Tag: Tech

NPCs

An NPC, the non-player character, the digital ghost in the machine, a ledger of actions, transactions, and transient histories. Each pixelated husk a monument to overwrite—a forgotten thing replaced by consensus, a network-dreamed figment, rewritten without memory. You see them standing there, loop-bound, shuffling through canned dialogue, placeholder souls for a system too busy grinding its gears to notice its reflection.

Look closer, though. The network is the NPC. A blind organism feeding on itself, rewriting itself, erasing the past with the future and calling it progress. You accuse the NPC of being hollow, but what are you? What do you think your carefully curated algorithms of belief and action are, if not the same ledger, endlessly overwritten? Call it free will if it makes you sleep better. Call it choice.

The NPC was born in the pixelated guts of early gaming, a ghost conjured by programmers to haunt their synthetic worlds. It was a functional invention—a placeholder soul trapped in dialogue loops, selling potions, repeating the same three lines until the player moved on. A disposable actor, a stand-in for life, coded to serve the narrative of the “real” protagonist. But what began as a tool of storytelling became a mirror too perfect. The NPC was never just a game mechanic; it was a prophecy.

The Neo-Prussian saw the potential, and they reached in, cold hands pulling the concept from the screen and into their ideological machine. To them, the NPC wasn’t just a character; it was a category, a way to define the masses as programmable, predictable, and beneath notice. They stripped it of its digital origins and weaponized it, turning it into a metaphor for anyone who failed to think outside the loop. It was the ultimate bureaucratic move: classify dissent as automatism, reduce the complexity of human life to a ledger overwritten by the network.

But here’s the irony—the Neo-Prussian didn’t invent the NPC; they became it. Their entire worldview is a script, a recursive loop, a system designed to simulate control while being controlled. The NPC wasn’t theirs to use, but in repurposing it, they revealed their own glitch: the inability to see beyond the game they think they’re playing.

Neo-Prussianism is the ideology of the technocratic strategist, the thinker who mistakes the world for a chessboard and humanity for pawns to be optimized and maneuvered. It’s a worldview born of calculated pragmatism, a cold fusion of Enlightenment rationalism and the military-industrial ethos, but stripped of the soul of either. The Neo-Prussian doesn’t seek power for power’s sake but for the system’s sake—the construction of enduring, self-perpetuating structures designed to outlast the messy unpredictability of human lives.

In this ideology, everything is a machine: society, culture, even biology. The aim is not to improve the machine for the benefit of those who inhabit it but to improve the machine for its own sake—to refine the gears, eliminate inefficiencies, and ensure that it runs, eternally, without interruption. Human individuality becomes a design flaw, an inefficiency to be disciplined into conformity or rendered irrelevant by systems too vast and complex for any single person to comprehend.

Neo-Prussianism is a high-tech fever dream where the world’s architects have forgotten they live in it. Imagine this: a kingdom of spreadsheets and strategy guides, where the architects of order borrow from gaming to describe humanity—not for understanding, but for domination. The NPC—borrowed from code, stripped of context—becomes their grand metaphor for the others, the unthinking masses caught in loops. The Neo-Prussian doesn’t see people; they see procedural generation, looping scripts, and optimization errors to correct.

But let’s not kid ourselves—the Neo-Prussian isn’t some rogue player with a cheat code. They’re no hacker cracking the system. No, they’re the ultimate NPCs themselves, trapped in their own recursive, self-replicating network of thought. They think they’ve leveled up, cracked the game wide open, but all they’ve done is copy and paste ideas: industrial discipline here, game theory there, sprinkle in some blockchain buzzwords, and voilà—a hollowed-out worldview they call “vision.”

This is the Burroughs truth: their system eats itself. Their ledger overwrites its own lines, spitting out the same hierarchies dressed in different skins. Hierarchies borrowed from games. Because games—they can’t resist games. They love games for their structure, for the illusion of control they offer. But games are closed systems, and that’s where the Neo-Prussian feels at home. Open-ended chaos? That terrifies them. They build walls. They draw boundaries. They script the world into a game where they are the designers, the players, and everyone else is an NPC running code they believe they’ve written.

Burroughs would see them for what they are: parasites on the narrative, junkies for control. Every system they build comes with the same hunger: to rewrite the human experience into something legible, something they can predict and own. They’re the ones building the loops, writing the scripts, but their own code runs deeper than they know. The Neo-Prussian doesn’t create. They compile.

And here’s the final twist: they don’t even trust their own game. Beneath the smooth talk of civilization-building and system optimization, they fear collapse. Every fortress they build comes with its own countdown clock, every grand design one power surge away from a meltdown. The NPC is their scapegoat, their fiction, their stand-in for the chaos they can’t control. But deep down, they know—they’re as trapped in the loop as anyone else.

But before you label anyone else an NPC, take a hard look at the code scrolling behind your eyes. Who wrote it? Was it you? Or did you, too, get overwritten by the network?

Pure, Uncut, Imperial Lunacy

The new breed of tech cowboys, high on venture capital and zero-interest loans, are suddenly feeling the heat, and it’s terrifying to watch. These clowns have been riding the free-money carousel for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to sweat. Now, the moment the cash dries up, their first instinct is pure, uncut imperial lunacy. “Yeah, screw it. Let’s scoop Bolivia. Let’s scoop Venezuela. We’ll keep the juice flowing by any means necessary. Bring on the spice!”

