John / is on Nostr

Most of my posts delete after a week.

Writer, musician, theatre artist, arts advocate. Co-creator of collaborative fiction platform Mote. Recovering brand designer and advertising creative director. Former drag queen, househead, club kid.

Posting: astrophysics and cosmology; collaborative fiction and narrative instruments; TTRPG and gaming stuff; music; and other nerdy things I like.

Anti-fascist. Everything is politics. Team #NOVID.

Queer/Gay, He/They. I got Pre-Existing Conditions.

Mote: https://whatismote.com
Free One-Shot TTRPGs!: https://motestories.com/games

Last Notes

2024-09-08 09:20:18

People with small minds and hearts feel empowered to derisively call out those of us still capable of dreaming and striving. This is deranged, because it is *they* who are pitiable.
Imagine thinking not only that the bounds of what's possible are known, but that *you know them*. Imagine the incandescent arrogance of someone with such high self-regard that they believe *their* assessments of *all that is possible in the world* are accurate enough to forestall even the attempt.

2024-09-07 19:42:25

I'm not sure there's a force in the universe strong enough to convince someone in the United States that they weren't, in fact, locked in their houses for 1.5 years.
The "lockdown" fantasy is so entrenched across the country that people you *actually know* were going to clubs in June 2020 will look you in the eye and say with intense earnestness that they'll never "go back" to being trapped in their house for a year.
They have to justify their current nonsense with an invented past trauma.

2024-09-05 03:35:23

Money..........ISN'T REAL.
We can "afford" anything we need to, because THERE IS AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF MONEY.
Because it ISN'T REAL.
If your options are the destruction of the planet (REAL) or spending $1 quadrillion dollars (not actually REAL), you just PRINT MONEY. You don't say "welp, I guess HUMANITY WILL DIE whoopsie"
When I say neoliberals are fundamentally unserious people, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. They literally are saying "welp" right now.

2024-08-27 21:10:57

- reply

I don't disagree on principle. But I do think that it's worth remembering that what you call "purity testing" is sometimes the result of hypervigilance.
I also think the language "purity test" is...not the best. It belittles their position and their reaction in ways that scream "privileged" to me, because the more marginalized you are the less wiggle room you've got for "live and let live" attitudes.

2024-08-24 20:49:43

- reply

So it's collapsing, because it murdered its culture of excellence. And once you destroy a culture, it won't come back: kind of like the coral reefs we're blithely slaughtering every year with our pollution.
What's most telling is that Boeing's executives are *totally, honestly nonplussed* by what's happening. It's a combination of "why are these passengers so worried about planes falling apart?" and "it seems impossible to not build planes that might fall apart."

2024-08-24 20:45:30

- reply

They pumped it full of steroids while "trimming the fat" - which actually means they fired all the people who knew what they were doing and/or cared if the product killed people.
Expanded production lines + dramatically reduced staff + erased oversight = massive short term profits.
Obviously, it wasn't going to last.

2024-08-24 20:43:27

Boeing is remarkable because it's a nearly perfect exemplar of the outcomes of our current economy, whether on society, the planet, or even companies themselves.
Boeing used to be well known for how well it treated its employees. It used to have tons of "lifers" who worked there until they retired. It used to make a respectable profit, and enjoyed almost universal praise for its product quality.
Then, modern capitalist goons showed up.

2024-08-22 09:33:46

"Getting sick is bad and you should avoid it" and "Genocide is bad and you should never do it" seem to be the most controversial takes in the Western world right now, so...
I guess that's how we're doing.

2024-08-20 18:54:17

Elon Musk remains one of the dumbest, most incompetent, meanest people on the planet AND one of the richest people on the planet.
If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about our economic system, you're not paying attention.

2024-08-12 20:41:35

I don't know who needs to hear this, but JD Vance's "drag" is exactly the kind of "drag" every cis guy does in college. The victory laps so many people are taking dunking on his "hypocrisy" are just gross.
It's not news that sometimes people do shit in college and then turn into worse/better people after college. This whole "20 years ago you did this!" thing makes us look like peevish little pieces of shit.
Hypocrisy, esp ancient hypocrisy, is boring. Focus on who he is today.

2024-07-07 00:12:10

I remain bewildered that America has not just gone to SCOTUS and told them to fuck off.
I mean, if these nine Wizard Kings ruled that you should kill yourself tomorrow, would you oil up your gun and load it?
When institutions fail to the point where they mandate destruction of the rest of society, you *empty them out and give them a good scrubbing and possibly replace them*, you don't just shrug, say "welp" and drop nukes on DC.

2024-07-05 18:47:28

People grasping about to figure out why Biden really started to fail about a year ago, in a sudden decline, but also having memory-holed the neurotropic plague ravaging the world right now, is a vibe I literally predicted years ago.
Presidents are not immune to plague, despite being President. Biden catching COVID multiple times is as bad as your grandma catching it multiple times. Both of them are going to be fucked by it

2024-07-03 22:18:40

Novavax just can't win, man. Like, last year they were 2 months late to the party. This year, they were going to early but the FDA changed its reco like a week after they committed to JN.1, which will be a terribly ineffectual vaccine because we'll be on KP.3's grandkid by then, and JN.1 doesn't even work on KP.3.
What a mess.

2024-06-23 19:38:24

If infection with SARS2 isn't harmful enough for medical professionals to treat it seriously, I think maybe it's time for them to tell us what, praytell, *is* harmful enough for them to take precautions?

2024-06-14 18:53:31

Literally everyone at a friend's work (they're full remote) has COVID right now, after attending a conference last week.
Many of them had COVID 5-6 months ago as well.
One of them has had COVID at least *7* times, though he's stopped counting.
My friend tells me that they're all kind of spooked and confused by it. They call it "a slow dawning", which is, of course, exactly how the broader public was always going to realize they've been hoodwinked into selling their health for pennies.

2024-05-17 19:29:35

As we watch companies like Slack almost casually mention that they're collecting and funneling proprietary data into their LLMs, I wonder when the other 90% of the Fortune 100 are going to start explaining in harsh terms what they're planning to do to these people if they keep it up.

2024-04-10 20:28:29

Anyone got a good technique for making super-strong infused oils for cooking? I'm finding maybe 15 different methods online and don't want to have to try all of them haha.
Bonus points if it's shelf stable for 3+ months.