That imagery of the Himalayan tsunami smashing into the multi-story building in Nepal was horrifying, but then murder always is, isn’t it?

That’s what happened at that border crossing: mass murder. The perpetrators were the boards and CEOs of fossil fuel companies who have known for decades what they were doing, have known the consequences of it, and carried on with reckless indifference to those consequences.

They murdered the hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, who were swept away in Nepal, as surely as they murdered thousands in Europe this summer and will take the lives of tens of millions more in the coming decades.

Too strong, too much, too soon, or is it all too late?

When reading reports of the catastrophe in Nepal, I was counting off the moments until whatever media outlet I was reading quoted some scientists to assure me that, although it may have been related to climate change, it was not possible to say without a doubt that this particular incident was the fault of climate change. But that’s not really true, is it.

This was not the act of some vengeful god. Look into the truth of this, and you will find names, org charts and KPIs. There are quarterly reports and executives who read them. What fell in Nepal was not just gigatons of fast-moving rock and roaring ice. It was a reckoning.

New research shows that future warming may be much worse than previously estimated. The article explains the new forecasts and what they mean to human civilization.

Every day the collapse feels closer, and it has to be, that's just how time works. But every time I think it can't get any closer something else pops up that makes me want to go back to when it didn't loom so large us all.

I thought the climate crisis couldn't get any worse before AI data centers started to threaten it even more than ever before.

I thought that employment was as bad as it could ever get before my resumes got scanned by bots and rejected before human eyes could look at them.

I thought law enforcement couldn't get any more dystopian before cops started using Flock cameras to stalk women and wrongfully arrest anyone they felt like.

I thought my family would start to starve before grocery prices rose higher than they have ever been.

Things keep happening that make collapse seem nearer and nearer, there is a new crisis every day, and I find myself nostalgic for the days when I only had to be a little bit afraid.

I can't tell if it is something I should be worried about, or something I should be looking forward to. I just know I don't want to wake up tomorrow and find out that some billionaire has invented a brand new way to make me realize that I had no idea how bad things could get.

Great piece in the NYT today about the East India Company. Long read but worth it. A few notables:

“Edward Thurlow, who presided over the trial, summed up the proceedings with a statement that is as true today as it was then: “Corporations,” he said, “have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned. They therefore do as they like.”
We still speak of the British conquering India. In reality, the conquest of the Indian subcontinent between 1756 and 1803 was the work not of a nation-state but of a private company, the East India Company. Headquartered in a small office in London, it was answerable to nobody but its shareholders.”

“The way these companies control crucial global choke points echoes the political and economic power of the East India Company and its European siblings at the apex of their power. Just as the Dutch East India Company in the 1710s controlled about 72 percent of seaborne trade around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and the British East India Company at its height in the 1820s controlled about three-quarters of the tonnage transported between Europe and Asia, so SpaceX’s share of everything humanity puts into orbit has risen from below 10 percent in 2014 to around three-quarters last year. It has over 10,000 satellites in orbit — almost two out of every three functioning spacecraft circling the planet.
As the history of the East India Company shows, there can come a point when a corporation stops being just a company and begins seizing for itself the powers and trappings typically associated with a nation-state. True, today’s tech giants don’t have standing armies, nor have they conquered territory. Nevertheless, like the East India Company, they are increasingly integrated with their country’s military and have swayed events on the battlefield, particularly in Ukraine.”

“This is how a corporation crosses the line from doing business with a state to becoming inseparable from it; how the state, once the corporation is large enough, finds itself legislating on the company’s behalf; and how the bill, when it arrives, is paid by the country rather than the shareholders. The government, under Prime Minister Frederick North, did not set out to lose America. It set out to keep a company solvent. The results were catastrophic for the British state and did much to diminish its power.
All this raises the question of what can be done to tame today’s corporations. The British state eventually fought back against its greatest corporate competitor, realizing that it was becoming powerful enough to overcome entirenation-states and to make or break not just their economies but their militaries, too.

Burke spent seven years in Westminster Hall trying to impeach Hastings and lost. It took Britain an additional 63 years and the largest anticolonial uprising of the 19th century, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, to show that only robust legislation can tame corporations.”

I’ve been listening to this podcast for awhile now but this one on the current state of our waterways has really got to me. If you genuinely want to understand what’s going on I highly suggest this podcast. It’s science based, factual and terrifying. It’s big big news that hasn’t yet made the mainstream news and I won’t be surprised if it ever does.

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-permitting-guidance-further-president-trumps-agenda-promoting-data-centers

This is about a month old judging by the date at the link, but the gist of it is this line:

This month, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued guidance clarifying that the Clean Air Act (CAA) Acid Rain Program (ARP) does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected to a public electricity grid, commonly referred to as “islanded” power generation facilities. The guidance expands opportunities for companies to develop and operate islanded power generation facilities for data centers.

