This is really sad. You’re a great writer and an inspiration for me and many others. I’ll follow you to Ghost. I don’t have a lot of support money anymore, but you’re on the list. I hear so much now that haunting feeling of having no idea what to do next. As you note, highly intelligent, motivated, savvy people are running out of options. My car is too old to deliver groceries. Anyway, you are reaching and teaching people.
We could start our own magazine, but that ship may have sailed. Maybe a paper magazine, typed on a manual typewriter, printed on an old Xerox machine and sold on street corners, at least the tech bros couldn't get their paws on that.
If it comes to a guerilla war against a "Permanent MAGA" led government, newsletters passed hand to hand will be crucial. The resistance in the Soviet Union called it samizdat.
The rich did this. It's (very) tempting to blame the fascists, who have been plotting this since at least the civil rights era, but the rich were the only ones who could have stopped them. They chose not to, either because they agreed with it, or because they feared democratic socialists more, and decided they were immune to the actions of the fascists.
The rich *are* fascists. Musk is a fascist. Bezos is a fascist. Zuckerberg is a fascist. Thiel is a fascist. Andreessen is a fascist. Larry Ellison is a fascist. Tim Cook is a fascist. Rupert Murdoch is a fascist. Billionaires are fascists. They believe in fascist ideology. They practice eugenics. JD Vance is rich. Trump is rich, even if he carries huge amounts of debt. RFK Jr? Also rich, from all his anti-vaxxer grifts (plus family money). His net worth is an estimated $15-30 million.
The rich don't "agree with" fascism. They're fascists. So in a way, you're right. They were never going to stop it. They funded it. To a great extent, they're immune to it in the sense that they're the ones doing it. Of course, nobody is immune to fascism. Fascists always turn on each other because they're also narcissists.
The one and only. :) Ironic since he has also written about how we need to increase military spending to counter China's influence. But now they're going to save the world? The truth is somewhere in the middle, but like we said, nuance is dead. You can only flip back and forth between extremes now. Good times...
I thought you were referring to Bill Mckibben, who recently wrote an article about China's current policy of exporting clean-energy tech to developing countries at a large scale. He likened it to an environmental "Marshall Plan". I was thinking, does he really not know anything about climate change?
Jessica - another post that really resonates! I give thanks every day (although I'm sure not enough) that my wife and I are in a good place, literally (France) and figuratively (able to do things we enjoy), but it's been incredibly hard watching the "energetic disassembly" of pretty much everything in the States, especially after spending most of my adult life in service (Army and DOD civilian). I think so many people must be where you are now, but you have the good fortune of being very talented. Someone else observed that people are still making money writing and selling books; that's what I've gone back to (on top of my paltry retirement income and my wife's business, which thankfully is doing well).
But something else your post made me think of was what I can only call a dissolution of community that's been going on for at least the last year or so. The right seems to be able to hold things together, even using "red on red" assassinations to bolster their cause. But everyone to the left of the Nazis, liberals onward to anarchists, just seem intent on clawing one another to pieces, both across that part of the spectrum and within their respective groups. Like what you said about subscribers liking most of your stuff, but then tossing you off because you said one thing they didn't like. It reminds me of the "COVID-conscious community," where for at least the last couple/few years people have been shredding one another, usually at the behest of a relatively small group of bad-faith actors and a$$holes. And thus far there's no leadership, either in a social or political context, that can bring people up out of his ever-deepening morass.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling (early morning here and I haven't had enough coffee!), but I believe you'll find your footing again soon. You're smart, talented, and determined, which counts for a great deal, even in this effed-up world!
I’ll keep reading on whatever platform you choose. I’m paying for both ghost and Substack. You sound defeated. I hope you’re not. I am rooting for something to change to keep you going!
I really identify with how you feel Jessica. I used to work in animation. I had to take time out because of LongCovid with ‘brainfog’ so bad it’s essentially been like living with dementia, with months on end where I had trouble even understanding what people were saying to me. Combined with the total burnout I had from decades of toxic workplaces, I wasn’t able to continue. But I was only able to do this because I was privileged enough to own my own house. I sold it, moved somewhere much more remote and cheaper and have been living off the proceeds for a couple of years. This last year I’ve been desperately trying to get another job. And, of all the things I’m qualified to do, there’s… nothing. It’s terrifying.