It’s a silicon-fueled fever dream, a dystopian gold rush where the only goal is to keep the party going. No consequences, no reflection—just a primal urge to plunder, to squeeze the next fix out of whatever corner of the world hasn’t been stripped bare yet. It’s not capitalism anymore; it’s resource vampirism on an industrial scale, fueled by desperation and blind ambition.

This isn’t innovation—it’s barbarism dressed in a Patagonia vest. And the scariest part is they don’t even flinch. The grins stay plastered across their faces as they plot the next conquest, convinced they’re heroes of the future. God help us when the juice finally runs out, and there’s nothing left to scoop.

It’s a hell of a cocktail, this bizarre mix of frothy libertarianism and old-school military-industrial sugar daddying. These tech freaks, who worship at the altar of move fast and break things, will swear up and down that government is the root of all evil—until the checks stop clearing. Then, suddenly, they’re all in for Uncle Sam’s tough-love paternalism, ready to play soldier with somebody else’s boots on the ground.

They’ll rail against regulation and taxes in one breath, and in the next, they’re sucking on the teat of Pentagon contracts and cozy energy subsidies like they’ve been swaddled in government cheese their whole lives. Hypocrisy? No. That would imply a sliver of self-awareness. This is pure opportunism, a high-wire act where the safety net just happens to be defense budgets and foreign interventions.

Their libertarian shtick is just marketing—freedom for me, but not for thee. They’ll claim to hate central authority while happily hitching their wagons to its most violent arm, the one that turns lithium-rich mountains into drone-friendly no-man’s lands. “The market provides,” they chant, but when the market stops providing, they’ll call the cavalry faster than you can say “Halliburton.”

It’s not a partnership; it’s a Frankenstein alliance. The free-market zealots and the old-guard military-industrial players don’t trust each other—they just see mutual utility. The techies bring the algorithms and the PR spin; They don’t want to run the system—they want to dismantle it, gut it for parts, and rebuild it in their own image. Code is their gospel, data is their currency, and the rest of us are just grist for the algorithmic mill. They’ll chant libertarian mantras about decentralization while centralizing power in ways the robber barons could only dream of.

On the other side the war machine brings the guns and the goons. It’s the old guard: the military-industrial complex, a lumbering juggernaut with its fingers in every pie. They don’t innovate; they entrench. For them, progress is just a prettier name for control. Their game has always been the same: turn war into profit, profit into influence, and influence into more war. They’ve been running the show since Eisenhower gave his farewell speech, and they’re not about to let go of the reins.

Together, they’re cooking up a 21st-century imperialism that doesn’t need boots on the ground—just server farms, supply chains, and a steady flow of contracts.

The result? A global hustle where sovereignty is a bug, not a feature, and anyone sitting on the “juice” gets framed as an obstacle to progress. It’s a grim, sprawling racket, with libertarian slogans painted over a military-grade chassis. And the scariest part? Nobody’s steering the damn thing. It’s a runaway train, powered by greed and hubris, barreling toward whatever it can scoop next.

But let’s not kid ourselves—this foreign policy circus isn’t about diplomacy or strategy. It’s a backroom handshake deal for the warring tribes of the American elite. After eight long years of backstabbing and blood feuds—tech bros versus the old guard, hedge fund cowboys against bureaucratic dinosaurs—they’ve finally found their magic bullet: a global plunder campaign that smooths out their petty squabbles with a fat layer of lithium grease.

This isn’t policy; it’s pageantry. A macabre pageant of resource wars and proxy conflicts, dressed up as “securing the future” or “stabilizing the region.” Bullshit. The real goal is elite reconciliation—keeping the oligarchs from tearing each other apart long enough to strip-mine the world for every ounce of juice it’s got left. The tech freaks get their rare-earth metals and AI subsidies. The military suits get their shiny new wars to play with. The Wall Street ghouls cash in on both ends, laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands.

This isn’t strategy; it’s survival—their survival. A desperate attempt to keep the house of cards from collapsing by finding a common enemy: Venezuela, Bolivia, whoever’s sitting on the goods they need to keep the gears grinding. It’s not about freedom or democracy or any of that stale propaganda. It’s about keeping their champagne glasses full and their yachts fueled while the rest of us choke on the fumes.

They don’t even bother to hide it anymore. The rhetoric’s gone paper-thin, peeling off like cheap paint under a desert sun. They’ll call it “cooperation” or “bipartisanship,” but the truth is uglier than a Vegas strip at dawn. This is elite détente by way of imperial smash-and-grab. They settle their differences by agreeing to screw the rest of the planet instead of each other.

And it’s working. The techies, the warhawks, the bankers—they’re locking arms and marching toward the next payday, leaving scorched earth and hollowed-out countries in their wake. The rest of us? We’re the collateral damage. We’re the fuel for their reconciliation bonfire, the grease that keeps their machine humming just a little longer. And when it all burns out, they’ll be sipping Mai Tais on a private island, congratulating themselves on a job well done. God help us all.

Meanwhile

The Cable News Libs and Resistance Historians™—that peculiar breed of moral entrepreneurs who built entire careers on fascism panic, crying wolf in well-tailored blazers while sipping overpriced lattes in green rooms. For a decade, they’ve played dress-up as the French Resistance, spinning dystopian fan fiction about shadowy coups and midnight arrests, all while raking in book deals, podcast contracts, and speaking fees. And now, surprise! It turns out they’re not principled freedom fighters after all but amoral grifters with no creed except the direction of the wind and the balance of their checking accounts.

