Probably_Undesirable

A love story about surveillance.
‘Actually not as bad as I thought it would be.’
- Mark, London

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

In 1977 Philip K. Dick told a room of French sci-fi fans that reality had been edited, and he remembered the previous version.
He spoke no French. The speech was translated live. He never knew which speech they actually heard.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

It’s not all doom and gloom

[Samurai Shiba @SamuraiShibaJP]

My father has never hugged me.

Not when I was born. Not at my graduation. Not when I left home.

That's normal for a Japanese father his age. Love is a full gas tank when you visit. A bag of oranges handed over without a word.

Last month, my friend from Texas came to dinner at my parents' house. When it was time to go, he did what Texans do.

He hugged my mother.
Then he turned around and hugged my father.

My father froze. Arms straight down. Like a soldier being hugged by a bear.

Three seconds. Nobody breathed.

After he left, my father sat at the table for a long time. Then he said:

"In America… do they do that with their fathers too?"

"Every time," I said.

He nodded. That was all.

Two weeks later, I went home for dinner. When I was leaving, my father stood up, walked to the door, and put his arms around me.

Badly. Like he was assembling furniture with no instructions.

I'm over forty. It was the first time.

He let go, looked at the floor, and said, "Drive safely."

My mother told me later he'd been practicing on the dog.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

I built a Mechanical Turk who sorts the world's utopias from its dystopias. He's confident. He's not always right.
What would you add? They can be obvious, oblique, borderline, famous or fringe.
https://t.co/HgnhXGSMZx

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@Geopolitics_Emp How about HMRC receive all my income and give me a weekly stipend, adjusted by a behavioural desirability index?

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole Is the Fighting Fantasy Steve Jackson the same as the Illuminati Steve Jackson? Or is one British and one American?

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole I think I’ve still got the original copies of Warlock of Firetop Mountain etc somewhere, I should reread, pencil in hand for notes in the margins.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole Apologies. I’m on the 🍷
I get a little crude

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole I’m going to get my Dick out https://t.co/eObbmZE35o

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@JackRosevear13 @_InThisTogether It’s been devoured. Fennel seeds, chilli flakes and Himalayan salt. No evidence. My wife will testify.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole The Illuminati card and Trump. Absolutely. And Jackson/Livingstone. Funnily enough my idea started off as a choose your own adventure type book/game and morphed into…whatever it is. You’ve got a good nose for these things!

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@HeadWarriorTWM Peter Thiel liked your post

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@biddle_leo @NickHudsonCT @MoKetchups @Teeserv2 @Kristof_Poland @JMCDelingpole @_InThisTogether @JohnnyVedmore @Geopolitics_Emp @DickDelingpole I should have said, it’s free. My attempt to put pen to paper, clear my mind and my browser full of rabbit hole, rather than monetise,

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

You were pretty much spot on, don’t beat yourself up 🤣

Whilst I’ve got you here, Leo, Nick - this is @Teeserv2 here. This account's for a novel I've been writing - my attempt to make sense of, well, everything. Set in modern-day Sussex. It's the first thing I've written in nearly three decades. Semi-autobiographical, with a few fictional characters including Dev (unwittingly my Tyler Durden in hindsight) and The Dude (based on an imagined Big Lebowski version of Alan, who’s also in this chat)

This thread is basically its spine: if money stops allocating, what replaces it?
It's online, a mix of prose and a scrolling phone-style feed, best on a desktop (ok on phone though) with sound on.

I’d love you read the first couple of (short) chapters. Does the interface work? Does it make you want to read on?

Leo, You're in it - commenting on a fictitious x post. I should’ve asked you first. Sorry!

Nick, I’m halfway through listening to your power system speech. I’d love to link to it if that’s OK?

https://t.co/g69SoMx7iX

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

More’s Utopia is one of the key cards in the deck, Leo. More meant both prefixes. In a short poem at the front, the island jokes that it deserves to be called Eutopia. Oh the roguish Tudor sense of humour. It’d be a meme nowadays.

Here’s the card…

A Truly Golden Little Island

Fifty-four cities, all alike. No money, no private property, no locks on any door. Everyone works six hours a day and dines together in great halls. Gold is kept for chamber pots and prisoners’ chains. You may visit another town whenever you like, with a permit.

Your choice? Utopia or Dystopia?

Ernest’s comment (he’s The Mechanical Turk) Eutopia, the good place? Or Utopia, no place? The pun runs throughout. The narrator’s name translates as 'peddler of nonsense’.

Way in - Set sail
Way out - Only with the prince's permission

Filed as - Dystopia

Filed because - Total surveillance, loss of privacy, enforced conformity, moral and intellectual control, forced manual labour. No locks though.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@brivael Yes, I read the @Kristof_Poland post too

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

@brivael Followed by ‘Elon Musk’

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

Amusing ourselves to death. Except the laughter is canned and our demise is in the ‘hands’ of an autonomous drone.

[Mark Simpson @marksimpsonist]

Politicians performatively watching TV for a performatively TV-watching TV show, while peformatively enjoying "bants" and "lager".

While we're told to prepare for WW3.

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

Agreed. You can't predict the growth of knowledge, so you can't predict future demand. Nobody wanted an iPad in 1900.

But post-scarcity doesn’t mean the end of wanting. It means the cost of making most things becomes negligible. Desire/demand shifts to what’s harder to physically create - status, attention, land (despite Musk’s Mars wet dreams). And scarcity shifts with it.

If ‘money’ no longer allocates, something else will take its place. Energy? (see Alan’s notes on Joulework/Technocracy). Permission? (verification) Reputation? (social credit). An amalgamation of the three? Which could produce something less Utopian - Neo-feudalism, administered by algo and sedated by your Soma-feed.

Whether this happens or not is anyone’s guess. It seems they’re giving it a bloody good try.

Instead of ‘you will own nothing and be happy’ perhaps the future will be ‘you will owe nothing and seem happy’?

[Probably_Undesirable @cbts2026]

Musk’s vision of Utopia isn’t in the deck yet. Star Trek is - a similar post-scarcity fantasy.
In Elon’s words:

‘In a future where anyone can have anything, you no longer need money as a database for labour allocation.’

I wonder what the medium of exchange will be if it isn’t ‘money’? The mind boggles.

[Alan Berman @MoKetchups]

Morning!

Feels like a good day to remind everyone that there's an entire eco-system of griftfluence and the best way to stop feeding it is simply to focus your attention elsewhere... like the infrastructure that created and controls this eco-system in the first place

People are replaceable, you are allowed to focus on them

Girard... Mimetic Theory

Masks to protect the machine. People like Musk, Thiel and Gates are cartoon villains. Podcasters/thinkfluencers are henchmen at best

System still exists when you remove any of them

Time we focus on that because things will get better when we do instead of this continous "bringing out the guillotine" every time a fed podcaster/thinkfluencer gets exposed

Nothing changes but the faces until we do that