Writing about this era of US fascism - we all need to be doing it for future generations

[mysteryowl]

It feels important to make our own notes/stories for future generations. I don't mean only the writers. All of us need to be our own reporters/scribes to leave those stories for your family's future generations.

I am not much of a writer or a person that journals, yet I do write short stories about events in my life.
I am collecting my stories on a couple of flash drives to be left with my will for anyone to read...future generations.

I want my lineage to know from me the horrors of the times I lived in, in the USA.

[jfz9580m]

1. I liked your writing

Last edited Fri Jan 16, 2026, 11:06 AM - Edit history (3)

I am not a writer either. I am a (mostly failed) academic scientist as of this date. I am approaching 50, but I still hope to get back into science in my narrow area of hard science some day.

I am working on preparing some complaints and my posts on DU are one form of complaint initiation. I am trying to encapsulate a 15 year issue in a couple of posts, jumping around a bunch.

But whether it is science or posts on DU, I prefer that anything other honest human eyes see is unremarkable stylistically. But specific complaints cannot be watered down.

My writing and other behaviors since about Dec 2011 especially, but in fairness going as far back as early 2009/2010, were off-kilter.

I blame Facebook, Google (and for me personally, by now Tata, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, AirTel, Jio, Amazon, SBI Card, other unknown small companies possibly connected to people like Alex Pentland) algorithms and probably agents, for a lot of what is wrong right now. I have even written to two journalists/one tech oped writer I trust (Yasha Levine, Christopher Ketcham/Ed Zitron). Further, I am very worried by what I saw on the ground here where I am in India as well by some stuff in the US.
I have no issues with any of the labs I worked in nor with my doctors. I generally broadly trust publicly funded scientists/doctors outside of computer science. But this is not about people or systems I respect or trust so much as the ones I do not trust.

Hospital and University administrators I shun. I have read about three computer scientists who seem respectable enough: Ryan Williams, Yan Lecun and Rollo Carpenter. Just as examples. (There may be a few more, who don’t steal anything that isn’t nailed down to turn into junk ruining its original worth and making more Idiocracy trash heaps).

However, I am wary of the field in general as kleptocracy and hype seem an unfortunate characteristic. Maybe that is unfair.

I will go over my journal and delete any posts that make references to other humans (who could find it objectionable). I do not know anyone irl who would like to be internet-famous anymore than I would.

I would hate for my name/identity to be associated with anything but my routine work. That said, I will not just accept a status quo I (probably) thoroughly disapprove of.

My journal, such as it is, represented pushback of a non-ideal kind. Now I will try to make it as organized and professional as writing that of necessity must castigate an entire field as prone to theft of labor. But harsh as that is, how else is one to defend oneself against allegations of paranoia or conspiracy theory? Economics and Computer Science do not have a good track record wrt honesty or professionalism as of this date.

The EECS Dept I first was in in the US did not make a good impression. They pocket tuition fees, but don’t bother at all with educating students from foreign countries struggling with learning. If they are not a degree mill, they are still a scam. No one pays you 25-35 k from a country in the Global South to just drift. This is YOYO and mercenary/sleazy as well. When I contrast it with the investment scientists in the natural sciences make, especially my phd/postdoc mentors, it just looks shady and shameful. I would not trust an ai or other project from that field at all.

I am not a professional expert in whatever is relevant to all this. But this is tied to the complicated area of human trust. I have never had any serious mental illness. But I find it disorienting to pretend to buy into an alarming acceleration driven by those two fields. Or most likely those. The adminstrator at my last school was another of these CS people.

I am determined to file complaints, but that requires more tangible information or at least a better structured narrative. If you get it wrong, it gives a neutral reader the wrong impression.

It is all tied to what your post talks about, but with specific focus on the malicious role of tech companies and media narratives that are dishonest even when mainstream.

This form of growth is a cancer on the planet and ruins lives. It fuels authoritarianism as resources get depleted by human overpopulation and an obsession with growth at any costs.

It is a nightmarish Hobson’s choice to force on immigrants to America or former visitors like myself with no fixed plans: this Cato/Koch/BigTech take on immigration versus the type of populism Steve Bannon/MTG etc represent. I was fortunate in having the means to come back home. I feel for people forced to endure herding and sorting driven by such drivel.

I am not European or Canadian. But it is not very clear why visitors from countries like India would be expected to have a monolithic response.

