I do not believe you care about this
You are lying
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This one was about bumblebees and death and the "MAHA" and "AI" scams and Dolly Parton and Ratboys and the NFL and a lot more.
Luke O’Neil
Make America healthy again you say? So open up thousands more hospitals around the country especially in rural areas or towns where private equity is buying them up and stripping them for parts? Make healthcare free for all? Invest in a big push to train and hire more doctors and healthcare workers? Is that what they want to do?
No? Oh so it's just the individualistic fash parts I guess. Doing pushups against cancer kind of shit.
I also shared this short story by me.
Luke O’Neil
And an excerpt from Christopher Harris' new novel Pound Foolish.
Luke O’Neil
Down below we've got another striking and meditative essay by Michael Brown on the similarities between paranoid survivalists he met living out in the Arizona desert and the AI-brained tech ubermenschen. Brown previously wrote for Hell World about his experience of putting his life back together after years of addiction and homelessness.
Luke O’Neil
...I was not the only one who passed out on the sidewalk as people walked over me and wondered what might have happened in my life that had led to such a moment; and I was not the only one who’d been kicked out of place after place and been beaten up by cops and criminals both; and I’m not the only one who became a violent criminal and victimized others myself; and I’m not the only one who got arrested over and over again and got to the point where I liked it because at least someone was interested in what I did; and I’m not the only one who’s woken up on a gurney in an emergency room out of an alcoholic blackout before signing in and suddenly feeling like I might have found a way out; and I’m not the only one who actually started to find joy in life and see the beauty in small things and take delight in the presence of other people even when they were giant pains in my ass; and I’m not the only one who wants to tell the story without leaving any of the bad parts out just so that I can make the point that life is still beautiful and worth living and that the world and other people are far more beautiful than I used to think.
First some of me getting pissed off.
Just once in my life I would like to see a Democrat being interviewed by right wing media like Fox News or right wing media like every single other outlet treat their questions with the contempt they deserve. I know it's not going to fix everything or maybe even anything but how much coverage and how much groundswell of excitement from the base do you think it would inspire if when asked about "boys in girls sports" or some other stupid fucking culture war distraction one of them finally said "What the fuck are you talking about man? You sound like a dumb asshole right now."
What's the worst that's going to happen the New York Times is gonna work overtime to make sure you don't get elected? They were already doing that buddy.
You simply say "Are you stupid? Do you think I am stupid? And do you think all of the people watching at home are stupid? Everyone sees through what you are doing. Using one group as a scapegoat for the very real problems everyone has – all caused by Republicans by the way – unlike this fake one you have made up. Dumb asshole."
Just go on the attack for once instead of sitting there trying to please your enemy who is in the process of trying to humiliate you.
And if you want to say something else true that almost no Democrat ever says for some reason you can top it off with a “Every single Republican in our lifetime has sought to make our lives worse in every way possible. I’d like to try to stop that.”
It doesn’t count if you say it in euphemisms and with the we’re all still friends here haha tone. You have to say it like a real fucking asshole bully. The southern bless your heart or midwestern cutting politeness thing doesn’t work it has to be a northeast style "Are you fucking stupid? Are you dumb?"
Abdul El-Sayed has come pretty close to this sort of thing but hasn't gone far enough. His appearance on Jesse Watters' show on Fox News a couple weeks back was a good start.
"I'm running for U.S. Senate. It's insane," he said. "I'm out here trying to take on the health care crisis and big pharma, and you're asking me about who gets to play what sports. It's silly. People can't take you seriously."
Contrasted with James Talarico's weenie heel turn the other day on Fox it looks downright heroic though.
“Every sport has to be safe and fair,” Talarico said. “As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes, I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness.”
He was also asked if he still believes there are six sexes.
“I missed the mark on some of my past statements, I’ll be the first to admit it,” he said. “What I meant is there are two sexes and there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. Obviously I didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes, there are two.”
You'll never believe what happened next. Republicans said he was lying and trying to cover his ass and flip-flopping and he also managed to demoralize large numbers of Democrats trans and otherwise in Texas and across the country. In other words he got nothing for trying to appease the right. Which is what happens every single time a Democrat tries it.
