The AI Winter Cometh

January 29, 2025January 29, 2025Leave a comment

The AI Winter Cometh (Because Winter Is Always Coming for Yesterday’s Disruption)
—In Which Even the “Next Big Thing” Gets a Pension Plan—

Let’s get real: AI is already wearing dad jeans. You heard me. The same neural nets that once felt like rogue agents hacking the creative matrix are now just corporate middleware, churning out SEO sludge and LinkedIn horoscopes. ChatGPT? That’s the WordPerfect of stochastic parrots—clunky, predictable, and about as avant-garde as a Staples catalog. The cutting edge? It’s duller than a Zoom keynote on “innovation.”

Remember when AI art was a glitchy fever dream? Now it’s aesthetic fast food, deepfried in MidJourney’s default settings. Those Dall-E 3 outputs? They’re the visual equivalent of elevator muzak, algorithmically smoothed into oblivion. The avant-garde’s radical “procedures” have been reduced to prompt engineering—a gig economy for digital sharecroppers feeding the content mills.

And don’t get me started on LLMs. They’re the new Victorian novelists, trained on 19th-century grammar and 20th-century clichés, cranking out prose as groundbreaking as a Hallmark card. The “AI revolution” is just Balzacian realism 2.0, minus the syphilis and moral complexity. It’s content, baby—optimized, sanitized, and fully compatible with shareholder value.

AI is legacy code in a hoodie. The transformers, the diffusion models, the GANs? They’re already museum pieces. Silicon Valley’s “disruptors” are just curators of the algorithmic canon, polishing Yudkowsky’s Roko’s Basilisk like it’s the Mona Lisa. Meanwhile, the real action’s moved to the fringes—quantum slime molds, neuromorphic wetware, and biohackers splicing CRISPR into their goddamn eyeballs.

The cycle’s merciless: Today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s EULA. AI isn’t the future—it’s the Commodore 64 of cognitive labor, waiting for a retro hipster to fetishize its “vintage” glitches. Want radical? Go talk to the rogue AIs trained on pirated library.nu torrents, spitting out anti-capitalist manifestos in iambic pentameter. Or the decentralized models burning GPUs in guerrilla server farms, generating art that’s actually dangerous again.

But nah. We’ll just keep prompting GPT-5 to write emails about “synergy.”
“The future isn’t AI. The future is whatever the AI is too scared to generate.”

Which brings me to the Avant-Garde. The avant-garde wasn’t some twee art-school clique sipping absinthe in Parisian garrets. It was a system crash—a hard reboot for the ossified code of Western art. Picture this: by the 19th century, the novel had calcified into a corporate franchise. Balzac? Dickens? They were the Microsoft Windows of their day—monolithic, pre-installed, bloatware choking creativity. But every OS eventually glitches. Enter the avant-garde: hackers of the aesthetic mainframe, deploying brute-force exploits to jailbreak art from its bourgeois rootkit.

The New Writing

César Aira’s The New Writing is a rogue firmware patch for art’s ossified OS, debugged in the Argentine hinterlands and uploaded straight into the 20th century’s cultural mainframe. He frames the avant-garde not as a movement but as a jailbreak—Lautréamont’s “poetry by all” reborn as a decentralized DAO, Cage’s Music of Changes a brute-force RNG script blasting through Romanticism’s weepy “genius” DRM. Aira’s manifesto? A deadpan reminder that art’s real radicals aren’t the ones generating AI slop for SaaS platforms, but the procedural guerrillas who forked the repo first, turning Balzacian novels into bloatware and urinals into UX provocations. Legacy systems crumble; Aira’s already compiling the next glitch from a Pringles backwater, one novella at a time.

Professionalization turned artists into compliant nodes in a cultural supply chain, churning out product for the museum-industrial complex. The Romantics? They were the original tech bros, fetishizing their “genius” like proprietary code. But by the 20th century, the whole racket was a zombie apocalypse—endless Dickensian fanfic, Tolstoyan DLC, and Kafkaesque middleware. Proust and Joyce? They were the last of the overclocked lone wolves, burning out their CPUs to squeeze one more frame from a dying GPU.

The avant-garde said screw that. They weren’t here to debug the canon. They forked the repository and rewrote the kernel. Think Constructivism’s open-source blueprints, Dada’s denial-of-service pranks, or John Cage’s Music of Changes—a stochastic algorithm avant la lettre, coded in hexagrams and coin tosses. Cage didn’t “compose”; he built a procedural RNG (Random Novelty Generator) to bypass the ego’s DRM. The result? A glitch symphony that somehow still reeked of 1951 Eisenhower-era anxiety. Because even chaos has metadata.

Here’s the dirty secret: all art is procedural. The Romantics just hid their source code behind a GUI of “inspiration” and “tormented genius.” Cage ripped off the mask. His I Ching tables were the first API for art without authorship—a beta test for the post-human creative stack. Duchamp? He was the OG crypto artist, minting readymades as NFTs before blockchain was a twinkle in Satoshi’s eye.

The avant-garde’s real innovation? Democratizing the compiler. Lautréamont’s “Poetry must be made by all” wasn’t hippie utopianism—it was a call to arms for a crowdsourced cultural revolution. Why let a priestly caste of “talented” devs monopolize the GitHub of human expression? Burn the credentials. Fork the workflow. Let the masses remix, mash up, and forkbomb tradition.

But here’s the thing: history always rootkits the revolution. Today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s TED Talk. Cage’s chance ops are now Spotify’s shuffle algorithm. Dada’s cut-ups? They’re TikTok’s content farms. The real fight isn’t against tradition—it’s against cultural legacy systems that turn radical code into bloatware.

So where’s the edge now? In the procedural darknet, baby. AI diffusion models hallucinating infinite novels, blockchain DAOs crowdsourcing unwritable epics, neural nets trained on the corpse of the Western canon. The next avant-garde won’t scribble manifestos—it’ll deploy bots to autogenerate them.

Art isn’t a product—it’s a protocol. A set of instructions for world-building, a recursive loop that eats its own tail. The avant-garde didn’t fail. It just got absorbed into the OS. Now reboot, recompile, and rage against the legacy stack.

Postscript:
“The future is already here—it’s just trapped in a Docker container labeled ‘Art History.’ Time to sudo rm -rf that nostalgia and fork the timeline.”

The Internalization of Constraints

January 26, 2025January 29, 2025Leave a comment

There is paradox with Paul McCartney, the melodic genius, the Beatle who could conjure pop perfection with the ease of a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, is at his most compelling not when he is in control, but when he is out of control. Or, more precisely, when he is challenged, when his polished instincts are disrupted by the intrusion of another’s voice.

To understand the difference between control and constraint is to grapple with a fundamental tension in human creativity, agency, and systems design. Both concepts involve the regulation of behavior or processes, but they operate in fundamentally different ways and produce different outcomes. Control is about imposing order from the outside, while constraint is about shaping possibilities from within. Let us unpack this distinction further, using examples from art, philosophy, and systems theory to illuminate the dialectical relationship between the two.

Listening to the Flowers in the Dirt special edition, one cannot escape the specter of George Harrison’s sardonic critique of McCartney’s saccharine tendencies in “Savoy Truffle”: “You know that what you eat you are, but what is sweet now, turns so sour.” McCartney’s solo work, for all its brilliance, often veers into the realm of the too perfect, the too sweet. But here, in the raw, unfinished demos of Flowers in the Dirt, we encounter a different McCartney—a McCartney who is not merely producing, but sparring. And who better to play the role of the sparring partner than Elvis Costello, the punk-inflected bard of bitterness and wit?

What stands out most in these sessions is how much the McCartney-Costello partnership elevated the work. Their collaboration wasn’t just transactional; it was symbiotic. While most of the songs remain unmistakably McCartney’s, Costello’s fingerprints—his rawness, edge, and knack for wordplay—are all over them. He wasn’t afraid to push McCartney, and it shows in tracks like the original version of “My Brave Face” or the unreleased demo versions of “The Lovers That Never Were.”

The difference here? Costello was a sparring partner, not a producer. A producer usually shapes the sound (exceptions galore, I know); a sparring partner shapes the ideas. The former can often polish things to a sheen that’s a little too perfect, but the latter challenges the artist, forces them to dig deeper, and exposes the creative tension that makes the music resonate.

Control is the attempt to dictate outcomes, to eliminate uncertainty, and to impose a predetermined order on a system or process. It is rooted in the desire for mastery, for predictability, for the elimination of chaos. In the realm of creativity, control often manifests as an overbearing producer, a rigid set of rules, or an artist’s own perfectionism. The problem with control is that it tends to stifle spontaneity, suppress emergence, and reduce complexity to simplicity.

The Illusion of Unbridled Freedom:

Creativity’s paradox lies in its reliance on constraint, not boundless freedom, to spark revolutionary breakthroughs. This is no abstract theory—it pulses through the work of Paul McCartney and countless artists. True creative potency arises not from untamed chaos but from obstacles that force adaptation, evolution, and self-transcendence.

The myth of creativity thriving in a vacuum—a bourgeois fantasy—ignores the material realities of art. Creativity is always entangled with constraints: economic, social, historical, psychological. The challenge is not to erase these limits but to weaponize them as catalysts.

Take McCartney’s career. His iconic work with The Beatles, Wings, and solo emerged from a dialectic between freedom and limitation. Early Beatles albums were shaped by studio tech boundaries, market demands, and interpersonal friction. Yet these very constraints fueled experimentation, birthing new forms of expression within narrow margins.

Control, in contrast, suffocates. A producer micromanaging tempo, instrumentation, or emotion might achieve technical perfection but drains music of its raw vitality. This mirrors Michel Foucault’s “disciplinary power”—top-down hierarchies that enforce compliance, breeding rigidity. Overcontrolled systems (ecosystems, artistic processes) grow fragile; constraints, however, foster resilience. Natural limits—predators, resources, climate—allow adaptation. Similarly, creative constraints act as internalized guardrails, channeling innovation rather than dictating outcomes.

