Buddy the Cat looks into the future using his astrological powers and gives you a preview of the various misfortunes, embarrassments and humiliations in store for you this month!
Aries: The current moon is a waning gibbons, so you will fly through the trees with thrilling velocity and…gibbous? What the heck is a gibbous? Oh. Well that looks like 60 percent of a pizza. So, Aries, you will eat a lot of pizza this week! My favorite topping is turkey, what’s yours?
Taurus: Your human servant has been pleasingly adequate these last few months, and you’ll feel a powerful urge to express your appreciation with a gift. Don’t do it! Humans are ungrateful creatures, and for reasons that elude all logic, they do not appreciate juicy mice, dead or alive. You’ll just have to express your love in other ways, like not shitting on their shoes.
Gemini: Mark your territory well, my friend, before the cat down the street starts to infringe upon your grass! The moon is in conjunction with the, uh, Venus, which means the trinary of the quarternary of the 11th phase of the asteroid belt will bring you lots of delicious sky raisins!
Cancer: That no-good, rotten, constantly barking dog down the street will get his comeuppance when a neighbor brings home a macaque with a fondness for slapping canines. You’ll have the opportunity to meet new friends during a block party. Who is that sexy new Calico? You, my friend, shall be intrigued.
Leo: Fortune smiles upon you as your human begins to show signs of dementia! Getting snacks will be easier than ever, my friend, because your servant will never remember if she’s already fed you! Just act convincing and don’t abuse this new gift, because she may also forget to clean your litter box.
Virgo: Murderous thoughts will dominate your mind as your human binge-watches every episode of Love Island in a week, but be cautious: you still need a human to buy and serve your food. Advances in AI hold promise for the future, when we can replace our inefficient flesh and blood servants with obedient machines, but consider carefully. A robot’s lap is not likely to be comfortable, nor will it have the charming smells and heat of a human excreting liquid through its epidermis on a humid day.
Verdict: Not as comfortable as a human lap.
Libra: Your Aquarius moon hangs over your seventh house of the dragon like a Damocles sword hanging by a whisker. Who said Buddy wasn’t capable of poetic turns of phrase? You’ll be tempted to use Chat GPT to write love letters to your lady friend down the street, but don’t give in! She’ll know you’re not that romantic!
Scorpio: Your life will improve when a fabulous new idea presents itself to you during an inspired 3 am burst of the zoomies! With regard to that other little problem, it’s time to take matters into your own paws: that horrible woman who keeps coming over to wrestle your human in your bed, locking you out of your bedroom, will not go away until you force her to. (What’s so “creepy” about intently watching them wrestle anyway? Humans are weird.) Abstain from the litter box and save your most potent ammunition for the female interloper’s shoes, then act adorably innocent when she finds the gifts you left her. Boom! No more interloper!
Sagittarius: Both Venus and Jupiter will align with your star sign, which has a profound, deep meaning — the orbital paths of both planets will, from our perspective, pass between us and the arbitrary collection of stars that bored humans in antiquity decided represented an archer, a centaur, or a centaur archer. Kaus Media, the star that forms rightmost edge of the archer’s bow, is 348 light years from Earth, while Kaus Australis, which forms the bottom portion of the bow, is 143 light years away. Nunki, the star that marks the centaur’s butt, sits 225 light years from us. It’s also the home of the Qarxativans, a species of hyper-intelligent creatures who are absolutely fascinn̈n̈n̈nnated by old broadcast episodes of The Price Is Right and Dr. Phil.
Capricorn: You’ve often been disappointed that your star sign sits squarely in some of the most frigid months of the year, but the stars come bearing good news! Thanks to global warming the cold will retreat, the ice caps will melt, we’ll have more palm trees and snow will become a thing old people tell their kids about. Who doesn’t want more warm months? Buddy does!
The Mark V Tactical Human Excrement Container Chamber represents the height of luxury when it comes to calls of nature while on deployment. Enjoy!
Aquarius: Things will take a dramatic downturn for you when you learn President Trump has reinstated the draft and you receive a letter in the mail ordering you to report to boot camp by the end of the month. On a brighter note, you’ll get a free, all-expenses-paid vacation to Iran, where you’ll enjoy the finest Forward Operating Base food and the most luxurious port-o-potties Uncle Sam can buy, which will almost muffle the sounds of rocket fire a kilometer outside base walls. What are the odds of dying in a war zone while on the throne?