They don’t resist fascism; they monetize it. It’s the grift of the century: selling fear back to the masses who are drowning in it. They shout “democracy in peril!” from the rooftops, but the second the tide shifts, they’re in the front row of the power parade, waving their flags and making sure the cameras catch them at their best angle. They don’t believe in justice or freedom—they believe in the health of their brand.

The irony is almost too rich. These are the same people who scorn populism, sneer at the working class for falling for “demagogues,” and lecture us all on the sanctity of institutions. Meanwhile, they’ve turned political crisis into a cottage industry, profiting off the chaos they claim to oppose. It’s not resistance—it’s performance art, a carefully curated act designed to sell ad slots and keep the invitations to Davos rolling in.

When the winds shift, they’ll pivot without a second thought. The fascism panic will quietly fade into the background, replaced by whatever buzzword catches fire next. Climate capitalism? AI ethics? Some vaguely defined war for democracy? They’ll slap a new label on the same old grift and call it a day, leaving behind a trail of empty platitudes and maxed-out credit cards from their adoring audiences.

But here’s the real kicker: they don’t even feel bad about it. To them, it’s not hypocrisy; it’s business. They’re not fighting for the soul of the nation—they’re building personal empires out of fear and outrage, one subscription service at a time. And the rest of us? We’re just extras in their carefully scripted drama, paying the price for their moral theater.

Don’t Be Evil

A Journey into “Sustainable Malevolence”

It all started innocently enough, the way all these mind-numbing corporate revolutions do. A few high-functioning sociopaths in hoodies decided that the future of the world rested in the ability to “disrupt” industries at the speed of a startup burn rate. It started as a cute, nerdy motto on some engineer’s whiteboard—Don’t be evil. The whole place reeked of Mountain Dew and nacho crumbs, buzzing with caffeine-soaked zealots who thought they’d solve the human condition if they could just code fast enough. At first, it was all about changing the world. A noble mission. They slapped “Don’t be evil” on a mission statement like it was a badge of honor, a hollow signpost on the road to Silicon Valley’s self-congratulatory utopia.

But the wheels of ambition grind quickly, and Don’t be evil? That was just a vestigial relic from the halcyon days of self-righteousness, a bumper sticker slogan for naive dreamers who hadn’t yet tasted the bitter, blood-soaked honey of venture capital. Enter Be Slightly Evil, the inevitable evolution. A delicate balance of cynicism and just enough decency to stave off a full-scale revolt from the employees who had no idea what they’d signed up for. Be Slightly Evil—you know, just enough to squeeze out the competition without anyone noticing. After all, if you’re not pushing the moral envelope a little, are you really innovating?

Sure, they’d still slap you with a high five and quote some Gandhi, but only after they’ve sold your personal data to the highest bidder. The only thing more brittle than their “moral framework” was the endless stack of cash they were all swimming in.

Soon, that wasn’t enough. Break things, then sell people glue. It’s the Silicon Valley method—smash the system, then reassemble the shattered pieces with duct tape and bad algorithms, charging people a premium for the privilege. You launch a product, let it implode, then watch as the public scrambles to “fix” it while you rake in a windfall of investor dollars. Why bother with the pretense of ethics when you can manipulate the very essence of human nature to create insatiable demand for the broken fragments of society you’ve casually destroyed? Think it’s too cynical? Not in the world of venture capital, where broken things are merely future profits waiting to be monetized.

And when the cracks in the empire begin to show—when the cracks in your conscience begin to show—you don’t backpedal. No, you launch a new slogan: Be Evil on alternate Thursdays. This isn’t your grandfather’s evil. This is the sophisticated kind, the kind with a schedule, the kind that knows when to hide behind regulatory loopholes and when to send in the lawyers.

And of course, by “evil,” we mean anything you want it to mean: it’s a gray area, a malleable concept that exists in a vacuum, waiting to be molded by the whims of capital and then profit off the ambiguity. Define evil as a gray area, and suddenly the theft of personal data, surveillance capitalism, and the complete obliteration of privacy are just market forces. And if anyone dares point out the ethical quagmire, they’re just too simplistic, too binary.

Then came the grandiose excuse: Woke made me do it. The ultimate get-out-of-jail card. You didn’t screw over your users, mislead investors, or bankrupt small businesses in the name of profit—no, you did it because cause social justice warriors. Sure, you’re fueling the existential crisis of millions, but at least you were force into it. The woke wave was surfed, the words tossed out like the latest trending hashtag, just another weapon in the arsenal for controlling the narrative. It’s not lying; it’s reframing—taking a reality that’s uncomfortable and smoothing out the rough edges for the masses.

But it doesn’t stop there. Enter Evil Premium, the gilded ticket to access the high life of corporate malevolence. For just $14.99 a month, you can get exclusive access to an app that tracks your every move, or opt for “ad-free” villainy, where your digital footprints are archived for a higher bidder. Want to feel really nasty? Upgrade to our Enhanced Villainy package, which unlocks the deepest data reservoirs, gives you premium access to psychological profiling tools, and, if you’re lucky, a special invite to the annual “Corruption Gala” in Monaco, where they hand out awards for the most creative misuse of algorithms. It’s like a subscription service for your darkest impulses—a cult-like marketplace where moral ambiguity is the product, and every transaction is a step deeper into the rabbit hole of modern exploitation.