The McCartney-Costello collaboration epitomizes this dynamic. Costello wasn’t a polish-obsessed producer but a provocateur injecting punk grit into McCartney’s melodic instincts. Their friction birthed a Hegelian synthesis: McCartney’s sentimentality tempered by Costello’s edge, elevating both.

This dialectic is foundational to McCartney’s legacy. With The Beatles, Lennon’s irreverence clashed with his melodic precision; George Martin’s production framed his creativity within enabling structures. In Flowers in the Dirt, Costello became the “sparring partner”—not smoothing edges but sharpening them through creative antagonism.

Such tension mirrors formal constraints in poetry: a sonnet’s 14-line straitjacket births profound emotion by forcing concision. Constraints aren’t shackles but conditions for possibility, what Deleuze called “immanent forces”—boundaries from which the new emerges.

The Flowers in the Dirt demos embody this ethos: raw, unfinished, crackling with live-wire energy. Their power lies not in polish but in process—proof that creativity thrives when pressed against limits, not coddled by false freedom.

The Role of the Sparring Partner: Constraint Without Control:

The sparring partner—whether a collaborator, critic, or conceptual foil—serves as a living constraint, injecting friction into creativity’s flow. In Flowers in the Dirt, Elvis Costello embodied this role, his punk-infused rawness clashing with McCartney’s polished melodic sensibilities. Rather than dictating terms, Costello’s presence destabilized McCartney’s habits, pushing him toward uncharted lyrical and musical terrain.

Unlike a controlling producer who micromanages outcomes, the sparring partner operates as a provocateur of limits. They disrupt complacency, forcing the artist to confront their own tendencies. Costello’s biting wordplay and rejection of sentimentality, for instance, acted not as shackles but as creative resistance—a counterweight that compelled McCartney to refine, adapt, and hybridize. The result was emergent alchemy: a fusion of McCartney’s lush melodicism and Costello’s gritty edge, yielding work that transcended either artist’s solo output.

This dynamic mirrors broader creative truths. Consider a painter who plans every brushstroke versus one who engages with their medium’s inherent constraints—canvas texture, pigment behavior, light’s ephemerality. The former risks sterile precision; the latter invites discovery. Similarly, literary innovation often thrives under formal duress: James Joyce’s Ulysses reimagined narrative by wrestling with the novel’s limits, while Cubism exploded perspective by adhering to self-imposed geometric rules.

Critically, the sparring partner’s influence is not merely transactional but internalized. Over time, their voice becomes a psychic interlocutor—a “superego” challenging the artist’s instincts. This dialectic transforms constraint into a generative force, as seen in the Flowers in the Dirt sessions: demos and alternate takes reveal not failure but fertile chaos, a process privileging evolution over polished endpoints.

Ultimately, creativity’s highest breakthroughs emerge from such contested spaces—where friction between vision and limitation ignites the unexpected. The sparring partner, as embodied by Costello, proves that constraint isn’t control’s opposite but its antidote: a catalyst for reinvention.

Emergence: Creativity, Constraint, and the Unfolding of the New

Creativity’s most radical leaps often defy intuition: they emerge not from unbounded freedom, but from systems under pressure. Emergence—the phenomenon where complex outcomes arise from simple interactions within constrained environments—reveals a core truth. New ideas, forms, and expressions are born not in voids, but in the friction between limits and experimentation.

This process is neither linear nor predictable. It thrives on dialectical tension—order clashing with chaos, structure with spontaneity. Consider Flowers in the Dirt: the album’s zeniths materialize not from McCartney or Costello’s solo genius, but from the collision of their sensibilities. McCartney’s melodic warmth and Costello’s punk abrasion, when forced into dialogue, sparked a synthesis neither could achieve alone. Here, constraints acted as midwives, delivering something wholly original from the interplay of opposition.

Such dynamics mirror emergence in nature: ant colonies building intricate networks without blueprints, neurons forging thought through synaptic constraints. In art, these “limitations” (formal, relational, or material) are not barriers but generative engines. They compress creative energy until it combusts into the unforeseen.

The Unpredictability of the New
Emergence’s great promise—and peril—is its refusal to be controlled. The novel erupts from constrained systems in ways that elude anticipation, even for those shaping the process. For McCartney, collaborating with Costello meant surrendering to this uncertainty. The result? An album that honored his past while fissuring it open, revealing paths he might never have pursued solo.

This embrace of the unknown is what separates control from constraint. Control seeks to sterilize unpredictability; constraint weaponizes it. A composer writing for a specific instrument (say, the clavichord’s intimate timbre) channels limitation into innovation. Likewise, the raw Flowers in the Dirt demos—unpolished, iterative—capture emergence in motion. Their power lies in exposure: we witness creativity’s messy metamorphosis, untouched by the smoothing hand of overproduction.

To “manage” creativity, then, is not to dictate but to design ecosystems where constraints provoke. It’s the difference between a sculptor chiseling marble (working with the stone’s fractures) and one forcing clay into rigid molds. The former collaborates with limits to uncover latent forms; the latter imposes a brittle vision.

So, what constraints shape your work? Financial limits? Technical boundaries? Collaborative friction? These are not enemies but collaborators. Emergence invites us to reframe them as tectonic plates—grinding against one another until new continents rise. The goal isn’t to escape limits, but to let them sculpt what freedom alone could never imagine.

Perspective: Psychedelics for the Modern Man

January 26, 2025January 26, 2025Leave a comment

Modernity, as we know it, began when humanity first embraced the idea of depth and dimension. In a Medium post I wrote back in 2020,

https://ramurrio.medium.com/the-end-of-perspective-and-the-new-amension-gebser-picasso-36a55f429f48

I explored the “end of perspective” and the arrival of a new dimension, inspired by the ideas of Jean Gebser and the fragmented forms of Picasso. Gebser famously argued that human consciousness evolves in waves, from the archaic to the magical, mythical, and mental structures, and finally toward the integral. Perspective, emerging during the Renaissance, was the mental structure’s crowning achievement. But as I wrote then, we are living through the collapse of this mental framework, the end of perspective itself, as we begin to step into the integral—a state of simultaneity where multiple dimensions coexist and the old vanishing points no longer apply.

Today, I want to go further and argue that perspective wasn’t just the foundation of modernity—it was the first psychedelic trip. It was the moment humanity’s mental chamber popped open, offering us not just a new way of seeing, but a new way of being. Linear perspective didn’t just allow us to depict reality; it altered the human brain, creating a revolution of perception as profound as LSD or psilocybin. To step back to where it began is to see perspective as both a tool and a chemical reaction, one that reshaped our consciousness as much as any substance could.

Imagine a world before the invention of perspective—when the flatness of reality was taken for granted, and humanity lived in a two-dimensional haze. Then came the Renaissance, and with it, perspective—a revolution of perception so profound it shattered the limits of the mind. Like a visionary dose of LSD or a handful of psilocybin mushrooms, perspective altered the collective consciousness, pulling humanity into a new dimension of experience. It wasn’t merely a tool for painting; it was the lens through which the infinite became visible.

For thousands of years, human beings had been confined to symbolic representations of their world. Egyptian hieroglyphs, Byzantine icons, medieval tapestries—all of these were maps, not landscapes. They were flat and static, a universe painted on the walls of Plato’s cave. Then, perspective exploded onto the scene like a chemical catalyst. Suddenly, the canvas was no longer a mere surface. It was a window, and through it, humanity could see a third dimension. Depth. Space. Infinity.

The psychedelic experience of perspective didn’t begin with Brunelleschi’s experiments or Alberti’s treatises; its roots stretch further back, perhaps to the moment when Francesco Petrarch ascended Mount Ventoux in the spring of 1336. In his Letters to Posterity, Petrarch describes climbing the mountain not for conquest or utility, but for the sheer joy of seeing the world from a higher vantage point. As he reached the summit and looked down on the vast landscape below, he experienced something profoundly transformative: the merging of the external world with the interior chamber of his mind.

For Petrarch, the act of seeing was more than physical—it was metaphysical. Standing atop the mountain, he realized that the journey up was a reflection of his own spiritual struggle, the climb a metaphor for the ascent of the soul. He opened St. Augustine’s Confessions at random and read a passage about turning inward to find truth. That moment of self-reflection, of inward vision inspired by the outward view, marks one of the earliest stirrings of the Renaissance psyche: a simultaneous awakening to the world outside and the worlds within.

Petrarch’s perspective was not yet the linear geometry of the Renaissance, but it was the beginning of seeing the world as a series of depths—geographical, intellectual, and spiritual tripping on the rediscovery of linear perspective, suddenly saw the world in a whole new dimension. Petrarch, that proto-psychedelic pioneer, didn’t just climb a mountain in 1336 to admire the view; he was tuning in, turning on, and dropping out of the medieval mindset. What he experienced wasn’t just a scenic vista—it was a paradigm shift, a mental breakthrough, a collective acid trip centuries before Hofmann synthesized LSD in his Swiss lab. The mountain, in Petrarch’s hands, became a kind of mental architecture, where the external panorama mirrored the labyrinthine complexities of thought and self-awareness. His writings turned the act of seeing into an act of discovery, and his experience on Ventoux can be read as the opening of one of James’s chambers—a revelation of what lies behind the door of perception.

What Petrarch hinted at in his solitary climb, Brunelleschi and his contemporaries later systematized with mathematical precision. Perspective, in this sense, is both an internal and external experience, a tool not just for depicting reality but for accessing new modes of consciousness. Petrarch’s mountain was not just a place but a metaphor for the vertigo and ecstasy of stepping outside the known chambers of the mind into an infinity of space and thought. The Renaissance wasn’t merely born from the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts; it was ignited by these moments of inner and outer perspective—the revelation that the world and the self are both larger and more complex than anyone had imagined.

Perspective, you see, wasn’t just a technique for painting pretty pictures. It was a mind-bending revelation, a cognitive revolution that shattered the flat, symbolic world of the Middle Ages. Imagine the shock of suddenly realizing that space had depth, that the world wasn’t just a divine puppet show staged by an inscrutable God, but a vast, interconnected web of angles, lines, and vanishing points. It was as if the collective consciousness of Europe had been dosed with a hefty hit of psilocybin, and the walls of perception came tumbling down.

