…ok…real quick before I lose my tiny mind…here’s a thing…you know how sometimes an expense at an unexpected juncture can really fuck up a budget? …well…our resident enabler has been carrying most of the costs of there being deadsplinter so that it appears to be…to borrow the tagline from the NHS…free at the point of use…& not in the that-makes-you-the-product way that’s traditional online…so…to date…that’s sort of worked & some kind folks have thrown in so it wasn’t all of it…& it’s not impossible that if a few things go the right way that might become a thing of the past…but…just at the minute…not so much…rough & ready we have a bill that’s suddenly due instead of coming around “in due course”…so here’s some dubious math for you

…give or take a couple of days this place has been around for 5 years…& if you take the pareto ratio 80% of the costs to have it continue to exist through to…’oct ’26 is what I’m told…the posterboard thermometer has a 2K target at the top…so…if there’s…at least a dozen of us…that’s less than 25¢/day…or…if you add the 2years to the previous 5…less than 7¢/day…whereas…avocado toast goes for…apparently…$6-$20…so…let’s call it $13…so…depending on how you look at it…if you could find it in your heart (&/or pocketbook) to help avoid @myopicprophet enriching the usurers of some credit card company to the tune of some shitty APR to the tune of…between 1 median-value slice of avocado toast a year…&…a slice about every 3.5 years…that would really take the sting out of being the longsuffering holder of that short straw in the middle of the existential crisis we seem to be having as a species?

…obviously that math is essentially bollocks…technically there’s more than a dozen of us…some of you are already contributing that way…the bill doesn’t allow for daily micropayment…yadda yadda…but…on the other hand…the sort of brits I’m extracted from would rather chew off their own arms that be direct or specific about money…& the fact that myo is more reluctant than I am to raise it lest anyone think it’s an attempt to raise more than his costs, rather than somewhere south of break-even on those…is misleading

…it’s less a case of “cough up, or the site gets it…” than it is “you don’t have to cough up…myo will pick up the tab…but it’ll cost more than the bill that way & if a few things go the other way that sort of thing can get away from you & that sort of thing can be sudden so if the site gets it somewhere down the line it might not come with a heads up & I don’t know about you but that would kind of suck for me?”

…maybe you aren’t quite as fond of this little online bywater as I am…but since, alas, I am not in the musk/bezos category of moneyed-opinion-haver-&-buyer-of-things-not-generally-sold…I can’t segue into a humble-brag about how this one’s on me…& my fondness for a spot where I can hear from a selection of folks who are kind enough to pretend I’m only moderately off my rocker without a combination of ads, autoplay & adversarial shitposting that may yet cause future historians to write this era off as one in which humanity was clearly having some sort of gestalt psychotic episode…in a cruel twist of karmic destiny…lacks any financial value at all

…so…& very much only if you can spare it…that’s my cap-in-hand routine?

…meanwhile…out there in the world…hmm…a week & change to go until the fateful day that probably won’t be the end of it…just about nobody can avoid sounding like they’re shitting themselves it might go the way they need it not to?

Trump also said: “If I win, this will be my last election.” That was a true statement because the constitution would bar him from serving beyond a second term in the White House. Yet it seemed to contradict an earlier campaign promise that he would not run for the Oval Office again if he lost to Kamala Harris in the 5 November election.

In another part of the show, the former president tried to address the age-related questions which forced Biden, 81, to drop out of seeking re-election – and which have since been redirected at Trump, 78.

Trump tried to convince Rogan that Biden was in cognitive decline because of brain surgery.

“It’s not his age,” Trump said. “Those are not good operations.”

…first off…there are no “operations”…whatever definition you run with from the de facto to the algorithmic…that bear the imperious imprimatur of the lumpen permatan…& can be called “good”

…& secondly…what “good operations” does mr maybe-thinks-hannibal-lecter-is-real have in mind, here…is he dinging joe for not being the $6million man?

Rogan alluded to how brain surgeries saved Biden’s life after he endured two aneurysms in the 1980s, when he was a US senator for Delaware before serving as vice-president to Barack Obama and then winning the presidency himself.

…only…I know one or two people who’ve had brain surgery…&…I’m not saying it’s as “simple” as flying a plane…but in my experience both have an overlap that sounds a lot like “good = can walk away from”…& joe is still stepping 40-some years later…which sounds pretty fucking good to me

…40-some years ago das apfelsine gestiefelt only looked a little bit like a waxwork that had been left too close to a radiator for several years…since when much has changed…& physiologically…if you’re that guy…those are not good changes…so not-good are they, in fact, they make the guy who had multiple brain surgeries & a lifelong speech impediment seem like the epitome of coherent speech & youthful vigor…which is a lot less unpleasant to contemplate than the sort of vigorous stuff that gets tucker all hot under the bowtied collar?