Two years ago I was in a more extreme position than this while I desperately tried to sell my house. Every day I wondered how much longer I could hold out. It became very clear to me that government deliberately sets up disabled people to run out of options until the only option left is to end it. Every day I knew I was that much closer to that terrifying end point. Luckily I did sell the house which has given me a temporary reprieve, but I know it’s only a matter of time till I’m back at this hopeless point again. The government, local councils, and corporations all conspire to make it impossible for us to live, milking every penny they can for us, making it next to impossible to find any way to make a living. Every time I find a new option it quickly becomes impossible. One of the things I have recently been working towards is self publishing through kickstarter. Now, with all the new tariffs BS it looks next to impossible to succeed with a kickstarter. It’s terrifying to know that whatever I try next I’ll be set up to fail, no matter how hard I work. I’m 50 now, so getting work becomes even harder. I feel so tired from it. I’m a realist, not an optimist, with excellent pattern recognition, and I always knew there’d be no retirement for me, but even so I didn’t see life being *this* hard now. I’m really scared. I hope I can find a minimum wage job if I’m lucky at this point.
I have no doubt, the end goal for the parasite class is they just want the rest of us to work till we can’t, extract every last penny from us, then they want us to die.
I’ll be supporting you for as long as I can. Your writing has been a massive help to me - mading it much easier to know how to plan going forward. I’ll stop my substack subscription and start up one over on the other platform now.
Jessica, thank you for your honest appraisal of how things are going in your life. You've had too much adversity. You must be feeling frustrated.
Your Substack work is outstanding. I noticed it right away, and I especially value your researched pieces. Yours is the only Substack I pay for. I will continue to support you, wherever you publish.
No one knows where we are going, and what to do. It’s everyone and the lack of sound footing is causing health, mental illness, and a real big debt problems.
I'm pretty sure I know where this is going, and damn quickly too. Think 1930s Germany into the 1940s. Since Kirk's death, they've laid their cards on the table.
I’m sorry this has happened to you, I think it’s happening to many creative people right now. And likely will happen to most of us.
I appreciate your work because it’s timely and real!!
I will follow you to whatever platform you choose to publish on. I may need guidance for accessing Ghost, but I will keep subscribing.
You seem like a survivor to me. Your PTSD has given you lifesaving tools others don’t have. Like hyper vigilance, which gives you the ability to discover what’s happening “ out there” and then write about it for us, your readers.
Thank you, you are helping us!
Have you read the book “At Work In The Ruins” by Dougal Hine? He tackles this exact idea of what will be useful for people in community during and after the collapse of this current system. He talks about basic human connections like simply sitting around a table sharing a meal. He is British and lives in Sweden with his family in a small village. They have started an in person and online community learning circle, a”School Called Home”, I think is the name of it. I think they are helping folks who feel “at loose ends” during this time of great upheaval to ground and reconnect. Maybe check him out.
Please do what you need to do to stay safe, to replenish yourself and be healthy. Your voice matters!
I can't say anything constructive except that we do what we do not because it matters in the world, but because it matters to us personally. Bakers gonna bake. Creators gonna create.
Hey Jessica, thankyou for all you do, your insights and information. I appreciate your work and will continue to subscribe. Alison.
Hi Jessica. I really appreciate your work and will continue to support you. I’m renewing my subscription here.
This is really sad. You’re a great writer and an inspiration for me and many others. I’ll follow you to Ghost. I don’t have a lot of support money anymore, but you’re on the list. I hear so much now that haunting feeling of having no idea what to do next. As you note, highly intelligent, motivated, savvy people are running out of options. My car is too old to deliver groceries. Anyway, you are reaching and teaching people.
Thank you. Let's hope things carry on over at Ghost.
I'm going to keep supporting you wherever you end up. Thanks for your unflagging honesty and consistency over the years.
Thanks!