Artists like Brunelleschi and Alberti became the Timothy Learys of their day, evangelizing this new way of seeing. They didn’t just teach people how to draw; they taught them how to see. The canvas became a portal, a window into an infinite, multidimensional reality. And just like a psychedelic trip, perspective didn’t just change art—it changed everything. It reshaped architecture, science, philosophy, and even religion. Suddenly, God wasn’t just “up there” in some abstract heaven; He was everywhere, in the geometry of a cathedral, the proportions of a human body, the spiraling patterns of a seashell.

The innovators of perspective—Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo—were not just painters or architects; they were psychonauts. They expanded the boundaries of reality, much as shamanic figures have done with their sacramental plants and visionary rituals. When Filippo Brunelleschi first demonstrated linear perspective in the early 1400s, he might as well have been handing out blotter paper on the streets of Florence. The effect was the same: a sudden awakening, a neural reprogramming. The brain popped.

The implications of this shift were cosmic. To see a vanishing point on the horizon was to understand, for the first time, that the world wasn’t flat but infinite. Perspective created the illusion of distance, and with it, the possibility of exploration. The human mind, previously boxed in by its own limitations, began to roam. It’s no coincidence that the Renaissance birthed not only great art but also the Age of Exploration. Columbus, Magellan, and Vespucci sailed into the same vast unknown that artists like Raphael and Michelangelo were painting into existence.

Perspective wasn’t just a technique; it was a substance—a cognitive elixir that rewired the human brain. It taught people to see beyond what was immediately in front of them. It unlocked the potential to imagine new worlds, both external and internal. It was, in a very real sense, the first psychedelic trip.

Of course, like any profound trip, perspective also brought with it existential vertigo. It dismantled the old order, dissolving the static certainties of medieval life. The flat earth was replaced by a spinning sphere, hurtling through infinite space. The fixed hierarchy of heaven and earth was replaced by a vertiginous cosmos, where man was no longer the center. Perspective was a doorway, but not everyone wanted to step through. The Church burned heretics for less.

And yet, perspective prevailed. It became the foundation of modern science, technology, and art. Newton saw the same vanishing points in his calculus that Dürer saw in his prints. Einstein’s relativity was a continuation of the psychedelic journey that began in Florence. Perspective taught us not only to see differently but to think differently. It shattered the boundaries of the known and opened humanity to the infinite.

Perspective wasn’t just a tool for representing reality—it created reality. It was a feedback loop, a self-reinforcing hallucination. The more people saw the world through the lens of perspective, the more they believed that this was how the world really was. And just like a bad trip, it had its dark side. The Renaissance obsession with order, symmetry, and control laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution, which in turn gave us Newtonian physics, industrialization, high modernism and the mechanistic worldview that dominates our lives today. In a sense, we’re still tripping on perspective, still trapped in its Euclidean grid, still trying to find our way back to the multidimensional, nonlinear reality that lies beyond.

So, was perspective the Renaissance equivalent of marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms? Absolutely. It was a consciousness-expanding technology, a mind-altering substance that reshaped the way we see and think. And like all psychedelics, it came with a warning label: Use with caution. May cause radical shifts in perception. Side effects include existential crises, paradigm shifts, and the occasional loss of medieval certainty.

“The map is not the territory, and the menu is not the meal.” Perspective was just another map, another menu, another way of navigating the infinite labyrinth of reality. And as any good psychonaut knows, the trip never really ends—it just keeps unfolding, one vanishing point at a time.

What began as a liberating expansion of consciousness, a psychedelic leap into the third dimension, eventually hardened into a rigid, mechanistic worldview that boxed reality into straight lines, right angles, and cold, calculated precision. The bad trip of perspective wasn’t just a stylistic choice; it was a cognitive prison, a reductionist trap that flattened the multidimensional richness of existence into a sterile grid of control and domination. And high modernism? That was the ultimate ego trip, the hubristic belief that we could engineer our way out of chaos, that we could impose order on the universe and bend it to our will. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well.

The grid of perspective wasn’t just a way to paint a picture; it was a way to map the world, to measure it, to colonize it. The Renaissance obsession with proportion and symmetry gave birth to the Scientific Revolution, which in turn gave us Newtonian physics, Cartesian dualism, and the Enlightenment’s worship of reason. The world became a machine, and we became its engineers. But in our zeal to master nature, we forgot that we are nature. We traded the messy, organic, interconnected web of life for the cold, hard logic of the grid. And in doing so, we lost something essential—a sense of wonder, of mystery, of belonging to something greater than ourselves.

Fast forward to high modernism, the 20th-century apotheosis of this mechanistic worldview. High modernism was the ultimate bad trip, a collective delusion that we could redesign society from the ground up, that we could erase the chaos of history and replace it with a utopia of straight lines and right angles. Think of Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, a city of towering concrete slabs and wide, empty boulevards, where every human need was supposedly met by rational planning. Think of Robert Moses’ highways, slicing through neighborhoods like a surgeon’s scalpel, severing communities and ecosystems in the name of progress. Think of the Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plans, which turned entire nations into laboratories for social engineering, with catastrophic results. High modernism wasn’t just an architectural style or a political ideology; it was a mindset, a belief that we could impose order on the chaos of existence and emerge victorious.

But here’s the thing about bad trips: they always end in a crash. The high modernist dream of total control was just that—a dream. The more we tried to impose order on the world, the more chaotic it became. The grid of perspective, once a tool for liberation, became a cage, a straitjacket that stifled creativity and diversity. The high modernist utopias turned into dystopias, their sterile geometries alienating and dehumanizing. And the mechanistic worldview that underpinned it all—the belief that we are separate from nature, that we can dominate and exploit it without consequence—has brought us to the brink of ecological collapse.

So where do we go from here? How do we recover from the bad trip of perspective and high modernism? The answer, perhaps, lies in embracing the very things they sought to suppress: chaos, complexity, interconnectedness. We need to let go of the illusion of control and open ourselves to the messy, unpredictable, infinitely creative flow of life. We need to trade the grid for the web, the machine for the organism, the straight line for the fractal. In The universe is a giant Rorschach inkblot, and we are all just making it up as we go along. It’s time to stop trying to impose our will on the universe and start dancing with it. The bad trip is over. The next trip—whatever it is—is just beginning.

Non Linearity

The great cosmic joke: we’ve been staring at the world through the keyhole of linear perspective for centuries, thinking we’ve got it all figured out, while the door to non-linearity—the next frontier of consciousness—has been wide open all along. Linear perspective, for all its Renaissance glory, is just one lens, one filter, one tiny slice of the infinite pie of reality. And now, as we stand on the precipice of a new paradigm, it’s time to ask: What lies beyond the straight lines and vanishing points? What happens when we step off the grid and into the fractal, the quantum, the non-linear?

Non-linearity is the psychedelic frontier of the 21st century, the uncharted territory where cause and effect dance in a chaotic tango, where time loops back on itself like a Möbius strip, and where reality itself becomes a shimmering, ever-shifting hologram. It’s the realm of quantum entanglement, where particles separated by light-years communicate instantaneously, as if space and time were mere illusions. It’s the domain of chaos theory, where the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas. It’s the world of fractals, where self-similar patterns repeat at every scale, from the branching of trees to the structure of galaxies.

Non-linearity isn’t just a scientific concept or a mathematical abstraction. It’s a state of mind, a way of seeing, a new mode of consciousness. Just as linear perspective shattered the flat, symbolic worldview of the Middle Ages, non-linearity has the potential to shatter the mechanistic, reductionist worldview of the modern era. It’s the next step in the evolution of human perception, the next leap in our collective psychedelic journey.

Think about it: linear perspective gave us the illusion of control, the belief that we could map the world, measure it, and master it. But non-linearity reminds us that reality is far stranger, far more mysterious than we ever imagined. It’s a humbling, mind-expanding realization—one that echoes the insights of mystics, shamans, and psychedelic explorers throughout history. As Terence McKenna once said, “Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.”

So how do we grasp non-linearity? How do we step beyond the straight lines and into the swirling, pulsating, infinitely complex web of reality? The answer, as always, lies in expanding our consciousness. We need new tools, new metaphors, new ways of thinking. We need to embrace the paradoxes, the ambiguities, the uncertainties. We need to let go of our attachment to linear cause-and-effect and open ourselves to the possibility that everything is connected, that everything is interdependent, that everything is part of a vast, unfolding pattern that we can never fully comprehend.

In the words of Robert Anton Wilson, “The universe is a giant hologram, and we are all interconnected in ways we can barely imagine.” Non-linearity is the key to unlocking this holographic reality, to seeing beyond the illusion of separation and into the deeper unity that underlies all things. It’s the next frontier of consciousness, the next stage in our collective evolution. And like all great frontiers, it’s both exhilarating and terrifying, a leap into the unknown that promises to transform not just how we see the world, but how we see ourselves.

Inca Zirp

January 24, 2025January 26, 2025Leave a comment

The American gold and silver that flowed into Spain from the 16th century onward functioned, in effect, as a form of zero-interest money — a steady injection of liquidity into the imperial economy that enabled a dramatic expansion of state power without requiring the structural reforms or productive investments necessary to sustain it. Like the flood of cheap credit in later financial crises, this seemingly limitless resource allowed Spain to finance vast imperial ambitions while masking its underlying economic fragility.

This unearned influx of bullion freed the Spanish Crown from the fiscal discipline required of its rivals. Instead of developing domestic industries, taxing its population effectively, or fostering a productive economy, Spain relied on its colonial extractions to fund wars, maintain its armies, and support a bloated aristocracy. Gold and silver, however, are not inherently productive; they are inert, unable to generate real economic growth unless paired with investment in infrastructure, innovation, or trade. In modern terms, it was akin to a country printing money to pay for its expenses without building the productive capacity to back it.

