The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Beneath the Artificial Earth Electricity generation, economic doctrine, and the ever-growing power demands of AI Chris Bateman “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller In one of the merely possible futures within reach of our imagination, our planet possesses unimaginable computational power harnessed by Artificial Intelligence. These colossal computational contraptions can calculate protein folds so effectively, that they can predict the side effects of new drugs with only moderate inaccuracy, while mediocre television shows are so cheap to generate that even the most undiscerning viewer is bored of them. To power these computational achievements, the landscape is cloaked in vast continental sheets of light farms, ringed by endless rows of windmills, and peppered with catalytic carbon dioxide stations to compensate for the scarcity of trees. This is the Artif...

  Malevolent Anal Distraction The media’s reporting on the "Queering Nuclear Weapons" essay written by a new national nuclear security official obscures something much darker John Carter Nuclear security is, I’m sure you do not need to be convinced, a deeply serious matter. Ever since we cracked the atom over Hiroshima our civilization has been walking a tightrope over an abyss. A single misstep could mean annihilation – hundreds of millions dead within minutes, billions within days. Doubtless there would be some survivors, but it’s doubtful that industrial civilization would survive. We’ve come within a hair’s breadth of this a few times, not only in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but on other occasions, when radar mulfunctions or computer glitches left launch officers in the USA and the former USSR unsure whether or not to press the big red buttons they were entrusted with. Fortunately for everyone, they didn’t. If they had, none of us would be here. Nuclear power plants can be ...