I’ve been watching The Alt Right, Boogaloo Boys, and other undesirables’ activity online. I’ve been at it for some time now. In all reality, I’ve probably consumed more of material than they do. I don’t monitor them because I care about them, agree with them, or enjoy their ideas. On the contrary, I find them to be utterly repulsive as people. They strike me as being lesser creatures, if I’m being completely honest. But I find it important that someone keep an ear to the ground on their trends. My reasoning here is not without merit. I’ve surveilled numerous Telegram extremist channels for over a year now, and I’m considering busting out Evernote and compiling everything I’ve seen so far in either a single long blog post or multiple blog posts spanned over the course of a few months. I intend to dig up what I can about where these people come from, what their occupations are, and possible root causes behind why they are the way they are. I know that I’ll answer maybe one of those questions or none of them, but I feel like I should at least make the attempt to document what’s out there and how easy it is to find yourself in the midst of American extremists. I think it’ll prove to be interesting and hopefully informative.

Life will sure throw curveballs. It seems like it’ll throw them every chance it gets. Sometimes those curveballs can cut you down, make you feel like less than you are. And some of those curveballs will build you up. They’ll remind you that despite your best effort, there will be no concrete plans in this crazy thing we call existence. At least, none that don’t require some “dressing” or clever maneuvers. COVID was something to blindside us all. The failed federal response to COVID, doubly surprising, and even more disappointing. Under Trump we’ve seen over 200,000 deaths that likely did not need to happen. Trump is merely an extension of “old money”, the Americans in the top one percent who regard us as cattle. I didn’t realize just how little we mean to the elite until they saw fit to throw us directly in harm’s way using their poster child, Donald J. Trump. COVID is a disaster, Trump’s response to it a complete disaster, and if he manages to squeeze out enough votes to get a second term we’ll see nothing more than more disaster with him at the helm. It wouldn’t surprise me, in all honesty.

I feel like there’s an air of general unease everywhere right now. You have the ultra-capitalist fruitloops regarding human lives as expendable fuel for a thriving economy, and you have individuals who just want to exist without failed leadership completely ignoring the health and welfare of the general public. Both sides are deeply carved out in how they’re voting, and polling indicates Biden has a lead, but I’m not entirely sure we can trust polling anymore after 2016. Things are insane, to say the least.

Figured I’d test out Hugo’s ability to handle utf-8 just for shits and giggles. I’m also giving WSL 2.0 a spin, checking out the subtle nuances between 1.0 and current. Not sure I’ve really noticed any difference yet, but maybe I’ll see them once I install packages. Not really sure. I looked briefly at the version comparison chart, but I don’t really remember the highlights. I just remember that overall, WSL 2.0 seemed to be a no-brainer.

I do far less with this damn thing than I either expected or wanted to do with it, and my work/life balance is really one of the largest contributors. Even beyond that I frequently find myself choosing to vegetate with Disgaea 5 on the switch, grinding away at maxing out character classes and beefing up stats rather than writing a thoughtful post or describing some tech hurdle I’ve recently overcome. It’s whatever. At some point I’m sure I’ll have a day or two off where I find myself saying, “This is a perfect opportunity to draft up {x} thing I’ve been wanting to document”. Or maybe try something new. I dunno. It’s whatever. I complain about my work/life balance, but I also don’t do anything to change it. I’m not slowing down by picking a less intensive career path or low-energy job.

I think I’m a little in shock about how much work I have coming my way. It’s pretty intense. It looks like I’m going to have at least two, possibly three concurrent high profile projects as well as a number of smaller projects interspersed. I can’t really say how things are going to go, but I’m going to do my damnedest to get it done and do it right. I’m also writing this post on my phone using JuiceSSH, which is pretty cool. I’m glad I bought it. It works really well. It has this badass feature that allows you to use the virtual keyboard as either a “hunt and peck” for commands or an “autocorrect” for long strings of English words. I’m also tunneled into a raspberry pi over WireGuard. I need to buy at least one more of those, maybe two, and a large external drive to tether to it. Well, back to the grind, I guess.

How did we get here? I find myself asking that question over and over. It’s almost a daily reflection for me. How did Harvey Weinstein vicitimize women for thirty years? How did Jeffrey Epstein turn sex trafficking into a cottage industry? How did Trump maintain his personality cult across thirty allegations of sexual impropriety? The truth nearly seems stranger than fiction. At least, to me.

I’ve always been an incredibly defiant person. I buy heavily into the “No gods, no masters” mantra, and I feel as though we’re the masters of our own destiny. But that isn’t true for my peers. If they were to see a famous person in person, all bets would be off the table, and many of them would cease to be the same individual. The truth is that the “rockstar effect” is killing society.

It appears as though the nihilists are winning as we delve deeper into quantum mechanics. Local realism is under attack from every front, it would seem. I honestly despise the fact that quantum mechanics are easy and cheap to dip your toes into. It’s a short segue from polarized light to breaking existence as we know it. Who wants a universe that both exists and doesn’t exist until you observe that it either exists or doesn’t exist? Yet you can perform simple experiments at home that lead you down this absolutely insane path. I don’t know about you, but this shit bothers me. The underpinnings of everything in existence feel more solid than what we’re teasing out from photons.