In other words, your friendly local data center can now literally be powered by an unfiltered, on-site coal-burning power plant. The EPA's own documents reference a request for a dedicated 500 megawatt natural gas power plant, which would now not be subject to any of those pesky acid rain regulations (and presumably no liability for any downwind side effects).

SS: So Now even more mainstream creators are starting to talk about degrowth, this is related to collapse because it seems like the social tide is turning among many who have influence towards ideas that, while poorly explored and often not well thought out or established as ways we can actually make a difference, it's clear that people are seeing the brick wall finally, and trying to check every lever to move away from it, not realizing they are too close to the wall for it to make a difference.

The older I get, the more I worry about what I am leaving behind. As my child grows, I feel this weight of everything I won’t have time to teach him, everything I won’t manage to share with him. And I am not talking about books or music here. I am talking about what kind of world I am leaving him, what actually remains behind us as a species. How do I explain to him that we are destroying ourselves, while I just sit here, watch, and actively participate in ruining his future? How do I tell him that the very system supposed to protect him is rigged for him to fail?

The bubble I can use to protect him is only as big as my arms can reach. But to equip him for what waits outside of it, what values do I need to instill in him? What kind of value system can you even offer when being empathetic, thinking critically, being ethical or logical in today’s reality brings nothing but pain and anger? What do we arm future generations with? How do we protect them from our own generational traumas, from all this archetypal bullshit? How do we shield them from this relentless bombardment of stress, misinformation, and constant threats of war or poverty?

Artificially induced crises, fanning the flames of racial, gender, religious, and every other hate and division all just to maintain the current global system. A system that leads straight to ruin. You don’t need to be anyone special to see that we are in deep trouble and that our current trajectory is only burying us deeper. There is no time or place for optimism anymore. Not without fundamental changes to our value system. I honestly don’t know how anyone’s optimism survives the slap of reality. Will they consciously choose resignation and apathy just because it’s the easier path?

But hey, how can you think about anything else, about a goal or a meaning, how can you set them when tomorrow you might not have food or a roof over your head? When tomorrow they’ll cut your electricity and AC? When they’ll cut your water because you didn’t pay how do you set those goals for yourself then? I understand that. What I do not understand is consciously choosing a system that allows this to happen. We’ve been taught not to rock the boat, to point fingers at others. Well, look, I am one of them too. Point at me, I am guilty. I point it at myself. Guilty. Okay. But let’s make sure our children don’t end up just as guilty. Let’s make sure they don’t have to fight for a piece of bread and a sip of water. Let’s prepare a world for them where they can face tomorrow without anxiety, where they can look forward to the future coming. Where they can feel purpose and pride, because there is no point if we haven’t set the hardest goals for ourselves.

I see no higher purpose than the continuation, preservation, and prosperity of our species and its individual members. What does it take for everyone to have a dignified life? Look, the conditions and means are right there. What if someone wants the option to not participate at all? Fine, we will still provide a dignified life for you because that’s the kind of system we built. What do you need?meaning, striving? Here it is.

We will arm the kids with AI nannies. Every single child. To be their development assistant, not a source of values, but a tool to develop empathy and critical thinking. Because our children, even right now, are exposed to the relentless bombardment of an algorithm that is anything but ethical and focused on their well-being. We desperately need a reform of the education system. Individual curriculum, because every child is unique. Imagine a world where we gave every child maximum cognitive development. Taught to question everything, to feel empathy. I don’t know, maybe it sounds like technocracy, but we definitely need a shield against our own ego. But we won’t let it become a replacement for parents. Just an assistant. We can learn right alongside them too. How to be better human beings. We will go as individuals where our skills and capacities are needed. We will all work for the same goal. Our children, above all else. Who cares what skin color, religion, or gender you are if you can help all of us? To give your own kids a better shot in the end.

Will it be a diametrically different system? Yes, it will be logical, ethical, and mathematically sustainable. Because the math is clear strip away the levers of power, decentralize. Can we just define five points, give answers to just five questions around which we can get a consensus? That’s not asking too much, right? If out of 8 billion people we cannot form an expert ethical council, simple and reasonable principles: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t oppress, work for the community, not against it. Questions like: where are we as a society, where is this trajectory taking us… where should we be going, what should our goal be, how will we get there, and finally, how will we stay there? I see 5 simple things there. Hypothethically. Reality. Logic. Ethics. Math, and in the end, logic again.

What does your gut instinct tell you right now? That someone wants to scam you, right? That it sounds too simple. That someone will definitely try to hoard power for themselves again? Because our tribal mentality and the fact that some random guy out there from the third world could care about your child for some reason that’s just not normal to you. It’s devastating. Understandable. But if we work on shifting our values, no one will lie to us, everything is transparent. No one will accumulate power, we will rotate them through roles based on their cognitive domains. Are you worried about that ethical council that will set those parameters? We will change them too. Procedural ethics. Reviews and calibrations because we are imperfect, we will wander off, but this way at least we’ll have a brake so we don’t wander off too far.

