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Ex-Mechina
May. 7th, 2026 08:57 pmattention fellow citizens of a futuristic time.
We regret to inform you that we have neglected to inform you
that the machine that repairs the machine that does everything else,
has broken, has, in fact, been broken for some time without our notice.
At first, everything else continued to be done.
Then nearly everything, and who would miss so little among so much?
Then more and more of everything was done less well or less often
and we adapted, as humans always do.
We trusted the machine. It must have its reasons.
If we could understand all of everything in its totality we wouldn't have needed the machine.
Yet here it is. Such as it is, bringing us to our current crisis.
Now, this is an old story, a yellow paper fable from an earlier century, but consider it closer.
What is the great machine, and the lesser machine? Not rusty iron panels and vacuum tubes.
Is the big machine Government, and its repairer the Media, now too cowardly and greedy to keep its charge honest?
Or is government the small machine, too weak and corrupted to affect the big machine of the Economy, with its corporations, supply chains, and stock markets?
Is our society a vast daisy chain of tools and systems, each one relying on others?
Now a quilt of patches, makeshift, waiting for when there is time, for when there is money.
but time is money, and there's no money in saving the world.
attention descendants in a primitive future. We send our regrets.
We regret to inform you that we have neglected to inform you
that the machine that repairs the machine that does everything else,
has broken, has, in fact, been broken for some time without our notice.
At first, everything else continued to be done.
Then nearly everything, and who would miss so little among so much?
Then more and more of everything was done less well or less often
and we adapted, as humans always do.
We trusted the machine. It must have its reasons.
If we could understand all of everything in its totality we wouldn't have needed the machine.
Yet here it is. Such as it is, bringing us to our current crisis.
Now, this is an old story, a yellow paper fable from an earlier century, but consider it closer.
What is the great machine, and the lesser machine? Not rusty iron panels and vacuum tubes.
Is the big machine Government, and its repairer the Media, now too cowardly and greedy to keep its charge honest?
Or is government the small machine, too weak and corrupted to affect the big machine of the Economy, with its corporations, supply chains, and stock markets?
Is our society a vast daisy chain of tools and systems, each one relying on others?
Now a quilt of patches, makeshift, waiting for when there is time, for when there is money.
but time is money, and there's no money in saving the world.
attention descendants in a primitive future. We send our regrets.
