“Afropresentism says, I am here bearing witness, yes, and it aches. And yes, I am grieving. And most importantly, yes, I celebrate still being alive enough to feel all of that. I see that you are also grieving and I see that you are alive too… Yes, I celebrate the rage I know I’m not alone in. Yes, I see the everyday barrage— the advertisements and the architectures that have grown so elaborate, so unrelenting in their reminders of our compromise. And, yes everything I bear witness to that wounds me and wounds you I will meet with my own technology of refusal.”
Building from this philosophy and from the dialogue with Mutemi, Githere made the case for the kinternet–a conceptual model for a network that weaves together myth and ancestors; theory and practice. Sketched out by hand and distributed on paper to everyone in the audience, the kinternet is a technology of repair, rooted in grief, rage, slowing down, and connecting with one another in the present.
Sea levels are just the start of how climate change will upend the ocean. Rising temperatures are also threatening a critical artery that runs through the ocean known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. This current, in short, sends warm water northwards and dumps colder water southwards in a giant loop, massively influencing the world’s weather systems along the way.
If temperatures keep soaring, scientists fear that AMOC could collapse — and with it, climate patterns across the globe. Temperatures in Europe would plunge without the injection of warm water it brings. Rainfall in the tropics would be disrupted. And sea levels on the US east coast would rise.
To save AMOC from demise, two researchers have proposed a daring Hail Mary: building a giant dam across the Bering Strait, the channel that separates Alaska from Siberia, to stop the proverbial bleeding. As outrageous as it sounds, the megaproject could in theory stabilize the ocean current, according to the findings of a new study they published in the journal Science Advances.
20th Century Studios has released the first trailer for Whalefall, the adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ novel coming to theaters in October.
The film — which stars Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz and more — is described as The Martian meets 127 Hours, centering on a scuba diver in search of his deceased father’s remains. The diver gets swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.
The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces.
A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb—the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot—the research team has identified multiple lines of evidence, all of which support the interpretation that GLIMPSE-17775 is a supermassive black hole enveloped in a dense cocoon of partially ionized gas, a model referred to as the BH* (black hole star) scenario.
Among his many mythopoeic pronouncements, the great Sun Ra maintained that he was making music for the future. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and more than 30 years after he left the planet for the last time, his music is gaining more recognition than ever before. A recent slew of reissues, new compilations and previously unheard live recordings continues unabated. His Arkestra – under the direction of long-time member, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen since 1995 – continues to delight audiences worldwide. Just last year saw the release of two new feature-length documentaries about him. The Magic City examined his early life in Birmingham, Alabama; and the more comprehensive Sun Ra: Do The Impossible did the festival circuit before being shown on the PBS TV network this February as part of its American Masters series of artist biographies – bringing Ra’s improbable story to its widest audience yet.
After losing several hours yesterday to running every fix and check I could think of, I came to the sad conclusion that this laptop, a T580 from 2018, is now starting to fail and therefore must be sent to live on a farm. This machine has had its keyboard replaced twice over the years and kept on chugging, but now its chipset is dying. So I caught the end of the Lenovo May sale by a whisker and ordered a new ThinkPad. I doubt the new machine will have the durability of this faithful monster, which I will be sad to retire.
A biotech startup called Bexorg is doing something that sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a cyberpunk novel — or from the script of “RoboCop,” for that matter.
The company is extracting human brains just hours after their owners died and then hooking them up to specialized life support machines, Science reports. While the masses of pink mush no longer host electrical activity, most of their key functions remain intact, allowing scientists to test experimental drugs, such as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, like never before.
You’d hope that the disembodied cerebrums are most assuredly dead. But according to the reporting, an extracted brain hooked up to one of Bexorg’s proprietary life support machines, BrainEX, “hovers between life and death.” There’s no spark of consciousness, and yet the brains are kept running on an artificial lung, kidney oxygenate, blood, and other fluids.
OPERATIONS: got the new cover for a graphic novel reprint currently codenamed PROJECT WALLOPS, so we will be headed to solicits shortly. I need to get a script off the desk today and then figure out how to zero out all the fucking money I spent yesterday STATUS: I am physically de-teched until such time as the Google app that replaced the FitBit app is fixed to the point where it no longer hallucinates bicycles READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) LISTENING: a musician sent me her two new videos last night and I am playing them repeatedly today.
Well, the heatwave is here. Today is linen trousers, thin socks and one of the 100% cotton popover tops I get from from a manufacturer in Tibet, which are remarkably durable.
Today begins a much less connected season, in a way. I managed to read the top ends of four newspapers and four news/magazine sites this morning. (If anyone’s keeping up, the current stack is: The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Economist, BBC News, Politico and Foreign Policy.) I am gathering up the print objects that have gone unread so far this year, and last night I started catching up with the Times Literary Supplement and The Wire after I squeezed a litre of organic orange juice. (The Zulay (UK) (US+) is the best squeezer I’ve ever had.)
The honest response to all this, for someone like me, isn’t to write a manifesto. It is to build something small, and then to use it, and then to invite a few other people to use it, and to see what happens. Not a revolution. A tree.
That is what Tuhat is. Tuhat is Finnish for one thousand, and the rule is exactly that — every post must be at least a thousand words. No notes. No threads. No hot takes. No algorithm sorting writers into winners and losers based on how often they post or how spicy their headlines are. You get a page at tuhat.net/u/you, and your readers find you the old fashioned way, through a URL, an RSS feed, or an email subscription you actually own and can export as a CSV.
The constraint is the point. A thousand words is enough room to make an argument, tell a story properly, or sit with something difficult without rushing to a punchline. It is also enough friction that nobody publishes here for the dopamine of it. If you don’t have something you genuinely want to say, you won’t bother. That is by design.
John Coulthart:
a further evolution of a form of digital drawing I’ve been developing, a process in which you draw a portion of the picture then copy and paste it to a new layer, distort it slightly using one of Photoshop’s Distort filters, then draw over and around the new section until it blends seamlessly with the rest. This has the effect of creating unpredictable forms that underly the work as a whole, rather like the Surrealist techniques of frottage, grattage, decalcomania and so on. The Surrealist processes were all the product of physical materials but the impulse is the same whatever technique you may use: the introduction of a random element that might evade the conscious input of the artist and the habitual strokes made by the drawing hand.
However bad a writer you think you are, you are not worse than AI. But you still keep letting it do your writing for you, as if I won’t be able to tell. Listen: I can tell. I can always tell. You think I won’t notice, but I will. There’s no hiding from me. If you let AI do your writing I will find out, and I will kill you.
OPERATIONS: am behind. STATUS:
I have taken my FitBit off, because the app was “updated” to Google Health and now it hallucinates bicycles.
I have just taken delivery of two cases of ale from Williams Bros brewery and a case of wine from Flint Vineyard. Flint is a Norfolk vineyard that makes an exceptional sparkling, and William Bros is the home of the Fraoch heather ale and a remarkable summer ale called Birds And Bees.
Four phone calls before noon suggests that this is going to be a difficult day for focus.
READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) LISTENING: SUPER-HEAVY HAMOAZIAN REVERIE, Urthona LAST WATCHED: SCARFACE (1983), because you always drop the remote when SCARFACE comes on. Also, THE RUNNING MAN (2025), and finished watching THE BOYS, and did two episodes of British period crime show LEGENDS. DRINK: found a 25 year old Lagavulin in the back of the cupboard
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
OPERATIONS: ALL THE THINGS STATUS: inbox 175, rss 1000, everything is out of control READING: THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
By Christmas 1975, the CIA’s optimism about the broad political situation in the Middle East was accompanied by a relatively sanguine view of the threat from terrorism too. The December edition of its monthly summary of international threats ended with an unusual warning. On the night of the 24th of the month, the agency said, a ‘new organisation of uncertain makeup using the name The Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge’ was planning ‘to sabotage the annual courier flight of the Government of the North Pole’. Security precautions were being co-ordinated worldwide and the ‘prime minister [of the North Pole] and chief courier S. Claus had been notified’.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Politics in Britain has returned to high psychodrama, the kind you normally find in failing states.
Just noticed I haven’t set the date window on this watch! 8C with a feels-like of 4C, which explains the pain in my hands and wrists this morning, and the sky to the east has turned black.
Just a few hours before the Orion spacecraft crossed the sky en route to the moon on April 1, mechatronics engineer Rodrigo Trevisan Okamoto received confirmation he had been waiting for since the Artemis 2 mission was announced in 2023. The email from NASA stated that the crew of the first crewed mission to orbit the moon in half a century would carry a device developed by Okamoto and his team at Condor Instruments, a São Paulo-based startup.
“The NASA announcement was sudden and caught us by surprise. And it was only after the mission concluded that we learned the astronauts had been using the equipment in tests for the past two years,” Okamoto told Agência FAPESP.
The device, called an actigraph, is shaped like a wristwatch and incorporates accelerometers, as well as light and temperature sensors, to precisely map the user’s sleep and wake patterns over the course of days or weeks.
In 1959, physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, colleagues at Cornell University, published “Searching for Interstellar Communications” in Nature as part of the emerging field of SETI—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.3 Recognizing the spin-flip resonance frequency of hydrogen and noting the ubiquity of the element throughout the cosmos, they deduced that other technologically advanced civilizations would similarly attempt to transmit messages on what they termed “the hydrogen line.” In effect, the scientists had identified a pre-civilizational cosmic commons: the hydrogen envelope enshrouding the Big Bang’s host of celestial bodies, cosmic detritus, and all potentially existing lifeforms beyond planet Earth—an open field for interstellar communication held in common before any civilization arrived to claim it.
The 1420 MHz band is now protected by international convention, reserved strictly for the reception of potential transmissions and restricted from commercial or terrestrial use. The hydrogen line is thus shuttered to the appropriations of what Bataille terms “the restricted economy.”4 In our secular scientific world, the hydrogen line serves as the part of the frequency spectrum humanity holds open for contact with inhuman realms…
You notice the anxious darting of his eyes, then the makeup: thick, chalky concealer layered over skin that looks irritated, acne ridden and painful underneath it. His content team trails him carrying bright portable lights, but he doesn’t speak to them like a boss or even a collaborator. He speaks to them like an insecure thirteen-year-old midway through a panic attack: rapid little bursts about how the angle is wrong, how his skin looks bad, how he’s not even talking to the right people.
Within thirty minutes he’s completely withdrawn, sitting alone at the edge of a banquet, scrolling on his phone. Every few seconds his face twitches slightly, tiny repetitive tics perhaps a side effect of the chemical cocktail he’s on.
I had no desire to speak to him. I watched several girls try, only for Clavicular to speak about them while they were still standing there, openly complaining to his entourage that the interactions weren’t interesting enough to clip into content.
Before I leave I glance over Clavicular’s shoulder to see what he’s scrolling on.
No surprise: himself.
He flips between platforms checking views with total concentration, pausing at different uploads like a trader monitoring stock performance.
STATUS: spring is apparently on pause, and this week has turned into a cluster – lost yesterday to plumbing issues that cost me five hundred quid, the day after I said, we’ve got a little money, let’s go out to that very expensive restaurant on Friday… READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
At dawn, he walked a short distance to a stream to wash. He had just knelt to splash water on his face when a tremendous blast of hot air flattened him among the rocks. When he recovered his senses, staring upwards, he saw the afterburners of two Israeli F-4 Phantom jets disappearing into the sky and, very close to him, a small green lizard that he would remember for the rest of his life. Apart from cuts and bruises, a bloodied forehead and singed hair, Ekberg was unhurt. As he staggered back, unable to hear anything other than the ringing in his ears, he saw men running and gesticulating, a severed leg on the ground, what looked like entrails caught on tree branches. Fires were burning among the trees and the air smelt of roast meat, cordite and faeces.
Big fog day. I remember a morning, not long after I started school – probably five years old, maybe six – blanketed in thick fog. Got to school, and my classroom was a couple of floors up. And everyone was at the windows. Because the top of the fogbank was lower than the height we were at, so we could look down on the roof of the fog, and it was like walking around above the clouds. I remember that sense of surreal altitude, and that we were seeing something rare. We just walked upstairs to look down at the tops of clouds.
A recent NATO report defined cognitive warfare as the “manipulation of the enemy’s cognition,” involving “the use of all knowledge, strategies, and available tools to impact human behavior…. with the end goal of manipulating and altering decision-making.” Under this definition, the systems associated with technological innovation offer ripe pickings for cognitive-style warfare. Now that humans have fashioned this highly vulnerable domain, defined by the ever-deepening and increasingly structured union of humans and machines, we can no longer ignore the opportunities and threats we have built into it.
Cognitive warfare. “The Innovation System as a Disruptive Battlespace,” sure, great title. But. COGNITIVE WARFARE.
READING:THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+)
I suspect that there are various spirits within me. My sister and my father are two among many. They haunt me on different floors and almost never at the same moment.
Supposedly the “jazz shoe” is making a comeback, “Repetto’s Zizi is made using the same 1960s cousu-retourné stitch-and-return technique; demand for the style has grown by 10 per cent over the past three years, buoyed by the collective shift towards softer, lower-profile footwear. (According to Edited’s Katharine Carter, shoes on the market described as “chunky” and “platform” are down 33 per cent year-on-year.)”
