The Weekly Weird #14
AI pollution, Gen-Z gets PSSD, robots say Eat Me, the Olympics of the future, Jamaican me nervous, Black Out on the West End, and the Commies are back, baby!
Welcome back to your weekly round-up of the weirdest wonders in the world of dystopia.
A special hello to all our new subscribers, joining us from far and wide, and via the kind recommendation of our friends The Fifth Column (A Podcast),
, and .Episode 108 of the podcast drops this Sunday, March 3rd. I speak with Beatriz Busaniche, an Argentinian digital rights advocate who led the push against electronic voting there, and regularly campaigns on issues like digital ID, facial recognition, and the dangers of the database state. She’s a fountain of knowledge on the ways technology is affecting society in Argentina and internationally, and a compassionate human being worth hearing.
I also want to add that this week’s Weird was going to include an item on Google’s re-brand of Bard as Gemini and the ensuing (shocking) shenanigans (shock-anigans?), but there was so much to include that it got too long and will soon reach you as a separate standalone post.
So, let’s strap it on and get stuck in!
AI Pollution
The exponential rise of AI-generated content has been a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s fun to type a few words and see fully realised images spring forth from the internet’s maw like food regurgitated by a mother bird. On the other hand, the tsunami of nonsense in text and image form has already become noticeable online, and will only increase in prevalence and severity until we either accept that nothing we see, read, or hear can be verified in any meaningful way, or flee cyberspace like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Hard to decide whether it’s worth the trade-off, right?
just wrote about this in an article called Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI. He doesn’t waste time planting his flag.Now that generative AI has dropped the cost of producing bullshit to near zero, we see clearly the future of the internet: a garbage dump.
Harsh? Pessimistic? How much of the internet was not garbage before Chat-GPT set fire to the online world in 2023? Well, I’m with Erik on this, in the sense that while we could argue about the garbage-osity of the web as a matter of taste from pretty much any point since its inception, what makes the current situation different is the scale, intensity, and irreversibility of the problem.
Google search? They often lead with fake AI-generated images amid the real things. Post on Twitter? Get replies from bots selling porn. But that’s just the obvious stuff. Look closely at the replies to any trending tweet and you’ll find dozens of AI-written summaries in response, cheery Wikipedia-style repeats of the original post, all just to farm engagement. AI models on Instagram accumulate hundreds of thousands of subscribers and people openly shill their services for creating them. AI musicians fill up YouTube and Spotify. Scientific papers are being AI-generated. AI images mix into historical research. This isn’t mentioning the personal impact too: from now on, every single woman who is a public figure will have to deal with the fact that deepfake porn of her is likely to be made. That’s insane.
The level of pollution that we face from AI-generated content goes all the way down. As Erik points out:
Given that even prestigious outlets like The Guardian refuse to put any clear limits on their use of AI, if you notice odd turns of phrase or low-quality articles, the likelihood that they’re written by an AI, or with AI-assistance, is now high.
It’s a question worth asking: Does it matter if an article in a major newspaper of record is written by a human being or a generative LLM? If the facts are true, and presented in a cogent digestible fashion, isn’t that just technology doing what a person used to do? Professional typesetters aren’t a huge part of the newspaper business anymore either, because you can do their job on a computer now. Should journalists be insulated from the pressure of progress?
I don’t have a simple answer for that. It’s enough to sit with the question and stew. That said, I do think there is a qualitative difference between human and AI output, based on what I’ve seen so far. A world where AI content is the norm would radically change the way humans interact and survive together and also feel very different, more synthetic, ineffably less real and solid perhaps.
The question becomes even more pressing and poignant when we get into AI-generated content for children.
From Erik Hoel:
All around the nation there are toddlers plunked down in front of iPads being subjected to synthetic runoff, deprived of human contact even in the media they consume. There’s no other word but dystopian. Might not actual human-generated cultural content normally contain cognitive micro-nutrients (like cohesive plots and sentences, detailed complexity, reasons for transitions, an overall gestalt, etc) that the human mind actually needs? We’re conducting this experiment live. For the first time in history developing brains are being fed choppy low-grade and cheaply-produced synthetic data created en masse by generative AI, instead of being fed with real human culture. No one knows the effects, and no one appears to care.
