiple options when it comes to transportation? Recognizing that building redundancies into our infrastructure is actually more efficient than relying on a one-size-fits-all solution?

A car breaking down can completely derail an individual’s day. A truck breaking down on a highway can derail a city’s day. The less the person or city needs cars to function, the less likely they are to be stuck when something goes wrong.

The only way to move around without depending on other companies is by walking, and there’s no way that can replace cars, trains, buses, bicycles, etc.

If you have all of those options available, you can never be stranded when one of those options fails.

But with a car-centric society, all it takes is a single point of failure, and you are no longer free to move about the society.

They are not advocating for society to be less interdependent. They are explaining that a car-centric society has less freedom of movement, because the “independence” of a car is a lie.

His only regret was that he wouldn’t be around much longer, to truly enjoy the depth and breadth of suffering he brought to humanity.

Actually, his only regret was that he failed to disinherit 3 of his 4 children so that his empire could outlive him.

Natural causes are coming for him and his creation, and neither he nor the fuckup in chief have a true biological or political heir to wield their ridiculous power. Their legacies will crumble without them, and the world will cheer. Or at least sigh in relief.

You are seen! There are thousands of “you’s” out there building permanently-temporary fixes out of digital duct tape. Users think it’s black magic, IT thinks it’s a security risk, management thinks it replaces IT, and you know it just keeps things moving while everyone else talks about the big software overhaul that’s way overdue but always 6-36 months down the road.

Something in me refuses to believe that these people knowingly and intentionally harm women. But it sure as hell looks intentional.

Most people don’t do any of this “intentionally” in the sense that they are aware of the harm they cause. It doesn’t even enter the realm of moral consideration.

To many, there is a genuine belief of superiority that is entirely subconscious. The easiest example is classic mysogyny in a relationship - the woman is “emotional” and therefore the man should be the one to handle “business”. That’s not just 1950s oppression. Some variation of that thought process is shockingly prevalent across generations.

That man doesn’t really think he’s harming his woman. He thinks he’s helping, by being the man of the house. That same logic applies outside of romance. “I am more rational than she is, therefore I should talk now and she shouldn’t.”

That’s not a thought. That’s just a foundational belief that spawns all the other thoughts.

Ever been in an argument with another adult, and a child joined in with some naive half-informed emotional take on society?

An adult usually placates the child - explains, briefly, why they’re wrong - and returns to arguing with the other adult.

That’s how a lot of men see women by default. As inferior, naive, ill-informed, emotional creatures. Not consciously. Not intentionally. Many mysogynists genuinely seem to have the same intentions as the adult to the child - to placate and educate.

But its fucked up, and it’s important to acknowledge that it simmers under he surface. The reason all of this is so complicated and messy is that it is so hard to see mysogyny for what it is.

You genuinely can’t know if a single interaction with a single male was an example of mysogyny, because sometimes humans just condescend to each other. Sometimes humans are just shitty to each other.

But women experience so many of these experiences in aggregate that they can’t give the benefit of the doubt to every man they meet, especially when the man himself might not understand his own implicit biases.

Most office workers move things from point A to B in the physical, digital, or financial world. Electricity, toys, real estate, insurance contracts, missiles, you name it. The office worker is a link in a chain of information that stretches from the beginning of causality to the final effects of human existence.

There’s a mine, somewhere in the world. In that mine is metal. A factory owner wants that metal. Office workers for that factory call or email the office for that mine, and ask for that metal. The two offices negotiate a deal.

This usually involves calls or emails to management, accounting, sales, legal - all different office workers doing different things - that ultimately boil down to:

1. agreeing to a price per unit of metal (+ applicable taxes) that can benefit both parties, and
2. logistics of when and how to deliver or pickup that metal, and how much those logistics cost.

From there, it’s pretty much the same deal. The factory isn’t making enough money. They want to sell a better product. Office workers for the factory contact other office workers at an engineering firm. Both parties make calls, send emails, design proof-of-concepts, and they negotiate a deal. Sometimes they logon to an hour-tracking software, so an office worker can bill the factory per hour another office worker spent working for that factory’s product.

A major importer wants the product that the factory made with that engineer’s designs and that mine’s metal. Office workers make calls, send emails, check tariff and tax regulations, contact representatives at the port or border, schedule times and dates, and negotiate a deal.