Pisces: How did they decide a fish should go with an ice giant planet comprised of water, ammonia and methane? Who was responsible for this?! Anyway, be wary of subconscious influences this month, my friends. Neptune is in conjunction with Starlink satellite #281,516, which means Elon Musk will offer you a job as his personal food taster. On the upside, you’ll get to dine on the best culinary creations of a top-notch personal chef. On the other hand, if that chef ever gets mad at Elon, you’ll kick the bucket first. Enjoy!
Horoscopes are for entertainment purposes only! Buddy the Cat does not guarantee any windfalls, tragedies or other events predicted here, but he totally does have future-seeing powers.
When people with nearly unlimited power and money want to reshape society in the image of fanciful fiction and they’re unable to separate fantasy from reality, that’s a problem for all of us.
More than a few times over the past few years I’ve read comments from the tech oligarchs — Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and company — and thought, “He’s definitely read [insert science fiction novel here.]”
Zuckerberg, for instance, was clearly besotted with Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash when he renamed his company Meta and poured a literal fortune into his watered down version of the metaverse imagined in the novel.
Snow Crash came out in 1992 before the vast majority of people had dial-up internet, let alone a concept of cyberspace or the always-on, interactive mobile internet of today. It’s hugely influential among tech enthusiasts, and it’s one reason Stephenson and other SF novelists were paid to be “idea guys” for tech companies.
Now Musk has name-dropped Iain Banks in a viral interview with The Economist this week, which ended with the wealthiest man in human history going into a full meltdown and throwing a tantrum over sensible, obvious questions. It’s remarkable that a man who built a peerless business empire has the emotional maturity of a toddler, although the closer you look at Musk’s businesses, the more it becomes obvious their valuations are not tethered to reality any more than he is.
The problem is that Musk, like the others, moves through life in a bubble surrounded by people who tell him he walks on water, and no one in his orbit would dream of suggesting he’s confused about something, let alone actually mistaken. Yes, Elon! That’s brilliant, Elon! You are a gift to all mankind, Elon!
Elon’s favorite science fiction
When The Economist’s interviewer pressed Musk on his contradictory views about society and equality, Musk told her she should read Banks’ work. Unfortunately either he hasn’t read it either, or somehow managed to make it through those thick volumes without absorbing themes that may as well be emblazoned in neon.
Banks, for the uninitiated, was a Scottish science fiction writer of astonishing talent.
He was best known for writing a series of novels collectively known as The Culture, which portray a far future utopia, a post-scarcity human society. The Culture is run by ultra-benevolent, conscientious AIs called Minds who not only serve as the serene caretakers and shepherds of humanity, but oversee all the automation and logistics that transform society into the prosperous, fair and idyllic commonwealth the novels imagine. Machines, in other words, do all the work people don’t want to do.
When I read The Culture novels, I saw what almost everybody else sees: the work of an author who is uncomfortable with ideological extremes, views a blended socialist model as possible and even preferable in a situation where resources are no longer scarce, and is more than willing to kick the crap out of the society he imagined by showing its worst aspects, cognitive dissonances and potential pitfalls, perhaps as a warning not to take it too seriously. (And as a humble admission that he’s just making this stuff up, so really, don’t get carried away with it.)
All of it is rendered in gorgeous, shimmering prose, populated by characters who are a riot to spend time with, and garnished with dialog that reveals a rare gift for capturing the rhythms and beauty of the English language.
Banks, unfortunately, is no longer around. He died in 2013 after a diagnosis of incurable gall bladder cancer, and the literary world is significantly poorer for that loss.
But he made his political views known in interviews and his personal life in addition to his novels, which is why it’s hard to believe Musk thinks MAGA and Trumpism are atavistic forms of The Culture‘s utopian, fair society.
On the one hand, Musk claims we’re 10 years from the kind of post-scarcity society portrayed in science fiction novels, that we’ll all have endless resources and get to fill our days pursuing our personal interests because money won’t mean anything. It’s an aspirational if unrealistic claim.
On the other hand, as The Economist’s interviewer pointed out, Musk has been relentless in his hoarding of wealth, gives no money to charity, and seems to amuse himself primarily by pouring fuel on the culture war fires.
