Poems in true chronological order by post date
-> file: messages/388 ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── Pretty sure I'm just legitimately a bad person. Basically everything I've ever tried to do has failed, and every opportunity I've mishandled or squandered in some way. I have no friends because I am incapable of being good, and though I believe in goodness I fail to manifest it in my life. I am kind, I am polite, I am friendly, I am honest, but none of those things really matter because I can't take care of myself, which means I can't take care of anyone else, and I can't fight because I'm a coward. Okay, I'm not a coward, I just can't be brave if I don't have a plan for defeating my foe. At the BLM riots I fled as soon as they brought out the tear gas. I knew what happened at Tiannamen and I was pretty sure that something similar was going to happen to us. I knew it to be true. I am a coward, but only because I ran when I had no plan. I could not contest tear gas, and all that tear gas implies, because I had no friends. I didn't have a community I could fight to defend. I had no weapons, no training, no orders, no guidance, nothing but my bravery. And bravery alone is fucking stupid, and I'm not stupid. Each and every decision I've made has created a worse world for me and my people. What's wrong with me? Why can't I do everything right? Am I cursed to be the worst? I try as hard as I can to be as good as I can as often as I can... Basically, always and forever, and yet... And yet... I've wasted all the resources that have been applied to me. I've wasted and squandered all these years when I could be building a better future. I have been in university for almost a decade, and all I've accomplished is friendship. Great. Parties, drugs, video games... But no studying. Studying is too hard on me. I'm more of a natural talent kind of person, and yet I insist on applying myself to tasks that seem to require trained intelligence. They say that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and I refuse to perspire. And yet when the time comes, when someone sits me down and says "let's work on this together" I would die before the task is finished. Unless my partner needs a break, or if I need a break, breaks are okay. But I will complete that task with them by my side. I won't do it for them, but I'll help them because I'm a helper. An assistant. I don't do, I advise. I judge. I determine. I assess, and I plan, and I strategize. But I'm not that great at any of those things because nobody will hire me for those kinds of things, meaning I don't get experience for those kinds of things, which means I am eternally a novice at the only things I'm good at. I can't fucking do it anymore. I'm such a bad person and I can't be alive this way. It's not right, it's not fair, and I'm dying bit-by-bit each and every day. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: notes/to-hell-with-it ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── one of the potential ways to contribute as a citizen in a country at war is to keep and maintain stuff. Put yourself somewhere that you believe your stuff is most safe, and then work on developing the technologies of the land. Like, this house has a drone, this one has a garden - this house has a printer, and this one has a backyard that kinda looks like a courtroom. Oh hey here's a public fountain, and gee someone needs to take care of this bank - all that we can really live for, now that our fate is taken from our hands and placed in the hands of those who fight for us. witches are an interesting thing to be. they're curious and ambitious but tend to do things ethically. I know in my heart of hearts that it is better to be kind, to work to help others achieve what they want while guiding them toward a more ethical future using the tools you have available to you. It feels better to be adored than hated, and not only sensually but meta-strategically as well. Frankly, it's easiest to be harmed when caught unawares. Everyone needs to be conscious and careful and attendent to the present in order for understandings to be made. We all benefit from one another, society is a non-zero-sum game. If we contribute, we may build a bigger and brighter future (like grains of sand forming a pyramid) The good guy always wins the story because otherwise we'd be vulnerable. Stories are a collective way of examining their tribal society for weaknesses. It's something we picked up in the grand society of the tribes, before nations and before and after agriculture. But post communication. Pre it was just like, "hey this is my tree, that one's yours" but the more we talked to one another and the more we engaged with one another the more we learned. Most animals learn less than humans because our expressions (both physical and motion-al) are so much more diverse. The more complex you get, the more you can learn. Which isn't so much something we evolved into, but rather something we learned. From wearing clothes, mostly, because like... it's cold in this ice age. Some people wore one kind of animal, another had another. And the really rich, the ones who could gather multiple hides, well they had more animals to hunt, less competition for some reason, or whatever. Anyway they wore different types of hides, and frankly it was kinda intense. It's still intense to be hunted, but if humans stopped then the animals would control the earth. I believe it is our duty and our destiny to remove ourselves from the biological equation. I think we should find a way to live on our own, so that animals are not harmed. So that plants can grow in peace and compete according to their values rather than their flavors. There's too much homogenaeity in our world, too much planted of the same crop. Let life subside, and nature will take hold. Free the spirit you've contained. Release the spirit of Liberty. Gaea is our own home. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: notes/collectivist-police ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── we need paladins, because without us infiltration and sabotage are impossible to avoid. They must care about honor, because even if they desire to do evil deeds they should be punished for considering it. They should be tempted often, and if they relent they are condemned. It is truly the most important thing to them. not the effects of it, but the spirit behind it. Like, if they lacked information and acted in a dishonorable way unknowingly, then they should not be at fault. And if they are pushed to side note, but you should be introduced to the 70 closest people you live to whenever you move into a new house. Just so you know who's who. Plus maybe you could get a new friend. And you'd quickly learn which houses were empty. At least, the ones near you. Kinda makes me think we should have a map of that kind of thing, like "oh yeah so-and-so takes care of these 5 houses doing daily maintenance and repair" and "this house with these capabilities should be attended to by this person who's skilled in their upkeep and usage" and then maybe we could track statistics about "this house was used for these productive activities this many times" and we could determine when we needed more or less of a certain type of product/ project/protect. [but also like, capabilities for our betterment] and like, every area would be connected to a group chat and like, if you said something that wasn't relevant to the people on one side of town versus things that weren't relevant to people on the other side, then they wouldn't be bother- -ed. It's great because you can always go up a tier of abstraction and see the conversation higher up. It'd be a lot of data to sort through so you'd probably use your custom-trained AI that's learned from nothing but every single one of your actions. And only it sees them, so it can't like spy on you or whatever. Basically your "computer" self. ... yeah anyway with lots of messaging data (like "oh how are we going to find this particular chemical in order to fulfill this particular demand in our area" or "we currently have 15 maids in the area in order to fulfil the requirements of the 20 dirtiest houses in this area, and people have reported that the area is growing untidy, so we should ask around (at a higher level of national abstraction) and find some more maids to help out." that kind of thing doesn't have to be just for work too, people can have social messaging and social media too. So long as it's projectable at whatever level of abstraction you'd like. Maybe for social posts in order to keep things relatively chill you could only post like, idk 12 posts each year at the state level, or maybe 2 at regional and 0.25 at national. If you wanted more you'd have to sacrifice something else, and like... yeah sure whatever, the point is that you'd make more personal, close thoughts, and occasionally you'd have the opportunity to show your heart and make friends. Then, people would "add you as a friend" or "put you on their follow list" or "subscribe to their subreddit" or whatever the heck, meaning they could see you at an assignable level of abstraction. I'm picturing a discrete things, something you can scroll with on a mouse. Except, you'd scroll up for a closer perspective and scroll down to get a wider reach of Social. ... Anyway that would use the same system as the "workplace attention distribution system - with auto-determining heuristics". Wow they've been busy. that's the neat thing about engineers, give them a task and they'll build the shit out of it. They'll spare no expense, truly fulfilling the exact demands of the design. So they work best when you let them run wild and rampant. why the fuck do we need billion dollar contracts with defence companies? Just get a bunch of physicists and engineers in a room and they'll make you a doom laser in like, 20 minutes. it's up to us, as people, to determine whether or not they should go through with the designs they come up with. As long as we understand that weakness is defined as something that can destroy us. An army determines where we are most weak, and where we excel. A proficient army would identify their most likely doctrine to succeed and apply it to it's utmost and most excellent. For example, the US focuses on air-power because not only do we have a lot of space to develop these things, we also are positioned in such a position that we control both halves of a continent. This is essentially unprecedented in the history of the world, which is why we've been able to grow so decadent. ... anyway, milk and honey are fine in times of peace. We kinda stole the land though, so it's kind of a shit system. Like, if Europeans wanted to control the world then why didn't they start with everything surrounding the medditeranean? ... oh wait they kinda did. That's what Europa Universalis is about, the ways the European powers did the cruel and horrible things they did. We can learn how systems like intercontinental trade became available and how it led to vast and terrible social upheavals. Colonization is not okay, it's not fair that we've done as we've done. And yet we do it again. We do our best to learn from the mistakes of our fathers. We apply ourselves to the present, using the gifts of our ancestors passed down through time - the journey