The reach of Rogan’s show, estimated at 14 million listeners on Spotify with an 80% male audience split between Democrats, Republicans and independents, has developed a reputation as a useful platform for seekers of political office.

…now I don’t have these sorts of numbers…but…somewhere in the guts of spotify…I’m pretty sure they have some autopopulated fields in a database or two that could tell you how many of that estimated mass of millions are of voting age & hailing from swing state IP addresses…&…not to shoot fish in a barrel…but I’m guessing the venn diagram overlaps pretty heavily between “claims to be an undecided voter” & “listens avidly to joe rogan who has successfully changed their mind about a number of things & they think is basically the everyman guru of our times”

…still…marvellous bit of compare/contrast, wouldn’t you say?

The rally was expected to begin at 7.30pm, but by that time Trump was only then leaving Texas. The ex-president recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, seeming to suggest that many rallygoers would not have work the next day because it was Friday and promising: “We’re going to have a good time tonight.”

“I am so sorry,” Trump said when he arrived. “We got so tied up, and I figured you wouldn’t mind too much because we’re trying to win.”

…I mean…if anyone ever doubted that to reach an equivalent level while either a woman or not-white you need to do twice as much work for half as much reward…let’s face it…they’d need to have been putting in the work themselves to manage not to notice?

Meanwhile, Harris was in Houston, Texas, with superstar singer Beyoncé [right on schedule, incidentally] to drive her message opposing the conservative state’s abortion ban as she attempts to become the first woman ever elected as US president.

“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift,” the Houston-raised singer told the crowd of 30,000 people. “Our moment is right now. It’s time for America to sing a new song.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/26/trump-joe-rogan-podcast

…&…I already burned my allowance for rubbing folks the wrong way for the day with the thing about the filthy lucre so I probably shouldn’t go off on another rant about how extremely illegal it would be in a sane world for money-as-a-metastisized-malignancy to set so much of itself on fire to produce the net effect musk has imposed on twitter…which is actually worse than it seems because even the bad parts of old twitter didn’t stop it being close to the opposite thing in terms of an overton viewfinder…because…I’m already on thin ice

Elon Musk’s social media app X is supercharging the spread of voter-fraud conspiracy theories with the help of artificial intelligence, boosting unfounded claims including two personal smears against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The dubious content is spreading in the app’s “explore” section, which says it uses Musk’s AI software, named Grok, to aggregate trending social media topics. The information does not appear to be fact-checked by humans, and in several recent examples it seemed to repeat false or unsubstantiated claims as if they were true.

The feature is named “stories for you” and has a label saying it’s in a beta test, meaning it’s an experiment not available to all users. Each “story for you” consists of a feed of posts related to a trending topic. On the desktop version of X, users can also see a paragraph-long summary of the topic written by the Grok software if they look at the history of the “story for you.”

The feature’s placement in X’s explore section gives it prominent digital real estate in the final weeks of the presidential election, in which Musk is backing former President Donald Trump. Its repeated amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the election follows a string of instances where Musk has personally shared similar ideas, both in live appearances and on his social media.

…so…if you feel like shooting the messenger…I don’t really blame you…but…I’d lay off if he’d just take a day off from being the. fucking. worst.

Each trending topic curated by Grok includes a warning disclaiming any responsibility for accuracy and telling users to check facts on their own: “Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs,” the disclaimer says.

…yeah…sure…famously elon stans are super-double-secret-probation-ary good at verifying their shit before they “output” it

…some of those weird nerds aren’t even bots…it’s a weird fucking world & no mistake

…anyway

On Monday, Grok uncritically repeated debunked allegations of wrongdoing related to the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems. Grok produced a “story for you” titled “Public Scrutiny of Dominion Voting Systems,” which aggregated posts accusing the company of “election rigging” and “fraud.” Dominion has previously denounced similar accusations as lies, and last year Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion.

Grok’s written summary of the online debate accused Dominion of “potentially stifling legitimate discussions on election security” through “legal threats.”

…looks like a duck

On Wednesday, Grok parroted unfounded claims of wrongdoing in Maricopa County, Arizona, boosting a claim by an X user that county election workers are “corrupt” because of the speed at which they count ballots.