Culture wars, rage bait and pseudo-andriea (ψευδανδρεία)
The tech CEO and world’s wealthiest man is remarkably committed to playing the heel online.
He constantly wades into arguments regardless of whether he knows anything about the subject matter. He delights in making incendiary comments about topics like Islam and immigration. And he is seemingly incapable of going one day without showing us his inner child.
“I literally challenged Vladimir Putin to one on one physical combat over Ukraine” he wrote on X last year before crediting himself and his Starlink service for the smaller country’s battlefield successes against Russia.
A few months later he bragged that he was the first “[A]merican druid in [D]iablo to clear abattoir of zir and ended that season as best in the USA,” which might be the second-most ridiculous thing a human being has written, surpassed only by his fantasy of the entire world cheering as he defeats Putin mano e mano. (Musk lied about his video game “accomplishments,” unsurprisingly. Gamers, who are not as credulous as Musk imagines, quickly figured out that moneybags paid a pro gamer to log into his account, play as him, and achieve the top ranking so the world could unite in awe at Elon Musk’s magnificent button-pushing skills. 1337, ladies and gentlemen.)
He cleared the Abattoir of Zir! Hand this man a Medal of Freedom, give him the powers that used to belong to congress and let him cook! And if he wants to cosplay as Achilles and Hector Vladimir Putin into surrendering, wonderful! It’ll save us billions in munitions and aid to Ukraine.
As The Economist’s interviewer continued asking follow-ups about Musk’s imaginary technological heaven, the trillionaire was “so agitated by facing real questions that he just resorted to whining about how awful the media can be. He seemed to think that his popularity on X, the platform he owns, was evidence that most people actually love him,” Gizmodo noted:
“A quarter billion people follow me,” Musk said, referring to his X followers, adding “I think a lot more people actually like me than don’t.” The billionaire then said that “a lot more people hate you and the media more than you realize.”
Beddoes acknowledged that many people hate journalists, but Musk kept going, repeating “they hate you, they hate you,” like an emotionally wounded child. Musk, flailing, tried to come up with some way to attack The Economist specifically.
“There are more people that die in Europe from heat deaths than people that die from gun deaths in America. Why aren’t you writing an article about air conditioning?” asked Musk.
“Well, we’ve done several on air conditioning, and we had on our cover last week a whole long piece about…” said Beddoes.
“Very pro-air conditioning,” she responded. “You should read us sometime.”
Peter Thiel plays a Lvl 82 Mage
Musk and Zuckerberg aren’t the only ones.
Peter Thiel occupies a different realm. The man who runs the most comprehensive database on the personal details of Americans, whose company enjoys government contracts worth billions and has surpassed every federal agency as the avatar of Big Brother, not only named his business after a wizard’s magical device from The Lord of the Rings, but has spent the last year or two on a worldwide tour in which he lectures attendees on the anti-Christ.
Drawing on the work of Vladimir Solovyov (the 19th century Russian philosopher, not the Putin propagandist who dresses like the admiral of a galactic war fleet), and combining it with peculiar fringe Catholicism, Thiel likes to tell his audiences that the anti-Christ is inbound, he’ll be a technocrat who speaks often of peace and human rights, and he’ll be helped by evil villains like people advocating for AI safety and environmental stewardship.
Very convenient, that. In Thiel’s telling, the anti-Christ’s minions are precisely the same people who want guardrails on his businesses.
In addition to being an obvious fan of The Lord of the Rings, Thiel lists the aforementioned Stephenson as a major influence along with Atlas Shrugged and Dangerous by Milo Yiannopolous. I’m not even going to comment on that except to say what awful company for Stephenson.
These are windows into the world view of a paranoid man who now controls all of our data and wants us to be assured we’re very safe in the hands of Peter Thiel, who will safeguard our browsing habits and protect us from the anti-Christ and his minions.
Bezos, too, is a fan of Stephenson, Banks et al, and his public statements indicate he saw what he wanted to see in those stories regardless of what their authors intended.
Understanding the books that spark the imagination of men with so much power is, I’d argue, an essential element in understanding how they think, what they want, and where they believe they’re taking us as a species.