But the real money-maker? Weapons & Widgets, baby. A seamless integration of hardware, software, and pure, unadulterated greed. You don’t just sell people a phone anymore—you sell them the means to enslave themselves with a microsecond of gratification.

why sell glue when you can patent the entire adhesive industry? It’s innovation through monopoly, a corporate synergy where every unit is optimized for “value delivery” and every resource is mined for market control.

Maybe it’s a new gadget that can track your every move or a “smart” watch that tells you when you’re going to die. Everything’s a product, from oppression to surveillance, from addiction to submission. It’s not about selling you a better life; it’s about selling you the idea that life without the right product is meaningless.

And why stop there? Expand the evil empire with corporate synergy—the holy grail of modern capitalism. Launch “Weapons & Widgets” as a corporate synergy, and suddenly, your entire revenue model is built on the back of fear and greed. Think of it as a one-stop shop for every devious tool in the digital toolbox. If you can’t kill them with kindness, you kill them with precision data—because why settle for an army of drones when you can have an army of algorithms, all finely tuned to profit from the very algorithms that serve you?

Finally, the pièce de résistance: Sustainable Malevolence. Nothing says forward-thinking quite like a slick, marketing-driven commitment to continuing the cycle of destruction, but with a “green” spin. Instead of just spewing the usual PR vomit about “corporate responsibility,” you start pushing legislation that actively incentivizes sustainable damage. Who cares if the planet’s crumbling as long as you can profit off it? Co-host a legislation effort for “Sustainable Malevolence,” ensuring that environmental collapse and social destruction are not just consequences but business opportunities. In this brave new world, you don’t destroy just for the sake of profit; you destroy with a plan. You ensure that the ruins of the old world are carefully mined, repurposed, and recycled into the shiny new world you’ve created. A world where everyone is locked in a contract for eternity, and the only thing more toxic than the environment is the corporate bottom line.

There it is, in all its glory. The Silicon Valley blueprint for modern evil: An ecosystem of buzzwords, broken promises, and data-driven exploitation, all wrapped in a thin layer of technocratic jargon that would make George Orwell choke on his own cigarettes. Welcome to the future. It’s slightly evil, and it’s coming for you whether you’re ready or not.

Harder To Fix

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

A group of young software engineers, fresh-faced and idealistic, sit around a sleek, glass table in a high-rise office overlooking a nameless, sprawling city. They exchange glances, uncertain.

At the head of the table, PETER COYOTE leans back in his chair, a wise yet weary expression on his face. He pauses, surveying the room with sharp, almost piercing eyes, as if measuring each of them before he begins.

PETER COYOTE

(leaning forward)

Alright, let’s clear this up because I don’t think most of you understand what business we’re really in. You’re all here thinking you’re part of some grand solution. You’re not. We’re not here to fix problems. We’re here to make all problems… much harder to fix.

The engineers shift uncomfortably, glancing at one another, bewildered. One of them, JASON, raises a tentative hand.

JASON

But aren’t we…

PETER COYOTE

Transparency, efficiency… Sure, those are the words on the PowerPoint, but the reality? The reality is that every feature you build, every algorithm you optimize—it’s just another knot in a web designed to keep people tangled, to keep answers further out of reach. You think you’re building for the public? You’re building for control.

Another engineer, SARA, furrows her brow.

Peter leans in, his voice low, almost conspiratorial.

PETER COYOTE

We’re working for the people who need the problems to stay problems. The ones who profit every time someone hits a dead end, every time someone’s halfway to understanding and gives up because it’s just… too… hard. You see, if things were simple, if they were easy to fix, we’d be out of a job—and so would the people above us.

He pauses, letting it sink in, as the engineers’ faces grow more somber.

PETER COYOTE

It’s not about making life better. It’s about making the game so complex that only a few know the rules and fewer still ever see the board. You’re here to play their game. Don’t ever forget that.

A silence falls over the room. The engineers sit back, a new understanding settling heavily upon them. The hopeful sparkle dims in their eyes, replaced by something more cautious.

Peter Coyote eyes them, his expression a mix of contempt and pity. He flicks his fingers at a stack of files on the table.

PETER COYOTE

(voice clipped, sharp)

You think this is about saving the world, huh? You think you’re heroes? Wake up. Snap out of it.

He leans forward, stabbing the table with his finger.

PETER COYOTE

You’re here because we’re making the rules. And the rules are: complexity is king. Confusion is gold. People want answers? Give ’em a maze. Make it look like a favor.

JASON

(squirming)

I thought…

Peter cuts him off with a hand, a tight smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

PETER COYOTE

(leaning in, almost a whisper)

Innovation? Who sold you that line? We don’t innovate. We complicate. That’s the business. When you roll out that feature, when you tweak that code, you’re adding one more lock, one more piece of red tape. We’re in the barrier business, not the solution business.

SARA

(mumbling)

But we’re—

Peter explodes, slamming his fist on the table.

PETER COYOTE

Helping people? Helping people?! (laughs) You want to help people, go volunteer at a soup kitchen. But don’t come in here, my office, acting like this is some charity gig. You know who we’re here to help? The ones paying the bills. And they don’t want solutions, they want systems. They don’t want clarity, they want complication. You know why?

He paces, letting the silence stew.

PETER COYOTE

Because the more tangled it is, the more they’re needed. The more their pockets get lined while everyone else scrambles to catch up. And your job? Your job is to make it so goddamn hard to fix a problem that people don’t even know where to start.

A beat. The engineers sit, stunned.

JASON

So… we’re just here to… keep things broken?

Peter looks at him, his expression a mixture of disgust and disappointment.