He's still gonna try it though!
But but but it's Texas not Massachusetts...
No you don't!
"Y'all don't understand. People fucking suck in my state. Which is why you have to suck too to get them to vote for you. They are too fucking stupid to ever want anything better. And they'll kill you for even trying. This is how it will always be."
That's how a lot of you sound right now with this "you have to win Republicans to be a Democrat shit."
"Try coming to where I'm from and inspire people. Just try it. They'll piss on you. No one wants anything good or decent where I'm from. No one wants someone to make things better. They want to die in the mud. They want to sink real slow into the mud until it's just their hat on top of it."
That's you. I'm being you right now.
I do not care if you are from a traditionally red state your job as a leader is to change that. It's not to chase what people have been told they already think it's to give them something else to believe in. And the way to do that is to show you are willing to fight for everyone not throw a convenient othered group under the bus to appease the imaginary bigot majority.
Luke O’Neil
We cannot be the ones to preemptively and "pragmatically" kick our more vulnerable allies off of the plane. The end result will be having to face the fascists later on anyway but with a significantly diminished coalition. Better to turn around right now to face them with our full complement of fighters.
You say "I am for the dignity and safety and equal rights of trans people everywhere. Fuck you. The end."
And if they keep with the questions about children's sports the answer is "Who gives a shit?"
"I do not believe you care about this issue. You are lying. In fact you're a straight up weirdo for fixating on kids' genitals so much. That is odd behavior. Let kids run around with their friends."
I wrote about this in the most recent paid-only Hell World but it bears repeating again: it is long past time we stopped taking these bad faith questions seriously.
"If this right here is the issue you are obsessed with and rail about constantly above all else it's a bit suspect as regards what your actual motives are. Considering how many millions of children are harmed yearly by lack of access or under-access to treatment in our more routine for-profit healthcare system I don't think these people are completely sincere in their concerns about child medical welfare writ large. I am sorry but I just don't fucking believe you."
"I just have concerns about girls sports."
Negotiating our survival
by Michael Brown
Not only is the old world ending and a new one being born, but it is directly related to who and what I am and do.
Imagine thinking that way on a regular basis as the world keeps not ending? That you are living in the eye of the needle through which the one true thread of history must pass and be seen.
Lately I’ve been looking back on the time when I lived out in the desert in the early 2020s. A weird space of which I am still fond but am in no rush to get back to. I’ve been reminiscing because I’ve been paying too much attention to the news lately and the latest AI discourse reminds me of the survivalists I met out there.
Not only are the revolution and the revelation imminent but they are directly related to what I am and do.
Back in 2021 I’d had a few bad experiences, including a gnarly paranoid meth freakout, that ended with me out on the streets with all my stuff witnessing a guy getting shot at the bus stop. That was distressing.
So I got clean and slept at the bird sanctuary for a bit before my stimulus hit on Saint Patrick’s Day and drove the snakes out of my bank account. I got a cheap room in a bad neighborhood and figured out how to get out to the desert by way of public transportation and sleep outside legally. It turns out that that is not that hard to do in Tucson.
All of history is culminating in some ultimate event that revolves around my personal mythology.
It seems like the edge of the known world at first. You feel like you’re the only one there. Even at this late point in history you might get a little whiff of that frontier feeling, though that’s an illusion, because not only are there people all over but there have been for thousands of years. And besides that the city is still only four miles to the east. It’s just well hidden by the mountains.
I met a lot of people who were trying to live as if the city did not exist. As if other people in general were an existential threat to their livelihoods. In some cases this was true. There were guys who had violated parole or were on the run. You can’t always get a straight story from guys like that. If someone lays a romantic outlaw story on you he might actually be a violent sex offender.
Then there are other people who aren’t violators or felons but who basically identify as such. They think of themselves as misfits and outlaws. More often than not this has to do with serious intimacy issues and unresolved trauma.
I don’t need other people when they don’t love or understand me anyway.