How bad can AI children’s content be?
If colours, shapes, and noise are all you need to occupy your child, why not just give the kid some LSD and let it watch traffic lights through the window? How about the Weather Channel, or literally anything?
Imagine growing up on nonsensical and alienating digital media that leaves you chronically depressed and in need of constant medication to replace the Saharan drought in your brain where healthy chemical activity from human interaction used to be…
Gen-Z Gets PSSD
published an excellent article on her Substack looking at the possible crossover between asexuality in Gen-Z and the use of anti-depressants, specifically Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). She puts together a compelling case which, at its heart, asks an important and urgent question: Is Big Pharma getting away with injuring young people because society is afraid of stigmatising asexuality?In fact, between 40 and 65% of people who take an SSRI are thought to experience some form of sexual dysfunction. What few people know, though, is these side effects can persist even after coming off of the drugs—a condition called Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD).
[…]
In the UK, 1 in 3 teenagers aged 12 to 18 has been prescribed antidepressants. In 2022 alone, the number of children aged 13 to 19 taking antidepressants rose by 6,000 to 173,000. That’s kids taking drugs known to cause sexual dysfunction—drugs that the Royal College of Psychiatrists admits to using to castrate sex offenders…
[…]
…we also need to acknowledge the millions in Gen Z taking SSRIs during vital stages of their sexual development—and potentially being told their side-effects are a valid identity.
It seems that social media (who knew ‘asexual TikTok was a thing?), and prevailing tendencies to affirm identities and avoid frowning upon sexual mores, have encouraged an acceptance of the recent rise in asexuality a priori without allowing for widespread investigation of its causes.
While laying out her stall in a compelling and passionate fashion, she asks valid questions about the nature of identity and social grievance movements that may, regardless of intent, be providing cover for corporate malfeasance and medical malpractice.
I don’t accept that it’s ableist or stigmatising to discuss the side-effects of medication. Or discriminatory against asexual people to say that sometimes this could be sexual dysfunction.
[…]
So my fear is this: you might not be asexual. You might be suffering from PSSD. You might not be a victim of stigma against your sexual identity; you might very well be a victim of the pharmaceutical industry.
Sexuality and intimacy are aspects of dystopia that don’t always make it into the conversation, because of more obvious or pressing questions over surveillance, government over-reach, technological function creep, and information pollution. History and literature do show us, though, that the primacy of relationships between individuals, and their relationship to their own bodies, can end up interfering with the completeness of capture that totalising systems want, and as such are often undermined, corroded, or attacked by those who want to consolidate power.
From Freya’s impassioned closing in her article, the experience of Gen-Z may indicate that this is already happening.
We are a sexless generation. We are also a sedated generation. And I’m asking for the courage to at least investigate the connection between the two. You deserve to know if your sexual identity is a side-effect. And if enough of us speak up about this, the pharmaceutical industry deserves what’s coming to them.
Gen-Z isn’t just under the microscope because of an apparent disinterest in sex. They’re also labelled “the foodie generation”, and multiple studies delve into their complex relationship/obsession with food. Is there anything strange and potentially horrifying on the horizon on that front?
Thank you for asking.
Robots Say Eat Me
Yeah, edible robots. Not The Onion, and not kidding.
RoboFood is an initiative aiming “to lay the scientific and technological foundations for the development of truly edible robots and robotic food, which can in turn provide novel functionalities and services for human and animal health, society, and the environment.”
From their website:
Ordering your pizza and having it delivered in a few minutes by a drone? That could soon be routine. But what about having the drone itself for dessert, instead of sending it back? That would be entirely new technological territory with applications far beyond take-away meals.
The 21st century in a nutshell. What would usually end as a fun, dead-end stoned conversation on a filthy couch in a student apartment at 2 a.m. is now an actual stated aim of tech innovators.