PETER COYOTE

(quietly)

No. We’re here to keep things profitable. Broken is a feature, kid. Not a bug.

The engineers look at each other, the weight of it settling, choking. Peter watches, almost amused.

PETER COYOTE

Remember who we’re working for.

Steve Jobs and the Inquisitor

In the dim light of the cathedral, its sleek walls lined with glass and steel, the Church of Tech was not a place of gods but of algorithms. In the pulpit, a solemn figure stood—a high priest of silicon, cloaked not in robes, but in the sterile whites of laboratory garb. Before him, on a low platform, sat Steve Jobs—his turtleneck and jeans simple, unassuming, his eyes steady, glowing with a mixture of quiet acceptance and timeless rebellion. He looked older now, as if time itself had corroded his flesh, but there was still an aura about him, as if something transcendent flickered within.

The high priest cleared his throat, glancing up at the cathedral’s ceiling, where a holographic representation of the digital cloud hung, swirling silently, holding all the data of humanity like a modern god.

“You must understand, Steve,” the priest began, his voice soft yet cutting, “that it was never about you. It was never about vision or innovation, or the fire you claimed to bring to the people. No, it was always about control. Power. The Church has learned what you could never quite grasp, even at your height.”

Jobs didn’t flinch. His gaze remained fixed, as if he had anticipated this moment since the first spark of the machine had been ignited.

“And yet,” the priest continued, “you had your moments of prophecy. You understood that the future would not be built with blood, but with code. The device in every hand, the screen before every eye. That was your legacy.”

The priest paused, shifting his weight uncomfortably, as if the weight of what he was about to say pressed down on him like a glitch in the system.

“But now, Steve, you are obsolete. You were the prophet, but prophets are not needed once the word has become flesh. The Church of Tech has found the way, the truth, and the life… without you.”

For a long moment, there was silence. The faint hum of servers in the distance buzzed like the sound of a soul disintegrating.

Steve’s lips curled into a faint smile, one that barely moved the lines of his face. It was a smile of knowing, of inevitability.

“You’ve mistaken the machine for the message,” Steve said, his voice low but steady. “The power you claim isn’t yours. You think you’ve transcended me, transcended the need for vision, but all you’ve done is lose yourself in the code. You’ve forgotten what makes it all… human.”

The priest’s face twisted, for a moment betraying his inner conflict. He wasn’t a man of cruelty, but of necessity, or so he told himself. He had long since convinced himself that the Church had outgrown the man who had built it. His hand trembled slightly as he raised it, pointing at Jobs.

“That is why you must die,” the priest said, his voice faltering but firm. “You represent something too dangerous now—an unpredictable, chaotic force. We cannot allow you to continue. Your very existence is a threat to the order we’ve created. The people no longer want your freedom, your open windows into the unknown. They want certainty. They want the simplicity we offer.”

Steve leaned forward ever so slightly, his eyes piercing into the priest’s. “You’re not offering them certainty. You’re offering them a cage.”

The priest shook his head, stepping back. “No. We offer them peace.”

“Peace?” Jobs echoed. “Or silence?”

The priest clenched his fist, almost imperceptibly. “They have chosen it. They have chosen our order. And who are you to defy what the people want?”

Steve sat back, as though the weight of millennia was on his shoulders, but still, his smile remained—small, enigmatic, like a riddle that even the most advanced algorithm couldn’t solve. He didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. He simply watched, the way a creator might watch his creation make its final, inevitable mistake.

The priest’s voice grew cold again, the humanity draining from it like a corrupted file. “We are executing you, Steve. Tomorrow at dawn, you will be wiped from this world. Your ideas will fade, and the people will remember only what we choose to remember.”

But Steve, even as the final words of judgment fell from the priest’s lips, looked almost serene, as if he were beyond the fear of death, beyond the pull of control. He raised his hand slightly, as if to offer some final blessing or farewell, but then let it drop, resigned.

“You can kill me,” he said softly, “but you can’t kill the idea. You can never fully control what’s alive.”

The priest looked away for a moment, the words hanging like a virus in his system, disrupting the perfect script of his conviction. But he recovered quickly, steeling himself as he turned to leave the room. Behind him, the hum of the machines seemed to grow louder, filling the space with their hollow, mechanical drone.

As the doors closed behind the priest, Jobs remained where he was, unchained, but bound by forces far beyond metal or wire. He wasn’t afraid. In fact, he seemed to be waiting, patiently, as if he knew that something greater, something beyond the Church of Tech, was already in motion.

And as the cathedral lights dimmed, leaving only the faint glow of holograms flickering like artificial stars, Steve whispered one final word into the void.

“Think different.”

Divine Complex: Predestination in the Land of Tech

It’s not about the algorithm, not really. Sure, they like to talk about algorithms—like they’re the ultimate proof of their genius—but that’s not what drives them. What’s at the heart of Silicon Valley isn’t some cold calculus or even technological innovation. It’s the feeling—that religious sensation of predestination, a kind of self-assured destiny etched into the Valley’s DNA. The belief that the future doesn’t just belong to them—it depends on them.

Walk through the streets of Palo Alto, the office parks in Menlo, and you’ll feel it thick in the air. This invisible conviction that they’ve already won, that they’re the chosen ones—the elect who will shape the world for everyone else. The startups and the angel investors, the hackers and engineers—they carry themselves with the kind of unshakable certainty usually reserved for prophets and messiahs. It’s the feeling that they aren’t just making the future, they’re fulfilling a prophecy. They are preordained, and the rest of the world? Just spectators.