So after buying OpenAI, Larry Ellison bought TikTok? I can add 2 and 2, but I know I'm not going to like the result.
We could start our own magazine, but that ship may have sailed. Maybe a paper magazine, typed on a manual typewriter, printed on an old Xerox machine and sold on street corners, at least the tech bros couldn't get their paws on that.
Yep. Our own Truth Social. Quite an undertaking it would be...
If it comes to a guerilla war against a "Permanent MAGA" led government, newsletters passed hand to hand will be crucial. The resistance in the Soviet Union called it samizdat.
We will call it the "Free Press".
…and we can be the Free people.
The rich did this. It's (very) tempting to blame the fascists, who have been plotting this since at least the civil rights era, but the rich were the only ones who could have stopped them. They chose not to, either because they agreed with it, or because they feared democratic socialists more, and decided they were immune to the actions of the fascists.
The rich *are* fascists. Musk is a fascist. Bezos is a fascist. Zuckerberg is a fascist. Thiel is a fascist. Andreessen is a fascist. Larry Ellison is a fascist. Tim Cook is a fascist. Rupert Murdoch is a fascist. Billionaires are fascists. They believe in fascist ideology. They practice eugenics. JD Vance is rich. Trump is rich, even if he carries huge amounts of debt. RFK Jr? Also rich, from all his anti-vaxxer grifts (plus family money). His net worth is an estimated $15-30 million.
The rich don't "agree with" fascism. They're fascists. So in a way, you're right. They were never going to stop it. They funded it. To a great extent, they're immune to it in the sense that they're the ones doing it. Of course, nobody is immune to fascism. Fascists always turn on each other because they're also narcissists.
And, I know this is blasphemous - Opray is a fascist, too.
100 percent. Yep. Her fans don't want to see it because, gasp, that means they might be fascists.
And they all wished that they'd been invited to Bezos wedding, too.
UGH!
Thank you for your work and I'm sorry for how impossible everything is. ❤️
"some dude with no actual understanding of the climate crisis telling us China is going to save the world with solar panels."
.... lemme guess, Noahpinion? Noahthoughtsinmyhead isn't nearly as catchy but far more honest.
The one and only. :) Ironic since he has also written about how we need to increase military spending to counter China's influence. But now they're going to save the world? The truth is somewhere in the middle, but like we said, nuance is dead. You can only flip back and forth between extremes now. Good times...
He's the dictionary definition of neoliberal. That's about as much as you can say about him. And it's definitely not a compliment.
I thought you were referring to Bill Mckibben, who recently wrote an article about China's current policy of exporting clean-energy tech to developing countries at a large scale. He likened it to an environmental "Marshall Plan". I was thinking, does he really not know anything about climate change?
Ah, him too. We're looking at 3Cs of warming, minimum, with 4-5 likely. It's planet killing stuff, and these guys are talking about solar panels...
McKibben may be as hopeful, but he's 1000x less insuffrable.
Meanwhile Smith's pumping out dreck like this: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/china-is-quietly-saving-the-world
Jessica - another post that really resonates! I give thanks every day (although I'm sure not enough) that my wife and I are in a good place, literally (France) and figuratively (able to do things we enjoy), but it's been incredibly hard watching the "energetic disassembly" of pretty much everything in the States, especially after spending most of my adult life in service (Army and DOD civilian). I think so many people must be where you are now, but you have the good fortune of being very talented. Someone else observed that people are still making money writing and selling books; that's what I've gone back to (on top of my paltry retirement income and my wife's business, which thankfully is doing well).
But something else your post made me think of was what I can only call a dissolution of community that's been going on for at least the last year or so. The right seems to be able to hold things together, even using "red on red" assassinations to bolster their cause. But everyone to the left of the Nazis, liberals onward to anarchists, just seem intent on clawing one another to pieces, both across that part of the spectrum and within their respective groups. Like what you said about subscribers liking most of your stuff, but then tossing you off because you said one thing they didn't like. It reminds me of the "COVID-conscious community," where for at least the last couple/few years people have been shredding one another, usually at the behest of a relatively small group of bad-faith actors and a$$holes. And thus far there's no leadership, either in a social or political context, that can bring people up out of his ever-deepening morass.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling (early morning here and I haven't had enough coffee!), but I believe you'll find your footing again soon. You're smart, talented, and determined, which counts for a great deal, even in this effed-up world!
