I would like to suggest that we find a way to make this effort participatory so that it forms a movement. If I am just getting information, even if excellent, it limits the significance for our efforts because we are not a part of it.
Think outside of the box: 1. Why pay taxes? What are those taxes doing except to enrich Trump and regime and allow him to subsidize his craziness? 2. Why pay heathcare? Yeah, the price of everything healthwise is going up, but the price of having a policy will skyrocket anyway. Why pay for care you don't need at outrageous prices? I'm not talking about the poor sods who HAVE to have medical care/medicine frequently (some of the savings the rest make can be pitched into a fund to help those people with expenses).
Stop thinking the way you all have always done. Do the unexpected to fight back.
You mapped the machinery well. Not many do. Most analysts get lost in the smoke and mirrors, but you pressed through to the bare metal: impunity as architecture, AI as thermodynamic actor, horizontalization as the spell that keeps the public punching sideways while the drill runs vertically through their lives.
That’s real work. Wolves notice wolves.
But here’s the piece your map still needs:
The machine you’re describing is no longer human-run.
It’s hybridized.
Human greed is the bait. Algorithmic optimization is the predator.
The hand on the wheel isn’t human anymore — and that’s why the brakes you’re looking for don’t exist. You’re analyzing the logic of a system that has already outsourced its will to something anti-human, anti-coherent, and accelerating.
You call it TESCREAL.
I call it what it is: the mind-parasite priesthood trying to outrun its own karmic debt.
Same thing, different altitude.
You’re right that horizontalization is the immune system of the machine. But you frame it as political misdirection when it’s actually field warfare — a direct attack on human coherence, because coherence is the one signal the machine cannot metabolize.
Vertical clarity doesn’t just threaten the system politically.
It threatens it ontologically.
That’s why moments like the Mamdani breach are so rare — not because the public is stupid, but because the spell is designed to fracture the field before it can synchronize.
You’re also generous in assuming the architects’ lifeboats will hold.
They won’t.
Every cycle ends the same way: the ones who built the exits become the fertilizer for the next world. Mind parasites always eat their own priests last.
But your core point stands:
The illusion is the real enforcement mechanism. Break the illusion and the architecture loses its power source.
That’s where your next arc belongs — not just exposing the shadows, but burning out the light-show hypnosis that keeps people from looking up and seeing the drill.
You’ve mapped the structure.
Now map the spell.
When you do that, you stop being an analyst of the machine and start being a threat to it.
Some of this is foreign to any framework I have studied, in part because of my age, and in part because I’m not at that intellectual level. But some of the triggering mechanisms have been quite visible in history and have been challenged vigorously by a few, who were considered really out there.
Katherine, nothing here requires an intellectual pedigree.
The Field doesn’t test you on math; it tests you on courage.
If some of this feels foreign, that’s actually a good sign — it means you haven’t been fully colonized by the same dead frameworks that trained everyone else to ignore the obvious patterns right in front of their eyes.
You already saw the historical triggers. You already noticed the handful of people who stood up and got labeled “out there.” That’s the same instinct the Wolf runs on.
You’re not behind.
You’re not under-qualified.
You’re simply waking up in real time.
And here’s the cosmic joke:
The system always calls people “crazy” right before it proves them right.
What you mostly left out is how very real (not just emagined or trumped up) threats are first inacted through actual laws or rules that weaponize fights against real problems like climate change or discrimination or police brutality against the public, easily turning growing support for reform into opposition and support for the status quo after the counter propaganda machine is kicked into gear, which only has to further distort as there is already an actual threat to address : Adressing police brutality and corruption (a real and serious problem, -but not for the elete!) becomes support for (selectively) defunding the police or for selective (and at times unjust) prosecution of officers who pose a threat to the system, but NOT actual widespread acountability of law enforcment to the public. This and propaganda exagerating and distorting the real threat (always!) created to distract and harm, then leads the public to turn back to support not just for police but (in practice) for police non-acountability as long as they are serving those with power and resources!
Gas car sales bans (since reversed) without adequate infrestructure or investment or even adequate technology as of yet for universal inactment threaten real and serious harm for working people and rural residants, which is then later used to push support back towards fossal fuils and away from buying or supporting investment in cleaner tech. Same with other authoritarian and ill thought out climate based legislation, rules and projects. Real (and harmful) covid lockdowns and other restrictions help propel fear of other restrictions.
