So today, for my 100,000th post...
I wish to thank EarlG, Elad and Skinner and everyone that is Democratic Underground for being my main source for info and entertainment, I love and thank you all for companionship and the help you give when needed!
As for the current times, what a catastraphuck! I have felt all along that we would come to this, though I had sincerely hoped we could avoid it, and now we face the deciding moment of our existence, will we prevail as a Democracy or not?
I suspect that there will be massive uprising this year, especially this summer, and that will be the beginning of our revival as a nation with renewed vows to keep our Democracy and cleanse it of the graft and corruption that has plagued us for too long.
I hope that everyone here can find and muster the strength and fortitude required to meet the moment and prevail because it is going to take all of us to make it happen.
SO LET'S DO THIS!!
And as Ryan Hall says, "Don't be scared, be prepared!"
It's going to be a tough year for most of us so let's support one another and go forward knowing the mission we must complete.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Let's do this!
We’re all in this together. 
And congratulations on 100,000 posts! Keep 'em coming.
Here's to the next 100,000 and beyond!
🎉
For being here!
Congratulations!
That some 80% of those posts were K&R and +1!
Ha, ha, ha! Sorry, couldn't help myself! 
It's people like you who make DU so great.....
This is a safe place kinda away from the maddening crowds.
It’s getting close to the time to put away the seed catalog and get to planting, thats a sure stress relief.
I'm just getting settled in at the new place, been here 5 weeks-ish, so sorting out everything in my life from the menagerie of boxes and tubs that were heaped in here has taken some time. Plus I had some virus thing for a couple weeks. But I know where my seed cache is. I also have to package some seeds promised to other gardeners and then edit a pile of pictures also promised to others. I'm almost done putting everything away. Hopefully I can get to those things soon, I have pictures to post here.
it is cat a stropicSo I made it my sig:
"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming." -- Pablo Neruda
Congrats on your 100,000 posts and hope for many more.
And your post is spot on!
I enjoy your posts 🩵
and the Happy Dance for you!!!
Was listening to SiriusXM "The Groove" when I saw your post and they were playing some Janet from 35 years ago "Alright" -
(and LOL that you watch Ryan Hall Ya'll"
) 
Another DUer reaches 6 figures.
I've been a member on-and-off since 2004 (my post count doesn't reflect that because of my own stupidity in 2007) and I'll never reach 6 figures!
Congratulations, 2naSalit.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 
100,000 is a huge number!
8
It took 12 or so years but I don't think I'll ever catch up to you!
I didn't post for a couple of days because I wanted to say something special at my 1000th post! And back then newyawker99 posted Milestones - and she was the one who originally welcomed me to DU - on my very first post.
We must al
Continue to support one another!
I was thinking back this morning over the past.
I looked up this book I came across in 2010-2011. It was called the Marbury Lens. It took me back in time. I was working on the same damn paper I am working on now. It was a couple of years into the Obama admin and I had sort of drifted off DU, losing interest in politics and hoping for the best.
That was 14-15 years ago. I was living in the US. My marriage was ending - no infidelity or lack of love. We still talk every day and are close friends. We just sparred a lot as a couple and entirely about semantics in politics. Maybe two highly political people don’t work well as a couple as you argue so much about trivial differences. Our marriage was a version of GD at times. Now we drop it fast when we disagree over argue to death over what the correct level of loathing for Mark Cuban is appropriate (♾️ in my view, slightly less in his) etc. Not the kind of tmi overshare I normally would do, but I have a rough idea of how corporate lawyers try to make female complainants seem sleazy, unstable, conniving etc if they can. I have lead a dully non-lurid life (at the risk of sounding like that YouTuber who shared how he doesn’t dissipate his tensions after making wild allegations ;-/). I am a mediocre scientist, use pot and have a short temper.
Anyway, I started working in a Cafe to force myself to concentrate better and instead it got worse as I would people watch or zone out.
What was really on my mind then as now was revolution. The state of the planet always, but also bitterness that some professions when done honestly are so hard and unyielding and those the ones most in tune with the Limits to Growth (though I didn’t think of it in those terms then). While the mediocre and useless junk tech capitalism that preceded ai slop long back (Nicholar Carr gets it) was overcompensated. Bullshit jobs is too kind.
But the reason I thank DU is that that was the most apolitical period of my life-or perhaps undirected politcs. I was getting embittered even with science, though that was always superficial bitterness. I know how hard people work in the natural sciences and they are generally people I get along with, unlike the computer people whose worldview is like nails on chalkboard for me, with rare exceptions.
This piece I found via John Naughton nails it:
https://crookedtimber.org/2022/12/08/your-platform-is-not-an-ecosystem/
Anyway, I was working at a medical centre and failing every way I could. I generally like doctors (a handful in psychiatry aside) and natural scientists, but engineers ..it is a way of thinking that is a constant irritant on my nerves. I was an engineer at some point and happy to get as far away from it as I realistically could. I wish I had majored in physics instead.