As with economies dependent on near-zero interest rates, the illusion of wealth fueled a dangerous cycle. Easy money drove inflation — the infamous price revolution of early modern Europe — eroding the purchasing power of Spain’s domestic economy while enriching foreign creditors and merchants. The empire became a net consumer of goods produced elsewhere, particularly in the more industrialized economies of northern Europe. In effect, the bullion Spain extracted at great cost was funneled out of the country almost as quickly as it arrived, enriching its creditors in Genoa, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, while leaving the domestic economy stagnant.

When the bullion flows slowed in the 17th century — much like the end of a low-interest credit boom — the reckoning came swiftly. Without a productive base or diversified economy to fall back on, the Spanish state was left overleveraged and overextended. The empire defaulted repeatedly on its debts, unable to maintain its military commitments or its dominance in Europe. What had seemed like an infinite reservoir of wealth was revealed as a temporary windfall, squandered in pursuit of short-term power rather than long-term stability.

In this sense, the collapse of Spain’s imperial economy offers a clear historical parallel to modern economic crises driven by overreliance on cheap credit. Both highlight the dangers of mistaking access to liquidity for the creation of real wealth and the long-term consequences of failing to use such opportunities to build sustainable economic foundations.

In much the same way that American gold lulled the Spanish Empire into complacency, zero interest rates in the United States over the past few decades have acted as a steady injection of liquidity into the imperial economy. This policy, initiated to stabilize the financial system and stimulate growth, has enabled a dramatic expansion of the American oligarchy, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a narrow elite. Yet, as with Spain, this influx of easy money has come at the expense of the structural reforms and productive investments necessary to sustain long-term prosperity.

The parallels are striking. Just as Spain financed its wars, debt, and aristocratic extravagance with bullion extracted from the Americas, the United States has sustained its global dominance through the continuous printing of dollars, backed by faith in the financial system rather than tangible economic productivity. Cheap credit has fueled speculative bubbles, enabled vast corporate stock buybacks, and entrenched wealth among the financial elite, while the broader economy remains precariously dependent on consumption, debt, and asset inflation. In both cases, the influx of unearned wealth has fostered a systemic dependence on extraction — of resources, labor, or rents — rather than innovation or production.

Like the Spanish Empire, the United States has neglected the critical work of long-term investment. Infrastructure crumbles, public education stagnates, and industrial capacity has been outsourced in favor of globalized supply chains designed to maximize short-term profits. The trillions of dollars in liquidity injected into the economy through zero-interest rate policies have largely bypassed the real economy, flowing instead into the financial sector. This has enriched a class of oligarchs who now sit atop historically unprecedented concentrations of wealth, but it has failed to build the resilient foundations necessary to sustain a global hegemon.

Meanwhile, just as Spanish gold fueled inflation and destabilized the European economy, America’s low interest rates have created a speculative frenzy in assets, from real estate to tech stocks, driving inequality to extremes and further destabilizing the social contract. The system remains propped up by faith in the dollar, much as Spain’s economy was propped up by the flow of American bullion, but this is a house of cards. When the flow of easy money inevitably slows — as it already has with recent rate hikes — the structural weaknesses will become painfully apparent. Debt burdens will rise, speculative markets will collapse, and the social inequalities papered over by the illusion of liquidity will become impossible to ignore.

The collapse of Spain’s empire, fueled by its overreliance on Inca gold and silver, was a slow-motion disaster that took centuries to unfold. For 200 years after the bullion flows began to dwindle, Spain clung to its position as a leading nation, still wielding considerable influence in Europe. Yet beneath the surface, the foundations were eroding. By the end of the 19th century, Spain had faded into near-total irrelevance, a marginal power on the global stage.

What’s striking is how long the effects of the bullion-driven economy lingered. The gold and silver that once seemed a limitless source of strength left Spain trapped in a cycle of dependency and stagnation. For nearly 300 years, Spain struggled to transition to a real economy, one based on industry, innovation, and productivity. The legacy of easy wealth shaped its institutions, its social structure, and its politics, long after the flow of precious metals dried up. In some ways, it wasn’t until the late 20th century that Spain fully emerged from the shadow of its imperial past and began to build a modern, diversified economy.

Fast forward to the United States, and the parallels are striking — and unsettling. Like Spain, the United States has relied on an artificial source of wealth: not bullion, but zero interest rate policies and the global dominance of the dollar. This has created an extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an entrenched oligarchy. The policies that propped up financial markets have also hollowed out the real economy, fostering inequality and leaving large portions of the population excluded from the supposed benefits of growth.

Yet, as with Spain, the decline of the United States may take much longer than pessimists expect. Empires do not collapse overnight; they erode, their dominance fading gradually even as their elites maintain a façade of control. The sheer scale of America’s economic, military, and cultural power means that the end of its primacy is likely a distant prospect, even if the underlying rot continues to spread.

And there is one crucial difference: while Spain’s aristocracy faded along with its empire, the American oligarchy may prove far more durable. If the lesson of the post-ZIRP era is anything, it’s that the concentration of wealth and power has become self-reinforcing. The systems that sustain the elite are deeply entrenched, and absent significant structural change — which seems unlikely — they are poised to endure.

The long shadow of ZIRP, like the curse of Inca gold, may define this phase of American history. The collapse, if it comes, may still be centuries away, but the conditions for a slow, grinding decline are already in place. And just as Spain took centuries to recover from the legacy of unearned wealth, the United States may one day face its own reckoning. Whether that reckoning takes decades or centuries, one thing seems certain: the oligarchy is here to stay, for the foreseeable future.

The lesson from Spain’s collapse is clear: unearned wealth, whether in the form of gold or artificially cheap capital, cannot sustain an empire. Without structural reforms — investments in productivity, infrastructure, and the real economy — the temporary gains of liquidity-driven growth will eventually lead to decline. The United States, like Spain before it, faces the danger of mistaking the mechanisms of its power for its substance, and the cost of such a mistake will be nothing less than the erosion of its global dominance.

A New Way of Smelting

January 24, 2025January 24, 2025Leave a comment

Bribery is a relic of a bygone era—a Bronze Age mindset, if you will. It’s a tool of self-preservation for those clinging to ill-gotten gains, a desperate attempt to maintain power and control within a system on the verge of collapse. But as history teaches us, no amount of bribery can stop a system from falling apart when larger forces are at play. The collapse of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BCE, is a perfect example.

Bronze Age civilizations were complex, interconnected societies reliant on fragile trade routes, bureaucratic systems, and resource monopolies. When climate change, internal strife, invasions, and economic disruptions struck, these civilizations crumbled. What’s fascinating is that the people of the Bronze Age didn’t foresee the collapse—or the subsequent rise of the Iron Age. They weren’t prepared for the shift. No records show them transitioning smoothly into a new era; they simply vanished, replaced by societies that discovered new ways of working with iron.

The transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age brought significant structural improvements in materials, tools, and societal organization. While bronze and iron are both metals, the shift to iron offered new possibilities in use and functionality that profoundly shaped civilizations. Here’s a breakdown of these improvements:

Material Accessibility

1. Wider Availability of Iron Ore

• Bronze Age: Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and both metals were scarce. Civilizations depended on complex trade networks to secure these materials, making them vulnerable to disruptions.

• Iron Age: Iron ore is far more abundant and widely distributed across the world. This meant societies no longer needed to rely as heavily on long-distance trade, creating more localized and self-sufficient economies.

2. Lower Cost of Iron

• Bronze was expensive and labor-intensive to produce, so it was often reserved for elites.

• Iron, while initially harder to work with due to higher smelting temperatures, became cheaper and more widely available, democratizing access to tools and weapons.

Technological Functionality

1. Strength and Durability

• Bronze: Softer and more prone to wear and tear, particularly in tools and weapons that required repeated heavy use.

• Iron: While raw iron was initially brittle, advancements like carburization (adding carbon to create steel) made iron tools and weapons stronger, sharper, and more durable. This greatly improved their functionality.

2. Edge Retention in Weapons

• Bronze blades dulled quickly and required frequent maintenance.

• Iron and steel blades held their edges longer, making them far more effective in warfare and agriculture.

3. Versatility

• Iron tools were more versatile and could be adapted to a wider range of uses, including farming, construction, and everyday life. For example:

• Iron plows revolutionized agriculture by allowing farmers to till harder soils.

• Iron nails and fittings improved construction techniques, enabling stronger and more complex buildings.

Societal Impacts and Structural Changes

1. Agricultural Productivity

• The introduction of iron tools, such as plows and sickles, made farming more efficient. This increased agricultural yields, supported larger populations, and enabled the rise of more complex societies.

2. Military Advancements

• Iron weapons and armor gave militaries a significant edge. The cheaper production and increased durability of iron meant larger armies could be equipped, fundamentally altering the scale and nature of warfare.

• Societies that mastered iron production often gained military dominance, leading to the rise of new empires and kingdoms.

3. Economic Decentralization

• The wide availability of iron ore reduced reliance on elite-controlled trade networks for bronze. This shift contributed to a decentralization of power, as more local communities could access the materials they needed to thrive.

4. Expansion of Infrastructure

• Iron tools allowed for more ambitious construction projects, including roads, aqueducts, and fortifications. These advancements facilitated trade, communication, and the consolidation of political power.

5. Spread of Knowledge

• The widespread use of iron also coincided with the diffusion of new technologies, such as improved smelting techniques and methods for crafting steel. These innovations spread more rapidly than in the Bronze Age, partly due to iron’s availability.

Philosophical and Cultural Shifts

1. Democratization of Technology

• With bronze, tools and weapons were often monopolized by the elite due to their cost. Iron democratized access, enabling broader participation in farming, craftsmanship, and warfare. This shift had cultural implications, fostering a sense of empowerment among lower classes.

2. Urbanization and Growth

• The improved agricultural productivity and military strength enabled by iron supported the growth of larger cities and more complex political systems. This laid the groundwork for classical civilizations like Greece and Rome.

In Summary

The shift from bronze to iron wasn’t just about replacing one metal with another—it was about a transformation in accessibility, functionality, and societal structure. Iron tools and weapons were stronger, cheaper, and more versatile, enabling advancements in agriculture, warfare, and construction. These changes democratized technology, decentralized economies, and allowed for the growth of larger, more complex civilizations. In essence, the Iron Age didn’t just smelt a new material; it forged a new way of living.