…quacks like a duck

Grok has also spread smears against Harris, the Democratic nominee for president. It created a “story for you” repeating unfounded allegations by X users that she used cocaine in the White House, and it created a “story for you” repeating allegations by X users that she attended parties hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs, who’s facing federal sex-abuse charges. Fact-checkers have said a photo of Combs with fashion designer Misa Hylton was altered to add Harris’ face.

…give or take a waddle around the island of dr moreau

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has shared some of the same conspiracy theories amplified by his Grok software, including the unfounded allegations of wrongdoing related to Dominion Voting Systems.

…seems…pretty much ducked up from the dirt up

The feature has been problematic in the past. In July, Grok-written summaries boosted false information about President Joe Biden, helping to spread wild conspiracy theories that Biden had an undisclosed medical emergency, might be dying, had been murdered or would be murdered soon.

It’s a job that used to be done by human curators as recently as two years ago, before Musk bought the app then known as Twitter. In 2015, Twitter’s management rolled out curated trending topics as a way to help users make sense of the flood of information on the app. Twitter employees added verified context from traditional news sources such as The Associated Press and Reuters, in an attempt to elevate the quality of information that was trending.

But Musk, in one of his first acts after buying Twitter, eliminated the jobs of human curators, and now the tech billionaire has delegated the task to his AI software.

…so…blame that arsehole…I…don’t even work here?

X launched the experiment in AI-written summaries months ago, and although it has received little attention, some users quickly expressed alarm about the Grok-authored text they were seeing in the beta test of the app’s “explore” section. One Reddit user in April compared the trending topic summaries to rolling “brainless AI dice.” And in July, an X user posted a screenshot of “explore beta” with text asserting that Biden would be the next coach of England’s national soccer team.

In recent weeks, dozens of X users have posted about “explore beta,” and the vast majority of the posts have been negative. One user said it was pointless, and another said it was “absolute trash.” But several said they knew of no way to opt out of the beta test.

It’s not clear how many people see the AI-created summaries. Some X users who browse the app’s trending topics see only ranked lists of popular subjects, with no AI-generated text. It’s also not clear if X plans to expand the Grok summaries from a beta test to a standard feature.

Elon Musk’s X is boosting election conspiracy theories with AI-powered trending topics [NBC]

…on a scale of…will it rain today to…how bad is climate change going to get…or where-is-elon-on-the-political-spectrum…how “not clear” are we talking at this point in proceedings…asking for a friend?

…only…it’s also…famously…”not clear” who should be declared the winner of the ballot on guy fawkes’ night in the ex-colony that decided fireworks should be for the summertime when it doesn’t get dark so early…just to prove what rebels they are

The former president, who is deadlocked in the polls with Kamala Harris, has spent months priming his supporters to believe the only way he could lose is through fraud. “If I lose – I’ll tell you what, it’s possible. Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat,” he said at a rally in September.

…you might be thinking “clearly that’s the sort of thing you’d only say if you knew damn well there was no legitimate route by which you win this thing on the up & up”…but…here’s a bit of paranoid fantasy for you…arguably they really did…with some help from that brooks brothers riot engineered by roger the-ratfuckers’-ratfucker stone…rob mr inconvenient truth…& florida carried more than its share of that water…so…it’s a potentially true statement…uttered by someone else…but…if he does in fact do enough cheating to swing the outcome in his electorally collegiate favor…the part where it’s the illegitimate actions that remove the legitimacy…& not the team colors being run up the flagpole…is hardly going to sway the rabidly faithful dogs that already caught the car & haven’t been back in the house since they developed a mouthful of needlessly dead potential mothers they won’t stop worrying or let go of…so they can’t fit through the door…&…well…that might could cause some problems more severe than “I want to say you did a bunch of illegal shit to alter the outcome of this vote but then I’ll sound like I’m as fucking willfully ignorant as your lot…& the earth is already mad enough to want her oxygen back from that sucker bet”?

But this year the Trump ticket’s efforts to pre-emptively deny the results in case of a loss of the election go beyond rhetoric. They are now backed up by widespread party support and a highly organized, massive legal apparatus.

“The effort to try to subvert the outcome is more thought-out, more strategic, more organized, more coordinated in 2020,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Republicans are primed to support Trump’s efforts. Nearly one in five Republican voters believe Trump should declare the election result invalid if he loses, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (12% of Democrats said Harris, who has committed to accepting the election results, should do the same).