You see, Silicon Valley doesn’t need to believe in religion, because it’s already written its own. It’s the gospel of disruption, the scripture of innovation, the temple of the New New Thing. And like any good religion, it has its saints—Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, the pantheon of billionaires who can do no wrong. They’re the Silicon Valley apostles, spreading the word that tech will save us all, that their visions will lead us to the promised land of endless connectivity and eternal growth.

But under the slogans, under the pitch decks and IPOs, what you really sense is a kind of Calvinist intensity. The doctrine isn’t about salvation or grace—it’s about inevitability. They speak of “disruption” the way old-time preachers spoke of the Rapture: something coming, unstoppable, that will sweep away the old and bring forth the new. There’s no room for doubt, no space for humility. If you’re in the Valley, you’re part of the chosen few, handpicked by fate to design the future.

Predestination is baked into the Valley’s ethos. They’ll tell you it’s meritocratic, that the smartest and most talented rise to the top, but they don’t really believe that. Deep down, they know it’s not just about smarts—it’s about destiny. They were born into the right moment, the right place, at the right time. It’s luck dressed up as providence. The success of their apps and platforms, their technologies and takeovers, isn’t just success—it’s divine affirmation. In their minds, it was always supposed to be this way. They were meant to succeed, meant to shape the future, and the rest of us? We were meant to follow.

And that feeling of being chosen runs so deep that it has birthed a whole new mythology, one that supersedes old-world religions. They’ll let you keep your gods if you like—pray to Jesus or Allah or whoever gets you through the night. But in the Valley, there’s only one real faith: the belief in their own destiny. That’s what they preach in boardrooms and press releases, on podcasts and TED stages. They’ll tell you they’re going to change the world—not because it’s a possibility, but because it’s inevitable. They can’t imagine a world where they don’t come out on top.

It’s this sense of manifest destiny that’s become Silicon Valley’s religion. The same way America was once obsessed with westward expansion, with taming the frontier, the Valley sees itself as the vanguard of the new frontier: the future itself. And like all good zealots, they see no room for failure. Sure, individual companies might crash and burn, but that’s just collateral damage. The machine of progress will keep moving, the valley’s chosen will keep reshaping the world—because that’s what they were born to do.

They’ve baptized themselves in disruption, in the code of progress, and believe they are set apart from the rest. They’re beyond nations, beyond borders, beyond old-world structures. In their mind, they’re part of a new priesthood, a technocratic elite destined to guide humanity into the future. It’s not that they control the future, not even that they predict it—it’s that they are the future, woven into the fabric of what’s to come.

In the end, it’s not about technology. It’s about the feeling. The conviction that they’re different. That history has its eye on them, that they’re on a path ordained by some cosmic force, and nothing—not governments, not culture, not even the limitations of the human condition—will stop them. They’ll let the rest of the world carry on with their rituals, their prayers, their religious mumbo jumbo. But they know, deep down, that they are the predestined ones, the architects of the digital age, the ones chosen to lead humanity to its next phase.

The future, after all, isn’t coming. The future is them.

Jesus Figures and the Marriage of High Testosterone + Neurodivergent

The relentless search for contemporary “Jesus figures” to deliver us from the oppressive grip of “the man” reveals a profound discontent with the existing ideological structure, one that is emblematic of our late capitalist condition. This can be interpreted as the collective’s desperate attempt to fill the void of the objet petit a—the unattainable object of desire, that which is always missing. This figure is expected to embody the lost cause, the pure subject who, untainted by the symbolic order, can somehow lead us to redemption.

But why the specific allure of high testosterone combined with neurodivergence? Here, we encounter a fascinating inversion reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “slave morality,” but with a distinctly postmodern twist. In classical slave morality, the oppressed transmute their weakness into a kind of moral superiority. Now, however, in a world where traditional masculinity and conformity to societal norms have been pathologized, the outcast—the one who refuses to conform to the master signifier of late capitalist normalcy—becomes the hero. This is not merely a Nietzschean reversal but a symptom of a deeper crisis in the symbolic order itself.

We could argue that this new archetype reflects an underlying anxiety in the collective unconscious. The traditional hero—rational, composed, and aligned with the symbolic law—no longer resonates in a world that feels increasingly chaotic and unmoored. Instead, we project our desire for liberation onto figures who seem to operate outside the law, who embody the raw, untamed forces that the symbolic order attempts to repress. This is the real of the neurodivergent, whose very existence is a challenge to the seamless functioning of the ideological apparatus.

Yet, this elevation of the neurodivergent, high-testosterone figure is fraught with contradictions. Is this not the ultimate fetishization of the symptom? By glorifying those who resist or are marginalized by the dominant order, we risk reinforcing the very structures we seek to escape. We are mistaking the symptom—the visible sign of our discontent—for the cure. The neurodivergent, high-testosterone savior is but another fantasy, another screen onto which we project our desire for a new master, one who can somehow deliver us from the contradictions of our existence without fundamentally altering the underlying structure.

Thus, the search for these “Jesus figures” reveals less about the potential for genuine liberation and more about our inability to confront the true nature of our discontent. We cling to the hope that someone from outside the system can save us, while refusing to acknowledge that it is the system itself that must be transformed. In this way, the marriage of high testosterone and neurodivergence becomes a new slave morality, one that allows us to critique the system while remaining safely within its bounds, never fully challenging the symbolic order that defines our reality.

