- Today in Tabs
- Posts
- Masks Off
Paul Ford is blogging again and it’s like he never stopped. For all I know, he never did stop—he’s probably been blogging in his journal every day, or in his dreams. If you don’t already know Paul (how?), all you need by way of introduction is this very short story from 2002 that predicted the next quarter century of developments in technology and society. A couple days ago he wrote about his name showing up in the files, like many other completely innocent people.
All the masks came off this year. I mean we all have our masks. But this is They Live level. Goblin faces everywhere, and no need to wear secret glasses to see it. Not even suits and ties, but middle-aged shits in soft linen shirts. Comfortable on the deck chairs as they plan revenge on Gawker. All seven deadly sins at once, all day.
…I guess our myths of evil need to factor in email and PDFs far more than they do. Milton at his wildest never imagined two-factor authentication. But of course Satan has a gmail account and posts to 4chan.
With all those masks off, it’s been difficult to look directly at the news. I keep getting snagged on irrelevant details, little glitches floating on the surface of a bottomless blue hole of horrors. Like what’s up with all those equals signs, anyway? It’s cross-platform line encoding, of course. It’s always cross-platform line encoding. The Files are also providing people with a working Windows 7 license key and a brand new mirror for the Bash Reference Manual.
But Garbage Ryan looked directly at the files and saw Jeffrey Epstein’s cash and influence all over the worldwide rise of fascism. Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, Michael Wolff, Elon Musk, 4chan, Bitcoin, Gamergate… Epstein’s right in the middle of all of it, smearing around his money and connections. For every villainous scheme since 2008, there’s an Epstein email like:
And what’s up with the typing? This is the best explanation I’ve seen for that:
plug (n): “a source from which to score drugs” …or whatever.
Long live the new flesh. Welcome to the resistance, Ammon Bundy. Looks like Minion’s back on the program, boys. The beauty of slag. How likely is 'likely'? “It could be the end, but I hope it's just a checkpoint.” Intern Bijan on internet checkpoints. The slut spuds of true Berlin. Bizarre little roots, you’re still in control of the board. It’s still what computers can’t do. Earth 2 finally dropped. I’m going, I don’t even care.
Today’s Song: Rich the Kid, “Plug Walk”
It’s a short one today because I collected a ton of links about OpenClaw and then decided I don’t actually care about it, lol. Good luck to everyone turning over all their credentials to the credential stealing machine though. Ok one more thing—this guy figured out how to spend $20 to ask a computer what time it is. The innovation here is incredible.
I’m on Bluesky @rusty.todayintabs.com and not really anywhere else so if you subscribed to me on OnlyFans, I have some bad news. Or good news, I guess? Please subscribe to my emails though.
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