Bravo Johnson (bravojohnson)

They’re in too deep

• 1 reply
• 0 recasts
• 4 reactions

Doing this now. Moorcock’s multiverse is the first one that isn’t built like a strip mall of IP franchises. The real difference is this: in almost every modern multiverse, from Marvel to whatever franchise bolts on quantum hand-waving next, the rules stay the same. The physics is the same. The morality is the same. The narrative grammar is the same. The characters may wear different hats or have goatees, but the operating system never changes. It’s one universe duplicated endlessly, like photocopies made on cheaper paper. Moorcock is the opposite. In his multiverse, the rules don’t stay the same. That’s the entire point. Each world feels like it’s running on a different metaphysical engine. One universe is governed by tyrannical Law; another by anarchic Chaos; another by a precarious Balance that barely remembers you exist. Time flows differently. Meaning flows differently. Identity isn’t stable—sometimes it’s barely a suggestion.

• 1 reply
• 0 recasts
• 4 reactions

Update from Europe: I, Brayden ‘Sovereign-Individual’ Multisig, have discovered something deeply uncomfortable. After a decade of screaming that taxes are theft, safety nets are socialism for ugly people, and that society should run on 100× leverage and raw founder energy, I have to report the following treasonous facts: My blood pressure is down. I sleep through the night without checking if my bags are -90 % I haven’t tried to onboard a single barista to copy-trade me. I just… feel good? Like, suspiciously good? Apparently the same policies I diagnosed as ‘serotonin-deficient serfware’ function differently when you’re not personally exposed to the downside. Who knew? I spent years telling founders that universal healthcare would turn us into docile NPCs and it turns out it mostly turns you into someone who doesn’t have to pretend ‘hustle culture’ is a personality because of golden-handcuffs perk for making partner at a16z or grinding LeetCode for ten years.

• 1 reply
• 0 recasts
• 16 reactions

It’s hilarious that New Yorkers elected Mamdani. Obama’s opponents imagined a radical, foreign-born Muslim boogeyman—so now here comes, actually born in Africa, actually Muslim, actually leftist… and he’s crushing NYC politics with exactly the sort of unapologetic progressive vision they feared Obama might secretly harbor. It’s like the birther fantasy accidentally willed itself into being—but 15 years later, and way more ideologically potent. Progressives win when they stop running from the insult and start owning the slur flipping it—whether it’s “queer,” “dyke” or “whatever,” or in this case “Muslim born in Africa”—the moral panic collapses under its own weight.

• 2 replies
• 0 recasts
• 17 reactions

For all its talk of systems thinking and disruption, tech and science behave like the Habsburgs—hiring their own, breeding the same ideas, and mistaking control for progress. The tools get smarter, but the gene pool doesn’t. We have Transformers that can process millions of tokens, deployed by institutions that can’t process a single idea that didn’t come from their network. Algorithms find novel patterns in data, run by organizations that can’t recognize novel patterns in thought. The scientific method itself was born from institutional diversity—natural philosophers, clerics, mechanics, physicians all colliding. Boyle and Hooke weren’t from “the main lab.” Darwin was a gentleman naturalist, not a professor. Ramanujan was a clerk. Now? Good luck getting your arXiv paper noticed if you’re not already connected. Good luck getting lab access without the right pedigree. Good luck getting taken seriously if your idea doesn’t fit the paradigm or your credentials don’t burn bright enough.

• 1 reply
• 2 recasts
• 16 reactions

The point of the subscription economy is ontological. Everything — can now be a service provided at a forever cost. Ownership is often about a transactional completion, where you acquire something and then move on, satisfied with having met your need. It’s finite, with a clear start and end. Subscription, on the other hand, is a perpetual commitment, a continuous cycle that prevents closure. It keeps you tethered, never fully satisfying the need in a permanent sense because the expectation is that you’ll always be engaged, always consuming, always involved. It’s a structure that denies the ability to “move on” because it’s built around an ongoing dependency. In this way, the subscription economy by redefining time also reshape the very nature of “self”

• 4 replies
• 0 recasts
• 16 reactions