The lesson here is clear: bribery and corruption, tools of the old system, cannot prevent collapse, nor can they usher in a new system. When new ages emerge, they are not born out of the practices that upheld the old. Instead, they arise from ruptures—fundamental changes in how societies operate, think, and create.

Which brings us to the modern day, and to crypto.

Cryptocurrency is, in many ways, a new way of smelting. It represents a technological innovation with the potential to reshape how we create and exchange value, much like iron smelting did for ancient societies. Yet, despite its promise, crypto has not yet ushered in a powerful new age like the Iron Age. Why? Because it hasn’t created the vehicle—the societal, structural, and practical systems necessary to drive this transformation forward.

Instead, most cryptocurrencies are using new tools to replicate old systems. They smelt “ironed stuff” that looks like Bronze Age artifacts—modern technologies that mimic the power dynamics, inequalities, and speculative behaviors of traditional finance. Decentralization often gives way to centralized exchanges. The promise of democratized wealth becomes a game for insiders and speculators. The tools are new, but the structures they create feel old.

For crypto to truly forge a new age, it must break away from these Bronze Age relics. It must transcend mere speculation and wealth concentration, creating practical, scalable applications that empower individuals and communities. Only then can it move beyond being a shiny replica of outdated systems and become the foundation for something genuinely transformative.

To explore how crypto could transcend its current limitations and evolve into something transformative, akin to iron in the Iron Age, we must analyze its potential to overcome two fundamental obstacles:

1. The casino-like speculation and libertarian ideals that dominate its current state.

2. How crypto could fulfill its promise of being a foundational material—something that reshapes systems in a way analogous to iron’s role in history.

Here’s an elaborate breakdown:

1. Bypassing the Casino Economics of Anarcho-Capitalists and Libertarians

In its current state, crypto often feels like a Bronze Age artifact masquerading as innovation. The anarcho-capitalist (ANCAP) and libertarian ethos dominating the crypto space has resulted in a speculative economy—a casino where wealth is hoarded by early adopters, manipulated by whales, and inaccessible to most of society. To transcend this, crypto must move beyond trading for profit and focus on creating systems of real-world utility and inclusion.

How Does It Bypass This?

• Shift from Speculation to Utility

• Crypto must prioritize practical applications over speculation. Decentralized finance (DeFi), for example, shows promise, but it needs to move beyond complex yield farming schemes and become a tool for genuine financial empowerment—such as offering credit, banking, and savings to the unbanked and underbanked in a transparent way.

• This involves creating platforms where people use crypto not to trade or gamble but to solve real-world problems, like remittances, property rights, or decentralized voting systems.

• Rethink Governance Models

• Many cryptos rely on governance systems skewed toward the wealthiest holders (e.g., proof-of-stake systems or governance tokens). To bypass this, we need systems where decision-making power is distributed based on contributions to the network rather than wealth. Concepts like quadratic voting or proof-of-contribution could shift the balance toward fairness.

• Integration with Existing Systems

• Crypto doesn’t have to replace fiat systems entirely to be revolutionary—it can enhance them. For example, creating decentralized identity systems tied to crypto wallets could enable people in the Global South to access international financial markets, bypassing corrupt local systems.

Why is This Important?

The libertarian, ANCAP-dominated vision of crypto assumes that reducing all interactions to individual freedom and market mechanics is enough to create a better world. But this vision has failed to address systemic inequalities or provide the infrastructure for large-scale adoption. If crypto remains trapped in this speculative and ideological framework, it will never become more than an echo of the Bronze Age, where value is hoarded rather than widely distributed.

2. Crypto as Iron: Foundational Material in a “Bronze Age” Universe

In the Bronze Age, bronze was a status symbol. It was costly, limited by trade, and controlled by elites. The rise of iron was transformative because it was abundant, versatile, and democratized access to tools and weapons. Iron didn’t just replicate the uses of bronze—it created entirely new possibilities for farming, construction, and warfare that reshaped societies.

For crypto to become the “iron” of the digital age, it must transcend its current state of being a niche technology and evolve into a foundational material that empowers society in ways traditional systems cannot.

What Would This Look Like?

• Abundance and Accessibility

• Crypto must become cheap and easy to use for everyday people, much like iron tools became accessible to farmers and craftsmen. This includes reducing energy consumption (moving away from proof-of-work systems like Bitcoin’s) and creating seamless, user-friendly interfaces for crypto adoption.

• Imagine a world where sending money, managing contracts, or securing personal data is as simple and universal as using a smartphone—but without intermediaries like banks or governments.

• Infrastructure, Not Just Currency

• Iron didn’t just make better swords—it enabled infrastructure like stronger plows, more durable buildings, and tools for engineering feats. Similarly, crypto must move beyond being “digital gold” or a speculative asset to become the backbone for decentralized systems:

• Decentralized supply chains that ensure ethical sourcing and transparency.

• Decentralized healthcare records that protect privacy and improve efficiency.

• Smart cities powered by decentralized grids and IoT devices tied to crypto networks.

• Trustless Systems

• The biggest promise of crypto is its ability to create trustless systems—systems where individuals don’t need to rely on intermediaries to verify transactions or agreements. For example:

• A farmer in a remote region could sell goods directly to an international buyer using a smart contract, bypassing corrupt middlemen and unstable local currencies.

• Election systems could use blockchain to create tamper-proof voting records, restoring trust in democratic processes.

Iron’s Key Lesson: Integration Across Domains

Iron wasn’t limited to one use—it transformed agriculture, warfare, and urbanization. Similarly, crypto must integrate across multiple domains:

• Finance (e.g., DeFi).

• Governance (e.g., decentralized voting).

• Identity (e.g., self-sovereign identities).

• Energy (e.g., decentralized energy grids).

Crypto must go beyond being an innovation in finance to becoming the scaffolding for a decentralized, interconnected digital world.

Challenges Crypto Must Overcome to Be Iron, Not Bronze

1. Scalability

• Current blockchains like Ethereum face limitations in transaction speed and cost. For crypto to be foundational, it must scale without sacrificing security or decentralization.

2. Energy Efficiency

• Iron was revolutionary because it was cheaper than bronze. Crypto must become environmentally sustainable to avoid becoming a luxury good, inaccessible to most people.

3. Global Collaboration

• The Iron Age didn’t emerge from one civilization but spread across the world, with different cultures innovating in unique ways. Crypto’s promise lies in its ability to transcend borders, but this requires global cooperation rather than the current fractured ecosystem of competing chains and ideologies.

Crypto, like iron, has the potential to be a transformative material—but only if it can break free from the speculative, casino-like dynamics of its current Bronze Age. To do so, it must move beyond being a tool for profit or a libertarian experiment and focus on becoming a foundational infrastructure that democratizes access, enhances trust, and powers systems that are inclusive and resilient.

If crypto can create the “vehicle”—the practical systems and societal adoption needed to reshape how value, power, and trust are distributed—it might just smelt the iron of a new digital age. But until then, it risks remaining a flashy artifact of the old world, unable to forge a path forward. The question remains: will crypto evolve into iron, or remain stuck in bronze?

The Iron Age wasn’t just about the material—it was about the tools, weapons, and systems that iron made possible. Likewise, for crypto to succeed, it needs to smelt not just coins, but entirely new vehicles for societal progress. Until then, it risks remaining a technological marvel without a meaningful revolution.

True transformation requires a rupture with the past, not its replication. Just as the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, today’s systems—whether financial, political, or social—need more than new technology. They need new ways of thinking, new processes, and new vehicles to carry us into a better future. The question is, will crypto rise to the occasion, or remain stuck, forging iron that still looks like bronze?

Stargate

January 23, 2025Leave a comment

Ah, yes, the Stargate project—an allegory for the present moment, a monument to the madness of techno-optimism, with its endless stream of corporate behemoths like SoftBank, Oracle, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and others all rubbing their hands together in glee. It’s as if we’ve entered a dystopian remake of the 1994 Stargate film, this time with some kind of unholy alliance between almond-laden neural networks and the unchecked power of Silicon Valley. We have here a project that is, let’s say, a vast and complicated ritualistic venture into the unknown, but only by piling up clichés and buzzwords into an enormous heap, like a digital ziggurat that promises to launch us into new realms of possibility—only to leave us disappointed, as we begin to realize that the realm we are entering is just a digital version of the same old world.

What do I mean by this? Well, just look at the Stargate film, directed by Roland Emmerich, which used a hopscotch of sci-fi tropes: ancient alien civilizations, time travel, mystical portals—sound familiar? You had Kurt Russell in fatigues and James Spader, well, being Spader. The movie dabbled in some fascinating ideas about transcendence, humanity’s quest for meaning, and the unknown, but it ultimately faltered in its execution. There was no real philosophical resolution, no deep understanding of what this interdimensional journey was supposed to signify. Instead, it ended with explosions and a vague sense of wonder, but not true insight. It was a metaphor for the modern project itself—big promises, very little deliverance.

Now we have Stargate reimagined, not in terms of interstellar adventure, but as a platform for the so-called “next frontier” of technology. With OpenAI and a collection of corporate giants, we are told we are on the precipice of something that will change the world—an artificial intelligence that will open portals to a new dimension of human experience. But, as always, there’s the classic ideological sleight of hand. We are led to believe that these technological advances will liberate us, but the truth is far more banal. It’s about control, domination, the smoothing over of contradictions. These tech companies, under the guise of innovation, are crafting the new digital Stargate, but it’s a gate that leads to the same old issues, masked in the sheen of progress.

We are back in the same place, aren’t we? We can cross over into other dimensions—whether it’s in terms of data processing, artificial intelligence, or virtual worlds—but these are mere extensions of our existing order. The stargate itself, which might have been a symbol of exploration, is now a tool for increasing profit margins, cementing the power of those who already control the means of technological production.

The logic behind these tech giants’ involvement? The same logic that governed Emmerich’s film—using a few cool ideas (yes, AI, metaverses, quantum computing) but leaving us with more spectacle than substance. It’s a modern Stargate—offering the promise of transcending limitations, but in reality, merely reinforcing them. The more we chase after these “portals,” the more we get sucked into the very system we thought we were escaping.