The Swiss team based at “the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)” is keen to “create a library of smart edible materials, which deliver suitable mechano-chemo-electrical transduction properties,” as one of their five Project Objectives.
Apparently, eating robots will reduce “electronic waste” and help search-and-rescue missions feed starving mountain climbers and lost hikers in inhospitable places.
Did you ever have a friend who, after ripping a particularly hefty bong hit, turned to you with bloodshot eyes and said “Bro, what if they made the wings of a drone out of rice cakes?”
Well, now there’s a scientific lab making that obviously pressing issue for humanity a reality.
AZO Robotics has a summary of the state of play in the field:
In the future, numerous electronic products may be constructed partly or wholly from biodegradable and edible materials, imparting a shorter lifecycle to the product and severely reducing the quantity of waste produced during the product’s life. Specific applications that call for biodegradation are also facilitated by RoboFood, such as an implanted biosensor only intended to remain active for the lifetime of disease treatment and naturally degrade in the bloodstream.
Cool. So we’ll make robots with a shorter lifecycle, i.e. more of them because they’ll become unusable quicker, but this won’t be the same as having longer-lasting ones because…?
I can’t wait to find out what someone’s experience is of having an edible robot “naturally” degrading in their bloodstream. It sounds fun.
Speaking of what’s in your bloodstream…
The Olympics Of The Future
A team of investors, scientists, and people with a vision of super-jacked athletes running the 100m in under three seconds have put their heads together with the goal of realising the sporting event none of us knew we needed: The Enhanced Games, billed as “the Olympics of the future.”
When 44% of athletes already use performance enhancements, it is time to safely celebrate science.
By “celebrate science,” they of course mean they support any athlete who wants to get pumped on ‘roids or biohack their way to superpowers.
Who knew that when Bill Burr went on Conan O’Brien seven years ago, he planted a seed in the minds of Peter Thiel and his fellow dreamers?
The ‘Movement’ even has a page for Enhanced World Records, rehabilitating disgraced athletes stripped of their titles for juicing. They also provide a helpful guide to ‘coming out as Enhanced’:
It takes courage to be open about your body; the International Olympic Committee has weaponized the athletic community against science, and against you.
What kind of ‘enhancement’ are we talking about here? Are we stopping at medication? How about implants or gene therapy? Can a discus thrower be fitted with an exoskeletal arm that supercharges their toss?
Suddenly, the 56% of athletes who compete without doping seem uninspired or at least unadventurous. What spectacles are we being cheated out of with our foolish insistence on a level playing field and a lack of pressure on athletes to poison themselves or use their bodies as petri dishes for unproven chemicals just to shave a few seconds off a lap?
Maybe there’s too much emphasis on ‘achievement’ in performance enhancement anyway. What if we just tried things based on the spectacle they could provide to a paying audience? The Mescaline Marathon? The Peyote Shot-put? Ketamine Curling? The Heroin High-jump? Agoraphobic Bobsledding? Greco-Roman Wrestling on Viagra? How much better would the Olympics be with Crack-pipe Javelin?
I guess what I’m really saying is that I want them to hire me to come up with events. Mr Thiel, if you’re reading this, call me. I have ideas.
Jamaican Me Nervous
The Jamaican government has announced that it will be completing the first phase of its National Identification System (NIDS) within the first quarter of 2024.
From Biometric Update:
Enrollment in NIDS is voluntary. The government says the program is a unique, reliable, and secure way of verifying an individual’s identity that will establish a reliable database of all Jamaican citizens and issue registrants a unique, lifelong national identification number; options floated to date have included mobile digital ID and biometric fingerprint or eye scans.
This isn’t the first time the Jamaican government has tried to establish a national identity database.
