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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“Well, first of all, I love my cat. I take care of her,” the rapper says of his Thunder Cat.
Some of you may remember Xzibit (pronounced exhibit), if not from his music then his stint as the host of Pimp My Ride, a show in which X and a custom car garage would take people’s junkers and turn them into extravagant moving art pieces with unique and over-the-top features.
One memorable episode, for example, had the crew transform the interior of one car into an aquarium, with fish tanks built into the backs of seats and door panels, while others featured innovations like trunks that folded out to become fully-functional kitchens.
What people may not know is that Xzibit is also a dedicated cat dad, and we mean dedicated. He keeps Thunder Cat on a diet of healthy food, brings her for regular check-ups and IV infusions at the vet due to previous problems with dehydration-related illnesses, and gives her the attention she deserves as a living being.
“She’s seen it all,” he added. “And everybody’s asking how I’ve kept her alive for this long. Well first of all, I love my cat. I take care of her, and I look out.”
The 51-year-old emcee, real name Alvin Nathaniel Joiner, said he was initially surprised when people expressed so much interest in Thunder Cat. He said he constantly gets correspondence from fans who love his cat. In an Instagram video, he held up a shirt with images of Thunder Cat sent to him by a fan.
“And yes,” he said, “I’ve worn this.”
Los Gatos bungles a delivery
The cat used to smuggle drugs into a maximum-security labor camp prison in Russia. Credit: FSIN/Russian government
A cat has been released and is free to go without charges after inmates tried to use the feline to smuggle drugs into their Russian prison, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN in Russian) said.
The unimaginatively-named Penal Colony No. 17 is in Krasnoyarsk, a city of about 1.2 million, and it’s brutal. It’s a maximum-security labor camp mostly for foreign prisoners in a region of Siberia where the average temperature in winter is below zero.
Not the kind of place you ever want to find yourself, which is certainly one reason why the inmates are trying to dull their existence with drugs. Their courier was a black and white cat who caught the eye of a prison officer because it was wearing two home made collars.
Prison security called for a K9 unit to sniff at the white powder found inside the collars, and you know the rest. There’s no word on whether anyone inside or outside the prison has been hit with charges, but thankfully the cat was unharmed, deemed healthy and set free.
As defiant Persian cats refused to budge in negotiations to end the war, President Buddy has made a series of increasingly dramatic threats.
WASHINGTON — When President Buddy launched an offensive against Jazmin and Xerxes, Persian cats belonging to a neighbor, he said he expected the besieged felines to capitulate in “two weeks, maybe three.”
Six weeks later not only have the Persian cats refused to meet the president’s demands, they’ve closed the Passage of Four Moose, a key alley that connects the residential area to the rear of a plaza where dumpsters overflow with with yums discarded by a restaurant, a bagel and breakfast cafe, and a bakery.
Without dumpster food supplementing the meals they get from neighbors, local cats are growing increasingly impatient with the war.
President Buddy dismissed their concerns, saying negotiations were going smoothly shortly before expressing anger that talks with the Persians weren’t moving fast enough.
“My envoys say we’re getting close on a deal,” President Buddy told reporters. “A big, beautiful deal unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s gonna be incredible!”
But just three hours later the president took to his personal social media platform, Meow Social, to issue a direct threat to the felines who continued to defy him.
“If they don’t open the alley, we’re gonna blast them to oblivion!” he wrote. “We’re gonna send them back to the stone ages with the — and by the way, my weapons are very powerful. Everyone says it. Open the alley you crazy bastards!”
The president separately posted an AI generated image of himself “as a physician who just happens to be wearing robes” during his war of words with Leo, an Italian lion and spiritual leader.
Previously, President Buddy had threatened to “destroy,” “obliterate,” “armageddonize,” “vaporize” and “unleash fury the likes of which they’ve never seen” on five different occasions, setting deadlines only to pull back at the last minute because, he said, meows between the parties were more favorable.
A spokescat for the Persians said negotiations were “nowhere close to reaching a resolution” and warned they would keep the alley closed until President Buddy recalled his forces. They also expressed frustration, saying that six weeks into the conflict, they still weren’t sure what the president wants or seeks to accomplish.
“He just rambles about ‘tremendous words’ and ‘powerful numbers,”” one source close to Xerxes and Jazmin meowed. “We were able to get his attention by offering access to the coveted McDonald’s trash bins four blocks away because we know he loves Big Macs, but he insisted we give him yellow cake. We don’t have any cake.”
Despite the Persians’ insistence on a withdrawal, Buddesian forces continued to surround the alley, with the aircat carrier USS Tremendous patrolling one end.
Sailors aboard the USS Tremendous, which was deployed to the Alley of Four Moose after Xerxes and Jazmin closed it.
Although President Buddy faces growing concern about the standoff with cats in his own party, he told felines at a Friday rally that a favorable resolution was imminent.
“I wrote the Deal of the Art,” the president told the crowd. “Nobody negotiates like I do. I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like – and friends of mine that are English professors – they say it’s the most brilliant thing they’ve ever seen. So the Persians – and by the way, Tuesday will be litter box day, and food bowl day. They’ll be gone, obliterated in one day. So those are very powerful numbers, and we’re gonna attack the Siamese next.”
Who better to take charge in the UK government’s seat of power than the cat who has lived there for 15 years?
Larry the Cat, the UK’s most magnanimous and beloved feline, has shared his home with six prime ministers since he was brought on to No. 10 Downing St. in 2011.
After elections last week diminished current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s party and grip on power, it seems only a matter of time before a seventh prime minister applies to share Larry’s home.
But if doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping for different results is the definition of insanity, as the famous saying has it, then it won’t be long before Larry outlasts his seventh and eighth prime ministers.
There’s a simple solution: roll out the big chair for Larry. He already naps in it.
As the UK’s equivalent of the White House, No. 10 is both the residence and office of the country’s political leader, and in 2011 the rodent problem at Downing Street was so out of control that then-Prime Minister David Cameron famously threw a fork at a mouse which appeared during a state dinner.
Enter Larry. A prominent local rescue in London, Battersea Dogs and Cats, recommended the former stray for his hunting skills, and Larry arrived at Downing Street like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
He has outlasted Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak.
Larry the Cat. Credit: 10 Downing St.
With the prime ministership feeling like a revolving door at times, Larry’s stoic presence has provided the kind of stability the late Queen Elizabeth II would be proud of. He’s become a national treasure, with approval numbers with the public that human politicians would kill for.
Now the sixth human Larry has generously allowed to occupy No. 10, Keir Starmer, is on the ropes. While we don’t pretend to be experts on the procedures, deal-making and Machiavellian maneuvering that allows UK politicians to wrangle coalitions into prime ministerships, the headlines indicate Starmer is on his way out even as he tries to dig in his heels.
He’s lost a significant amount of support since a major election defeat, and while he remains defiant, his own party members have begun to urge him to step down. It’s a familiar pattern to anyone who has observed politicians come to grips with the end as everyone around them braces for change.
Larry celebrated his 19th birthday just a few months ago but has shown no signs of slowing down.
Here at PITB, Little Buddy and I feel that instead of handing the government to another incapable human, it’s long past time to make Larry the official prime minister.
Larry is already the UK’s de facto leader, well-versed in statecraft from more than 15 years of napping in the vicinity of the UK’s top decision-makers. He’s not intimidated by other politicians, and while some (like former US President Barack Obama) have earned his favor, he’s famously snubbed others.
He’s been the de facto power within No. 10 for quite some time, his leadership skills are beyond question, and the kids love him!
Pain In The Bud 
