dnvdk

[dnvdk]

Theater, spectacle, fog of war, preemptive, morality, Western, exceptionalism, greater Israel, trade route, Strait of Hormuz, WWIII, black & gold triangle, uranium.

The weird got so weird that pundits from all sides seem to agree on the terrible choice to attack Iran. The war pigs have the power, sorcerer of death's construction.

[dnvdk]

Happy new year - may the chaos be merciful!

[dnvdk]

With the speed at which geopolitical developments progress at the moment - and with a couple of days downtime over Christmas - I got interested in nuclear weapons once again. Have always been fascinated by them ever since I was very young as they are mostly theoretical and technologically so very different from anything else we use. The combination of a leap in physics on the one hand and their speculative qualities on the other - they're the closest to an actual diegetic sci-fi object. There are currently 22 USA-owned B61-12 nuclear warheads in Volkel, The Netherlands (article from 2023) which is about 50km, or less than an hour, from where I live. I knew of their existence for decades but for some reason was under the impression that these were surplus bombs from the Cold War era, probably catching dust because for sure there would never be a nuclear threat in my lifetime. Turns out it doesn't really work like that. These are constantly serviced, updated and state of the art weapons of mass destruction. Much smaller than I thought they would be (these specific ones are the size of a rolled up carpet) with a payload of up to 1250 kilotons - 83 times that of Little Boy that destroyed Hiroshima. And as much as I theoretically understand the usefulness of the thermo-nuclear Mexican stand-off we know as mutually assured destruction, it is still completely baffling to me that these could be fitted to regular F16/F35 fighter planes and effectively destroy countries in minutes. Not to start about ICBMs, MT nukes, high altitude drones and other developments that the Boeings, Northrup Grummans, Lockheed Martins and all their adversary competitors of the world have cooked up. Looking back at the Cuban missile crisis and other near-escalations the equilibrium has been stabilized by negotiations and diplomacy - none of which seems on the table at the current time. So we - humanity - are to a large extent going to be dependent on the next Stanislav Petrov to not get pulled into doing something without thinking it through.

[dnvdk]

So.. the Lockheed Martin Special is apparently back on the menu.

Make the Military Industrial Complex art again!

[dnvdk]

The Samson Option Israel's deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against a country whose military has invaded and/or destroyed much of Israel. Commentators also have employed the term to refer to situations where non-nuclear, non-Israeli actors have threatened conventional weapons retaliation. The name is a reference to the biblical Israelite judge Samson who pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had captured him. Storytelling/narrative is the predominant factor in most debates as identity is increasingly the defining lens through which the world is perceived. Referring to mythical figures from biblical scripture to define a geopolitical tactic is a cunning linguistic trick - of which the term nuclear ambiguity that is also mentioned in the Wikipedia article is another bewildering example. I'm proposing the call a spade a space and refer to the tactic described in the most objective manner: a tantrum.

[dnvdk]

News The general term 'media' is often what we critique but I'm currently interested in understanding the most counterproductive and toxic of all: the hysterical, amygdala rubbing advertising monolith we collectively understand as news.

As a species we've developed offspring with ever faster calculating brains over the course of thousands of years. The reason for this is simple; the faster you are able to spot a danger, the less likely you become to the dangers that lurk in the corner of the cave. Fast forward to Ancient Rome where the Acta Diurna (daily journal) was instigated by Julius Caesar and presented daily in or near the forum. So this first type of industrial media was developed and controlled by (or at least with the blessing of) the ruling emperor about 40 years after the term 'bread and circuses' was established. Skip printing press, skip television, fast forward to today. This daily outing has become a realtime perpetual outing. In the last 25 years, the commercial necessity of capturing as many viewers as possible has also been supersized by the Peter Thielization of the world that fully embraced zero-sum mindset where there are only winners and losers. As a result the pluriform media landscape that existed by the end of the 90s has been acquired completely by a very small group. This directly results in newspapers with different titles that print the exact same thing ('Why not, it is objective!') and TV stations that regurgitate identical, teleprompter fed, monologues and factoids. And looking back at this quarter of a century, it is clear this will only accelerate into a news cycle that is fully built around cliffhangers. The ideal situation for this conglomerate is 24/7 OJ Simpson chases. 'This is just in!' 'Important developments!' all while seeing images of people you never met and places you have no intention of visiting. The London subway and Boston Marathon bombings, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan, wildfires, flooding, murder, a celebrity dead in their bathtub. It is important that you stay up-to-date. People describe themselves unironically as 'political junkie' while the actual net result of politics being grossly overestimated. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the covid pandemic can be seen as the trifecta of hysteria and changed the landscape forever. The sheer outpour of daily news and the level in which political, military and commercial interests are intertwined with this barrage can now only be viewed as the politico-industrial complex. Or more accurately; the military-political-industrial-media complex. And yet - news is for the most part consumed without any suspicion. The complex has done an amazing job in providing co-workers world wide with one dimensional phrases parroted from the trustworthy men and women without characteristic personalities. The notion that gets proposed from time to time to introduce critical thinking to children in schools is simultaneous objectively a good idea and a total and utter impossibility as the 'thinking' part is turned off so effectively by the complex that the addition of 'critical' is just cruel. What to do about it? In the words of Marshall McLuhan given to Timothy Leary - Turn on, tune in, drop out.

