CRACKPOTS 45: TPUSA 9/11

Things are feeling very 9/11 this 9/11 eve...

The newsletter is late and last minute...just how you like it. It's been a hectic week here at Headquarters---we're dusting off the epaulets and medals for our 9/11 live show, it's been a few years since we've done anything live, have to get the machine cranking again...

The live podcast show can be a tough nut to chew. Definitionally, podcasts are talk radio digitally delivered to ten million Beats pills slung off nails in the wall that listeners turn on when they make love. A podcast, like self-abuse, is something you do by yourself or, if you're really out of your mind, with your stonefaced boyfriend...fine, yes, it works then, but how to get it across live? The show, in the most basic sense, consists of two or three people talking to each other in our sepulchral concrete studio, the Franczakbünker. Very different from conversing in front of hissing crowds....

Previously we've done a sort of stage show, addressing the audience directly, which worked out but you can only take that so far, you can hit corny easy, and that is (I say with all honesty!) my great fear...so we figure this time we do something more traditional, after all that's very fashionable, we go and sit on a stage and talk to each other and some of our friends. But you have to do that without performing a conversation, and pardon me, this is not to shock you but we don't exactly read off a script during our recordings, we like to be loose, but then again with a live thing you still have to keep it tight or risk looking amateurish...

Anyways that's why episodes are kind of discombobulated this month, we're working out the kinks with setting up the live show but, and let's hope this is not any kind of monkey's paw thing, it should be smoother in the future....excuses, excuses, they trot me out when they know we need excuses, nobody is even asking for excuses but I proffer them anyways. I try to be up front about things. Listeners always come up with crazy theories on why we do things (or don't) and the truth is almost always: We are a small operation, it's all in house, and generally we've learned during our handful of brief experiments in adding more beta partners into our polyamorous family that one ends up spending the same---or more---time managing other people. This is my SMALL BUSINESS NEWS.

In INTERNET news...I've soured on posting on "X" again. Now that's a website which only makes me miserable, you wake up and turn it on and there's 10,000 race war videos or snuff films mixed in with nudie girls and AI slop. The latest thing this week is the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee stabbed in the neck on the train in North Carolina by a schizophrenic black guy. The racial element of this has, of course, made it massive news online (the killer is clearly an insane guy--he claimed to his sister in an interview released today that Iryna could "read his thoughts"). Picture after picture, video after video, of her being stabbed in the neck, making a really heartbreaking scared expression, and dying. Accompanying all of this are various calls for public executions, deportations of all black people, etcetera. In actual fact I think the hiring of Daniel Penny at A16Z after his acquittal was a real turning point, but we'll see what becomes of this...

The website makes me sick and hateful; I think just about everyone who uses it becomes some manner of evil creep. My position has been that unless you're making money, social media is in general a time suck and soul killer, but I'm forced to modify the that now: The X payouts for engagement have driven huge numbers of people permanently into an abyssal pit. The internet really can make you a devil. In general I really find myself sick with the way people act online, and like all fools I imagine I am immune but I'm not, nobody is, sometimes I can ride it but times like now I just give it up almost altogether.

Even left wing people, the way they talk, so stupid, so brain damaged, I'm probably to blame a bit for this myself although I now try to stay out of political talk on the internet for the most part. There's just too much play-pretend; I have long been fed up. But am I stupid? Years of chest puffing and obsession with posting has somewhat normalized the politics what used to be called the dissident right, formerly the alt-right, various shades of Nazi or fascist. But what would that look like for my politics? Something, I'm sure, I wouldn't like, some Bill Maherian nightmare woke militia, drooling evil skinnyfats lumping along under the same brain fog and dopamine disorders, virtuous cretins who learned morals from memes...I must report I would be forced to open fire! God, there's so many mentally ill people online, or being online makes so many people mentally ill, that and stupid...

What an absurd turn of events that "being a Communist" is, in America, often just an online persona, not even a cool one like adult baby diaper lover or racial gamer...I suppose "being a Nazi" is too, so many people just adopting whatever pose strikes them as unique...

I can't even get excited at the prospect of an American civil war, oh great, two (or more!) warring visions of liberalism, a woke or antiwoke states rights crisis, good grief. Perhaps I would welcome it. It depends on my mood.

Not that any amazing conflict like that is particularly likely, but one gets glimpses when you see a stupid governor clashing with the stupid President, and all their supporters (no matter what the cause) crazy from watching Instagram reels 16 hours a day---in actual fact I just watched Charlie Kirk get shot in the neck on X. He's at some college in Utah, talking to a bunch of people that look like they go to college in Utah, he's saying there's all these transgender mass shootings, and POP, gunshot, and there's a hole in his throat, the second big neck wound of the week, blood is gushing out, he must be dead for sure...wow. The betting market for whether he'll survive the day is already up, though Glenn Beck says he heard he was stabilized (updated: This was not true). Kirk is close to the White House, he plays every side of the right wing media space pretty deftly, this is going to be a big deal. The government will hype up the danger of the radical left, even though essentially none of the recent shootings, save the one on the Israeli diplomats and the alleged raid on the ICE facility in Texas, have been from that quarter (Mangione, as we've covered here, is not anything like a radical leftist). Charlie Kirk, is, unfortunately for him, one of those guys with headlines like "GUN DEATHS WORTH IT" with big pictures of him underneath. That's a tough one to stand by after you get shot by a gun (if he lives, I expect he will---he has to). His last post is how we should politicize the murder of Iryna Zarutska.

Things are getting hotter, I think. They always feel that way after something crazy happened, but the specific combination of this muscular government, Charlie's connections to the regime cannot be understated; there's a medium chance there's a massive response to this. I would watch what you say online. And in general there's a porky sort of violence building up in the valves of American hearts that makes everyone want to eat each others' intestines...the combination is electric. There's a video of an old, portly, white bald man who at least said he shot Kirk being dragged away by police. His pants are down. His underwear is on display. A woman screams "How Dare YOU!" at him. The whole thing is very Eddington.

I was thinking (before Charlie got shot) that AI psychosis is super common, and it's much more than jacking off to some Twilight spiel ChatGPT farts out, it's everywhere...the device can make you feel beloved, amazing, it can make you a billion dollars, or it can ruin your life, your little penis can be leaked, you can drive yourself crazy making your face pretty with TikTok filters, or more likely you'll just be kind of miserable, too much information (and "information") in a funeral procession going by, you'll remember only bits and pieces, a kaleidoscope of BULLSHIT. For almost all of human history we had one world, hell for every single second but the recent blip of human history you could only see things in front of you or hear things nearby, otherwise you were schizophrenic (or holy, or on drugs) and now you can masturbate with three monitors to unspeakable monsters violating cartoon girls between scrolling through videos of a woman stabbed in the neck on the bus or a right-winger shot in the neck at a college, all this magic conjured up by machines designed by antisocial monsters who view their work as literally building an electronic GOD, everything is fractured, stereophonic, I mean Jesus Christ, of course people are crazy, what other reaction is even possible.

One of the events that kickstarted the Spanish Civil War involved Socialist police officers blowing a Sotelo's head off in a car. But I don't think there's many socialist police officers in America.

I watched the sun set with the Haredi on the South Williamsburg waterfront yesterday, it was beautiful, the sky was pink, orange, white...It's impossible not to feel in love with the world seeing clouds turned yellow by the setting sun.

New episode out tomorrow, we have some more stuff in the churn too you guys will like.