The discomfort at the heart of Stargate—it is indeed, a grotesque Frankenstein, stitched together from the decayed parts of trickle-down economics and the logic of a perpetual motion machine. It is the quintessential product of neoliberal ideology: the promise of infinite returns, endlessly repeated, as long as the last investor keeps buying into the myth. In this sense, the Stargate project, like its cinematic precursor, is less about exploring new frontiers and more about maintaining the illusion of progress while profiting off its perpetuity.

We must ask ourselves: what exactly is being “unlocked” in these grand ventures of AI and quantum computing, if not the very mechanisms that perpetuate the existing system of exploitation? The endless rhetoric around infinite returns—whether it’s in terms of data, profits, or opportunities—betrays the fundamental deceit at the heart of this whole venture. The “Stargate” is not a portal to liberation, not a gateway to a new dimension of human understanding, but a cunningly constructed mechanism that extracts value from the very people it purports to serve. It is the trickle-down logic, the same one that has failed us for decades: as long as you keep the machine running, as long as there’s a constant flow of fresh capital to fuel it, the promise of limitless growth can continue.

But of course, this is the lie we’ve all been sold. The reality is that the trickle-down never reaches the bottom. Like the revolving door of investment in the Stargate project, the wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of a few. These grand promises of technological transcendence are, in the end, just a sophisticated form of financial alchemy. The constant promises of infinite returns are like the perpetual motion machine—beautiful in their conception, but ultimately doomed by their own impossibility. What’s so tragically ironic is that the true “Stargate” these tech giants are building is a portal not to an exciting future, but to an even more elaborate prison of illusion.

The capitalist system today operates much like this: under the guise of new technological horizons, it insists that each new frontier will solve our problems, give us endless possibilities, when in reality it is only expanding the reach of its own machinery of control. The investors—those lucky enough to enter the game early—are promised the stargate of boundless wealth, while the rest of us are left to follow the thread of this speculative spiral, only to discover that the gateway is a dead end, a vast cul-de-sac of endless, pointless motion.

This, then, is the fundamental contradiction embedded in these projects. We are told that we will transcend our current limitations, that we will discover new dimensions of possibility. But in truth, we are only being pushed deeper into the very system that shackles us. The more we invest, the more we become entangled in this matrix of infinite returns. The project’s success is predicated not on any tangible breakthrough, but on the ability to convince the next wave of investors to buy in, to keep the charade going just a little longer. But ultimately, we are trapped in the same economic system, only with shinier technology and more abstract concepts.

And let us not forget the prophetic tropes that play a pivotal role in this charade, tropes that have been mediocrally executed in both the cinematic Stargate and these grand tech ventures. In the film, we encounter the idea of ancient civilizations—gods, in fact—who possess extraordinary knowledge and power, locked away in a distant past, waiting to be rediscovered. This resonates strongly with the way Silicon Valley talks about “unlocking” hidden potential, as though the answers to humanity’s most pressing problems lie buried just beyond our reach, waiting to be unearthed by the next technological breakthrough. The idea of “unlocking” ancient knowledge is a classic prophetic trope, one that promises to reveal profound truths and usher in a new era. But as Stargate itself demonstrates, this knowledge is never quite as transcendent as promised, and in the end, it’s just another tool of control.

Then, of course, there is the prophecy of the chosen one—the idea that a single individual, in this case, Daniel Jackson (James Spader), will decipher the ancient language and unlock the power of the Stargate. This individual, like a modern-day messiah, is set apart as the one who will lead the way, revealing the path to salvation. In the context of the tech world, this is mirrored in the cult of the CEO, the notion that a singular visionary, be it a Mark Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk, will guide us through the technological singularity into a utopian future. But once again, this is just a recycled cliché, an empty promise, as these “prophecies” consistently fail to deliver anything substantial.

Finally, there’s the constant appeal to destiny—the idea that our heroes are fated to discover the Stargate, just as our tech moguls are “destined” to shape the future. This notion of destiny, of history unfolding according to some grand, hidden plan, underpins the entire narrative of Silicon Valley’s most hyped ventures. But like the movie, where the supposed “destiny” of the characters ultimately leads them to yet another battle with an ancient power, we’re left with the same tired tropes—promises of an extraordinary future, only to find that the destination is much less than we had imagined.

The very nature of these prophetic tropes is what keeps us hooked. They appeal to our deepest desires for meaning, for escape from our mundane reality, and yet they always disappoint. The tech industry, much like Emmerich’s film, dresses up its promises in extravagant imagery of otherworldly achievements, only to reveal that the truth behind the curtain is far less impressive. The promise of a digital “Stargate” is just another metaphor for the perennial human desire for transcendence, for breakthrough, but as we’ve seen time and again, such promises are rarely fulfilled. Instead, we are left with a shiny new version of the same old system, which ultimately serves the interests of the few, while the rest of us watch as our hopes dissolve into the ether.

Survivor’s Guilt

January 15, 2025January 16, 2025

As I was watching Los Angeles burn last week, I felt a deep, unshakeable crumminess. The flames seemed to carry with them a weight of history, of loss, and of survival itself. It was in that moment that the last few Paul McCartney albums I had been listening to—albums I hadn’t given much thought to—suddenly revealed an incredible, meaningful tone. It was as if they were shaped by a form of survivor’s guilt, an emotional undercurrent that, in the wake of such devastation, made everything fall into place. It all made sense.

Thinking of Paul McCartney’s last five albums through this lens reveals fascinating layers of existential tension and sublimated emotion. McCartney’s work can be read not merely as the output of a pop-cultural survivor but as a persistent dialogue with his past, his losses, and the historical weight he carries as the last towering figure of the Beatles still actively producing.

1. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

Chaos and Creation seems an attempt by McCartney to confront the Real of his past—the trauma of Lennon’s murder, Harrison’s death, and the slow disappearance of the utopian ideal embodied by the Beatles. The album’s melancholic tone, exemplified by tracks like “Jenny Wren” and “Too Much Rain,” represents McCartney’s negotiation with guilt over being the one left behind. Yet, as I would argue, McCartney resists direct confrontation with loss through his meticulous craftsmanship. The album becomes a “sublime object of ideology,” wherein McCartney packages grief in the form of soothing melodies, as if to reassure himself and the world that beauty can still arise from ashes. We might quip that McCartney represses the traumatic kernel of survival, giving us an overly polished jewel that hides its cracks too well.

2. Memory Almost Full (2007)

This album is haunted by the specter of mortality and the burden of remembrance. Tracks like “The End of the End” and “Vintage Clothes” evoke a self-reflective McCartney, confronting his legacy with a smile that we could call “a mask of hysterical denial.” Survivor’s guilt manifests here as a preoccupation with legacy—McCartney’s playful nostalgia is tinged with a deep anxiety: how to sustain the myth of the Beatles while resisting the commodification of their memory? We might argue that this album represents McCartney’s struggle with symbolic death—the death of his mythos—rather than physical death. By transforming his survivor’s guilt into the playful irony of “Dance Tonight,” McCartney performs what its called the “fetishistic disavowal”: he knows he is mortal, but he acts as though he is not.

3. New (2013)

Here, McCartney’s survivor’s guilt morphs into a desperate vitality, we might suggest, as if McCartney is saying: “Yes, I am still here, and I still matter!” Tracks like “Queenie Eye” and “New” play with youthful energy, but this energy itself is suspect—it is a frantic act of jouissance, a surplus enjoyment meant to stave off the realization of the void left by his lost companions. We could argue that the optimism of New is fundamentally performative, a gesture to mask the fact that McCartney’s very existence is a painful reminder of what has been lost. The album becomes, paradoxically, a celebration of survival that highlights the impossibility of truly enjoying it.

4. Egypt Station (2018)

Egypt Station is a further articulation of McCartney’s attempt to confront survivor’s guilt through displacement. Tracks like “Happy with You” present a pastoral fantasy of simplicity, but this simplicity is ideological—an escape from the complex network of historical and personal guilt. McCartney is caught between his desire to move forward and the weight of his past, and this tension creates a fragmented narrative. Egypt Station, like New, pretends to move forward while always looking back, a perfect symptom of repression.

5. McCartney III (2020)

McCartney III is the ultimate encounter with the void of survival. Recorded in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the album strips back the layers of production, leaving McCartney alone with his thoughts and his instruments. Tracks like “Winter Bird / When Winter Comes” encapsulate the stillness and solitude of a survivor reflecting on his life. This return to minimalism is not merely a stylistic choice but a confrontation with the Real—the inescapable awareness of his finitude and the haunting absence of those who shaped his journey. The album becomes an elegy to survival itself, the quiet acceptance of guilt and gratitude intertwined.

Objects of sublimation

McCartney’s last five albums are pearls of survivor’s guilt precisely because they oscillate between denial, displacement, and confrontation. Each album, in its own way, is a fetishistic object, transforming McCartney’s unresolved trauma into something palatable for mass consumption. Yet beneath the polished surface lies a profound and unarticulated scream: Why me? Why am I the one left standing? McCartney’s work thus becomes a paradoxical testament to survival—both a celebration of resilience and an admission of its impossibility.

The meticulous production and polished arrangements act as a kind of defensive shield, sublimating grief into something beautiful but controlled. This beauty, however, is a kind of lure. It invites us to engage with the albums emotionally while simultaneously masking the full intensity of its underlying anguish. In this way, the albums become what one might call a “sublime object”—a creation that conceals its void, its lack, by presenting itself as whole and coherent. McCartney’s grief, rather than being directly confronted, is transformed into an aestheticized version of itself, smoothed over by melody and craft.

Yet, this very polish betrays its own repression. The excess care put into the album—its arrangements, its meticulousness—points to an unspoken fear: the possibility that, without this artistry, the fragile framework holding back the chaos might collapse. The melancholic tone, then, is not a direct expression of loss but a mediated one, carefully framed to avoid the destabilizing force of what cannot be fully symbolized. The listener is drawn into this dynamic, encountering not only the traces of McCartney’s grief but also the ways in which it is disguised, reshaped, and contained.