As per DunnCox:
The Government’s first attempt at NIDS by way of the National Identification and Registration Act, 2017 (“the Act”) became law on December 8, 2017 but without a date fixed for its implementation. The implementation of the Act was quickly challenged. It was argued that major aspects of the system that it sought to establish would likely infringe upon the Claimant’s constitutional rights and freedoms and indeed, that of every Jamaican. The Court, upon review, struck down the Act. The Government went back to the drawing board and devised a new system by way of the National Identification and Registration Act, 2020
The first attempt was intended to be mandatory for all Jamaican citizens and residents, and the list of data to be collected was staggering:
[The] scheme compelled all Jamaicans to submit biographic, biometric and demographic information including your full names, date, time and place of birth, full names of your parents, gender, height, place of residence, mailing address, nationality, marital status, the full names of your spouse, the date and place of marriage. If deceased, date and place of death and the age at the time of death (it is unclear who is to submit this information on behalf of the deceased person). Further, you were required to provide your photograph or other facial image, your fingerprint, eye colour, manual signature, retina or iris scan, vein pattern (if not possible to collect), your foot, toe and palm print. The database may also include any distinguishing feature, and your blood type. Finally, you were required to submit your employment status, your race, religion, education, profession, occupation, address, matrimonial home, and telephone number.
The attempted national identity scheme was struck down when a court ruled that it violated Jamaica’s Constitution by forcing citizens to enrol in a database. People who refused or failed to sign up faced prosecution and having public services withheld. In brief:
The system is unconstitutional because it purports to make a national identification card or number the only method of verification of identity.
Nickardo Lawson at DunnCox continues:
The Court rightly observed that “if it is intended to prevent corruption or fraud, then it is premised on the assumption that all Jamaicans are involved with corruption and fraud”. This is obviously irrational. The danger of abuse by the state or its agencies, and the removal of personal choice, outweigh any conceivable benefit to be had by the community at large.
So now NIDS is being rolled out, backed by a Data Protection Act that came into force last December.
Veronica Arroyo from Access Now, in 2022, wrote up some excellent background on why the devil is in the detail:
For instance, part of the original plan was to use the national digital identification program to facilitate “Know Your Customer” requirements that are important for commerce. But this would have entailed including tax ID numbers in the Jamaica NIDS system, and together with other provisions in the law, that meant opening the door to future third-party access to this information. This could have led to surveillance and/or profiling of Jamaicans, and ultimately, discriminatory treatment. Fortunately, legislators ultimately listened to civil society and struck the tax ID number from the final text.
Close call. But what happens to the data that the government does gather?
Besides collecting as many as 16 different types of personal information for Jamaica NIDS enrollment, the NIRA says nothing at all about deleting information when it is no longer necessary for the program. This opens the door to potential government repurposing or abuse of highly sensitive data, as well as the possibility that the government will share these data with third parties. This situation isn’t helped by the fact that NIRA states that “any other law” can prescribe the disclosure of identity information. That’s not only risky, but unnecessary. The Jamaica NIDS program was created to provide legal identification, not open up databases of people’s personal information to third parties — especially with no mechanism for notifying data holders and no prohibition against data repurposing or profiling.
Well, you might say, what’s the big deal? People need to identify themselves, and in a digital age, it makes sense to have a simple straightforward database to streamline that and make access to services more efficient. And besides, the system (in Jamaica at least) is voluntary.
Arroyo nails it in a nutshell:
When such digital public infrastructure systems provide people with an “economic” or “transactional” identity that is used everywhere, and they are the only option available, they become mandatory in practice, if not in law.
Again, the devil is in the detail. As Arroyo reports, “legislators failed to take up our recommendation to separate identity information from authentication requests,” which is a serious issue if “the system and databases in question contain people’s biometric data, making it very difficult for people to “reset” or replace the information in case of hacking or identity theft.”
Once someone has your iris or fingerprint, how are you going to prove you are really you if they have something that only you should have? I’ve heard first-hand accounts of the hellish lengths people have been forced to go to when fingerprint or face-recognition is compromised, and a system that institutionalises that surprisingly insecure form of verification could only increase identity theft and fraud.