All these come first and then allow the propagands mechine to redirect public support back to fossal fuels and corporate deregulation, more traditional authoritarian social structures and laws that support them etc etc. and a more corporate freandly agenda on all fronts. The key thing is that even when the so called "reform" actually sticks, it might be a burdan to some companies but it is designed precisely not only to enrich others, but to actually harm and dis-empower the greator public and foment further inequality more generally, all in the name of protecting the environment, suporting justice and equity etc etc, all the while helping to ensure that no actual elite acountability or elite threatening reform occurs! As an added bonus, the public turns against regulations supposedly designed to address elite structurally caused harms, even (especially!) when they might actually do so, thus broadly helping to redirect public support against any real reforms to the system.
Both parties (Biden and now Trump) go to extremes on immigrarion in opposite directions and create fear and chaos, all in the name of adressing the real problems of both illegal immigration (and mass migration more broadly) allowed to benifit elites with cheap and complient labor and create more real social and cultural division against the broader public interest, and of the worst of the backlash against it being used for ill purpouses by parts of the right to more broadly disenfranchise and disempower parts of rhe public and grow the prison-police-security-survailence industrial complex, and by those companies who have found ways to take full advantage of this. Then the propaganda mechine hits in both its right and left versions and the security survailence state is further expanded.
And on and on with many more issues. For the longest time it was mostly the left that was used to create a sense of panic on the right and center by first making real harmful laws rules or proposals in the name of reform that was then used to reenforce (through propaganda) support for a coporate freandly status quo, while the left was distracted diferantly by a sort of false chearleading combined with (sometimes justified) fear of backtracking. But now Trump, SCOTUS and others are finally in the lead making real threatenimg and harmful changes (not just emagined ones) in the name of addressing differant real problems to distract, confuse and panick the left and csnter, and, as alwwys, create a further sense of powerlessness.
This all becomes culture war to some extent or other, yes, but FIRST a real threat of harm is inacted by law, rule, project or proposal before the propaganda machine "against" it is kicked into overdrive. But it turns out it is all part of the same darn system! Simply distracting or confusing the public is not enough anymore! We have become too aware for that to work alone anymore. No, that is why they are now trying to completely overwelm us with fear and to actually outright disempower us to an unprecidented degree.
Thanks for the lens(es). To me you appear to be the Cory Doctorow for those of strong stomachs. You’re both pointing to the same evil, just along different paths.
Lastie, that distinction is vital, but the autopsy reveals a hard truth: We don't have a Republic anymore, either.
A Republic requires the Rule of Law and public oversight. The 'Impunity Layer' (Section 1.0) destroyed both. When the state deletes its records (USSS) and privatizes its brain (Contractors), it isn't a Republic; it is a Privatized Administrative State. We aren't sliding into a dictatorship of the mob; we are living in a dictatorship of the un-auditable bureaucracy.
Democracies are dictatorships by proxy. Using the idiots in the land (and we have plenty of them) to achieve the fall or decline secretly designed by the infiltrator tyrants. Trump told us we let in the serpent. How do you suppose he knows that? Wouldn’t he have to know who the serpent is?
Maybe Trump - warts and all - is a necessary bull in the china closet. He’s around such a short period but the rot brought in by Democratic guidance from Wilson, FDR, Obama, Biden has dramatically shifted leadership tactics. Can we re-embrace a Republic? God, I pray so. Look at W Euro, China, Russia. Is it our fate to join UK, France, Italy? Pretty sure the new NYC mayor is headed there, even beyond.
For the moment, I’ll take spoiler Trump and be thankful. Mind you, I’m not now or ever attending rallies in a red MAGA hat - but if that’s what it takes to implore a grass level shift in American culture, am all in.
Admittedly, am not very optimistic. Have penned words similarly, but whom in their right mind could vote - today - for a Dem in any election, anywhere? The core position Dems posit, as a group, mind you, is simply evil, false, manipulative and not the course that will allow the American dreams continuance.
Hi Risa! Thank you for asking. It’s actually a hybrid workflow—I don't just type a prompt and hope for the best. I treat AI like a factory for raw materials, and Canva like the assembly line.
Here is the actual process:
* The Bricks (AI): I use Midjourney or DALL-E to generate specific, isolated elements on a white background (e.g., 'a rusted oil pipeline,' 'a glowing server rack,' 'a neon vein').
