Pylimitics

May 17 2026

A lot of systems, institutions, and norms are breaking down. Some are vast and global. Others are small and local. And maybe my impression of this is hopelessly mired in my own local context, and like a large language model, I’m inexplicably hallucinating. I read a lot, though, and I’m not the only one see signs of collapse at different levels of our somewhat-global civilization. Certainly the US portion of it.

When a civilization collapses, or is even engaged in existential conflict of one sort or another, an underground emerges. “Emerge” is probably the wrong term here; it’s an underground so let’s say it comes into existence.

There are lots of different undergrounds, from art to economy to press to resistance movements to music, counterculture, and more. There are undergrounds here and now, and I think they’re growing, attracting participants. There’s probably no hierarchical structure or central authority (it’s an underground) so if you’re part of an underground you might not even know it. You just have the feeling that normalcy is breaking, and you do something about it, at least in your own personal way.

This, then, is an invitation to join. It’s not just one thing, one movement, or one attitude. There’s a tech underground in reaction to the creeping rejection of US-based tech giants, techbros, and their sociopathic greed. There’s a political underground trying to do something about the cruel, stupid, reptilian cadre that’s spent decades amassing power. There’s a semantic underground, and this one is exceedingly subterranean, rejecting the forced erudition of blowhard apologists (for whatever topic garners views, likes, and listens), the empty generation of exposition by statistical prediction (looking at you, language models), and even the degradation of education, especially in the humanities, by the same reptilian cadre I mentioned earlier.

I can’t tell you what do to underground. If I knew (and maybe I do), I still wouldn’t tell you.

Welcome to Underground(The).