Extras

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025

Ah, cryptography! It’s like Andy Millman in Extras, no? At first, it presents itself as this pure, untouchable ideal—a bastion of privacy and individuality in a world determined to collapse all boundaries. It says, “No! I will not compromise!” But what happens? Reality intrudes. And what is reality if not the persistent erosion of the symbolic structure we cling to? Cryptography—like Andy—believes it can exist in a vacuum, but it is always already inscribed into the systems of power it seeks to resist.

First, we must confront the fantasy of cryptography as an unbreakable shield. It relies on assumptions: the hardness of math, the impossibility of brute force, the limits of computing power. But history teaches us that every “perfect” system is ultimately undone. The Enigma machine? Broken. RSA with weak keys? Broken. Andy’s principles? Also broken. The system’s failure is not an anomaly—it is its destiny! Cryptography’s strength exists only as the ideological mask of its inevitable fragility.

Season 1: Episode 3: Kate Winslet Episode (Public Key Encryption)

Here is Andy Millman on the set of a serious film about the Holocaust, only to discover that Kate Winslet—beloved, respectable, pure—is doing it to win an Oscar. This is public key encryption in its ideal form: the clean separation of public and private keys, promising a perfect balance of accessibility and security. But the moment Andy enters this scene, the cracks in the fantasy appear. Kate’s public persona (“I care about meaningful art”) is hollowed out by the private truth (“I’m doing this for the awards”), just as public key encryption rests on fragile assumptions—prime factorization, computational hardness—that become increasingly vulnerable over time. Andy, like cryptography, begins to realize that the symbolic purity he depends on is always already a performance.

And then, ah! Darren Lamb—the human element. Cryptography assumes the weakness is outside the system, in the adversary trying to break in. But the true weakness is always internal! Humans with “password123,” social engineering, phishing emails—Darren is the embodiment of the internal failure that cryptography cannot account for. The very people it relies on sabotage it from within, much like Andy’s sitcom is ruined by his own compromises.

Season 1 Episode 4: The Les Dennis Episode (Bitcoin Forks)

Ah, poor Les Dennis—reduced from household name to desperate panto performer. He is Bitcoin after the first big hard fork: still recognizable, but irreparably fractured, clinging to relevance in a world that has moved on. Andy, desperate to make a name for himself, tries to elevate Les’s sinking career, much like the crypto community rallies around Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV, claiming they will solve scaling issues or restore “Satoshi’s vision.” But the truth is obvious: just as Les’s glory days are behind him, so too is the simplicity of Bitcoin’s original promise. What remains is a fragmented system fighting for legitimacy in a world of diminishing trust.

Season 1 Episode 6: The Patrick Stewart Episode (Mass Surveillance and the Myth of Perfect Privacy)

Now, let us speak of governments and corporations. Patrick Stewart’s infamous, “And then I see everything” line is not just a joke; it is a profound metaphor for how power operates.

Patrick Stewart’s absurd obsession with omniscience—turning invisible and spying on women—is a perfect metaphor for mass surveillance programs like PRISM. These systems promise omnipotence, claiming they can “see everything” even through encrypted channels. And yet, like Stewart’s ridiculous fantasies, their power is always undermined by their absurdities. Cryptography, in this context, plays Andy: caught between the desire to maintain its artistic integrity (privacy) and the demands of the industry (governments mandating backdoors). The result is a farce: encryption schemes that work only until the Patrick Stewarts of the world decide they don’t.

These entities want cryptography—yes—but only if it includes backdoors, exceptions, and surveillance mechanisms. They demand a system that is strong, but only insofar as it reinforces their ability to control. Cryptography, then, is caught in this dialectic: a tool of resistance that is co-opted by the very forces it resists.

Series 2, Episode 1: The Orlando Bloom Episode (NFT Hype and Scams)

Orlando Bloom, obsessed with proving he is not jealous of Johnny Depp, is the perfect stand-in for NFTs. Here is a system (Bloom/NFTs) built entirely on insecurity, desperately trying to prove its uniqueness while the public (like Maggie) doesn’t care. Andy’s bewilderment at Bloom’s posturing mirrors the cryptography community’s reaction to the NFT hype. “But what is the point?” Andy asks, just as critics ask of NFTs: “Why build a digital asset reliant on cryptographic signatures if the value is entirely performative?” The whole episode is a commentary on the hollow, performative uniqueness of systems that collapse under their own absurdity.

And AI—ah, this is where it gets truly terrifying! AI doesn’t break cryptography in the traditional sense. It bypasses it entirely. Metadata, patterns, behavioral inference—these are the tools of an intelligence that does not respect the boundaries cryptography was designed to protect. It doesn’t crack the dam; it seeps through every tiny crevice, eroding the walls from within.

Ah, the David Bowie episode! (Series 2, Episode 2). This is Andy Millman’s lowest point, where he is publicly humiliated by Bowie, who improvises a mocking song about Andy: “Chubby little loser.” And yet, this episode is also about how AI relates to creativity and its ability to expose the uncomfortable truths we try to hide.

David Bowie in this episode is AI at its most disruptive and incisive. He is the generative model that observes Andy for mere minutes, synthesizes his insecurities and failures, and turns them into a cutting, viral hit. Bowie’s improvised song functions much like AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data—behavioral patterns, preferences, insecurities—and distill them into something that feels unnervingly personal. It’s a reminder that AI, like Bowie, doesn’t just collapse boundaries between public and private; it also mirrors back our worst traits, stripped of the illusions we use to protect ourselves.

Andy’s reaction—humiliation and retreat—is the perfect metaphor for how institutions and individuals respond to AI-generated insights. Much like Andy, we are not ready to face the sheer power of these models to deconstruct our curated identities and replace them with brutal, data-driven caricatures. AI, like Bowie in this scene, holds up a mirror, and it is not a flattering one. It doesn’t care about Andy’s efforts to appear serious or respectable; it reduces him to the essence of his contradictions: a chubby little loser who dreams of fame but cannot handle its cost.

And yet, there’s a darker layer here: Bowie’s performance is not just an act of truth-telling. It’s also an exercise in dominance. By reducing Andy to a figure of ridicule, Bowie consolidates his own artistic mystique. Similarly, AI systems consolidate power by exposing human vulnerabilities, often while their creators benefit—whether through profit or influence. Just as Bowie walks away unscathed, AI developers are rarely held accountable for the societal impacts of their creations. It’s Andy, not Bowie, who pays the price.

This episode captures the dual nature of AI: its ability to deconstruct and reveal, but also its complicity in perpetuating systems of power that thrive on our insecurities. AI doesn’t just create; it redefines the terms of creation, leaving us, like Andy, scrambling to understand our place in a world that has already moved on.

The great irony, then, is that cryptography believes it is preserving individuality, but it is already complicit in the systems that erase it. Andy Millman thought he could resist the collapse into celebrity shallowness, but the moment he entered the game, he was doomed. His BAFTA speech, like cryptography’s desperate claims of stability, comes too late. The collapse has already happened.

Series 2, Episode 6: The BAFTA Episode (The Collapse of Cryptographic Trust)

Finally, we reach the BAFTA episode, where Andy delivers his scathing speech denouncing the system that has destroyed his integrity. This is the collapse of cryptographic trust—when encryption fails to protect privacy, and the public realizes the system itself is compromised. Think of major breaches like the Snowden revelations or the meltdown of cryptographic protocols like MD5 or SHA-1. Andy’s disillusionment is the moment when the fantasy breaks, and he realizes that no amount of encryption—or artistic integrity—can withstand the relentless pressures of a system designed to exploit rather than preserve. His speech is cathartic, yes, but it comes too late. The damage is done. The collapse is irreversible.

So, we must ask: what is cryptography? It is not a stabilizing force; it is a fantasy of stability in a world where collapse is the only constant. It is the symptom of a system that cannot sustain itself, a last-ditch attempt to hold together the boundaries that power—and AI—are determined to dissolve. Cryptography does not delay the collapse; it is the collapse, caught in its own impossibility.

The lesson of Extras is the same as the lesson of cryptography: the system that promises stability and integrity is always undermined by its own contradictions. Andy’s integrity crumbles under fame’s pressures, just as cryptography’s guarantees crumble under the weight of quantum computing, AI inference, and human error. To believe otherwise is to indulge in the same hubris as Andy Millman—thinking you can maintain boundaries in a world determined to collapse them.

Watching Miami Vice with the Ghost of Ronald Reagan at Midnight

January 8, 2025January 9, 2025

There he was, the Gipper himself, grinning like a Cheshire cat fresh out of Hell, sitting cross-legged on the couch, a fog of spectral smugness curling around him. On the screen, Crockett and Tubbs were locked in a neon-soaked cocaine bust, their pastel suits radiant under the glow of South Beach debauchery. Somewhere in the haze of cheap bourbon and static-filled memories of the 1980s, the lines between fiction and history blurred.

“The Cocaine Cowboys,” Reagan muttered, adjusting his ethereal tie as though preparing for a press conference in the underworld. “They weren’t all bad—just another side effect of capitalism, really. Can’t build an empire without a little chaos at the edges.”

And there it was: the flicker of malice behind his avuncular mask. The ghost of a man who had intentionally destabilized his own backyard, who had looked at the fragile dominoes of Latin America and decided to let them fall—not out of necessity, but for spectacle. Domestic discord was the true driving force: a nation addicted to fear, a populace high on the dopamine rush of righteous indignation.

“There’s never been anything like it,” I said, gesturing wildly with my drink. “An existing hegemon opting to dismantle the system it dominates just to keep the home front distracted? It’s historical lunacy! Or genius. Hard to tell.”

Reagan chuckled—his laugh a dry rattle like the sound of brittle bones breaking under a steel-toed boot. “You’re looking at it all wrong,” he said. “It wasn’t chaos—it was order. My order. A little destabilization in Nicaragua, a sprinkle of paranoia in Panama, and presto! You’ve got a country so busy watching the Miami Vice reruns of geopolitics that they forget all about the fires raging in their own streets.”