A major retailer wants the product that the importer purchased from the factory…

A consumer buys a product and dies. Their family hires a lawyer. That lawyer has his office workers make calls, send emails, logon to government websites, and schedule hearings and submit documents to prove that the product killed the consumer.

An insurance agency investigates the plaintiff that is suing the retailer. They google the person that died. They contact office workers that know about how people die or know about how products can kill, and they check the insurance company’s database for how often people die to that product, and they calculate the odds that the product will kill a person, and then insurance office workers renegotiate a contract with the retailer office workers for higher premiums.

An office worker in the government works for the court. They receive the lawsuit documents, they make and cancel appointments, make phone calls and send emails to other office workers, lawyers, or plaintiffs, they send data from one lawyer to another, etc.

The whole system builds and builds until you have office workers talking to office workers talking to office workers about the movement of imaginary assets that never actually move, or the buying and selling of personal data for targetting ads that everyone hates, or software engineers building cryptocurrencies designed to fail or call centers that exist only to convince you to pay them money, or tax filing software companies that only exist because they pay the government to make tax filing hard…

And there, everywhere, in everything - you have the modern day office worker.

TL;DR: Reading emails. Sending emails. Checking data. Making data. Moving data. Making phone calls. Signing contracts. Approving decisions. Buying, selling, loaning, stealing, hiring, firing, murdering, perjuring, harassing, gassing, lying, crying, building, destroying - all pixels on a screen and voices on a phone, text in an email and words in a voicemail, all the world’s wealth and all the world’s future moving piece by little intricate piece from one human to the next in an impossibly vast network of causality that nobody really understands or controls but nonetheless keeps rolling forward one dollar at a time.

(Edit - oh, and don’t even get me started on websites, apps, and spreadsheets that they use to interface with the data. There are infinite monkeys at infinite computers making the most randomized bespoke solutions to every little business niche, and every office worker has to swap between 2-6 of them on the daily)

It’ll be hard to spot but easy to follow. But the drone and the wire don’t need to go in a straight line. Anything could be waiting on the route between the operator and the drone.

If someone doesn’t want to live and doesn’t have anything to live for

This is a temporary problem that can change. Depression isn’t a feeling. It’s a disorder, an imbalance, a prolonged neurochemical misfire. It’s horrible, and feels inescapable.

But any thoughts you have about the past - and any beliefs you have about the future - are directly influenced by that imbalance. There is no true depiction of the past in our heads. No future in front of our eyes. We simulate the past and future in the present moment.

When we access memories, we re-experience them all over again.

Depression prevents you from feeling good, so even your own memories feel hollow and devoid of meaning. A happy memory is filtered through the same process as a happy experience, and both are temporarily (and reversibly) stripped of emotional value while you are depressed.

The same is true for the future. You simulate your predictions as if they are artificial memories of the future, but they are also filtered through your present context.

While depressed, it is much, much harder to imagine a happy future. Not because you have pulled away the rosy glasses and seen truth. Not because you have found cold logic. No. You are, ever and always, an emotional animal, and you are defined even by your lack of an emotion.

To imagine a happy future is to simulate a happy experience. It’s required - to imagine oneself happy later, they literally have to experience that ‘potential’ happiness now.

With depression, the past feels faded and the future feels hopeless. But - unlike depression - those are just feelings. Those are literally just in your head.

Your perceived past and predicted future are defined by the range of experience you can have in the present moment. If you can’t feel happy now, you can’t fully process that your life was ever happy or will ever be happy again. But those are just feelings.

It might not feel like it now, but you have been happy before. You can be happy again, as long as you live. Not for as long as you live… but only if you live. The only thing that can stop you is death.

This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you. . . You will be warm again.

• Wit, a Brandon Sanderson treasure.

It’s time for ICE to leave NY. Hochul and the other governors need to pull the trigger and outright ban the agency from operating in the state. The fed is already pulling funding across the board for state programs and dismantling the agencies that keep states running when a crisis hits. All of the carrots are gone and Trump is waving his sticks around for no fucking reason anyway. Innocents are being taken off the street and students are being harassed and expelled.

Yes, there’s probably nothing to legally give her that power, but there’s nothing legal about any of this.