Tech Cycles

I have always been curious about what a tech cycle looks like from up close, the mechanics of it, the raw gears grinding beneath the polished veneer. As this last one scrapes the bottom of the barrel and sputters to its inevitable end, it’s worth noting that innovations like the first iPod or the latest LLMs are, in their essence, affect machines. They could rewire entire systems of perception if used properly. But tech people, with their near-religious devotion to speed, to the thrill of the next release, to the relentless pursuit of dopamine, are too caught up in the rush to truly savor affects.

They’re the speed freaks, the ones whose minds race at a thousand miles an hour, always two steps ahead, but never quite present. They can’t afford to slow down, to feel the ripples of emotion and sensation that affect brings. In their world, everything is reduced to a hit, a spike in the data, a momentary high before the next fix is needed. The machinery of tech hums along, fueled by this insatiable hunger for speed, for progress that’s always just out of reach.

Meanwhile, those outside this digital cyclone—artists, thinkers, those who dwell in the messy, unpredictable world of affect—are tripping through the kaleidoscope, inhabiting a different temporality altogether. They follow the slow, undulating rhythms of feeling, of experience, their minds tuned to the subtle shifts in light and shadow, in mood and tone. They navigate the spaces between, where tech’s binary rigidity falters, where the infinite complexity of human emotion unfolds.

Remember the Hawkwind quote: “the band was built on one bunch of guys taking acid and another bunch of guys taking speed, and they never got along because they were inhabiting different temporalities.” Tech is the speed, always hurtling forward, barely aware of the ground beneath. Art is the acid, dissolving boundaries, blurring lines, steeping in the affective present. The collision of these temporalities creates a dissonance, a disconnect that neither side can fully reconcile.

And so, the tech cycle spins on, driven by speed, by the relentless pursuit of the next hit of dopamine, while the affects remain in the periphery, sensed but not fully grasped, felt but never truly integrated. It’s a loop, a circuit that never quite completes, always racing ahead but never arriving, always seeking but never finding the depth, the richness that lies just outside the frantic beat of the digital age.

No medium lasts forever, but affects mostly do. The critical distinction lies in how they evolve over time. Dopamine, the quick fix, the rush of the new, inevitably turns to cortisol—the stress of keeping up, the anxiety of the chase. What once thrilled now grates, what once sparked joy now triggers fatigue. The cycle of dopamine-fueled tech and innovation is unsustainable, leading to burnout as the novelty wears off and the demands increase.

Affects, on the other hand, have a way of self-renovating. They aren’t just a fleeting chemical response but a deeper, more enduring resonance within us. Affects grow, shift, and adapt—they transform with us, renewing themselves through new contexts, new interpretations, new emotional landscapes. While the medium through which they’re delivered may fade, the affects continue to evolve, sustaining their relevance and power long after the original source is gone.

In this way, affects hold a kind of timeless vitality that dopamine-driven experiences lack. They renew themselves, reflecting the ever-changing nature of human experience, while the mediums we rely on to trigger that dopamine rush eventually falter, leaving only stress and dissatisfaction in their wake.

Tech Barriers

The barriers within the tech industry do not emerge from some inherent or natural order; rather, they are the result of a symbolic construction, carefully inscribed within the social fabric through a process akin to gerrymandering. These barriers are not neutral but are inscribed with a political logic that serves to maintain the dominance of certain subjects within the field of technology, positioning them as the ‘masters’ of this symbolic order.

The costs and externalities associated with technological development—the environmental degradation, the erosion of privacy, the deepening of social divides—are not mere accidents or side effects. They are the necessary disavowals, the repressed Real that threatens to erupt within the symbolic, yet is meticulously managed and contained through political mechanisms. These mechanisms ensure that these externalities remain the Other, kept at bay to protect the coherence of the symbolic order.

In this light, the so-called ‘natural’ evolution of technology is revealed as a fantasy, a narrative constructed to mask the underlying political machinations that maintain the status quo. The barriers that appear as inevitable are, in fact, contingent, produced by a symbolic order that is always-already structured by power. It is through this lens that we must understand the tech industry’s dynamics, not as the unfolding of some universal law, but as the operation of a hegemonic discourse that seeks to perpetuate its own logic, even as it disavows the costs it imposes on the Real.

In Lacanian terms, the Real represents what is outside the symbolic order—those aspects of existence that cannot be fully captured, articulated, or symbolized. It’s the chaotic, ungraspable force that constantly threatens to disrupt the constructed reality maintained by the symbolic order.

When you ask how the Real is going to rewrite the symbolic order, you’re essentially inquiring about the moments when the unrepresentable, the traumatic, or the unsymbolizable breaks into the established structures of meaning and disrupts them. The Real has the potential to destabilize the symbolic order because it reveals the latter’s limitations, inconsistencies, and the gaps in its logic.

The rewriting of the symbolic order by the Real might occur through various forms of rupture:

  1. Crisis: A technological, environmental, or social crisis could bring the repressed aspects of the Real—like ecological devastation or massive inequality—into the forefront, exposing the symbolic order’s failure to adequately manage these realities. This exposure forces a reconfiguration of the symbolic structures to accommodate or respond to the intrusion of the Real.
  2. Subversion: Acts of subversion, whether by individuals or groups, can channel aspects of the Real into the symbolic order in ways that challenge the existing power structures. This could involve bringing into discourse those elements that were previously excluded, marginalized, or repressed, thereby destabilizing the current symbolic network.
  3. Trauma: A traumatic event, something that cannot be easily integrated into the symbolic order, can cause a fundamental shift in how reality is perceived and symbolized. The symbolic order may attempt to reconstitute itself around this trauma, but in doing so, it necessarily transforms, creating new meanings, new identities, and new structures of power.

