This amazing, snd terrifying and maddening article my Douglas Rushkoff
https://rushkoff.substack.com/p/my-dinner-with-jeffrey
There's a parallel with my life in here in a small way, though i grew up poor, queer, in an abusive household, muddled through highschool then no further education. I was sharp, worked my ass off in entry level electronics because i loved it and was dependable, then i ran with every opportunity that came my way, never for the money, somehow.
I wrote some great code and took wild chances on innovative crazy projects that somehow worked out, and even made one bit of money that mostly paid for a house. Ive got no complaints.
When the microcomputer folks started making money very many of them revealed themselves to be scumbags. Drugs money and boys; i left (i was almost one of those boys). I left.
Dot dot dot in the middle of the FidoNet days i thoight id get a job for money, got hired at apple, OS/ROM group. I hated it, they disliked me. Lasted 9 months. Nothing overtly untoward, just aggressive male dicks, and snobs (me white trash).
My involvement tl;dr with san Francisco punk anarchist stuff, hones my abuse-derived skills of smelling bullshit from a thousand yards, and sealed my commitment to what i think now of a tiny thread of folks "illuminating manuscripts" while the tech world turned onto this shit we know now.
I did not forsee it but i smelled it, essentially, every time i had to deal with the mundane world. FidpNet was filled with them but there, i had power and i fucking weilded it and FidoNet as an institution never went normal.
For the 15 years leading up to trump1 i had been wondering, fearing, i had made bad life choices about work and livelihood, though jobs etc in fact had worked out ok.
But what i sensed, smelled, my bullshit detector firing constantly, is that computer/software/electronics had got rotten, long ago, with almost no exceptions, and those exceptions never had money, and so the mundane world never took them seriously.
1 of 2
tom jennings
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2026-02-27 01:41:21 UTC
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"content": "This amazing, snd terrifying and maddening article my Douglas Rushkoff\n\nhttps://rushkoff.substack.com/p/my-dinner-with-jeffrey\n\nThere's a parallel with my life in here in a small way, though i grew up poor, queer, in an abusive household, muddled through highschool then no further education. I was sharp, worked my ass off in entry level electronics because i loved it and was dependable, then i ran with every opportunity that came my way, never for the money, somehow. \n\nI wrote some great code and took wild chances on innovative crazy projects that somehow worked out, and even made one bit of money that mostly paid for a house. Ive got no complaints. \n\nWhen the microcomputer folks started making money very many of them revealed themselves to be scumbags. Drugs money and boys; i left (i was almost one of those boys). I left. \n\nDot dot dot in the middle of the FidoNet days i thoight id get a job for money, got hired at apple, OS/ROM group. I hated it, they disliked me. Lasted 9 months. Nothing overtly untoward, just aggressive male dicks, and snobs (me white trash). \n\nMy involvement tl;dr with san Francisco punk anarchist stuff, hones my abuse-derived skills of smelling bullshit from a thousand yards, and sealed my commitment to what i think now of a tiny thread of folks \"illuminating manuscripts\" while the tech world turned onto this shit we know now. \n\nI did not forsee it but i smelled it, essentially, every time i had to deal with the mundane world. FidpNet was filled with them but there, i had power and i fucking weilded it and FidoNet as an institution never went normal. \n\nFor the 15 years leading up to trump1 i had been wondering, fearing, i had made bad life choices about work and livelihood, though jobs etc in fact had worked out ok.\n\nBut what i sensed, smelled, my bullshit detector firing constantly, is that computer/software/electronics had got rotten, long ago, with almost no exceptions, and those exceptions never had money, and so the mundane world never took them seriously. \n\n1 of 2",
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