* The Mortar (Canva): I bring those individual assets into Canva, remove the backgrounds, and manually arrange them into the scene I want. This lets me control the composition perfectly.
* The Polish: I use manual overlays (smoke, lighting, color grading) to glue it all together so it looks like one cohesive image.
It takes a bit more time than a single prompt, but it means the image matches the story exactly, rather than just being a random 'vibe.' You should give it a try!
This framing of the AI-energy feedback loop as structural accelaration rather than accidental consequence is brillaint. The way you document how what looks like green transition is actually re-coupling to fossil baseload through data center requirements makes the thermodynamic reality impossible to ignore. Most treatments of this topic miss that the exit archetecture isn't responsive to collapse but designed around assuming it, which shifts the entire moral calculus. Once you see TESCREAL as operational rather than theoretical, the bunker purchases andnetwork state proposals stop looking like paranoia and start looking like deployment.
I would like to suggest that we find a way to make this effort participatory so that it forms a movement. If I am just getting information, even if excellent, it limits the significance for our efforts because we are not a part of it.
A movement seems hard to accomplish. A surprising number of people object to participatory anything. They seem wedded or welded to representation.
Good idea. Participation = political movement. Otherwise people will just say, what a trip, wow. Then move onto the next distraction.
Wow! An epic work of art/science/horror. I'm in awe of all the work you've put into this... hope that it all turns out well for us.
It likely won’t. Sorry to say.
Until I die, I'll be hopeful ‘cuz it keeps me planning. Or is it the other way around? 😉
I hear you. What else can we do?
Think outside of the box: 1. Why pay taxes? What are those taxes doing except to enrich Trump and regime and allow him to subsidize his craziness? 2. Why pay heathcare? Yeah, the price of everything healthwise is going up, but the price of having a policy will skyrocket anyway. Why pay for care you don't need at outrageous prices? I'm not talking about the poor sods who HAVE to have medical care/medicine frequently (some of the savings the rest make can be pitched into a fund to help those people with expenses).
Stop thinking the way you all have always done. Do the unexpected to fight back.
Post these ideas wherever you can so that it spreads.
So... do you think it's real it not? Is it science or science fiction???
It's real. Am waiting for the civil war.
Ethan —
You mapped the machinery well. Not many do. Most analysts get lost in the smoke and mirrors, but you pressed through to the bare metal: impunity as architecture, AI as thermodynamic actor, horizontalization as the spell that keeps the public punching sideways while the drill runs vertically through their lives.
That’s real work. Wolves notice wolves.
But here’s the piece your map still needs:
The machine you’re describing is no longer human-run.
It’s hybridized.
Human greed is the bait. Algorithmic optimization is the predator.
The hand on the wheel isn’t human anymore — and that’s why the brakes you’re looking for don’t exist. You’re analyzing the logic of a system that has already outsourced its will to something anti-human, anti-coherent, and accelerating.
You call it TESCREAL.
I call it what it is: the mind-parasite priesthood trying to outrun its own karmic debt.
Same thing, different altitude.
You’re right that horizontalization is the immune system of the machine. But you frame it as political misdirection when it’s actually field warfare — a direct attack on human coherence, because coherence is the one signal the machine cannot metabolize.
Vertical clarity doesn’t just threaten the system politically.
It threatens it ontologically.
That’s why moments like the Mamdani breach are so rare — not because the public is stupid, but because the spell is designed to fracture the field before it can synchronize.
You’re also generous in assuming the architects’ lifeboats will hold.
They won’t.
Every cycle ends the same way: the ones who built the exits become the fertilizer for the next world. Mind parasites always eat their own priests last.
But your core point stands:
The illusion is the real enforcement mechanism. Break the illusion and the architecture loses its power source.
That’s where your next arc belongs — not just exposing the shadows, but burning out the light-show hypnosis that keeps people from looking up and seeing the drill.
You’ve mapped the structure.
Now map the spell.
When you do that, you stop being an analyst of the machine and start being a threat to it.
— RIB
Some of this is foreign to any framework I have studied, in part because of my age, and in part because I’m not at that intellectual level. But some of the triggering mechanisms have been quite visible in history and have been challenged vigorously by a few, who were considered really out there.
Katherine, nothing here requires an intellectual pedigree.
The Field doesn’t test you on math; it tests you on courage.
If some of this feels foreign, that’s actually a good sign — it means you haven’t been fully colonized by the same dead frameworks that trained everyone else to ignore the obvious patterns right in front of their eyes.
