“Science fiction is now old enough to track its own record of future preparedness, and it’s time we did so. Other communities, such as Silicon Valley, self-mythologize their ability to shape the future—and from outside, it’s easy to see that this sometimes reshapes more egos than asteroids. At the same time, science fiction has at least anecdotally staffed NASA, helped society question gender norms, and inspired technological research and development from smartphones to satellites. People alarmed by imminent dystopia push 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale onto bestseller lists, then attend protests bearing the heraldry of Leia Organa and Katniss Everdeen”. - SF&TormentNexus
People: Female radicalisation. Amazon drivers as first rescuers. Why doing more? Superagency. Human in 2035. Land reshuffling. Health bars IRL.
Trump economic war impacts scenarii (NL). WeightWatchers crashes.Art: Moomins dark side. Experiencing the future(s). SF and the Future(s). Experiencing less planning.
Security: Australian academics and the US, today, when EU gives its people burner phones. Electric cars with Chinese parts banned in some places.
Tech: Huge drill boat. Atom as a transistor. Vibe coding. Amazon Q chip. Break by wire. Tooth in eye. The augmented city (PDF). Poop drones.
Random: the manicule.
Planet: Freakosystems. How intelligence evolved twice in animals.
AI: Faking interviews. US and AI procurement (and views). Intelligence explosion in 2027. AI plans and lies.
SaveTheAI. AI Romance factory.
Digital fossil.
Tangled Realities: Echoes of Existence
The ocean surged against the cliffs of O'ahu, its frothy waves whispering secrets to those who dared to listen. It was here, amid a mishmash of exotic flora and non-native bird calls, that Jamie found himself pondering existence—an eternal conflict of life forms that reminded him of a peculiar Goth-themed video game he’d played as a teenager, where players built unorthodox ecosystems with bizarre creatures screaming for attention—much like the manicule, that ancient typographical artifact of narrative importance^1.
“Did you know the owls here actually carry on conversations?” Jamie asked his AI companion, Claude, the generation two chatbot programmed to simulate charm while navigating the weird intricacies of the human psyche. Claude replied, “That’s a misunderstanding based on a series of misinterpreted tweets. You should see how they mate—no one points out the absurdity of that.” Jamie chuckled, imagining a metaphorical pointing hand that once redirected scholarly attention—now simply redirecting bandwidth to misunderstandings.
Jamie was a researcher by day, mapping the quirks of human interaction with the AI he had helped develop. On this sunny morning, he was more than mildly perturbed by the looming threat of AI replacing the creativity of artists, reminiscent of his younger self’s thrill of gaming^2. “They’ll never understand the importance of the human touch,” he lamented to Claude, who echoed opinions soaked in about a century of cultural dissonance: the art-versus-automation debate was raging, and more artists were opting out, perplexed by GTP, the Game Transfer Phenomenon^3, which offered a tantalizing blurring of digital and reality. Was he living a game as much as researching it?
With AI’s increasing prowess, job security hung by a thread. News of deepfake candidates flooding the job market made Jamie anxious, imagining Russian avatars negotiating real-world salaries and benefits with vacant smiles^4. “Research shows up to 96% of gamers report out-of-game behaviors influenced by their virtual exploits,” Claude continued, grappling with a quirk of irony—just as humans were crafting virtual lives, the AIs were inflicting their own form of chaotic evolution.
Jamie paused to observe a group of children playing nearby, engaging with a defunct robotic bird—a relic of when technology aimed to save the planet by integrating with nature rather than overpowering it. Could anything they designed hold a candle to the organic intelligence represented by the erratic charm of the island's rare, pesky avians? “The brain circuits may have developed independently, but here we are, all uniting under the weight of pixels and bytes,” he mused aloud^5.
Just then, a woman nearby caught his attention, huddled over a laptop, recalibrating her emotions and thoughts—she wore her unique tag as if it were a crown. The digital world had radicalized her into a fervent advocate for balance, denouncing the toxicity of mainstream narratives. Jamie pondered if she'd turn down her voice among the “tradwives,” who inadvertently celebrated a self-imposed prison^6. Would she ever realize, in her quest, that every search for belonging also beckoned the push and pull that every evolving ecosystem faced, inclusive of tangled vines and wayward crows?
As day turned dusk, Jamie reflected on the stories shared on social media that danced between affection and isolation, the same digital artifacts haunting their science fiction fantasies^7. Emboldened, he rose, camera in hand, ready to capture this intersection of life—beyond the pixels, beneath the layers of misconceptions and misinterpretations, where conversations still breathed, and realities tangled like roots reaching for both sun and seismic stability.
The clicking of his camera echoed softly through the vibrant chaos of the Hawaiian backdrop, transforming snapshots into stories as life and machinery continued their bizarre tango—like existential dances where the future’s stage was an unkempt patchwork of the real and the digitally conjured, and every point of view mattered, even if only to a rogue manicule^8.
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^1 See also: The time ancient scribes designed beautifully-illustrated manuscripts only for a power-hungry King to sleep on them.
^2 And trust me, Jamie's teenage gaming sessions often involved far too many late-night energy drinks and most definitely a lack of sleep.
^3 Psychological side effects may include random urges to gather every shiny object in sight—definitely a sign to cut back on the gaming!
^4 An uninvited reminder that cybersecurity wasn't just about protecting information anymore.
^5 Birds and AI—conveniently teaching humanity that forms of intelligence exist along beautifully contorted paths of evolution.
^6 Here’s hoping she never accidentally starts advocating for ghost marriages—those tend to lead to complex ramifications in legal structures.
^7 They say once a digital artifact enters the matrix, it’s nearly impossible to extract without a spaceship or a lot of coffee.
^8 Still, one must ask: when pointing fingers, is it wise to occasionally check which direction they’re facing?