ISSUE 2.13

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Death Drive

Millennial death memes, universal basic income fiction, sex on the internet, sterilization for prison sentences, and more.

Hi! Have some music! Here's a fittingly titled track for this issue: The Cancel - My Soul. A shivering, chill, funky/jazzy little number that'll smooth you right over. Also, I finally fixed the issue with the link to the YouTube playlist of tracks I've featured in Glitchet not working (they're at the bottom of the newsletter). Sorry for being a dum-dum. On to the articles!

[salon.com]

Why millennials are making memes about wanting to die

My take: because we already know we're (probably) doomed. Inside the article: economic anxiety, Dadaist influences, and disillusionment. With absolutely no data to back it up, I'd call our generation as having the strongest death drive in a very long time. It's not just a death drive, though; it's a sophisticated form of humor that only arises from having to live in the ridiculously complex world we now live in, with few options and an endless number of restrictions and adversarial forces. The only way out is through a hyper-surreal, cancer-like meme macrophage that breaks beyond the logic and reason of The Olds. Part of its strength is that it is alienating and obscure, only owed to those who are internet-quick enough to trace origins, project concepts, and join the big meme train. There's almost a willfulness about the tide pod thing: maybe if we threaten to kill ourselves enough with its products, Tide will stop trying to be so appealing to us, too.

[futurism.com]

Mining Crypto Takes So Much Bandwidth, It’s Inhibiting the Search for Alien Life

Specifically, the bandwidth being used is the GPU supply (I presume in terms of cloud computing resources). There's something extremely cyberpunk in how overwhelmingly cynical this is: great, deep adventures in outer space? No: cyber money instead, we know what keeps us alive, please and thank you.

[io9.gizmodo.com]

Read the "Into the Black" Contest's Winning Story, Set in a Future Where Economics Are Also Humane

Universal basic income fiction? Oh, yeah. You can read the winner and the runner-up here. The former is about an AI that has instituted a form of UBI itself, and the latter is about the govcorp having given a universal "Floor" to the people who formerly were under it--at the cost of data about everything you do and your forced consumption.

[nypost.com]

Drug addict gets shorter prison sentence for getting sterilized

This is something that's profoundly dark about getting sterilized in return for a shorter prison sentence. Oh, I know what it is: it's getting sterilized in return for a shorter prison sentence. I mean, reading into the details, you have a woman who's born 7 children, some while she was on hard drugs. She also consented to the deal. On the other hand, you have a justice system (and economic incentives in drugland) that set up such a situation without easy access to rehabilitation, education, and the slippery slope to arguments for eugenics of "undesirables" (read: those we systematically oppress and do not offer help to as a society). Uff da.

[wired.com]

A Brief History of Sex on the Internet

Oh yes, sexytimes. An interesting look at the explosion of sexuality with the access that the internet provided, between teledildonics, con men, online dating, and what it did for alternative subcultures. Excerpted from a book: The Naughty Nineties, The Triumph of the American Libido.

[aeon.co]

You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time

OK, what-ing what. You know how quantum particles can become entangled regardless of distance? Turns out, they can also become entangled regardless of time. That is, if I understand the article correctly, two completely unrelated particles, with completely untouching lifespans, can also become entangled through time. Which is fuckin' wild. Yes, it strongly implies retrocausality--the present affecting the past. Throw into that a little relativity--the idea that there's no absolute time, and when is only a matter of where (and when) you are in relation to the other event--and you have one confusing quantum mind soup. Timy wimy, wibbly wobbly indeed.