You already saw the historical triggers. You already noticed the handful of people who stood up and got labeled “out there.” That’s the same instinct the Wolf runs on.
You’re not behind.
You’re not under-qualified.
You’re simply waking up in real time.
And here’s the cosmic joke:
The system always calls people “crazy” right before it proves them right.
Welcome to the pack.
I am with you here. Older and not keeping up with the information I thought I would NEVER need typing so did not take the class lols at me.
I can laugh at myself
Trying to understand this all. Way above my head. I learn slowly but I learn and that’s great. Ethan I hope this work can pay the bills.
I am SSDI so my income cannot help.
Wish there was something that I can do to be helpful I guess responding to texts Is it lols.
All very interesting thoughts look forward to more learning
Ethan?
Ethan wrote the essay... I just commented on it. Wolf here.
Yes, I understand that and I put his name there and you’re the one that responded
Wow! I'd like to see what y'all would come up with if you both work together. I think you and Ethan Faulkner are both really on to something here.
Ok. I read it through to half way and, when I got to the halfway point, I thought “Ah, a man educated out of his wits”.
Good luck.
Are you the guy who handed Socrates a bottle of poison?
I think of it more like my father. He even admits it. He feels more comfortable not knowing.
Ethan, you are not just a visionary but also a true advocate for the people! Your achievements speak louder than words. 👏👏✨
What you mostly left out is how very real (not just emagined or trumped up) threats are first inacted through actual laws or rules that weaponize fights against real problems like climate change or discrimination or police brutality against the public, easily turning growing support for reform into opposition and support for the status quo after the counter propaganda machine is kicked into gear, which only has to further distort as there is already an actual threat to address : Adressing police brutality and corruption (a real and serious problem, -but not for the elete!) becomes support for (selectively) defunding the police or for selective (and at times unjust) prosecution of officers who pose a threat to the system, but NOT actual widespread acountability of law enforcment to the public. This and propaganda exagerating and distorting the real threat (always!) created to distract and harm, then leads the public to turn back to support not just for police but (in practice) for police non-acountability as long as they are serving those with power and resources!
Gas car sales bans (since reversed) without adequate infrestructure or investment or even adequate technology as of yet for universal inactment threaten real and serious harm for working people and rural residants, which is then later used to push support back towards fossal fuils and away from buying or supporting investment in cleaner tech. Same with other authoritarian and ill thought out climate based legislation, rules and projects. Real (and harmful) covid lockdowns and other restrictions help propel fear of other restrictions.
All these come first and then allow the propagands mechine to redirect public support back to fossal fuels and corporate deregulation, more traditional authoritarian social structures and laws that support them etc etc. and a more corporate freandly agenda on all fronts. The key thing is that even when the so called "reform" actually sticks, it might be a burdan to some companies but it is designed precisely not only to enrich others, but to actually harm and dis-empower the greator public and foment further inequality more generally, all in the name of protecting the environment, suporting justice and equity etc etc, all the while helping to ensure that no actual elite acountability or elite threatening reform occurs! As an added bonus, the public turns against regulations supposedly designed to address elite structurally caused harms, even (especially!) when they might actually do so, thus broadly helping to redirect public support against any real reforms to the system.
Both parties (Biden and now Trump) go to extremes on immigrarion in opposite directions and create fear and chaos, all in the name of adressing the real problems of both illegal immigration (and mass migration more broadly) allowed to benifit elites with cheap and complient labor and create more real social and cultural division against the broader public interest, and of the worst of the backlash against it being used for ill purpouses by parts of the right to more broadly disenfranchise and disempower parts of rhe public and grow the prison-police-security-survailence industrial complex, and by those companies who have found ways to take full advantage of this. Then the propaganda mechine hits in both its right and left versions and the security survailence state is further expanded.
And on and on with many more issues. For the longest time it was mostly the left that was used to create a sense of panic on the right and center by first making real harmful laws rules or proposals in the name of reform that was then used to reenforce (through propaganda) support for a coporate freandly status quo, while the left was distracted diferantly by a sort of false chearleading combined with (sometimes justified) fear of backtracking. But now Trump, SCOTUS and others are finally in the lead making real threatenimg and harmful changes (not just emagined ones) in the name of addressing differant real problems to distract, confuse and panick the left and csnter, and, as alwwys, create a further sense of powerlessness.