And the politics..
But that was when I felt (as I can now see looking back) the pull of algorithms. I stopped using DU and would watch music videos on YouTube and get angrier and angrier and yet somehow more apolitical. It was a very Hollywoodized and entertainment adjacent form of political anger.
I was also starting (and that is the sole thing that remains true) to resent a form of shallow, politicking with no economic or ecological component, but a lot of the divide and rule strain of politics. That’s not how I see people and after reading Yasha Levine, it is a suspicion I have that pop psych and psychiatry and pop culture broadly in the US are militarized, especially via the net.
They seem to operate on polarization exploitation, directing attention away from industrial leaders, oligarchs, politicians and villainizing mid level public sector workers a la Project 2025 and public health officials like poor Dr Fauci.
Any attacks on these technocreeps is like a WWE thing, because they are that arrogant. I imagine the French aristocracy was similar.
The best psychiatrists I have seen are not like the ones handpicked by Google Which is about half of the shrinks I have seen (though I question a society that makes me see these many shrinks 🙄 ).
That too over a simple low dose Adderall/Modafinil prescription or medical marijuana-the only things that ever conferred any real utility. And should not be mired in technocreep encroachment. I have never been open to anything else and never will be, but with not with extortion from technocrats. I am never open to machine learning.
But back to the algorithms-that was when “content” entered my life-some 15 years ago. And I agree with Yasha Levine largely.
Except for passive net use. Though that has made me realize that I like to be connected solely to DU because, I don’t like apolitical spaces in such a rapaciously political world. Or ones with both sides a la crossfire.
And that is mainly thanks to EarlG and elad.
I remember that as a very unhappy period in my life because it was the only time I was ever a superficially blah person..and that made me angry in this undirected and douchey way.
I am still angry..But it is back to being targeted and fine honed against Sundar Pichai, Nadella, Musk, Bezos, Marc Andreessen (he should also do hard time), the Palantir creeps etc.
As for Trump, I don’t think he would be possible without those guys. Yan Lecun who is the sole ai researcher I respect, left Facebook. I used to find it obscene that Zuckerberg was Lecun’s boss.
But it also underscored a pattern that repeats itself. These guys don’t stop. Sooner or later there comes a point where appeasement and civility don’t work.
I think Lina Khan was awesome. But the next round should send these guys to prison. Because it is either them or an accelerated slide into a surveillance state with few guardrails where people are targeted for increasing escalation while being called crazy troublemakers etc.
I tried to shrink my space and do as much as I could. But now it is my street and home and I have hit my limits. This is not entertainment.
I like my colleagues and doctors etc. But these guys are..they are sweet etc. But I am fed up and I am going to move this into the real world and try to get Sundar Pichai sent to prison.
Seems a bit overly ambitious, but it is a worthwhile goal. This paper aside, I can’t think of a more valuable contribution I could make to publicly funded science and medicine than to get Sundar Pichai sent to prison, before life degrades further.
It isn’t really random. YouTube is a very negative influence everywhere as it was on my life. Pichai has been Ceo of alphabet since 2017.
He matched Vance with his insipid and insincere proclamations against Trump in 2017, to now more characteristically suck up to Trump. This horrible man (Pichai) must do hard time.
Looking back I do think Google is a tackily corrupting and encroaching influence on society and sending Pichai to prison (after a fair trial -not symbolically or as a game, but a serious legal precedent) will help the fight for democracy. They pump up the Bannons and balance it out with the kinds of shouting videos unpopular with a lot of the left.
That is not the solution to our corrupt blah mainstream (e.g.: NYT, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Wapo etc), but another tumor.
Like Holmes etc, Pichai’s time has come. He was in charge throughout 2017-the present as society and life fell apart. In this period the surveillance state has strengthened its hold and sells noxious three-body confusion aliens solutions as critical thinking tests mixing up fact and fiction etc. These are terrible solutions. Lina Khan was cool. But more..
I am not crazy or an influencer or daft. I really do think the citizenry everywhere must pushback and revolt while we have any money or rights left. Instead of accepting more spooky, mind game or entertainment like solutions.
DU has credibility because the admins clearly care about what is best for everyone. That’s why I use this site, though I am generally skeptical about the web, I trust the admin decisions here. The admins take politics and reality seriously. It is why DU was never a negative influence. It is a vague association, but I associate YouTube with the start of more rubbish like net use.
These tech creeps are mercenaries. That’s how they switch sides with no shame and will no doubt try to game reality further and claim to have worked bts for democracy throughout.
That is a lie. They are just trying to predict their way to safety and it is up to us to hold them accountable. Any actual work that doesn’t suck and challenges critical thinking skills would suffer if these guys and their mercenary ways get away with finalizing the execution of this ongoing coup, with more conspiracies, fewer experts, more kayfabe, less oversight etc.
This is a time and resource suck and inverted. These Google guys are parasites.