Dozens of people who have challenged the results of the last presidential election are in local offices where they have power over certifying vote totals. Led by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election four years ago, Republicans have organized a massive effort to monitor election offices, challenge voters, and work in election precincts.

At least 35 officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 will have a role over certifying the vote this fall, according to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog group.

The Republican National Committee has spent months filing frivolous lawsuits that contain specious allegations of fraud. Legal experts say Republicans have no chance of winning the suits ahead of the election – many have already been thrown out of court – but they are instead designed to generate headlines and create the impression that something is amiss with the voter rolls.

The Harris campaign, voting rights lawyers, and civil rights groups are all preparing for the possibility of a chaotic post-election period that could include a flood of lawsuits trying to get ballots thrown out in an attempt to swing the election.

While there is little doubt that Trump will try and contest an election loss, experts are also nearly certain that he will not succeed. Judges turned away nearly every case Trump filed to try and overturn the election results – 61 in total – and experts expect that they will do so again.
[…]
Trump’s effort to contest a possible loss is likely to begin as votes are counted on election night. Just like 2020, it is likely that there will not be a winner declared on election night and key swing states are going to take hours or even days to count their ballots. The closer the election margin – and it could be very close this year – the longer it will take for news outlets to be confident enough to call the race, which could add to the uncertainty.

There’s nothing unusual about that lag. But Trump is planning to declare that the vote against him is rigged and that the slow count is evidence something is amiss, Rolling Stone reported in October.

That declaration of fraud is likely to be accompanied by swift lawsuits alleging various irregularities with the vote, supported by affidavits from people who say they saw something unusual at the polls or when workers are counting votes. While those claims are likely to be debunked, they’re likely to fuel the narrative that something wrong happened in 2020.
[…]
The watchdog group Protect Democracy calls these and similar lawsuits “zombie lawsuits” and predicts that Trump and allies could try and revive them after election day to challenge the election results.

Nikhel Sus, a lawyer with Crew, predicted Trump and allies would revive some of the suits they’ve already filed, but that they wouldn’t go far.

“We’re going to see these zombie lawsuits come back to life in a strategic tactical way. And perhaps that was the goal from the outset,” he said. “You still need evidence to win a court case.”

Filing a case challenging voter eligibility before the election doesn’t give it a better chance of succeeding afterwards, Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center said. Still, he said the litigation gives a false imprimatur to Trump’s claims of fraud.

“I do think you’re going to see after the election if people are upset about the outcome, pointing to “we’ve been saying for the last 8 months that they had bloated rolls and dead people on the rolls. Non-citizens on the rolls and the courts didn’t do anything about it,” he said.

After those suits are filed, Trump could move on to trying to stop certification of the vote at the local level. Long a little-followed process of elections, certification takes place at the local and state level to officialize vote totals after all of the ballots are tallied. Local boards – often staffed with party loyalists or little-known government officials – are responsible for undertaking this task, and generally do not have discretion not to certify.
[…]
“Even though it’s illegal and there will be potential stiff legal consequences for doing that sort of thing, it will cause some level of disruption,” he said. “There is a chance that by sowing distrust at the county level if president Trump loses the election that they’re going to lay the groundwork to dispute the results on January 6 2025 on the grounds that there was uninvestigated fraud or irregularities in particular states.”
[…]
Other top Republicans have followed suit and amplified the false claims. And Republican election officials in a handful of states – Alabama, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee – have all tried to back up Trump by releasing statements claiming to have found thousands of non-citizens on the rolls. Many of those announcements have been based on misleading methodology and further investigation has shown that many of those flagged have been eligible voters.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X and a major backer of Trump, has significantly helped boost these lie that Democrats want non-citizens to vote, posting about it at least 52 times and racking up 700m views, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.

The Heritage foundation, a rightwing thinktank aligned with Trump, has peddled misleading videos purporting to show non-citizen registering. Other Republicans have also added to the rhetoric. “[Democrats] want illegals to vote now that they opened the border,” Steve Scalise, a top Republican in the US House, said in his speech at the Republican National Convention in July.

The big lie 2.0: Trump plan to subvert 2024 election more organized than ever [Guardian]

…so…let me put this another way

About a decade ago, I ventured my opinion that the adult multitudes queueing for superhero movies were potentially an indicator of emotional arrest, which could have worrying political and social implications. Since at that time Brexit, Donald Trump and fascist populism hadn’t happened yet, my evidently crazy diatribe was largely met with outrage from the fan community, some of whom angrily demanded I be extradited to the US and made to stand trial for my crimes against superhumanity – which I felt didn’t necessarily disprove my allegations.