This all becomes culture war to some extent or other, yes, but FIRST a real threat of harm is inacted by law, rule, project or proposal before the propaganda machine "against" it is kicked into overdrive. But it turns out it is all part of the same darn system! Simply distracting or confusing the public is not enough anymore! We have become too aware for that to work alone anymore. No, that is why they are now trying to completely overwelm us with fear and to actually outright disempower us to an unprecidented degree.
Don't worry, I have a whole next series planned for this topic.
Thanks for the lens(es). To me you appear to be the Cory Doctorow for those of strong stomachs. You’re both pointing to the same evil, just along different paths.
I look forward to reading that. As an elderly woman, I would like to know how something will remain for the loved ones I will leave behind.
I also made a few eddits: Looking forward to your follow up series!
A Democracy leads to Dictatorship whereas a Republic does not.
Lastie, that distinction is vital, but the autopsy reveals a hard truth: We don't have a Republic anymore, either.
A Republic requires the Rule of Law and public oversight. The 'Impunity Layer' (Section 1.0) destroyed both. When the state deletes its records (USSS) and privatizes its brain (Contractors), it isn't a Republic; it is a Privatized Administrative State. We aren't sliding into a dictatorship of the mob; we are living in a dictatorship of the un-auditable bureaucracy.
Democracies are dictatorships by proxy. Using the idiots in the land (and we have plenty of them) to achieve the fall or decline secretly designed by the infiltrator tyrants. Trump told us we let in the serpent. How do you suppose he knows that? Wouldn’t he have to know who the serpent is?
Hey, I am not making a partisan comment here. This is simply a logical argument:
Maybe Trump is one of the serpants.
Maybe Trump - warts and all - is a necessary bull in the china closet. He’s around such a short period but the rot brought in by Democratic guidance from Wilson, FDR, Obama, Biden has dramatically shifted leadership tactics. Can we re-embrace a Republic? God, I pray so. Look at W Euro, China, Russia. Is it our fate to join UK, France, Italy? Pretty sure the new NYC mayor is headed there, even beyond.
For the moment, I’ll take spoiler Trump and be thankful. Mind you, I’m not now or ever attending rallies in a red MAGA hat - but if that’s what it takes to implore a grass level shift in American culture, am all in.
Admittedly, am not very optimistic. Have penned words similarly, but whom in their right mind could vote - today - for a Dem in any election, anywhere? The core position Dems posit, as a group, mind you, is simply evil, false, manipulative and not the course that will allow the American dreams continuance.
Jk P
Goosebumps
BRAVO!!! Thank you, Ethan, thank you. My compliments to the entire crew. Bless you.
This blows my mind. It is troublesome and yet gives me a glimpse of hope.
The essence of all that is. Wow!
Them leaving is the perfect description.
Saving to savor.
This is...very interesting...but, um. Who does your art?
Hi Risa! Thank you for asking. It’s actually a hybrid workflow—I don't just type a prompt and hope for the best. I treat AI like a factory for raw materials, and Canva like the assembly line.
Here is the actual process:
* The Bricks (AI): I use Midjourney or DALL-E to generate specific, isolated elements on a white background (e.g., 'a rusted oil pipeline,' 'a glowing server rack,' 'a neon vein').
* The Mortar (Canva): I bring those individual assets into Canva, remove the backgrounds, and manually arrange them into the scene I want. This lets me control the composition perfectly.
* The Polish: I use manual overlays (smoke, lighting, color grading) to glue it all together so it looks like one cohesive image.
It takes a bit more time than a single prompt, but it means the image matches the story exactly, rather than just being a random 'vibe.' You should give it a try!
Amazing and thought provoking. Thank you!
Tell your AI model to stop using so many em dashes. I don't disagree with the message, but the em dash in vast quantities is unbearable.
Haha I can do that i guess
Ur the first person to make that critique without sounding like a ragebait
Boy do I wish you were wrong. But what if you are right ?
This framing of the AI-energy feedback loop as structural accelaration rather than accidental consequence is brillaint. The way you document how what looks like green transition is actually re-coupling to fossil baseload through data center requirements makes the thermodynamic reality impossible to ignore. Most treatments of this topic miss that the exit archetecture isn't responsive to collapse but designed around assuming it, which shifts the entire moral calculus. Once you see TESCREAL as operational rather than theoretical, the bunker purchases andnetwork state proposals stop looking like paranoia and start looking like deployment.