They felt threatened by everything. Anyone who was different in any way was weird and scary to them. They had trouble with basic social activity. That was why they lived as they did. They talked big about how they wished the damn government would come and try to take their guns, but they were afraid all the time. It was as if they took refuge in the fantasy that someone was going to come for them. Fantasies like that provide a sense of purpose and importance and help compensate for feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness. People are like that.
The very fate of the world and the meaning of existence are to be determined and I am somehow essential to the process of it.
They saw themselves as free thinkers among people caught up in a herd mentality. Tech guys who talk about super-intelligence and the singularity are similar. They have their personal mythology and they believe in it at least partly because it fulfills basic psychological needs that they have trouble getting met through healthy social relationships. The survivalists tend to prefer relationships with trucks and guns and think in terms of how to survive without other people. The tech people think in terms of being lone supermen who are out-evolving the meat sacks by way of their embrace of cybernetics. There’s a fetishism to it. The social impulse is displaced onto the inanimate so that the subject can experience objects as people and people as objects. Human relationships are too messy because people are alive, spontaneous and free in ways that guns, trucks and computers are not.
Once one has enough firepower to rise to a position more powerful than the common herd, one becomes invulnerable and immortal, and is unconstrained by emotion, law, regulation, or principle.
So when the survivalist says “I have enough food and ammunition to survive a zombie apocalypse” it’s as if he really wants a zombie apocalypse because it provides an unambiguous sense of purpose. It makes it easy to figure out how they’re supposed to live and behave as human beings. His day to day life might even seem empty and meaningless to the point of suicidal despair if they were deprived of the paranoid fantasies and conspiracy theories that constitute their ideas of how human society actually works.
With the tech guys it’s even crazier because the pathological wish fulfillment fantasy of “I think my computer program might bring about the extinction of the human race” actually counts as a kind of global sales pitch made by a bunch of obscenely wealthy money hungry free market ideologues who are high on their own fumes and whose actions affect the lives of billions of people. Add to this that they are being enabled by breathless stenographers in the New York Times, or The Atlantic, or on CNBC, or X or wherever.
I never stockpiled food or weapons. I made friends in communities. I could live without money or possessions but I like other people. People are the most valuable resource and making friends and being good to others is the most important life skill there is for me. Everything else flows from that. Any other human being you encounter might be the most miraculous thing you will ever find. Of course there are bad ones too. There are very, very bad people out there. The uncertainty of all can really do a number on you. The uncertainty of it all can drive people to take refuge in weird fantasies about the great replacement or the end of the world or the singularity.
So I made friends at the nearest store and the church so I could get free shit for myself and others. And I made trips back into the city to visit my friends, who were largely transgender women of color. The survivalist types were prejudiced against and felt threatened by people like that. One guy told me: “I went into town one time and I saw Mexican gangsters and queers at the bus station and I got scared,” but that guy had recently gotten out of prison for a double homicide committed in a jealous rage. People are funny like that.
That guy was from the south and loved the confederacy. A lot of these guys openly subscribe to fascist ideologies without seeing any conflict of interest with regard to their own libertarianism. They see themselves as belonging to the select small percentage of people who will be lifted up unto glory as the rest of the world is purged in fire and flood. That’s common in America, the guy who self identifies as an outlaw while espousing authoritarian political views. Even the mainstream “liberal” press loves describing far right types as “mavericks” while someone who advocates for public healthcare and housing the poor is regarded with suspicion.
We live in absolutely unprecedented times and the very concept of history has become obsolete; only the sufficiently advanced and independent among us will bring forth the revaluation of all values. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
Eventually I realized that I might actually be able to change my own life by cultivating meaningful relationships and practicing compassion, but nothing I’ve done has helped me as much as other people have, and I’m thankful for that. It took me a while to get to where I could actually submit to letting people who knew better than I did tell me a thing or two. I’m a slow learner. But at long last learned to live with other people.
Now I see these tech guys getting messianic and apocalyptic and I see the same disconnect as I saw in the desert. It makes it easy to see why even the more woke (complimentary) people in tech might veer into varieties of fascism. Engineer types sometimes have trouble with other people and overestimate their own intelligence when it comes to things beyond their jobs. And here in the US we fluff our engineers’ egos so that they will keep producing consumer products, military dominance, surplus value etc. It gets easy for them to believe their own hype.