I’ll keep reading on whatever platform you choose. I’m paying for both ghost and Substack. You sound defeated. I hope you’re not. I am rooting for something to change to keep you going!
I really identify with how you feel Jessica. I used to work in animation. I had to take time out because of LongCovid with ‘brainfog’ so bad it’s essentially been like living with dementia, with months on end where I had trouble even understanding what people were saying to me. Combined with the total burnout I had from decades of toxic workplaces, I wasn’t able to continue. But I was only able to do this because I was privileged enough to own my own house. I sold it, moved somewhere much more remote and cheaper and have been living off the proceeds for a couple of years. This last year I’ve been desperately trying to get another job. And, of all the things I’m qualified to do, there’s… nothing. It’s terrifying.
Two years ago I was in a more extreme position than this while I desperately tried to sell my house. Every day I wondered how much longer I could hold out. It became very clear to me that government deliberately sets up disabled people to run out of options until the only option left is to end it. Every day I knew I was that much closer to that terrifying end point. Luckily I did sell the house which has given me a temporary reprieve, but I know it’s only a matter of time till I’m back at this hopeless point again. The government, local councils, and corporations all conspire to make it impossible for us to live, milking every penny they can for us, making it next to impossible to find any way to make a living. Every time I find a new option it quickly becomes impossible. One of the things I have recently been working towards is self publishing through kickstarter. Now, with all the new tariffs BS it looks next to impossible to succeed with a kickstarter. It’s terrifying to know that whatever I try next I’ll be set up to fail, no matter how hard I work. I’m 50 now, so getting work becomes even harder. I feel so tired from it. I’m a realist, not an optimist, with excellent pattern recognition, and I always knew there’d be no retirement for me, but even so I didn’t see life being *this* hard now. I’m really scared. I hope I can find a minimum wage job if I’m lucky at this point.
I have no doubt, the end goal for the parasite class is they just want the rest of us to work till we can’t, extract every last penny from us, then they want us to die.
I’ll be supporting you for as long as I can. Your writing has been a massive help to me - mading it much easier to know how to plan going forward. I’ll stop my substack subscription and start up one over on the other platform now.
Jessica, thank you for your honest appraisal of how things are going in your life. You've had too much adversity. You must be feeling frustrated.
Your Substack work is outstanding. I noticed it right away, and I especially value your researched pieces. Yours is the only Substack I pay for. I will continue to support you, wherever you publish.
No one knows where we are going, and what to do. It’s everyone and the lack of sound footing is causing health, mental illness, and a real big debt problems.
I'm pretty sure I know where this is going, and damn quickly too. Think 1930s Germany into the 1940s. Since Kirk's death, they've laid their cards on the table.
I’m sorry this has happened to you, I think it’s happening to many creative people right now. And likely will happen to most of us.
I appreciate your work because it’s timely and real!!
I will follow you to whatever platform you choose to publish on. I may need guidance for accessing Ghost, but I will keep subscribing.
You seem like a survivor to me. Your PTSD has given you lifesaving tools others don’t have. Like hyper vigilance, which gives you the ability to discover what’s happening “ out there” and then write about it for us, your readers.
Thank you, you are helping us!
Have you read the book “At Work In The Ruins” by Dougal Hine? He tackles this exact idea of what will be useful for people in community during and after the collapse of this current system. He talks about basic human connections like simply sitting around a table sharing a meal. He is British and lives in Sweden with his family in a small village. They have started an in person and online community learning circle, a”School Called Home”, I think is the name of it. I think they are helping folks who feel “at loose ends” during this time of great upheaval to ground and reconnect. Maybe check him out.
Please do what you need to do to stay safe, to replenish yourself and be healthy. Your voice matters!
I can't say anything constructive except that we do what we do not because it matters in the world, but because it matters to us personally. Bakers gonna bake. Creators gonna create.