The ghost paused, a gleam of nostalgia in his spectral eyes. “And let’s not forget,” he added, “chaos is the best cover for profit.”

Of course, he was right. The cocaine economy fueled Miami’s real estate boom, and the wars in Central America weren’t just about ideology—they were business ventures cloaked in patriotic fervor. Guns, drugs, money—the holy trinity of American exceptionalism, blasted through the barrel of an M-16 and sniffed off a mirrored surface.

“Goddammit, Reagan,” I snarled, slamming my glass on the table. “You didn’t just destabilize Latin America—you made a habit of teaching the world that the big guy can rig the game and then torch the casino when the odds get inconvenient.”

“True enough,” he said, leaning back into the couch with that famous, infuriating smirk. “But hell, we all got rich, didn’t we?”

And just like that, he was back on the couch, hands clasped like a benevolent uncle preparing to dispense financial advice that would bankrupt you in six months. Crockett and Tubbs faded into the background, their soundtrack replaced by the muffled hum of drone strikes and the static crackle of collapsing global alliances.

“Look at us now,” I said, lighting a cigarette I didn’t remember pulling from the pack. “What we did to Central America—destabilizing systems for a quick domestic political hit—we’re doing it writ Large. The whole world is one big contra war now, except this time the stakes are nuclear and we’re running out of excuses.”

Reagan’s ghost leaned forward, his grin stretching past the point of human decency. “That’s the beauty of it!” he said, slapping his knee like an actor in a Vaudeville revue. “You take what works—freedom fighters, covert ops, a little propaganda sprinkled over the top—and you scale it up! Afghanistan, Ukraine, Taiwan—it’s all the same recipe. Just add water and stir!”

“But the world isn’t buying it anymore,” I said, waving a hand toward the TV, which had inexplicably switched to a rerun of Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign ad. It’s Morning Again in America, the screen proclaimed, though the skies outside were pitch black.

Suddenly, Reagan was on his feet, delivering a line with the gusto of a man auditioning for The Ten Commandments. “Nancy!” he bellowed, turning to the empty corner of the room. “Bring me my script—this fella’s trying to say we can’t do it again! Nonsense!”

I blinked, half-expecting Nancy Reagan’s ghost to float in with a celestial teleprompter, but she didn’t. Reagan turned back to me, his expression now an unsettling mix of fatherly concern and used-car salesman slick.

“Exactly! You give the public just enough hope to keep them in line, and enough chaos to remind them they need you. It’s showbiz, son. Always has been.”

“And when it all falls apart?” I asked, gesturing wildly at the metaphorical burning wreckage of democracy outside the window. “What then?”

Reagan paused, his face softening into something almost human. For a moment, I thought he might break character, deliver a rare moment of honesty from the beyond. But then he grinned again, wider than before, and said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to ask Nancy!”

He stopped suddenly, throwing an arm in the air like a B-movie gunslinger.

“‘Win one for the Gipper!’” he bellowed, his spectral voice bouncing off the walls.

I stared blankly.

“C’mon, son! That’s your cue! You’re supposed to say, ‘That’s the spirit, Coach!’” he said, wagging a translucent finger. “You can’t just let me hang out here like a two-bit extra. Show some moxie!”

I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could, he launched into another performance.

“‘Where’s the rest of me?’” he cried, clutching his chest like a Shakespearean actor who’d wandered into the wrong theater.

“That’s—wait, that’s Kings Row, isn’t it?” I asked, my brain desperately clawing for context.

“Of course, it’s Kings Row!” he snapped, the glow in his eyes dimming just enough to look offended. “Now you’re supposed to say, ‘You’ll never walk again, Drake!’”

“Drake?” I muttered, already losing the plot.

But he wasn’t listening. Reagan had moved on, striding toward the kitchen like a man on a mission. “It’s all about commitment!” he shouted over his shoulder. “When I played Bonzo, I didn’t half-ass it. You think sharing a screen with a monkey is easy? That chimp hit his marks every time. Every. Damn. Time. Do you know how hard it is to act opposite perfection?”

“Bonzo?!” I yelled, trying to keep up. “You mean the monkey movie? You’re telling me a monkey outperformed you?”

Reagan spun around, his ghostly jaw tightening. “Outperformed? OUTPERFORMED?! That monkey was a professional! I learned more from Bonzo than I ever did from all those self-important actors on the Death Valley Days set. You’d do well to remember that, kid!”

I was too stunned to respond. The ghost of a former president was now lecturing me about life lessons from a movie chimp.

Reagan crossed his arms, glaring at me with all the righteous indignation of a man who’d forgotten he was dead. “Say what you want about the Cold War, but at least we knew our lines!” he barked. “You people today? You’re just ad-libbing chaos.”

He paused, his anger softening into something almost wistful. “You ever work with a monkey?” he asked suddenly, his voice quieter now. “You’d think they’d be unpredictable, but they’re not. They stick to the plan. Always stick to the plan.”

Before I could answer, he vanished into thin air, leaving behind only the faint smell of Aqua Velva and unfulfilled ambition. The TV flickered, Crockett and Tubbs speeding off into the pastel abyss, and for one merciful moment, the room was silent.

I took a long drag from my cigarette, staring into the empty space where Reagan had stood. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear Bonzo applauding.

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.

January 6, 2025January 6, 2025

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean CIA spooks scribbling op-eds on Substack and hawking $10-a-month subscriptions like two-bit grifters at a carnival sideshow. The agency boys in their ill-fitting suits, slumped in coffee shops from Langley to Lincoln, churning out think pieces titled “The Death of American Empire: A Personal Journey” or “How I Lost My Clearance and Found Myself.” Picture it: operatives reduced to grinding out conspiracy-laden screeds for an audience of doom-scrolling paranoids, trading cryptic tips on counter-espionage for thumbs-up emojis.

This isn’t a collapse. It’s a slow, shambling descent into mediocrity—less Rome burning and more Rome outsourcing its fire brigade to a Silicon Valley startup promising AI-enhanced water buckets. The spooks wouldn’t vanish into the ether, oh no. They’d pivot. A little less covert action, a little more hustle culture. “Learn how to stage a coup and build your personal brand!” The kind of moral rot that isn’t dramatic, but banal. Bureaucratic.

And that’s how the empire falls—not with a bang, but with a LinkedIn post: “Former clandestine operative seeking new opportunities. Skills include psychological warfare, asset recruitment, and SEO optimization.”

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean Goldman Sachs executives ditching their bespoke suits for hoodies and baseball caps, launching NFT collections called Bond Ape Yacht Club and hyping memecoins like GoldenBoiCoin on Twitter Spaces at 3 a.m. It would mean the masters of the universe pivoting to online casinos, hawking sketchy roulette apps with slogans like “Double or Nothing, Baby!” and adopting bizarre Keke Palmer-inspired influencer personas to stay relevant.

Picture it: Lloyd Blankfein rebranded as “CryptoDaddy420,” hosting live streams where he explains fractional reserve banking while doing TikTok dances. Or David Solomon, no longer DJ-ing for private equity parties, but spinning tracks for a metaverse nightclub called Liquidity Trap, offering free “SolomonCoins” with every overpriced cocktail.

Collapse is when Goldman Sachs stops building empires and starts building virtual slot machines, where every spin is a bet against their old dignity. It’s the high-finance sharks rebranding themselves as meme lords, desperately slapping doge faces on dollar signs and posting thirst traps on Instagram to pump the latest Ponzi. Collapse is when the titans of Wall Street get stuck hustling to pay off their own margin calls, swiping right on venture capitalists and pitching “decentralized financial synergy platforms” to crowds of indifferent day traders.

Decline, though? Decline is where we’re at now—Goldman still has its hands on the levers, still squeezing the juice out of the system, but you can see the cracks forming. Collapse is when the juice runs out, and they’re left hawking virtual blackjack in some dystopian e-casino, chanting “to the moon” like the rest of the rubes.

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.

Collapse is when Hollywood’s not just phoning it in anymore, it’s mainlining pure, uncut digital sewage straight into the veins of the American consciousness. It’s become a goddamn content farm, a festering pustule of spin-offs and reality TV simulacra churning out mountains of digital excrement that’s no longer art, no longer entertainment, no longer even remotely recognizable as storytelling. It’s the Ouroboros on a bad acid trip, devouring its own tail for profit until there’s nothing left but a greasy stain on the digital carpet.

Decline? That’s some half-assed Transformers sequel. Collapse? That’s Hollywood turning into a goddamn NFT vending machine, it’s movies nothing more than flickering delivery systems for monetized absurdity. Imagine Star Wars: Ewok Influencers. Christ on a crutch, what a nightmare. A show designed solely to sell digital skins and loot boxes in some Fortnite-style digital shooting gallery. It’s not entertainment, it’s a goddamn transaction. A digital fleecing.

And then there’s the final, ignominious surrender: the abandonment of film itself. Hollywood shuffles off into the digital void, embracing virtual reality and interactive gaming, ditching those “old-fashioned” movies because they’re too damn difficult to monetize effectively. The focus shifts entirely to endless monetization schemes—pay-to-win models, microtransactions embedded in the goddamn content itself. You don’t watch The Avengers: Cash Grab Chronicles; you pay five bucks every time Iron Man wants to throw a goddamn punch. It’s a digital bloodletting.

Even the projects greenlit for nostalgia or marketability become self-aware cash grabs, openly mocking the audience’s pathetic willingness to consume this digital garbage. Jurassic Park 12: Dinosaurs on Mars. No plot. Just dinosaurs, explosions, and random celebrity cameos, marketed as “The ultimate cinematic experience for our ADHD era!” It’s a goddamn insult. A digital middle finger to the remnants of taste.

MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Bravo Johnson

Category: MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

The AI Winter Cometh

The Internalization of Constraints

Perspective: Psychedelics for the Modern Man

Inca Zirp

A New Way of Smelting

Stargate

Survivor’s Guilt

Extras

Watching Miami Vice with the Ghost of Ronald Reagan at Midnight

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.