When I was a teenager in the 2000s I somehow got the opportunity to interview the drummer from Minor Threat for a hardcore zine.

I asked him for his advice for young musicians. He said “you’re not going to listen to this advice because you don’t think it’s cool, and one day you’ll regret it, but always wear earplugs.”

I didn’t listen.

Didn’t think it was cool.

Permanent ear damage by my mid 20s.

I’m dubious about any YouTube personality and Gary Stevenson is no exception. But his message is simple:

- the reason living standards is going down is the rich have all the money
- the rich have a lot of money making machines, they have so much money they can only use it to buy up the remaining money making machines (e.g. your mum’s house, and your future starter home). This is real, it was literally my job.
- in a more equal economy other issues (*cough*immigration*cough*) would be more of a factor, and we still have to acknowledge that, but if you redistributed wealth from the uber wealthy we would not all be in the shitter right now and they’d still be rich AF. Right now the other issues are just a wedge to make us fight over crumbs.
- the super rich are tied geographically to their assets (AKA the money making machines), it’s a lot easier to tax them then they’d like you to think

https://youtu.be/VgKb95wcyQQ?si=IkwI4OS1AjU2YuTI

I get where the whole "things didn't used to be simpler you were just a kid and shielded from the complexities of life" comes from and I hate conservatives who pull that shit as much as the next guy. Having said that, come on man, I was an adult 15 years ago and there wasn't an ongoing though widely disregarded plague all over the world, there wasn't an ever worsening cost of living crisis, there wasn't yearly climate change induced extreme weather events across the globe, and sometimes tech did neat things that made life better rather than being caught in an enshittification spiral which has now lead to the poisoning of the well of literally all information

So I feel like things are actually measurably more complicated and worse now

Sorry for going on a ramble but I keep seeing that pithy quote coming by and this just really bugs me

“Why don't you like BlueSky?"

Twitter taught me something. Any "For Profit" company is going to be a slave to its need for growth, its investors, and corporate greed.

BlueSky says “We don't want to be like that”. but they're also a for profit company that is going to end up a slave to their investors and their greed just like any other for profit company.

I don't feel like establishing myself there, just to have it all come apart in a few years like Twitter did. Because that's inevitable.

I’m trying to avoid politics. Really I am. But I saw a Trump billboard on my way home from Philadelphia, and it finally set me off.

it was the tagline underneath that got me. It read “migrants are entering the country every day, who pays?”

What the ever loving fuck? Migrants? Not illegal immigrants, which is a horrible phrase to begin with, but just migrants.

it’s no longer trying to make people hate folks for doing something illegal. Again, that’s bad enough. Now it’s trying to get people to hate folks who are from other countries at all.

This tactic isn’t just out of Hitler’s playbook, this actually IS Hitler’s playbook. Get people to blame a group of vulnerable people for all their problems and use their anger to get into power.

it almost made me physically sick. God help us if this man gets elected again.