methinks therefore me em

A second gift for @nonsemsical <3

Inspired by a post in which they claimed they used to sit in boxes as a child, which I thought was adorable.

For context,

Torment Nexus : "an idea that is so bad and dangerous in theory and practice that its indistinguishable from capitalist satire".

1) roads (this one is self-explanatory)

2) it makes the park inaccessible to like, entire swathes of the population. If you have experience with police dogs or guard dogs in your neighborhood, or you're a new immigrant from somewhere with a large population of feral dogs, it sucks ass going to the park and having someone's massive lab bound up to you!

3) If, for example, you are in a protected wetland area plastered with friendly signs asking you to please leash your dog to avoid causing an ecological impact, having your dog offleash might cause an ecological impact! "Oh no, my dog is well-behaved, they would never bother the wildlife" wrong! your dog is in the pond trying to eat the endangered Blandings' turtles!

No wifi or bluetooth connections. No touch screens. No predictive behaviours. No account log in. No fancy bullshit nonsense.

A fridge that does nothing but keep your food cool. A washing machine that washes clothes, the fucking end. And actually on the washing machine note: they would all have optional two-tap ports, so you CAN use the machine to heat the water if you need to, but you dont HAVE to, if youre in a home that has a massive hot water tank or whatever. AND, it would have fast cycles. None of this two hour minimum bullshit. Fuck outta here with that nonsense. 20 minute half-sized fast loads, 45 minute full sized regular loads, and a two hour option for those of you who like things slow or wanna give your towels an extra good long wash or whatever.

Anyway moving on. Dumb clothes dryers that just dry things, at a manually set array of temperatures, not an auto-temp chosen by the machine based on the detected type of fabric or size of the load. Dumb toasters. But QUALITY. None of this "its just fifteen bucks but it will last five minutes" shit. Dumb TVs. With various different ports, while we're at it. You want a security camera, but want full control of who accesses the recordings? Done. Dumb elevators, that go up and down at the press of a button and have no complex bullshit that takes out the whole lift whenever it experiences an internet outage.

DUMB CARS. WITH NO TOUCH SCREENS OR TRACKING TECH OR OTHER BULLSHIT.

GIVE ME MY APPLIANCES AS DUMB AS A BOX OF ROCKS. I DONT WANT THEM MAKING DECISIONS FOR ME. I DON'T WANT THEM "HELPING" ME. I DONT WANT TWO THIRDS OF THE BULLSHIT THATS IN THEM THESE DAYS.

I tried to buy a washing machine recently. They were ALL SOME DEGREE OF FUCKING "SMART." And yeah you can simply opt to not set it up, which is what i ended up doing, but it still prompts me even now to "complete set up?" AND it pushed the overall price of washing machines up because even though I dont plan to USE any of their STUPID smart tech, it was still included in the model! So it costs more! Because its "smart"!

-the video is from a time before sharing files across devices was trivial, which is why it looks so bizarre. my brother took the original video which i believe was a snapchat video which somehow got uploaded onto my parents’ computer, where my brother showed it to me. i immediately recognized the comedic gold and insisted on getting my own copy, so i re-filmed it on my own digital camera, which is why my brother is narrating what the video will be about before it starts. i then managed to get it onto my tumblr through a series of dark magic rituals. this is why it has an old mac toolbar AND a weird caption AND a vidlab watermark. simpler times indeed

-i was not involved in the act of exploring an abandoned mine shaft (extremely dangerous, do not do this) or touching the wild animal (extremely dangerous, do not do this) or hanging out with my brother (extremely dangerous, do not do this) and i do not endorse any of the behavior depicted here. leaving me notes and comments explaining that this was a bad idea is not a productive use of your time. i have known that everything my brother and his friends do is stupid and dangerous my entire life but at least in this instance we get to enjoy the fruits of their poor choices

-preston was fine. he was scratched up and got some rabies shots but this was not the first, last, or worst injury incurred by a young man who decided to follow my brother’s recommendations for what would be a good and cool idea to do. (his best friend was taken from our house to the ER six times over the course of middle and high school.) to my knowledge the ringtail was also fine despite his encounter with the cast of temu jackass.