And I am not fool enough to stoke a spectacle. I reject nonsense about Streisand Effects etc. Possibly the legal landscape of netuse must change entirely. Lina Khan got it.

These bloated entertainment adjacent spectacles devoid of talent or sanity, but forced by deregulation, poor data hygiene, and irresponsible deployment of ai at scale..Their sole purpose must become criminal liability for corporations and anyone who irresponsibly jumps into the fray to “sleuth” or exploit it as an attention seeking influencer or other grifter might...

Let’s see what happens..there is a possibility of drastic legal changes wrt ai and data use after Trump 2.0 and as a result of the increasing strain on more and more humans everywhere.

Lina Khan was refreshing in responding to present challenges over sticking with dated scripts preferred for their predictability wrt the status quo more than anything else.

I assimilate superficially anywhere. But industrial colonization of earth and of this ever increasingly brainless kind, testing the limits to growth in every direction - factory farms, fossil fuels and now this obscene “data as oil” with its shallow and mind numbing forays into brain science and human life broadly..it is a bit much. It is also bad and skewed science imo. And probably incitement if anyone bothered to honestly study it.

And this mindless copying of that or its equally execrable “indigenous” form (Ambani, Adani, small creepy local defense contractors etc.)..No. I lost my mother in this period even though she had an excellent oncologist. I was distrait thanks to these worries. None of it is even useful and it ruins the underlying resources.
I am an environmentalist and disgusted at the thought of such tranquility as wildlife (birds, mongeese, insects, feral cats etc) can find in this greenspace in an urban jungle disrupted for more junk tech. It is desecration of my mother’s memory (in all probability at any rate). I worry about light and sound pollution.

I have started thinking more clearly. I am determined to file complaints carefully and systematically. A blander and more deliberate form of writing will serve me well from here on out ;-/.
A lot of my journal was written just after I felt goaded or while distrait. I wasn’t sure how to respond to some stuff.

My issues are with private sector encroachment into human life at unacceptable levels. But I need more information.

Yasha Levine, Shoshana Zuboff, Chris Ketcham, Ed Zitron etc. have all covered different aspects of it. I also have some MeToo type complaints.

But a more staid form of output works as long as the gist is retained. I will rewrite what I wrote earlier this year.

I consider this the first formal post. It is Jan 16, 2026.
I am not happy with it. But it is a start. I will edit it atmost twice 5 times. You cannot make these briefer and retain the points.

I am very grateful to EarlG for allowing me to use this forum, as strange as these posts coulf seem sans context. I do not have enough definite info to be less vague at the moment.

It sounds a bit stilted, but that is because this is well above my pay grade and I am trying hard to not make it easy for tech co.s to yet again smear one as a fellow traveller with tinfoil hatters. The acceleration of invasive junk tech makes such claims laughable, but a corrupt, industry friendly and by the book shrink who clings to out of date models of mental health (refusing to adjust for accelerations in deregulated garbage tech) could make complaint filing harder. And the lawyers of these companies count on that.

I also have to complete a follow-up research paper for a paper we wrote in 2009. My postdoc mentor was awesome. He could have just let us collect data and then analyzed it and written papers up himself. That’s what EECS would recommend. But he was a real mentor not a sweat-shop enthusiast. So I need to complete this paper to feel I did what I could as a return on his time investment, beyond sparring with creepy technologists. I feel he would agree if he knew. He was a Bernie supporter.

And finally I have a medical marijuana prescription and supplement it with Modafinil (though I found Adderall more useful) I purchase from a local pharmacy my family has known for over 20 years. The last 15 years have been rough and I only went on Modafinil and medical mj in 2020/2021 respectively after my mom fell ill with cancer. Modafinil is fortunately not a controlled substance here in India thanks to either an oversight or some other shady loophole I don’t concern myself with. I would not sign up for anything transactional or undemocratic.
It is a safe drug and helps me. As does the medical mj.
I see a lot of rule breaking and to be clear there is no unsaid understanding from my side for VR projects for instance.

I think data mining and ai companies should be held criminally liable where they are indecent. I support my medical mj company and doctor and the best thing I can do for them is respect social and professional contracts the honest way rather than work with dishonest practices. Same for the small medical store that is oblivious to all this and merely being kind. They would not relax requirements were it any other medication (e.g.: ones with higher addictive potential or worse safety profiles). And it has helped me stay sober (medical mj aside). I have completely ditched alcohol, a known carcinogen.