Ten years on, let me make my position clear: I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies. At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement. Perhaps this statement still requires some breaking down.

…sounds…apart from being maybe something I might have said…in a not altogether disimilar fashion…considerably less bat-shit than sunstantial bits of the overall makeup of what’s considered to be the stuff of legitimate discourse concerning current affairs & electoral prospects…right?

…well…I don’t want to alarm anyone…but the guy who said it…uhhh

Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta) is a self-proclaimed wizard. His comic Promethea was his most powerful spell and was intended to end the world. More in the comments. [r/comicbooks]

I’m writing a paper on Alan Moore and I’m trying to figure out more about him and his relationship to the occult. i know he considers it important, but i was wondering if there were any sources to help me understand the extent of it. Like does he rely on it as a basis for his worldview, or is it more of a hobby that helps inform him in relatively minor ways? I was also trying to figure out if its more of an anti-western expression for him, specifically anti-christian perhaps. Any help or input would be appreciated! [r/AlanMoore]

Known for books like Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Batman: The Killing Joke, Alan Moore is no slouch when it comes to works of literary importance, but what a lot of people may not know is that the author also considers himself a magician, in a very real sense of the word. And, one of the only reasons he chose magic was because he once got drunk in Northampton.

…so…anyway…maybe that might give you pause…but…on the other hand…he’s extremely articulate & definitely not a dumb guy…so…I’d say there’s some pearls of wisdom in that breakdown

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/26/fandom-has-toxified-the-world-watchmen-author-alan-moore-on-superheroes-comicsgate-and-trump

…& as for this stuff?

Most recently, Alan Moore sat down with The Guardian to talk about his work, his life, and how he considers himself a practicing magician. The author sees himself as a “ceremonial magician,” someone who practices magic in the “bardic” tradition. To Moore, his ability to weave tales and change perceptions are forms of magic. Artists can change minds, change hearts, or even curse someone with a well-placed satire. With the right string of words and imagery a writer can change the very nature of truth and the fabric of reality for a reader of their story. For Moore that is true magic, and it all started with a dare, as explained by The Guardian:

Moore not only shuns the internet but, which will seem still more eccentric to some, makes no bones about being a practising magician – which he dates with peculiar precision to November 1993. Drunk in a bikers’ pub in Northampton on his 40th birthday, he announced “quite forcefully” he was going to be a magician. “The next morning when I woke up I thought: ‘Oh dear, I’m going to have to do that now, aren’t I?’ I didn’t know what it meant to become a magician. But I thought there was a certain power in having made the declaration.” His magical experiments came to chime with a worldview evident throughout his work. Human perception (as cognitive science affirms) is partial: we see the world as it’s adaptively useful to see it, not as it truly is.

https://screenrant.com/alan-moore-practicing-magician-drunken-dare/

…well…maybe I’m biased…I…like a lot of his comics…&…uhh…I’m not exactly here on a dare…& I definitely don’t think these DOTs have magic powers…but…in a screenname-checks-out sort of a way…”oh dear, I’m going to have to do that now, aren’t I?”…just maybe…might…resonate…a little…so…at the risk of sounding like I think it somehow strays into being applicable to me…which would be the sort of self-adulation that can get you lynched in some parts of blighty…some of these people really are magicians

…if I were…then I’d have been pasting a quote here about (iirc) neil gaiman by (iirc) terry pratchett…in which it is suggested that writers are magicians & talks about appreciating the feats of prestidigitation from the inside of the magic circle…but…I’m not…so…I’m not…although I might find it at some point

…in the meantime…here’s a story that’s almost as good as the douglas adams one about the rich tea biscuits at the train station

This was a long time ago, in the days before GPS systems and mobile phones and taxi-summoning apps and suchlike useful things that would have told us in moments that no, it would not be a few blocks to the radio station. It would be several miles, all uphill and mostly through a park.

…so…neil & terry are walking in san fransico…they’re…increasingly late for a radio interview…you get the picture

We called the radio station as we went, whenever we passed a payphone, to tell them that we knew we were now late for a live broadcast, and that we were, promise-cross-our-hearts, walking as fast as we could.

