So spouse did not make the official list. Perhaps because since he was new, he was only doing intern level stuff? Anyway, he didn't qualify. But the axe hasn't gone away, and will be dangling overhead for some time. I don't know we will ever feel secure again. Which is like, half the fucking point of getting a fed job.

This is so awful and exhausting. I've been getting stress headaches. Can't sleep. Doomscrolling way too much but what are you going to do, not look as everything burns??? I feel like I'm jumping down and screaming while clown godzilla rampages through our country. Does exactly fuck all.

I watched, truly, the single most depressing youtube video I have ever seen. The "dark gothic maga butterfly revolution" one that is making the rounds on reddit. You can search for it, I'm not gonna link. Something about it strikes me as off ... the timing of it, the blonde presenter, the rest of her channel. I looked up the rest of her socials and she's just a bit too perfectly presented and her body of work is scant. An actress-writer-philosopher with an aussie accent and a sardonic pop wit - she's a tech bros wet dream. If you told me she is a (very very good) ai fabrication and attempt to fool people, I would believe it, because her qualities are so rare to be found in one person and then to make this video. She's a player character (not that real PCs don't exist - there are some truly remarkable people in the world). And if that's true, if she and the video are generated to be "discovered" at the right time ... well that's a whole other rabbit hole that is way beyond my pay grade. If not to terrify people, then for recruiting perhaps? The way she says, "you can join right now". Something is sus and it's not obvious and that makes it even more sus.

But there's truth in the video, it's no half-baked conspiracy, ai generated or not, and the implications are not so great for us ordinary non player characters.

Why do billionaires need all that money. They want for nothing material like the rest of us. When you've got the mansions and the car collection and the yachts and you can go wherever you want and your name in the news every day and you have an army of people who jump when you say. When you own a whole technology brand or a communication platform. What do you buy or make that is next-level ultra expensive to stroke your own ego and impress the others in your circle? How about your own city, or a mini country, where you could dictate the collective efforts of people you hand picked to upsize your legacy? Why not make yourself a benevolent emperor, shepherding in the world you think is best? Farming your own human civilization, basically.

And maybe to some people it doesn't sound so bad, if they think of themselves as a potential elite, ready to kick off the dust of those deemed substandard. If you wanted to devote your life to colonize mars or something, and you were young, in perfect health, technically minded. Male.

But those of us who won't/can't conform and serve that agenda ...

It's giving Snowcrash. So we get all the shit aspects of cyberpunk and none of the cool tech. Fabulous. I'm never going to get my own internal soundtrack, which is all I ever wanted. That and wolvers. At this point I wouldn't even install a safe cybernetic because of the reality of how much tech gets flat abandoned and/or is laughably poorly constructed, toxic, and vulnerable to attack. There was the dream of cybernetics.

(Skip the next paragraph if you have your own suicide struggle. Also don't watch that video.)

So between watching that video and the news of musk going ham on various govt agencies ... the future is looking real bleak. "I'm having suicidal thoughts" bleak. "Where is the sweet spot in this takeover where I should blow my head off rather than miss the chance and get imprisoned to do forced menial work for whatever years I have left" bleak. My end of life looks like a bullet. Or an overdose. Just a matter of time.

(okay you are good now)

This is not a realization I wanted to have. Especially when things looked pretty bright back in October. And I was just really excited about getting this business started. Is everything ruined? Just like that?

I floundered in despair for a few hours.

I can only decipher that the path of mental and physical survival for me is to back away from money, materialism and worldly stuff and lean into what cannot be commodified. I need to choose a more monk like path. Then, even if I lose everything material, even if I am homeless eating cold bug gruel in the ruin of trump's america, I will still have what matters. I must stop putting my value in what I "possess", like the house. These things are transitory no matter what.

The only way to combat and escape the tech bro locusts is to stop giving them profits and stop valuing what they value (money). Don't play their games, like crypto or the stock market. (Funny, I thought crypto was kinda cool, but nope, ruined by pump and dump mentality.) Make another path, cultivate another value system. It may not save you from the cruel world as they would have it, but at least you will not have fed them. The more of us come to the same conclusion and make that choice, the more normalized it will be.

I still think of myself as living through a series of lifetimes, learning something in each one that carries over into the next. It's so easy to drown in the insane dramas playing out, but at the end, not much matters beyond simple comforts and acting with integrity in accord with your best self. The world moves around you - you do not move through the world. You are the anchor of your experience, and that doesn't change no matter what. Everything that happens is about testing and revealing that true self. You can't find that true self without discomfort.

I wish I had the talent to be an astrologer or whatever, because then maybe I could make money doing readings. Wouldn't it be simple if I could make spirituality into business and kill two birds with one stone. Alas, not so lucky. Selling spirituality is sketchy anyway. But I cannot avoid that money pays the bills. How do I get the money in an ethical way ...

I guess I just keep moving forward with my engraved cups. I have no better ideas. I'm getting very worried that by the time summer rolls around, things will be so trashed no one will have money for any extras, and I'll have thrown away good money on vending fees.

What can you do? Nothing isn't an option.

Well it's all batshit now. The chessboard has been flipped, pieces on the floor. No idea what our situation will be in two weeks, nevermind two months or two years. I'm just going to keep on keepin' on, as an act of will if nothing else. So many people have gone through extraordinary times of unimaginable cruelty and madness and come out the other side. We in the US have been the exception, not the norm. I just have to hope we can do the same.

I'm going to a protest in a couple hours. I have to paint a sign. I think it is going to say "Gondor calls for aid". I had stopped to get gas on Friday and the truck ahead of me at the pump had a large decal on the back window. It said "Gondor calls for aid" with the sigil of the white tree. I thought, "If only."