Now this is unironically what I think of when the tiny, near-dead embers of patriotism in my soul get a whiff of oxygen.
Great Depression 2.0 is here, what did we do back during the first one?
Well, lotta people fuckin’ starved and died, got terrible diseases, died before the age of 2, or in child birth, etc.
But, we also formed co-ops. We took a random sad sack of broke and broken people, and their stuff, people with no proper wage work available to do, got em together and said ‘anything useful you can do, for anybody else, is better than nothing’
We talked to those people. We commiserated. We built solidarity with others, face to face.
We fixed shit, we jerry-rigged shit, we made things that were completely broke into things that were only slightly broken.
We took shotguns to local foreclosure auctions, and not so subtly implied to anyone other than someone who’d promised to just gift the home back to the homeowner, that the shotguns were loaded.
Nowadays… call it recycling, upcycling, right to repair, what the fuck ever… stop wasting your money on stupid shit that won’t last a year or even ever be used by you once.
You don’t know how expensive food or fuel is gonna be in a month, 3 months, etc. Could triple by next year, who knows.
Build your life around trying to plan for that.
You got a storage unit full of shit? A walk in closet full of stuff you ain’t worn in a year?
You don’t need it.
Somebody else probably could use it. Figure out how to find that person, and get it to them, with as few or at least as fair middlemen involved as possible. You get a fair price, or maybe even a haircut or week of babysitting, fuck, a pound of flour… they get some barely used clothes.
Every random plot of possibly usable garden space, make it bloom. Fuck your yard of useless grass that literally is a traditional offshot of nobility having so much land they could show off making some of it not productive.
HOA in the way? Learn their bylaws and just investigate them by way of malicious supercompliance. Chances are high they’re doing some kind of money laundering or fraud.
… We’ve done this kinda shit before, our grandparents at least.
Most people actually get joy and purpose not from accumulating wealth, but from feeling like they’re actually some kind of important, in the service of others, in some kind of real and tangible way.
The system has failed us, in every possible way…, it will eat us alive if we do not build our own.
In the words of Adam Savage:
“I reject your reality, and substitute my own”.
We do not have another choice.
Cuba has developed a rich, mature DIY culture after several generations of trade isolation by the US and the collapse of the USSR. With a very limited inflow of tech goods, they basically don’t throw away anything. People cobble together all kinds of machines from pieces of other machines, The maker culture is much more than a hobby, it’s the predominent way of thinking.
As … immensely ironic and basically ideologically cruel as it is, we should absolutely emulate this attitude, learn from them.
They get starved and blockaded, we get flooded with hypereffective digital marketing, insane overproduction of single use garbage, horrendously overpriced cars full of more factory defects than a t34 from 1942, that is half illegal to repair on your own … while almost no one makes anything built to last any more.
Again, very ironic, but this actually results in a very similar situation for most normal people, at least once all the credit cards stop working.
Wow, sounds like you’re some sort of commie terrorist.
… I am quite sure they will call me ‘some sort of crazy person’.
This was very well written. This message resonates with me deeply. Thank you. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Thank you, but my writing ability, in this sort of way, is nothing in comparison to… Charlie Chaplin.
To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…
https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-The-Final-Speech-from-The-Great-Dictator-
I still cannot watch or even just read this without being moved to tears.
We need a new story to believe, now that the ‘American Dream’ is so thoroughly broken.
We need hope, placed in the right direction… in ourselves, and in each other.
Thinking now of the old SNL sketch where John Candy has a repair shop for fixing things most people throw away. Two women come in with a piece of toast they dropped that landed butter-side down on the rug. He decides to freeze it down in some liquid nitrogen and take off the fuzzy side with a belt-sander. Missin’ you, Johnny boy!
Radical as fuck
This reminds me that I just repaired my old Eastern bloc made speakers, a pair of Videoton DCR 2520A. The woofers have out-of-spec surrounds now since the now for real co-op (?) that bought the tools from Videoton during the robber-privatization worn out the tool needed to make the up-to-spec surrounds. They still had the tooling for the midrange speakers, and after some modification I could use some general purpose surrounds from Aliexpress.
I absolutely lament the enshitification of youtube. It used to be easy to find a video on how to fix nearly anything, but that’s bad for the algorithm, because then you turn the screen off and go about fixing the thing, as opposed to watching more videos :(
This is great and I love repairing things. I wish that repair skills would be taught in schools.
This is TERRORISM in the United States!
-Trump’s NSPM-7 which classifies ANTI CAPITALISM as TERRORISM!
At this point, saying
“Release the entire unredacted Epstein files” is probably considered terrorism.
Some of us might not make it, but at least we didn’t ignore or support a real terrorist
Here’s the thing: we can’t even trust them to release the unredacted files at this point. There is no 100% truth with this administration.
If they did release unredacted files, we’d have to ask why. We’d have to ask “why now? What’s missing?”
The sad thing is that this is the alt-right goal: to erode trust in our systems. And they have fucking succeeded in spades.
Fingers & toes. They’ll tell the truth before all the digits are missin’, even live on their beloved Fox news.
I see a lot more ignoring than anything else. I think Americans have failed utterly.
Please don’t call me “American”, I am a citizen of the world
A computer shop once laughed in my mom’s face for asking if they’d repair her printer. The accepted practice is to just throw the whole thing out when you want new ink or it stops working.
Eventually she tracked down a guy in another town who fixed printers, and he fixed the printer (a bottle cap was jammed inside, in case you were wondering. He returned the bottle cap).
That was 20 years ago and things aren’t better.
I read this as “broken sphincter?” for some reason
“Anticonsumerist”… kinda a shocking/clickbait way to put it. I wouldn’t call myself an “anticonsumerist” just because I’m cheap, I don’t want to pollute the environment with more tech waste, and I expect the stuff I buy to last. I mean, these people bought it in the first place, right? Maybe just anti-disposable tech?
God, I was just enjoying some cyberpunk-adjacent media yesterday and laughed at the satire of an in universe news outlet complaining about “anticonsumerist terrorism”.
Something something torment nexus
No they kick you in the shin and make slurs at you the entire time you are trying to fix your stuff. They really want you to feel bad about being a consumer.
I would love to do this. I’m great at changing out motorcycle tires and changing out brake pads, but I would love to learn how to solder or even diagnose bad diodes on a board.
It would be a great exchange of knowledge.
Be the exchange you wish to see!!!
Know anyone that’s into gaming? Modding old consoles is a great way to get into diagnosing board problems and fixing the crap PCBs in small electronics is fantastic for learning to solder. Two weeks ago I didn’t know shit about the eldrich slab of charms and runes inside electronics. Last week I successfully tested two power units for a playstation 4 and correctly diagnosed that mine has died due to APU overheating. Took about 2 hours, two videos, and a $15 continuity tester.
Unfortunately, mine’s dead in the water until I find someone who can reball the APU for less than the cost of a new system. In the mean time, I’m doing a tear down and mod on my Xbox 360.
Go to Hacklab / maker space to teach and learn while making, fixing or tinkering.
If I can’t fix something…instead of throwing it away, I save it to bludgeon the people responsible for creating something I can’t fix.
You better make sure I’m gone when you go into the bunker. I’m looking for air vents with company logos on them. I’ll have my deluxe HP ready, hung on a leather strap slung around my back.
…when “Squint” & “Cheesecurd” drag you from the depths of Mt. Florida, it’ll be me, “Ink Cartridge Empty” bringing the full weight of my HP2500XLRS down upon thine head!!!
It seems these repair cafes are very popular these days. Even my village of 7000 has one.
First I’ve ever heard of it.