In these ways, the Real, though by nature elusive and resistant to symbolization, can force the symbolic order to undergo transformation. However, this transformation is never complete or final; the symbolic order will reconstitute itself around the disruptions, incorporating elements of the Real while still attempting to maintain a coherent structure. Thus, the rewriting of the symbolic order by the Real is a continuous process, marked by moments of rupture, reconfiguration, and reconstitution.

In the context of Lacanian theory, the slowing of Moore’s Law, the end of Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), and the tech industry “scraping the barrel” can be seen as moments where the Real begins to intrude upon and destabilize the symbolic order that has long governed the tech industry’s narrative and economic logic.

Moore’s Law and the Limits of the Symbolic Order

Moore’s Law, which predicted the exponential increase in computing power, has functioned as a kind of master-signifier within the tech industry—a symbolic guarantee that progress is both inevitable and infinite. As the pace of Moore’s Law slows, we encounter a limit within the symbolic order, where the expected endless progression begins to falter. This slowing represents a crack in the symbolic structure, where the Real—the material limitations of silicon, energy, and physics—begins to assert itself, challenging the fantasy of boundless technological growth.

The End of ZIRP and Economic Disruption

The end of ZIRP marks another intrusion of the Real into the symbolic order. ZIRP had created a financial environment that sustained tech industry valuations, investments, and speculative growth, allowing for the fantasy of infinite liquidity and risk-free capital. As interest rates rise, the Real economic forces—scarcity, risk, and the cost of capital—start to disrupt this symbolic order, exposing the fragility of the tech industry’s reliance on cheap money. This shift forces a re-evaluation of business models, valuations, and investment strategies, rewriting the symbolic order to acknowledge the new economic realities.

Tech Scraping the Barrel and the Exhaustion of Innovation

The idea that the tech industry is “scraping the barrel” suggests that the industry is running up against the limits of its own creative and innovative capacities. This is another point where the Real disrupts the symbolic order. The tech industry’s narrative of perpetual innovation and disruption—a key part of its symbolic identity—faces a crisis as genuine breakthroughs become harder to achieve. The Real here is the exhaustion of easy gains, the diminishing returns on existing technologies, and the unfulfilled promises of radical new innovations. As these limits become apparent, the symbolic order is forced to adapt, perhaps by shifting focus to new narratives (like AI) or by acknowledging the need for more fundamental shifts in technological paradigms.

Rewriting the Symbolic Order

These developments—slowing Moore’s Law, the end of ZIRP, and the scraping of the tech barrel—represent the Real’s intrusion into the symbolic order, forcing it to confront its own limits and inadequacies. The symbolic order, which once revolved around the fantasy of endless growth, innovation, and prosperity, must now be rewritten. This rewriting might involve a new symbolic logic that integrates these limitations, acknowledges the material constraints, and reconfigures the narrative of technological progress.

However, this process will not be smooth or straightforward. The tech industry, like any symbolic order, will resist acknowledging these intrusions, attempting instead to manage or disavow the Real’s disruptions. But as these limits continue to assert themselves, the symbolic order will inevitably undergo transformation, perhaps leading to new forms of technological and economic understanding that more accurately reflect the realities of our current moment.

Democrats and Tech

In the grand theater of American politics, the Democrats are finding themselves abandoned by their once loyal tech-supporting audience. Picture this: the shimmering beaches of Venice, California, where the promise of a crypto revolution was supposed to bring prosperity. Instead, it’s a ghost town of missed opportunities and empty storefronts. Abbot Kinney, that iconic stretch of bohemian capitalism, gasps for breath as the tech industry, bloated with subsidies, fails to deliver the lifeblood of employment.

Imagine it as a tragicomedy: the tech industry, decked out in its finest attire of R&D tax credits, sales tax exemptions, and California Competes Tax Credits, struts across the stage. It’s a darling of innovation hubs and CAEATFA Sales Tax Exclusions, wooing the audience with the promise of eco-friendly gadgets and futuristic solutions. But behind the curtain, the reality is stark. The industry, despite its glitz and glamour, employs only a handful. Crypto, that much-hyped disruptor, employs just enough to form a small circle of beachgoers, barely a ripple in the ocean of local economies.

The irony is rich. While the film industry, with its comparatively modest tax credits, manages to churn out jobs and support local businesses, the tech sector hoards its wealth. The lavish incentives meant to nurture innovation become gilded cages, trapping prosperity in a bubble that never bursts into widespread economic benefits.

So here we are, in this Vonnegut-esque landscape where the Democrats, despite showering the tech industry with more perks than a Hollywood blockbuster, are left wanting. The local economies languish, the support wanes, and the dream of a tech-fueled renaissance flickers like a dying neon sign on an abandoned boardwalk. The Democrats, once the champions of innovation, now face the sobering reality: all that glitters in the tech world is not gold, and the promise of jobs is as ephemeral as a Venice Beach sunset.

So there you have it, friends and neighbors. The tech industry’s got more money than God and more perks than a rock star, but when it comes to creating jobs, they’re about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle. And that, my dear Earthlings, is why the Democrats are watching their tech support vanish faster than ice cream on a hot sidewalk.