[dnvdk]

Not fully sure why this struck a chord when I came across it two weeks ago, but it did. It is a blatantly silly video that seems like the result for when you ask one of the GPTs 'to scour the internet, feel the cultural temperature and output a meme-worthy video set to mediocre rap'. However - it has been a while since I got exited by anything AI (with the exception of Friend.com this summer, but that interest was nothing more than dystopian awe).

Disclaimer: this clear deepfake could be mistaken for reality by some and I get the risk in that, but it also reminded me of a type of satire that wasn't there for a long while The images are created using Grok-2, the AI image generation tool by x.ai/x.com that removed all guardrails for its model. The video is made by The Dor Brothers who have a very questionable track record and newer videos that they are put out immediately make it clear that they are in here for the hype - at best. It goes to show that all this image generation output only becomes valuable if there is something that was consciously imagined and decided by the human creator. This first video seemed to have some of that, but it seems that they are unaware of why it worked and instead went full Infowars appetizer.

[dnvdk]

There are 8 years between the video on the bottom (YouTuber Casey Neistat trying out the DJI Phantom 4) and the one above; a documentary about the drone squadrons of Ukraine. When I first watched the video of the filmmaker in New York experimenting with this flying camera it was exiting to see where the technology got to; the fact that these were becoming so affordable meant all kinds of new projects were suddenly possible.

In recently re-installing the X app I was exposed to innumerable clips of vast landscapes and desolate fields with the same aesthetic as I was by now used to from watching this 4K footage in the last 8 years progress into. But instead of summer holidays, scenic city views or motorcycle follow-shots the footage now showed Russian soldiers being blown to bits by soldiers flying slightly modified versions of the DJI drones you can pickup at any electronics store.

Watching the desperation on the faces of the soldiers being targeted and the resolution and frame-rate in which you see a human body being teared to pieces, with the same clarity and vibrance as an Apple commercial, is something that exists now.

[dnvdk]

Tactile captcha just to be sure.

[dnvdk]

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

[dnvdk]

Ethics, entrepreneurship, progress and pacifism Three images, two situations, simultaneously printed in today's newspaper. One of a Dutch soldier named Ewout (28) that perished while training in Germany, an accident that has 'stirred the peace of his local community'. The other two are joined at the hip as they are of outgoing/resigned Dutch defense minister Kajsa Ollongren visiting President Zelensky of Ukraine and one of the tech entrepreneurs in her delegation; Maurits Korthals Altes, founder of Avalon AI. This company specializes in robotic autonomous systems for persistent reconnaissance and has a background at Delft Technical University. In the video from last year Maurits explains in high detail why these unmanned ground- and aerial vehicles with advanced AI are so important: they will save lives as the fleet of systems will form a modern day equivalent to the 'circle the wagon' trope. Or in his own words; "Who can have anything against a solution like this?" explaining how all of this would remain fiction if not for their start-up to slay these problems and generate autonomous safety systems. Little more than a year later and that protective, defensive system is hailed as the new breakthrough to help Ukraine defeat Russia with drones that can detect enemy combatants and guide heavy artillery to where it will do the most damage. The shit end of that stick is off course the increase in casualties on the Russian side; boys and men like Ewout (28), sent to a battlefield far away from their loved ones. And this cynical cycle just continues, speeds up, worsens and is on a certain trajectory to escalate to a point of no return. Politicians resemble Silicon Valley executives with slick presentations and a blind trust in innovation while that good 'ol diplomacy lost all traction if it ever had any. The fact that the EU has fully and completely merged with NATO without acknowledging the glaringly obvious elephant in the room - being that the largest NATO partner not residing on the continent and having hardly any skin at all in this game. While geopolitically, the US has an obvious incentive to destabilize one of its two economic rivals all while humming the old Cold War tune of the danger of the Soviet Union. Which brings the circle back to today's news media. Unaware of its own ignorance it simultaneously delivers empathy porn for 'someone who could have been your next door neighbor' while presenting the slick, engineer-enabled death cult propaganda that resonates with this joke of a society's obsession with gadgets. I'm not here to name names and take sides, the narrative that Russia was provoked by decades of moving NATO-goalposts is quite simple to agree with but clearly a similar cynicism is projected through the lens of a different ideology on that side too. Russia will never be defeated by Ukraine alone, is far too rich in natural resources to lose any of their allies and with a compensation of about 20 year salaries for every deceased soldier, the local population is also not as adversed to the war as could be expected. Threatening with nuclear strikes still seems like a standard geopolitical tool from the playbook and mutually assured destruction still is a surprisingly effective system but the war pigs smell blood and it will run, one way or another. And newspapers and TV broadcasts only fuel this fire by endlessly regurgitating talking points of governments without any critical reflection on what is being said. It all feels very much like that fourth turning but the amount of systems that need to grind to a halt to get over this hurdle and move us as civilizations into the next phase is almost unimaginable. Carry on I guess.