I would try to say cheerful, optimistic things as we walked. Terry said nothing, in a way that made it very clear that anything I could say would probably just make things worse. I did not ever say, at any point on that walk, that all of this would have been avoided if we had just got the bookshop to call us a taxi. There are things you can never unsay, that you cannot say and still remain friends, and that would have been one of them.

…we’ve all been there…right?

We reached the radio station at the top of the hill, a very long way from anywhere, about 40 minutes into our hour-long live interview. We arrived all sweaty and out of breath, and they were broadcasting the breaking news. A man had just started shooting people in a local McDonald’s, which is not the kind of thing you want to have as your lead-in when you are now meant to talk about a funny book you’ve written about the end of the world and how we’re all going to die.

The radio people were angry with us, too, and understandably so: it’s no fun having to improvise when your guests are late. I don’t think our 15 minutes on air were very funny. (I was later told that Terry and I had both been blacklisted by that San Franciscan radio station for several years, because leaving a show’s hosts to burble into the dead air for 40 minutes is something the powers of radio do not easily forget or forgive.)

…all things…including…presumably…there being things in the first place…come to an end…even these posts?

Still, by the top of the hour it was all over. We went back to our hotel, and this time we took a taxi. Terry was silently furious: with himself, mostly, I suspect, and with the world that had not told him that the distance from the bookshop to the radio station was much further than it had looked on our itinerary. He sat in the back of the cab beside me white with anger, a non-directional ball of fury. I said something, hoping to placate him. Perhaps I said that, ah well, it had all worked out in the end, and it hadn’t been the end of the world, and suggested it was time to not be angry any more.

…sort of like how the tunes at the bottom are a penance/peace offering/attempt-at-deflection/whatever…because I don’t come across as nice as terry did

Terry looked at me. He said: “Do not underestimate this anger. This anger was the engine that powered Good Omens.” I thought of the driven way that Terry wrote, and of the way that he drove the rest of us with him, and I knew that he was right.

There is a fury to Terry Pratchett’s writing: it’s the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld. It’s also the anger at the headmaster who would decide that six-year-old Terry Pratchett would never be smart enough for the 11-plus; anger at pompous critics, and at those who think serious is the opposite of funny; anger at his early American publishers who could not bring his books out successfully.

The anger is always there, an engine that drives. By the time Terry learned he had a rare, early onset form of Alzheimer’s, the targets of his fury changed: he was angry with his brain and his genetics and, more than these, furious at a country that would not permit him (or others in a similarly intolerable situation) to choose the manner and the time of their passing.

And that anger, it seems to me, is about Terry’s underlying sense of what is fair and what is not. It is that sense of fairness that underlies Terry’s work and his writing, and it’s what drove him from school to journalism to the press office of the SouthWestern Electricity Board to the position of being one of the best-loved and bestselling writers in the world.
[…]
Terry’s authorial voice is always Terry’s: genial, informed, sensible, drily amused. I suppose that, if you look quickly and are not paying attention, you might, perhaps, mistake it for jolly. But beneath any jollity there is a foundation of fury. Terry Pratchett is not one to go gentle into any night, good or otherwise.

He will rage, as he leaves, against so many things: stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and shortsightedness, not just the dying of the light. And, hand in hand with the anger, like an angel and a demon walking into the sunset, there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity.

Or to put it another way, anger is the engine that drives him, but it is the greatness of spirit that deploys that anger on the side of the angels, or better yet for all of us, the orangutans.

Terry Pratchett is not a jolly old elf at all. Not even close. He’s so much more than that. As Terry walks into the darkness much too soon, I find myself raging too: at the injustice that deprives us of – what? Another 20 or 30 books? Another shelf-full of ideas and glorious phrases and old friends and new, of stories in which people do what they really do best, which is use their heads to get themselves out of the trouble they got into by not thinking? Another book or two of journalism and agitprop? But truly, the loss of these things does not anger me as it should. It saddens me, but I, who have seen some of them being built close-up, understand that any Terry Pratchett book is a small miracle, and we already have more than might be reasonable, and it does not behoove any of us to be greedy.

I rage at the imminent loss of my friend. And I think, “What would Terry do with this anger?” Then I pick up my pen, and I start to write.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

…there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being angry…or old…or a man…or white…or all of those things at once

…but…some odds are more equal than others

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life

…the late, great man himself

…I tell you…I miss that angry old white dude something fierce…& not for nothing…but I’d miss you lot & this place more than you might think if that all went the way of the norweigan blue?

…there will eventually be tunes here…but while I’m making my mind up about those…can I just make one more observation?