Countries watch and learn from one another. India rolling out the Aadhaar scheme did not go unnoticed. The pressure to centralise citizen data, and to dramatically increase the amount and variety of data held by governments, is real and rising. There are a lot of countries in the world and it’s hard to keep track of the shenanigans in all of them, so by all means write in with tips or drop a note in the comments.
Some unfortunately-not-comic relief now from the world of theatre…
Black Out On The West End
A Broadway production, Slave Play, will be opening at the Noel Coward Theatre on London’s West End in June for a three month run, and two performances will be exclusively for “an all-Black-identifying audience [so they] can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, athletic, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze.”
In other words, segregation, but this time it’s fashionable, righteous, and cool, apparently.
It seems ironic to call the initiative “Black Out’ when it will be everyone else who is kept out.
How white are we talking? Will they turn away albinos? Also, how will this be policed? Will buyers have to send a selfie to qualify for their ticket? Are the ushers going to have a Dulux colour chart at the door, and turn people away if their hue is too light? If the problem is “the white gaze”, will white people be allowed in if they’re blind? How is “white” being defined here? Are “white people” now a single undifferentiated mass perceived as monolithic, uniform, and sharing specific undesirable characteristics, regardless of the spuriousness of the supposed characteristics or the real-world behaviour of any individuals within that mass? I recall we used to have a word for that kind of thinking, didn’t we? Hold on, it’ll come to me…
What’s next, ethnic pricing? If the producers don’t want “the white gaze,” do they have plans to introduce surcharges on tickets bought by white people to disincentivise attendance? Or, more cynically, are they perfectly happy to have “the white gaze” in terms of ticket sales, they just want to make a statement? And what is that statement, exactly?
Is anyone who chooses to attend taken at their word in terms of how they identify? If so, why have the prohibition at all? In the end, what purpose does this serve, other than dividing humans needlessly? Is there any underlying demand for this kind of product, or is the product intended to manufacture the demand by creating an awareness of its availability? I have so many questions.
One group of people in the US, however, are very convinced that they have all the answers…
The Commies Are Back, Baby!
The Revolutionary Communists of America are forming a political party, have launched a surprisingly slick new website, and held a coming-out party/march in Brooklyn. “There is only one solution, Communist revolution” is a catchy chant. It sounds familiar though…where have I heard it before?
The RCA announced their mission to “overthrow capitalism in our lifetime” in a five-minute video on that noted hotbed of class consciousness, YouTube.
Here are the new faces of American revolutionary communism (RevCom?), who know what the world needs, and want you to get it whether you like it or not:
The next twenty years will look nothing like the last eighty, and we need to prepare. The burning task of our generation is to organise these tens of millions of Communists into a united political force.
Later on in the video they refer to organising the “tens of thousands” of Communists in the United States. Where are they getting such widely divergent figures from? Or are they already doing Soviet-style accounting?
My irony alarm went off when one of the contributors dropped this chestnut with a totally straight face and no sense of irony:
The popularity of online Communism is a symptom of the changing consciousness but it offers no real solution.
The hits just kept on coming:
In 1917, at a time not unlike our own…the Russian Revolution showed the way forward. It was a beacon of hope and optimism.
“A time not unlike our own” except that women didn’t have the vote in much of the world, the United States still had segregation and Jim Crow, child labour was normal, there was widespread illiteracy, no indoor plumbing, few treatments or vaccines existed for most communicable diseases, infant mortality and death in childbirth at high levels, the list goes on and on. But sure, just like now, why not?
That’s clearly what has been missing from the political landscape in the US, a group of hardcore ideologues selectively interpreting or misrepresenting history and current events in order to claim power for themselves because they want you to live their way even if you don’t want it for yourself. What a breath of fresh air!
I had an idea for a possible slogan they could use:
All Americans like to party. Good Americans like the Party.
What do you think? Put your slogans in the comments.
Well, that’s all for this week. Thank you as always for reading.
Outro music from the Swedish punk band bob hund, playing us out with Istället för musik förvirring (Instead of music, confusion).
Stay sane, friends.