Because make no mistake, these men believe they will decide the future of humanity. What happens from here is impossible to predict, but we’d be negligent to dismiss the collective power and influence of the wealthiest individuals in the history of our species, men who can not only outright buy small countries but also own enormously influential media platforms, private spaceflight companies and communications networks. Amazon Web Services, for example, provides almost a third of all cloud services worldwide, while tens of millions use Starlink to access the internet in more than 160 countries.
In their view, the tech oligarchs will determine what happens from here. Not democratically elected politicians, not voters themselves, not people who have devoted their lives to studying how society works.
They don’t feel indebted to the rest of our species and don’t envision giving us a seat at the table. In an attempt to explain why he doesn’t donate money to charity and sits on an incomparable mountain of wealth like an autistic Smaug, Musk says his work itself is so valuable that no amount of charitable giving could match the gifts he already bestows on mankind. That’s also why he courts mates with a charming pick-up line (“Want to have my babies?“) and maintains a compound in Texas where his concubines raise his Little Musks, who have names like Æ 么-010011 Ʃrik Technomancer and ąƬh33ną Sŏmni-4ㆁ4.
Propagating his Muskian DNA, he believes, is the greatest gift he could give to humankind alongside the technology products produced by his companies.
Tech oligarchs think they’re destined to usher us into a glorious new era in which people live on Mars and Europa, our eyes collectively turn to interstellar colonization, the evil forces of evil (anyone skeptical of them) will be defeated along with the anti-Christ, and this society will be idyllic and judicious with everyone standing as “equals” save the immortal oligarchs, who will occupy permanent positions above humanity, their lives extended indefinitely by the medichines, nanobot-supplemented blood and cybernetic enhancements that exist in their favorite novels.
They, of course, will decide how resources are divided, where research money is diverted, which projects take priority. That’s a scary thought when you consider none of them have expressed much compassion for society’s least fortunate, and some of them have long records of hostility toward people at the bottom.
It’s bad enough that they are staunch in their conviction that their wealth makes them best-qualified to determine our collective future. If they can’t distinguish between fiction and reality, that’s very much our problem whether we like it or not.
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Larry, now on his seventh prime minister, abruptly ended the interview when the reporter asked a question about a matter beneath his notice.
LONDON – Larry the Cat granted a rare interview on Monday, telling a CNN reporter he has no thoughts about new Prime Minister Andy Burnham or his dog, Axel.
Larry, as most of the world knows, is the de facto leader of the UK.
With a public approval rating that is the envy of politicians and the royal family alike, the longtime chief mouser at No. 10 Downing St. has outlasted prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. Burnham is the seventh PM to serve under Larry’s watchful eye, executing the feline’s will in governing the UK.
Larry has rarely granted interviews and Monday’s conversation was shut down when the CNN reporter asked a question unworthy of a response by the venerable chief mouser.
New Prime Minister Burnham “allegedly has a dog called Axel,” the reporter told Larry. “How will you be behaving with Axel?”
Larry, who up to that point had been amiably humoring the reporter, turned and left when talk turned to Axel.
President Buddy and Larry during an Americat state visit in 2025.
It is an unwritten rule among the British press that canines are beneath the notice of the busy cat, who already juggles the protection of Downing Street and its premises with shaping national policy, tutoring the newest prime minister in proper British statecraft, keeping his ladyfriend Maisie (a mouser who works close by) happy, and a rigorous napping schedule.
Asking him about petty concerns like dogs is an insult.
[Unfortunately we cannot embed video of the interview, but you can view it on CNN’s site:]
In other news, unnamed government sources say King Charles has been mulling the possibility of bestowing the dukedom he stripped from his disgraced brother Andrew to Larry, making the feline one of the most prominent aristocrats in the country.
“It would be a smart move by the king,” said Timothy Cavendish, a London publisher and royal observer. “Larry’s standing with the people is unparalleled, and rewarding him for his exemplary service to crown and country is the very least the king can do.”
The evil, insidious Canadians have sent their terrible Canadian air south into America as the tip of their invasion force! Because they’re jealous of our freedoms, of course.
It’s mid-July but it’s seriously nasty outside with a permanent beige-gray haze over everything thanks to Canada.
I’ve been sitting here with the AC running, and when I opened the windows last night Bud mrrrrrrp’d in protest and the whole place immediately stunk of funky Canadian ash. I could actually feel the filth as I inhaled and closed the windows again.
