Civil unrest escalates in the United States. In many quiet corners of the country, no change is visible. But in other areas—particularly those with large numbers of urban poor people—things are looking increasingly bad.

COVID-19 is still in the news, but it is more and more often backgrounded to other happenings. People of all sorts are waiting for the "green light" from policy makers—patients in need of treatment, businesses in need of customers, programers in need of Vitamin D... ¹

I pop open a can of Campbell's Chicken noodle soup and heat it over the stove. I toss in some frozen peas for a nutritional boost, and munch on a couple of carrots in the fridge while I wait for the soup to heat up. I pace around the shade in my backyard a bit; the summer heat is getting intense such that walking barefoot on the concrete/stone would hurt. Some sad doggo is getting walked on these hot surfaces as I write this, I'm sure.

I meditate upon the most recent Luke Smith video: "Enjoy the Cyberpunk Dystopia of Proprietary Software!". Yes, in many ways we are already living in a cyberpunk dystopia. My matrix portal machines (Windows PCs) hum in the background as I type here on using a fancy "batman" keyboard on an older machine. ²

For most of the day, I hover among a handful of computers, none of them bought as new, "state of the art" devices. I have a bunch of monitors, of which two I had purchased and the rest I got for free somehow. The machines I am using are not limiting me; it is my own ability and organization that prevents me from doing better—locked indoors with these devices, some useful books and reference materials, ...I'd probably emerge into the light as a more skilled computer user than before.

It is often a difficult path to do this—to go to the wilderness away from the familiar and comfortable. Wandering in the desert is a path that some have the luxury of choosing; perhaps more often than not, it is a place where people just end up.

Whereas the jungle is a place filled with disease, things to kill you, life forms all over... the desert is a relatively sterile place. The desert feels solitary—rather than having too much life all around and being fearful of what might eat you, the desert presents many mechanical, inorganic challenges.

COVID-19 has made many cyberpunk dystopia jungles. There are eyes (and apps) everywhere watching. Some neighbors stand by ready to report rule breakers. Signs and slogans abound like the colors of poisonous animals warning potential predators away. People develop venom and fangs, wings to jump between trees, and/or thick skin. Life is everywhere, but the form it is taking is not that of a fluffy housecat. It is a ginormous puma lunging at your throat, a school of piranha ready to devour whatever falls into the water, a bat (which probably shouldn't be eaten in a soup)...