My last employer did this really inept and somewhat malicious intervention in my health in 2012 and that set me back. They are more Si Valley and closer to EECS than to a decent school or hospital. I never blamed my mentor or other scientists there seriously. A very type-A sort of place..but that is what it is. But the health intervention was bullshit. Just a way to get a permanent medical record going for a future complainant. My mentor was preoccupied as he was starting a family and untenured. I support him. The school sucked. The city was not to my taste, though the people were largely nice enough. And I don’t want that growing here like Sidewalks Lab or a Pokemon Go or Fenn’s Treasure hub. I also worry that the delivery boys who deliver stuff to my house (who are always sweet) could get harassed in retaliation. It is why I post this. I am not backing down, but I hate other people being dragged in, even when I am sure in the long run, being more principled than self serving, while being honest about human life sans commodification/truly self serving and parasitic rot, is likely to prevail.

These relatively trivial transgressions have been a strain on my nerves. The local police have been decent in my few interactions with them. But the same cannot be said of some other rapacious and unhelpful/encroaching entities in tech, probably hospital administration etc.

I hated the air of extortion that hung over the last 15 years. I was sexually harassed by a defense contractor at a local holography company, at an office I went to for a digital ID..This has not been a good time and I am ready to pushback.

I try my best to be a decent person within such constraints and such privileges as I have, going by what is most scientific/logical/honest in my estimation.
I don’t see why the rest of these creeps can’t do the same when rules are cast to the winds by industrial leaders and politicians. I hate writing about this stuff, but I am not meekly submitting to colonization of my home, street and data by sleazy tech companies and tolerating a potential invasion by influencers, gamers etc.
This area should be taken off the grid and be a space that gets to opt out. I am a Nimby.
This is junk growth choking out healthy life.
I have a healthy brain provided I can say no to this stuff like a free woman with rights updated to the protections and options that would exist in civilized societies. Which these are not.

From the time I first saw these things two companies have been behind the most aggressive exploitation of a growing surveillance state: Google and Facebook.

Though now all these other creeps are piling on - Musk, Palantir, a plethora of other US/Chinese/Russian/Eastern European/Israeli (notably the creepy NSO Group that was responsible for Pegasus/Black Cube which Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers exploited)/Indian (e.g.: Lybrate/AcuBits/Sprnklr/MixPanel/InfoBeans etc) companies. Those are just ones whose names I know. Not to mention all sorts of outright dark web crap (with bogus white or grey hatting security theatre), disinfo agents, spooks, troll farms.

This cannot go on. The legit parts of most systems have become hard to distinguish from outright malice. It may always have been so but it is the increasing scale and pace. Yes I have had to DIY my mental health and work, but I can no longer not redflag this. I do not want to normalize what I saw in the creepy googlized city I was last in in the US nor legitimize what I see growing in my city.
It is tricky as I do not wish to encourage conspiracy theorists of the “5G kills birds/2.0” types any more than tacitly give right of way in my yard or on my street for corrupt developers in ai or data mining.

I am going to take this to court and do not recommend more use of soft misogynistic stalkerish force. It has been 15 years and Lina Khan is real sign of progress. This stuff must be ended and reported with serious retroactive penalties. Marijuana legalization should not be coupled with this blatantly exploitative rot. Medical mj cos offer a real service/product.
The rest of it is just extortionate and parasitic on both users and the companies offering real products. This is not good growth.
Pokemon Go was sued.
And I am formally putting criminal liability on the table for data mining, ai, VR/metaverse/street and terrain mapping/gaming/advertising firms that exploited any of my pieces of land on the parts of the grid they are on or the adjoining streets.

This has clearly reached a point where non spectacular but rather serious pushback is warranted. And I do not kid around about stuff like this.

-jfz9580m

[murielm99]

2. Yesterday, I ran across a book in my collection

that I have not browsed in a long time. It is called, "Cut From Plain Cloth." It is about the 2011 uprising in Wisconsin over the abuses of that nasty Scott Walker. My daughter was living there at the time, in a neighborhood that was central to the uprising. We spoke every day and made sure the protesters had the material things we could provide, like water bottles and pizza. That might sound comical, but it is not.

I hope some enterprising soul writes a similar book about this event. We need a record. Of course the Wisconsin book has many pictures.

Little Scotty Walker won nothing but ridicule, whether he knows it or not.