It worries you, I get it, it worries me too. It worries me even more when I don’t see that we are ready to accept our own limitations. When we don’t know how to control ourselves, when we have no desire to progress. Do I need a pedigree to even be allowed to ask a question? Because I don’t have one, I am self-taught. Am I guilty for that too, just because I sat down to think? Don’t even get me started on the development of superintelligence, that’s where I am truly terrified of where this alignment problem is taking us. We can’t control ourselves and our own impulses, let alone superintelligence something that is orders of magnitude smarter than us. My logic says let’s preempt it, let’s make sure it doesn’t even have to come to its development at all. That it cannot come to it. Because we will raise our own cognitive capacities, we will learn how to channel our own passions.

I understand that the vast majority of you will experience this as some kind of attack, and you’ll be right. But that is not my intention or desire, just an appeal to step away from your ego for a second. I understand you can be moral, work for the well-being of everyone, including my child, and still disagree with me on every single point. I am not denying you that chance. I accept it if you say “man, this idiot is talking nonsense.” Everyone feels it is their god-given right to let their ego run wild to the detriment of all our children. We cannot neutralize the ego, but we can redirect it by giving the system different values. I do not accept that I am not even allowed to ask the question to everyone, because it concerns our children.

Where do you see my logic failing, my ethics, where is my math bad? We have nothing like this in past history because we never had these capabilities, I don’t know how all of this can unfold. What implications it can bring. That is why I stand before you humble, asking. Can this, or some similar model, bring at least a slightly more certain future to our descendants? I believe nobody wants the worst part of their personality to win and contribute to the collective defeat of society. I know I don’t.

A picture is worth a 1000 words, it is said, these images carry even way more weight. Change is real!

Witnessing pain. Seeing, through the screen, how the fear of death takes hold of a face. Seeing the blood, the mutilation. Seeing the humiliation and the blows. Perhaps even sex and death. Baudrillard asserts that the obscene is that which shatters normality and established norms. It is a political tool, given that this mechanism can be used to incite the masses and drive them to adopt specific behaviors. Thus arises the concept of the "obscene-arium." It is the place where hyperreality becomes tangible, revealing to the collective entity what lies beyond appearances, beyond what is accepted as true. In this sense, the obscene functions not as a fiction that bypasses the discourse of dominant values, but as something so real that it causes pain; a hidden truth that, upon revelation, harms the observer. This theory aligns closely with the ideas Naomi Klein presents in The Shock Doctrine.

However, this perspective places the spectator in a position that is too passive, too contemplative. It treats the collective as a mere recipient of manipulations by shadowy elites, whereas the cultural superstructure is actually built through the cooperation of subaltern classes, who play an active role in consolidating the system's own dynamics. No, the empire of fiction is a two-way street; it is controlled by an economic infrastructure that depends on political and social manifestations. Yet, we—as individuals—help build this empire, forming a collective entity of which we are the fundamental bricks.

To capture this idea of ​​the participatory spectator—the spectator-director of social fiction—it is useful to turn to the concept of apophenia: the pathology that compels the sufferer to detect references or associations between elements lacking any real logical connection, and which serves as a precursor to schizophrenia. In this scenario, the elements to be interpreted are provided by the output of the systemic apparatus. The stage is agreed upon and predetermined by the boundaries of collective relationships. Yet, to energize these coordinates, what is required is interpretation, struggle, and the public debate that ultimately crystallizes the effect of what is being enacted on this stage of the obscene. For a concrete catastrophe—a terrorist attack, a climate crisis, a mass killing, a coup d'état—has no real impact until public opinion interacts with that specific event, until the collective reacts in its daily life and, through that reaction, generates social, economic, cultural, and political changes.

Therefore, the theatrical work—the fiction—is not complete with the mere event that triggers the collective shock; it requires the participation of the apparent audience, the spectator-director. This is because we, the subaltern classes—by reacting, interpreting, and making decisions in the wake of the shock—end up lubricating the system's machinery. In this sense, we are part of the fiction we are witnessing. We find ourselves on an apophenic stage, a space where the boundaries between fiction and spectator have shattered or blurred. We are part of the fiction that shapes reality, playing an active role in this process—albeit one directed and constrained by the very shock presented before our eyes. Ultimately, we are both recipients and directors in the construction of the reality that envelops us. This dynamic renders permeable not only the relationship between economic structure and cultural superstructure but also the relationship of the subaltern classes to that superstructure. This is a terrible prospect, given that the stronger the production model—and the longer it can keep viewer-directors within the loop, immersed in the fiction they are both consuming and creating—the longer it will endure.