I used to get paged at 1am to mess with downed webservers, now I hang out in a shack with no running water in rural CO.

I'm 48 and have a chunk of cash that made more last year than I've ever been able to make in a single year doing salaried labor as a programmer.

I quit 3 years ago when my kiddo graduated college and have been just living on that and my small A/V production business.

It's great.

I do a lot of work; I have done first aid at one music festival, paid sound at a bluegrass festival, and sat around doing random volunteer stuff at another. I can give the local music school and the local civic orchestra really good bids on doing sound for them. I am going to get an EMT cert because I have a friend who contracts to do first-aid at festivals.

I'm not at all worried that my (pre-LLM) programming skills and connections are going away- I've replaced them with mandolin skills and much happier.

Unfortunately, what I wanted to know also changed, in that I now use the site to keep tabs on the thoughts of folks are or who fund and work for hard-right technocrats.

There are, of course, many other folks on the site.

At the same time, the US techno-fascists both have an outsized influence on our lives and it's much harder to find their voices in other places: folks who, for instance, think Peter Thiel is of course quite sane and probably not trying to figure out a way to kill vast chunks of us off (and that it would be a reasonable thing if he were).

Right?

how is this different than saying if folks don't get a job it's just because they "weren't qualified"?

And isn't that just a tautology?

Isn't the point that we might think that getting a terminal degree would qualify a person for some kind of job in their field?

I mean, "I'm not too poor to eat, I just can't find anyone to sell me food at a price I can afford" is -a- take, but maybe not a helpful one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

But to your question: Cuba, actually.

A "human" is just a "featherless biped", after all?

I think the Goomba Fallacy captures something helpful to me- it's helpful to know the origin of a straw man if you want to un-stuff one.

Politically, I am an anarchist, so I already believed that they operate with disdain for the folks they govern- I look at how they treat the natives where I live in the rural West and it's obvious, and I have never believed that their racism would save me from that treatment. So to me there's nothing new here except the aesthetics of how they implement control over populations of people and the depth of their faith in surveillance technolgy.

Pragmatically, though, it's wild to watch them try and burn that paper.

When they stop pretending to care about the rule of law (a pretense they have undone a little each day of my adult life, and I am almost 50), they undermine the legitimacy of their government in the eyes of the general population.

These folks (the folks in the political mainstream of US political ideology, the ones with hands on the levers of capital and US force) are so far up their own asses high on literal amphetamines and social media that they thought they could control Minneapolis with 3k troops or take the Persian gulf by sniping some old and dying priest.

They have not been in touch with reality for a long time, insulated from it by their massive wealth.

Fine with me; I've never had enough folks on my side to think about pushing back so my life has been and will be spent caring for my local folks and watching the internal contradictions that the Marxists understand so well pull these systems down on themselves.

I'm not under any illusions that I personally will survive the fire they are lighting or, that this won't bring about human suffering on a scale that is impossible to comprehend. But I don't have any power over that and my people don't have any power over that outcome; there is little to be gained in fighting the heat-death of the sun, any more than telling the Democrat folks that running Harris would doubtlessly lead to the election of Trump or complaining that some day I'm going to die.

But it is wild to watch them burn this house down in such short order.

Anyhow, to answer your question: no. The constitution is whatever they say it is and always has been.

I could look at the "grab them by the pussy" thing and be disgusted but still think that there's something even worse that could come out which might discredit the guy.

But if the Epstein connections and his massive incompetence and massive corruption can't do anything, I can't see what would.

If you get far enough out it ceases to matter.

The (unpermitted, about 25-year-old) shacks I live in never had power and getting an easement was prohibitively expensive. It doesn't impact anyone but me (and potentially my son, who will inherit this mess when I die in 30 or so years).

There are codes here, and codes enforcement. But it's largely complaint driven and I suspect that all my neighbors are in a similar situation.

If I were in town and could get utilities I'd prefer that, but the county won't even pick up the last 1/2 mile of roads to where I am living... maybe if they'd do that I'd consider only building things that are permitted.

if I bet $50K that arowthway won't die suddenly then I am sure that probably won't happen, right?

For instance, I learned "Big Cheesburgers" by Blaze Foley picking bass on stage during a performance at a winery long before I ever heard a recording of him playing it. Same with, say Chick Pyle's "Jaded Lover" or Nancy Griffth's "I Wish it Would Rain" or, for that matter, Rodney Crowell's "I Wish It Would Rain". Those are all folks I either met in passing or knew folks who knew them well.

So while I have a pretty deep familiarity with music from folks with Texas connections, I don't know a whole lot of stuff outside of that area unless there is a connection to my proximately local folk festivals... David Amram or Stan Rodgers or Trout Fishing in America for instance.

I don't think I am unique in that approach to folk music. A lot the lineage of that stuff is mostly people playing in song circles or in small performances picking up a song from someone else, who in turn picked it up from someone, going back to Leadbelly or whoever.

I like recordings- it's super frustrating to hear a song and then not be able to find it anywhere. Especially if I want to learn it and add it to the other 400 or so songs I have memorized at any time, or go back and re-learn something.

Bubbles are real, but I am okay with them because in a certain sense that's what it means to be in a community. But communities aren't usually fragile like bubbles, and folks can come and go without gatekeeping, so that seems closer to how I think about these systems for knowing about folks.

What is rare is that there is a good enough story to some company think re-releasing a record might get some interest.

For about 15 years, I stage managed the New Folk competition at the Kerrville folk festival. It was pretty impressive to see 24 singer songwriters (selected from a poool of 600-1000 or so) all play over the course of 2 concerts, bringing whatever they thought was their best material.

Even weirder was going to Folk Alliance this year and running into all these folks who are slightly familiar... "oh, yeah, I remember you- I put a mic in from of you for 3 songs, 8 years ago".

Of the 800 or so songs I have heard there over the years most were as good as anything I hear outside these little folk music spots.

I know a solid 100 or so folks who put out an album of good work and then went on to live their lives. It's such a hard thing to make money off it that our time gets spent up doing all of the many, many other things in life that are compelling but pay better.

Still, if you look, you'll find folks who are out there writing songs to play. Even better, they are still alive and get really happy when you give them some cash for a tip.

There are some groups of people, many on this forum or even this thread, whose respect for my position would make me believe there is likely an error in my position.

Aesthetic differences are differences: red is not blue, afterall.

However,