R called me yesterday. I answered roughly how I normally would. "hey what's up? How are you?" a moment of silence following. hanging like a specter in the air but the moment was ineffective at conveying to me it's intended atmosphere. or rather I was not picking up what the silent moment had been putting down. unaware I waited for the reply. And soon it came. "... not ... ... great." "oh. sorry to hear that" I reflexivily responded. as my mind cast for possibilities. D had gone to visit R, did something happen with them? no stress, panic, or urgency in the voice says no. for other potentialities I look. Election results say T won, is that it then? "this about the election?" "Yeah." R begins to trama dump. D was watching the results on the TV at R's house, and R came into the room, and wanted the tv changed to literally anything else. D resisted somewhat. almost not at all, but it wasn't an immediate submission to the demand. "it's just the news, I only wanted something on in the background" D hears things. they have called it a kind of tinnitus. to distract from the sounds D likes to have background noise. That isn't so much a problem. Lots of people have executive function problems that are benifited from having something playing in the background. most choose music from my experiance, so someone doing similar for other reasons is understandable. Perhaps music is just the choice of the post MTV generation. D is ante-MTV. But the news isn't neutral. Their very existance is political, always a reperention of the powerclass, spliting the powerless mass into bite-size pieces for easier digestion. but most people buy into the lie they sell. Even if they acknoledge that the ruling parties all collaborate against the ruled, they don't take the next step. nice 0. kill -9. shred -rf. you can't possibly completely ignore all the "important" news, even if you try your damnedest. so give it as little bandwidth as possible in your personal sphere. You might think in the situation between D and R, that that's exactly what R wants. and that is exactly where you are wrong. "I didn't know you were /ANTI NEWS/" D responds to R's further insistnace. And from there things get hazy. There was some outbursting, and eventually D and R went off to be alone for some time, during that time R called me. R talked about all the negative feelings they were having. how it's terrible. how it's just the end of the world. I respect that they feel that way. That it's not a desireable outcome. But I am annoyed at the amount of CPU they are giving /news/ in the first place. I have largely moved passed these kinds of feelings. I expected T to win since July. I figured after the assasination attempt there was only a slim chance of them losing. and KH couldn't do it. It would have to be MO. but MO didn't step forward, so T's victory was assured in my mind. And I made peace with it. I never bought into this delusion of self suggestion that KH supporters hypnotized themselves into believing that KH stood a chance. Rather. I barely even knew they were doing that. I didn't hear any of this news, I don't use twitter/x. I don't use instagram. I don't use tik-tok. I don't use facebook. I barely have the time and energy to worry about the things that I want to worry about. I'm not wasting a moment of it on this garbage the rich and powerful manefest into reality. The power of it comes from the listening. People satisfy themselves with cheerleading for the person who is less bad. They are all terrible. You want me to pick between a shit sandwich and a shit icecream? It doesn't matter if i like desserts or savory things better. They are both shit. No one is making the changes we need to make to ensure humanity will exist in 500 years. They'd prefer to wipe out 99.99% of humans. because they are the several thousand that would survive. They build their bunkers with out tax dollars in the name of government security. they make long term decisions with terrible short term outcomes on purpose. They /want/ to destroy the environment. They /want/ to reduce the biodiversity on the planet. They want to destroy the lifestream so those that come after, the scatered few who manage to persist in their holes in the rocks don't have a leg to stand on after the collapse. They silo their information in the form of "propriety information" and latin. The leaked bits they attack using "patent infringment" in order to keep the number of people who even know it exists small. When I think about the problem of "who to vote for" these other thoughts come in to play. No one is stopping the Lithium slave trade. Hell they aren't even trying to minimize the amount needed. They seem to be maximizing for suffering. We aren't building neuclear. The next idiot who says ev solar is viable to me will be shot. There is a place for solar. Mirror array solar is great. and where the solar pressure isn't strong enough for that to be sensible, Geothermal is often good. and Nuclear. "where will we store excesses if not using lithium? we need to be able to handle peak loads". Mechanical energy storage have been around for literally thousands of years. We can get by without lithium. "but muh ev car" I'm sorry for being a bit too much of a eurofag for you bro, but you ever heard of a god damn bus? how about trains? what about bikes? If your daily life requires the use of a car, and your work isn't transportation then your daily life is fundimentally evil, and your every waking moment benifits those who want to control you. every complaint you can throw at me in opposition to trains, bikes, and busses I can dismiss with wour feelings being a hate of the poor. Sorry to tell you buddy. You /are/ poor. even if you have a couple million in the bank. you a poor ass broke boy. you are closer in wealth to me with my 5$ in the bank than you are to the rich. you won't be called when the ark has an open room. And this feeling of impotent rage festers still. and because I can't kill this process, I kill the ones I can so there are less prompting of it. I set it's nice as low as possible so when it does run other things can preempt it. This is what it means to not feed the beast. It's isn't /anti news/. it's news ambivilance. The 2024 election hasn't even happened yet btw. and it won't until January 6th. .