As a Marxist (or post-Marxist and post-Keynesian), I now believe the long-waited-for hard limit of climate catastrophe will not (like the hard limit of class struggle, or the hard limit of over one million American Covid deaths) bring down capitalism. Actual existential danger will not cause the scales to fall from the eyes of this system's subjects. We must no longer be hopeful; we must accept nothing less than the apocalypse in which we are already caught. And so the opening of Blade Runner is the only future we are left with: the continuation of the capitalist class order in an environment whose air is poisonous.
Indeed, this weekend Mariners fans spent 18 innings (more than six hours) in a stadium smothered by smoke from wildfires. And this smoke, which has been with us for much of October, will be with us until Friday—that is, if it rains on Friday. Don't be hopeful. The Seattle Times:   Â
While the Seattle area is finally cooling down after a stretch of unseasonably warm October weather, the region will remain shrouded in smoky, hazy air for the next few days. So if you can, stay indoors today.
If we fight for the leftist causes, it should no longer be because we believe they will make a change but because of a sense of duty. The left must adopt the aristocratic value of honor. We go down fighting for what is right, and nothing more.
If you are not feeling me on this, then you are not taking this warm and smoky October, and its meaning, seriously enough.
Bad news: Air quality is descending into unhealthy levels once more as wildfire smoke streams in from the east pic.twitter.com/Vm3K9YQGQs
— Seattle Weather Blog (@KSeattleWeather) October 18, 2022
Goodnight, Tako. She was a giant female Pacific octopus. She died not long "after laying thousands of eggs" in an Arizona aquarium. Her death, caused by senescence, was reported today.
The story: "Employees at an Amazon warehouse near Albany overwhelmingly rejected a unionization effort on Tuesday, delivering a blow to an upstart labor union seeking to organize workers at the retail giant." The union organizers believe this was the result of some serious monkey business. Maybe. But I also believe in the power of the flower. The flower on the chain of millions of workers. This flower cannot be dismissed as just imaginary. Â
If you are wondering, today's Slog PM is brought to you by Ecclesiastes. It is the section in the Old Testament where God simply disappears and the hope of an afterlife goes with Him. In Ecclesiastes, "a live dog is better off than a dead lion." Is this not our situation today? Utterly Godless—meaning, utterly hopeless? ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.") All we can count on is that the "sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose." This rising and falling can happen with or without us.Â
The kind of good news you get from MyNorthwest: "All lanes have been reopened on eastbound I-90 after a collision caused three cars to light on fire this morning."
⚠️SIXTH UPDATE:
— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) October 18, 2022
All remains the same. Only one right lane on the eastbound I-90, between East Mercer Way (Mercer Island) & Bellevue Way (Bellevue) is closed. Our maintenance crews will be working to help sweep the lane. We'll inform when all lanes are open. #PlanAhead pic.twitter.com/Ks1m0Dahsu
Now that the traffic is re-flowing on I-90, you can go to an overpass and see exactly how our society is cooking itself, how the smoke from cars rises to the smoke in the sky.
Go to your favorite freeway overpass and look down. Each car you see costs the owner an average of $11k/year. 16% of their total income, 29% for low-income families. There's a reason why car dependency is a thing. The auto industry kinda likes having your money. pic.twitter.com/2Ib3MdLP7A
— Ethan Tufts - ( Hello Road ) (@MrEthanTufts) October 18, 2022
And what's happening up in BC? The drought is so bad in the Sunshine Coast Regional District, which is north of Vancouver, BC (a city that recently abandoned its leftist mayor for one who, politically, is not unlike Bruce Harrell and the mayor of New York City—pro-police, pro-business, pro-"public safety"; in short, all that matters these days), that it (Sunshine Coast) "has declared a local state of emergency" and now requires its "breweries, water bottlers and non-medical cannabis growers to shut down water use starting at 11:59 p.m. PT on Tuesday."
What to make of this triangle Eric Adams, Bruce Harrell, and now Vancouver, BC's mayor-elect Ken Sim? You only have to visit Westlake Station to see the answer. The place, a central hub of a form of transportation that might have helped slow down the relentless liberation of carbon, is basically broken and a mess. Much of it does not work. The escalators are always down. No one is there to assist people arriving from out of town. The elevator, used by visitors and those who can't climb steps, is rarely cleaned or attended to. This is exactly how the left looks to ordinary people because we do not control the future. And when our dreams break down, as they are made to (see my theory of compossibility), voters swing, as expected, back to the right.Â
Are you feeling me yet?
Holy moly siena/NYT poll “more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election…” as they focus on economic issues
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) October 18, 2022
This is the only thing that made me laugh today, which had all of this smoke, cars on fire, and a future that looks exactly like Las Vegas in Blade Runner 2049.
Cranberry juice have a baby with anybody. pic.twitter.com/0aVr9NFi3v
— Roy Wood Jr- Ex Jedi (@roywoodjr) October 18, 2022
We will end with the only track I'm feeling at this moment, and, yes, it's a very bleak track: