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Tag: culture

21apr26

Published April 21, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Trifid Nebula.

Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war.

the Trump administration is turning to a new clique of defence upstarts that are reimagining how to wage war. They are led by Palantir, a software giant providing intelligence systems; SpaceX, whose Starshield satellite network provides reconnaissance and connectivity; and Anduril, an up-and-coming favourite that makes air and sea drones alongside anti-drone weaponry. This trio of so-called “neo-primes” have close ties with gung-ho figures in the Trump administration. And they are making the giants of the military-industrial complex increasingly nervous.

America’s legacy “prime” contractors have, in the government’s telling, grown stodgy, overpriced and risk-averse as a result of their lucrative sinecures. “If the [newcomers] are good and they get their sea legs, they’re going to win some of that business that otherwise would have gone through a traditional prime,” Mr Michael says.

n case you haven’t gotten around to reading Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s 2025 book, The Technological Republic, (because why would you do that to yourself?), the company best known for supplying AI-driven defense and surveillance software to the likes of the US Army, ICE and NYPD shared a 1,000-word X post this weekend covering its main points. The entire thing is both bizarre and deeply concerning. “The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal,” one of the 22 points states. “It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”

The book is billed as “a passionate call for the West to wake up to our new reality,” and other excerpts in the social media post include assertions such as: “Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public”; “National service should be a universal duty”; “The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone”; and “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”

The Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission, run by the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies (IPOA) at the University of Barcelona and led by Maite Mascort and Esther Pons, has identified a papyrus containing a fragment of Homer’s “Iliad” inside a Roman-era tomb dating to approximately 1,600 years ago, in the Egyptian town of Al Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus. The discovery is exceptional: it is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process

Link to shop. May have to get myself one of these.

My colleagues’ takes are often quite diverse, but this year a chorus has emerged — of strategists proclaiming 2026 to be the year of nostalgia. Wired headphones, workwear (back, so soon), medievalcore, landlines for kids, #90s TikTok. Reading this year’s reports, I find myself agreeing with the observations — nostalgia is big right now, and there’s an opportunity for brands to tap into it. 

But I also see nostalgia not just as a passing 2026 trend but a full-scale, post-digital revival — one that’s been a long time coming and will last beyond the end of the year.

OPERATIONS: aiming for another ten pages, plus other stuff
STATUS: incoming, new plants for the local wildlife to destroy before I can get them in the ground
READING: THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+)
LAST WATCHED: rewatched several episodes of TWIN PEAKS Season 3.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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telemetry 4dec25

Published December 4, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Nature has retracted a headline-grabbing climate-economics study after critics found flawed data that massively inflated its predicted global economic collapse. The New York Times reports: The decision came after a team of economists noticed problems with the data for one country, Uzbekistan, that significantly skewed the results. If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to earlier research (PDF). Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent. Of course, erasing more than 20 percent of the world’s economic activity would still be a devastating blow to human welfare. The paper’s detractors emphasize that climate change is a major threat, as recent meta analyses have found, and that more should be done to address it — but, they say, unusual results should be treated skeptically. “Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20 percent reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number,” said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University who co-wrote the critique published in August. “So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60 percent is off the chart.”

A man stands before a sinking ship. The ship will go down, the audience will watch, the metric will spike. Another entry in an endless algorithmic archive.

This is the logic of ultra-viral content: stunts, baroque challenges, a leap into lava. Each dare is designed to spike the dopamine drip yet leave no trace. The true danger was never the volcano, but the possibility that it might be lost in the scroll.

Culture is flattened by engines that reward repeatable extremes. A looped performance of risk reprocessed as engagement. Death, illegality, impossibility. All reduced to formats. 

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morning computer meme rot

Published November 4, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Alison Friend.

Memes thrive in a culture that’s endlessly accelerating – rotting and regenerating at the same time. This is also why the format rarely works for brands. Rather than relinquishing control, brands often end up producing content in meme-like costumes. Organic memes self-replicate and survive because people use them to express what hasn’t been said before. While brands chase the organic transmission real memes achieve, it’s often the anti-memetic campaign ideas – the ones that should resist spreading – that end up being shared the most. Anna Rose Kerr

See also ANTIMEMETICS, which I need to re-read.

In a particularly meta twist, the page for “brain rot” — let’s just go with Wikipedia’s definition, which is the “negative cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral consequences” of consuming content that’s “trivial, simplistic, or low in quality” — has been defaced so much that it’s now protected against public edits until early next year.

And specifically what it’s been defaced with? Pure, unadulterated brain rot — like this edit, from back in February 2025, when the page was replaced with references to the brain rot mainstay Skibidi Toilet and Donald Trump, along with the phrase “Goofy ahh brainrot 💀” repeated 96 times in succession.

See also morning computer brain rot 2025

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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telemetry 1nov25

Published November 1, 2025 by Warren Ellis

On All Hallow’s Eve, Jennifer Lucy Allan turns the cards and listens for what they reveal, tracing sonic lines across the tarot deck. From the ghostly atmospherics of William Basinski’s Wheel of Fortune, to the arcane explorations of early electronic pioneer Ruth White and Swiss krautrock mystic Walter Wegmüller, the spread unfolds in unexpected ways, its order uncertain, its juxtapositions surprising. Expect new sounds from Argentinian artist aylu, whose spiritually-charged album journeys from personal struggle to collective resistance, as well as slow-motion noise conjured by New Zealand’s drone trio Surface of the Earth.

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The Last Days Of Social Media

Published September 17, 2025 by Warren Ellis

The Last Days Of Social Media

“While content proliferates, engagement is evaporating. Average interaction rates across major platforms are declining fast: Facebook and X posts now scrape an average 0.15% engagement, while Instagram has dropped 24% year-on-year. Even TikTok has begun to plateau. People aren’t connecting or conversing on social media like they used to; they’re just wading through slop, that is, low-effort, low-quality content produced at scale, often with AI, for engagement.”

September 17, 2025 at 04:39PM

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marks 2sep25

Published September 2, 2025 by Warren Ellis

“The most likely scenario is that the severed upper limbs were trophies taken from the bodies of enemies fallen in battle or raids immediately after death and brought to the village. Heads and hands seem to be the most common human trophies documented in the archaeological record, although written and ethnographic sources often refer to other body parts, including soft tissues which would not generally preserve, such as scalps, ears, or genitals,” the authors write.

Disney is suddenly freaking out about losing its “boy” audience. No, really—they’ve finally noticed that the demographic they’ve spent the last decade ignoring might actually matter.

Variety is reporting that the studio has been quietly putting the word out to producers and writers: bring us films that can lure young men (ages 13–28) back into the fold. That Gen Z demo has been drifting for years, preferring video games and viral meme cinema (“Minecraft”) to whatever Marvel or Star Wars are serving up.

The United States may be losing its edge in mRNA technology­­.

The technology, which powered life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and is now rocketing new cancer therapeutics forward, will soon undergo a scientific slowdown. On August 5, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would wind down mRNA vaccine development under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA.

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IShowSpeed Gets Uploaded by EDGLRD

Published May 15, 2025 by Warren Ellis

IShowSpeed Gets Uploaded by EDGLRD

“If EDGLRD’s aesthetics could be boiled down into brain rot lingo, it might be that they find joy in the idea that the flavour profile of a single Dorito would have fatal implications on a Victorian child. Where other cultural observers see Speed’s content as over-injected with processed ingredients, EDGLRD sees a fellow risk-taker who opts out of 2025’s boring-dystopia, nostalgia-porn culture.”

umbrella, bicycle, sewing machine

May 15, 2025 at 04:02PM

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Viral WitchTok

Published April 8, 2025 by Warren Ellis

The resurgence of interest in witchcraft coincides with periods of social and political instability, as anti-progressive movements gained traction after years of strong progressive sentiment. In this context, marginalised groups turned to esoteric practices not as reactionary escapism but as tools for self-preservation and empowerment. Viral WitchTok content often emphasises spells for protection, manifestation and enlightenment.

I’m not sure “viral WitchTok” was a phrase I ever needed to see, but apparently that’s where we are. Or where we’ve been, actually. I noted otherwise intelligent, educated and alert persons talking way too much about astrology in the 2010s. Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about the retreat from the real that started pre-pandemic.

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Bullshit Singularity

Published April 3, 2025 by Warren Ellis

The cost of bullshit has dropped exponentially. The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) – marketed as “artificial intelligence” – has created a sort of bullshit singularity: infinite bullshit at zero-cost.

FLOOD THE ZONE, Rupert Russell

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Context Literacy

Published April 1, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Jay Springett, who brings a term that feels today like it has serious value:

We must cultivate context literacy and we must maintain a distinction between the infrastructure and the experience, between machine and meaning.

We are living through a moment that future historians may describe as a cultural rupture. A context war. How this plays out will shape new definitions of truth, authorship, creativity, and trust, perhaps for centuries to come.

Context Literacy feels like a big thing.

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