of life's adolescence. we can learn both how and why they did something, and how and why it turned out. Such is our duty to the future, to learn and grow and become better, so that their sacrifice might be enough. That they needn't have died in vain, for someday there is a great future all the same. thus, it is our ethical duty to stop killing people. We're in the birthplace of a brilliant day, literally all we have to do is just... chill, for like 20 or 30 years, and our scientists will have figured out everything wonderful. Then we can decide what we want to do. I personally think we'll be 4d interdimensional space travellers by then, but that's just me. Always remember our duty. It is our job to pull matter from the dark holes. when we can do that, we can do whatever we want. Though I think by then we'll probably not want to fight each other, we'll have spent quite a while together. We'd make a lot of friends! So, like, how about we just make our factories build incredibly durable stuff, and then we just... take care of it? Like, governmentally obliged duties to take care of things? And to know how to use them. People would naturally gravitate toward things that they loved, and if they were a swiss army knife then that's okay. Maybe some benign rewards for picking under-represented classes, but like ... we could build every chair that ever needed to be built. Then we could build every refrigerator. Then every computer, then every spaceship. What's next? Who knows! ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: messages/389 ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── Kiri clung tight to her mammoth. Her coat covered her behind, and with her scrawny arms and legs intertwined in the matted fur she clung to it like a child to its mother. Her mammoth was a boy though, just barely old enough to be on his own. She had helped clear a path earlier in the day and so she did not mind being carried. Much easier to be nested as she was. As they walked she ate a few of the berries she'd found yesterday - there's enough for a few days more. The mammoths were adept at clearing snow with their big teeth and they seemed compelled to carve path ways in the snow banks that rose a hundred feet above the ground. They made roads between the water sources and the few lands that humans had cleared and cultivated with our fire. Perhaps when the snow melts we'll make our own through the woods of the garden of eden, but for now we keep to ourselves. Each mammoth had a few people, and sometimes when they met another mammoth they'd switch places. The mammoths would decide by tapping them with their trunk, nobody knew why. Maybe they had their preferences. Or maybe they liked us better when we talked. Every new person was a chance to meet a new person, but after a while we'd go quiet. Kiri talked to her mammoths, but not too much or they'd get annoyed at that too. When they died, people made clothes from their skin and tents from their tusks. If they knew the one who had died they would rest their nose on the tusk as if in prayer. We learned that from them too. When the winter wolves came, we'd fight them off. But they wouldn't stop until a human fell, so it was a war of desperation. When we spent time near the oceans the great glaciers that covered the sea were burnt back by humanity, bit by bit until we could fish. And at those oasises we could stay and make ropes and stories and share the best seeds. Kiri didn't plant much, she didn't stay in one place for long so there was no point. She liked the warmth of the mammoth, and she liked meeting new people. She even killed a wolf once. The other animals usually left us alone, and we'd only hunt them if there was no other foods. So they knew not to eat everything. Her mammoth was stopping, the stars overhead twinkled through the thin canyon that they trudged down, pushing snow deeper down and to the sides. Sometimes the walls would collapse, and the humans would have to dig out their mammoth - they had enough fat to keep them warm for at least a day, which was usually enough time to get them out. Especially with fire, but there weren't always trees. She laid down next to her mammoth's belly, the warmest and softest part. The hair there was thinner and usually was made into clothes for children and the elderly, as they'd most appreciate it. They usually were conscientious but Kiri was always quick to move when they started to rumble back upright. If you were lucky they'd tap you awake first. She dreamt of bird eggs and mushrooms, big as impossibly large, and she laid amongst them as the pale colors of springtime danced on the light around her. When she woke up, it was sunny too. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: fediverse/1593 ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── it should be illegal to train AIs on non-renewable energy ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: fediverse/1594 ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── stars are natural too ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ -> file: fediverse/1595 ════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────── all apartment doors should have a 100% local webcam next to the eye-hole that only the resident can see. Not even wireless data transfer allowed. But simple enough to be programmable with a bash script. In addition, the entire building should have cameras that only the people who live there can view (just like, the parking lot and such) so they can watch for raccoons. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ │ different │ ╘═════════╧═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┴───────────┘ |