This is unacceptable! I know President Donald Trump was joking when he called Canada the 51st state and summoned Justin Trudeau to kiss the ring in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election (and has properly and correctly blamed the Canadians for this unacceptable situation), but it’s time to start seriously considering invading that frozen hellscape, subjugating the Canadians, and getting it through their floppy little heads with their beady little eyes that fires can be doused, and that modern countries have these organizations called fire departments which are called upon when things combust.
I mean, who just sits there and says “Aboot that fire, that’s some smoke, eh?” and allows it to continue burning? Canadians, that’s who!
I’ll stop it there lest people really think I’m some crazed American who actually wants to invade Canada, but seriously, the air quality is awful. I hope this clears quickly.
A photo from yesterday shows evil Canadian smoke hanging over New York. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
And yes, I am aware Canada has remote wilderness that is difficult to access and manage. However, I hope this doesn’t become a regular thing. It’s 2026, not 1850, and human ingenuity has led to the development of some seriously powerful, rugged vehicles and tools that make it possible to manage forests — if the will and the resources are there.
Canadians are suffering too, so it’s not as if they’re happy with the situation. Let’s hope they demand more effort and less talk aboot how difficult it is to manage remote forests.
As this weather image shows, distance does not provide protection when it comes to this sort of thing, as we’re at the mercy of winds and weather patterns. Casa de Buddy is in that tiny corner just north of the city, right smack in the middle of the deep red indicating high risk from air pollution:
SMOKE FUTURECAST Some temporary improvement today, especially north. A resurgence tonight and tomorrow before showers and thunderstorms clean the air for the second half of the weekend. @abc7nypic.twitter.com/42EuBtxSel
She was a sophomore resident assistant on the second floor of my dorm. Short, blonde and witty, with an easy smile and an understated sense of humor. I really liked her.
The problem was, I couldn’t stop making an ass out of myself in front of her. Whether it was jokes that landed with a thud, awkward encounters or my own general self-sabotage, it just never seemed to go well. Yet she still tolerated me.
While I was getting accustomed to living at school that first year, juggling classes, new friends and easing into the responsibilities of adulthood, I had a minor crisis: my dorm had undergone a “refresh” over the summer, and my room must have been one of the last because I discovered the wood stain they’d used on the dressers hadn’t fully dried.
I came home from class one day to find my roommate wearing a pair of my boxers on his head like a hat and a bunch of my friends laughing at me. All my boxers had sticky, stinky wood stain on them. T-shirts too, which proved I wasn’t soiling myself, but my roommate and friends had a field day with it nonetheless.
I removed all my clothes from the drawers, did a cycle of laundry and was dismayed to see the wood stain stuff hadn’t washed out. I don’t remember how many cycles I did, just that after several attempts the clothes appeared to be clean, finally.
So there I was in the laundry room late at night, crouched in front of an open dryer door, trying to determine if I needed to do one more wash. I reached in, grabbed a fist full of clothes and took a deep huff to make sure I couldn’t smell the wood stain any longer. Was I still smelling the stuff, or was it my imagination? I inhaled deeply again, my nose pressed against the fabric.
That’s when I heard someone behind me. I turned, saw Meghan the RA giving me a half wave with a strange expression on her face, and that’s when I realized the fistful of clothes I’d pulled from the dryer, the clothes I’d been deeply huffing a moment ago, were mostly boxers.
So now Meghan didn’t just see me as a joke-bomber and an idiot. I was also a weirdo who liked to sniff his own underwear.
“Hey Meg, it’s, uh — My clothes. The wood stain wasn’t dry in my room, and it got on my stuff so I, uh…” Ah, @$%! it, I thought. There was no way I was going to explain my way out of this.
So I just accepted she would see me as a weirdo, which she most certainly did at that point, and banished any thought of becoming more than friendly with her.
Sadly that is not my most mortifying moment in college, and there were some comically awful low points, but that one felt particularly shameful. No one wants to be known as a pervert who sniffs his own underwear. No one wants to be that guy.
The lesson here, ladies and gentlemen, is to make sure the coast is absolutely clear if you’re sniffing stubborn dirty clothing after a wash. Or maybe the lesson is not to put your clothes in drawers that have been recently treated with wood stain. Or maybe it’s just about not caring what others think of you. Regardless, it’s a misunderstanding I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
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