[dnvdk]

Shareholderfeudalism I've been thinking about the term technofeudalism - as described by Yannis Varoufakis - a lot lately, especially in regards to the media stronghold and the societal implications of very small number of platform news and media get funneled through. The image above is not directly related, but adjacent in ethics and morality. It was placed with an article in a local news site about shoplifting in supermarkets and a newly implemented 'two strikes and your out' rule after which the shoplifter can't shop at that supermarket in the entire region. At face value the issue seems clear;

Shoplifting is illegal and a crime and the supermarkets are making enormous losses through these criminal activities, therefore they have all the right to educate their consumers about the risks of illegal behavior.

There is however, an interesting counter narrative that is as true. In the last decade unemployment nearly vanished statistically but households struggle because the pay in relation to the inflation is out of control. Where the solution for the crisis of 2008 was found in austerity - an incredibly cynical process that cut government funding for basic necessities - this time around it is less visible. Let there be no mistake; we are currently experiencing a similar wave of austerity but the mechanics are more refined and purely financial. The form it takes however is one of optimism - employment is at a record high and governments are doing very well financially. The elephant in the room however is the costs that the covid measurements put on the financial system of the West. The costs were clearly enormous since both income dropped and costs went up. It was however never a topic conversation as it was a crisis that needed an intervention and 'the money printer went prrrr', as the meme goes. The costs of these decisions were obviously astronomical though and the main method of alleviating this burden - and more importantly, getting back control over government finances and spending - is by diluting the value of the currency even further. Kick the can down the road. Pray and delay. Whether it will burst or not is not clear but the fact that many politicians from western governments decided to leave office in the lasts few months could be an indication. And a good old global war is helpful in taking our collective mind of this issue too. Okay so back to the image with the Albert Heijn cardboard-cutout-panopticon. It is taken in a 'self scan area' where customer take on the role of employees. This has been my gut reaction to these things from day one; a dystopian area where, to the plings-and-bleeps that would have suited a Black Mirror episode, the consumer is loaded with the responsibility of an employee - making that employee redundant in the process. And the customer is happy because you remove multiple interactions from their life; no queueing, no talking, no handing over cash. Just wear you noise cancelling headphones and carry on. And then - groceries got expensive. Really expensive. Twice as expensive in a little over a year. We were told it was because of the conflict in Ukraine raw materials and energy became more expensive and everything cascaded from that. But that would or could have been the case in a normal economy. We are currently experiencing something closer to hyperinflation. And the consequences for the average family are dire. Getting your children fed, warm and clean used to be the bare minimum of what could be expected in a western country and now it is no longer a given. And since all of this is complex and opaque, the immigrant gets blamed for taking the houses and stealing the jobs and the far right gains more and more momentum. All in the name of capitalism and to not scare the shareholders. So here we are; people steal at a supermarket because they can no longer afford the groceries and they get the opportunity because the shareholders of that supermarket though cashiers were to expensive. And then that supermarket shows affiliation with one of the two institutions that have a violence monopoly to scare them straight.

[dnvdk]

Google Maps showed this beautiful in-between moment in time where Peter Struycken's Blauwe Golven (blue waves) is renovated. The work is just in front of my office and for the longest time I didn't fully understand why all the effort to replace one set of blue and white bricks for another.

It turns out the artwork in public space was always meant to be used as a parking space but was never really well implemented in the surrounding infrastructure and the parking functionality always felt as an after thought. When recently a plan arose to remove the Blue Waves in favor of a green corridor, the artist and others protested and got what they wanted; an infrastructure optimized version of the work. Check out the added width to the blue lines - these are now in line with a standard parking spot.

[dnvdk]

Watching Fargo season 5 and seeing Ole Munch channeling the modern day equivalent of Zeno of Citium. Gem of a stoic quote: "You don't yell at the boulder for being a rock."

[dnvdk]

Buckle up, interesting times ahead.

[dnvdk]

Driving Distances

Conscious constraints of mobility. Partially inspired by Rinus van de Velde who limits the distance he allows himself to travel to 1250 kilometers and personally contemplating the kind of restriction that would feel optimal. In a world and life of constant and ever increasing options and parallel use of resources I'm interested in finding parameters that would provide a new perspective on freedom of movement, travel, holiday, exploration. Both from a professional as personal perspective, a hard cap to your options feels simultaneously daunting and refreshing. Through the use of mapdevelopers.com I plotted circles ranging from 500 to 2250 kilometers in 250km increments starting from my house. It is interesting to immediately experience the limit of 500km being too restrictive for the rest of my life but would be fine for a period of a year or two. 2250km gets me to Moskow, Athena, Istanbul, Casablanca, Reykjavik and Hammerfest which spans the entirety of the European experience and feels to be more than sufficient to commit to. Will experiment with this in years to come.

[dnvdk]

Bomb-by-numbers as methodology to whitewash another wave catastrophes. Cynical, methodical genocide under false pretences.