But it takes a special kind of pride and vanity to really dig your heels in and make the leap from “I am an important member of a team who develops a popular technology” to “I am the avante garde of the future race of the transhumanoid, which will be as different from our lives now are from the lives of apes.”
Once you get to that level you really don’t need to deal with other people anymore. You don’t need to admit you’re wrong. You don’t need to accept the results of an election where you were part of a minority who lost. In fact, once you really get to that level you might just start to think that elections and democracy can only lead to a progressively worsening idiocracy, and that while authoritarianism might seem bad it is really the only way to save people, who are not as smart as you or your computer, from themselves. So that even if you are not a straight Nazi like Elon Musk you might still pave the road to hell with your good intentions.
And then we've got AI on the way, and when real AI hits, it'll probably be our governor. It'll be our president. We'll decide that human beings are too dangerous, volatile and emotional.
Fortunately this is not true of all tech people and plenty of them are speaking out about how the smartest guys in the room have been going off the deep end and it’s been leading to people losing their jobs after working for companies who once told them they were family. Some of the tech sector are rebelling against their own aristocracy, which seems good to me. The human ability to choose to do the right thing is as important now as it has ever been, if not moreso. Technology advances along lines of progress that diverge definitively from the development of human society and culture even though the technologies we use to move and communicate have a huge impact on our cultures and societies. Now more than ever we need to get better at critical thinking instead of sucking our own dicks because we have a robot that can beat a monkey in a breakdancing contest. I guess that is really what I learned by living among the survivalists. Seems like it was worth it to me. And that is the kind of value judgment that only a human being can make.
Mike Brown is a middle aged public library enthusiast in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Find more of his writing here.
Here's some other shit to look at.
Oh wow look at this. What a feel good story!
Matt Heilman and Gray News staff
A northwest Kansas school district’s unsettled lunch debt was substantially paid down, thanks to an effort from a group of inmates at the Norton Correctional Facility.
At the end of the 2025-2026 school year, Norton Community Schools, USD 211, had an unsettled debt of about $6,000, accrued from breakfast and lunch meals served each school day to students whose families faced food insecurity and couldn’t pay off their child’s account. ...
At Norton Correctional Facility, members of that organization, Reaching Out From Within (ROFW), “sprang into action this past spring to organize a fundraiser and help ensure children enrolled at USD 211 may be provided with reliable access to nutritious school meals,” a prison representative explained.
In a ceremony held at the prison early last month, Norton Correctional Facility said that nearly 30 incarcerated men gathered to present Norton Community Schools Superintendent Corey Roy with a $4,267 donation “to be paid forward and utilized to help local children fuel their day and stay focused and energized this school year.”
A reminder:
Luke O’Neil
lol get their asses Werner.
Ryan Lattanzio
A couple years ago at IDFA, I saw this movie “About a Hero,” which is this partly AI-generated hybrid documentary that tries to recreate the atmosphere of your films.
The intention of this young filmmaker was never to remake any [of my films], but making something in the spirit. And I immediately said, “You will fail. It is such a stupid idea. It’s phenomenally, abysmally stupid. I will not take part in it.” He wanted me to explain things and have my voice in it. I said, “You are alone. There’s such a thing as free speech, which I respect. So go ahead and fail.” And it is a failure, period.
It’s so standardized that AI can step in because there’s not real storytelling. It’s mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome AI to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it’s ad nauseam. When it’s ad nauseam, please, please, please let AI step in and do the job.
You are alone.
I'm sorry but this is so funny.
The week's most devastating own. Fuck him up!!
I finally saw Backrooms. A lot of very unsettling imagery.
For real though I did quite like it. Let people get weird with it! Take some swings. Please just take a fucking swing!
My other recommendation is that Adults season 2 is laugh out loud funny and they are all my children. Especially toward the end of the season when they started doing literal I Think You Should Leave style bits.
My songs of the week.