“In 1992, I travel to India… I want to experience the country in the most direct way possible and especially, the Buddhist sites.” — one woman’s pilgrimage
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What Kind of Smart Is It?—Speculative Hurdles Towards Evaluating Artificial General Intelligence
If, as William Burroughs proposed, language is an alien virus—then what are LLMs? What is the potential for AI consciousness, given what we know about life?
Freedom: Craving It and Reaching Beyond It
I dream about a dimension beyond this one: a realm that includes none of the limitations I despise. This is what Moshiach—a true messianic age—would mean to me.
The Lost Mariner and the Keys to the Holographic Theatre, Part One
Meet Jimmy G., a man whose consciousness has become stuck in 1945. This essay reflects on the nature of memory, time, and the consequences of historical trauma.
Being At Sea
History is a kind of dream. The dead are always with us. The more our culture melts away, the more we cling to a sense of solidity. Art tells us we are at sea.
The 2024 Jupiter–Uranus Conjunction
Traditional astrology arrives at Metapsychosis in high style. Jupiter is about to conjunct with Uranus and it’s going to really. get. weird.
Cadillac: The Mystic Shield of the Three Ducks
Being the unlikely story of the Duke of Waddlac, Humpty Dumpty, and the ill-fated crusade which brought the “Cataclysmic Egg of Catastrophe” to Detroit.
Surface Tension: the Artwork of Susan Leskin
I create my worlds on wood panels with acrylic and the occasional found object. They are made to explore my inner universe: to discover my relationships with other forms of life.
The AI-Robot Wars: Is Dystopian Science Fiction Becoming a Reality?
We’re in the midst of a Technology Takeover, pointing toward a world of technocratic governance and complete dependency on tech giants and the systems they control.
Teachings from the Spirit of Cannabis
Nostalgia enters the breath, its smell, its long arms of comfort… they stretch beyond those early years to blush across my skin, into my soft centre, and coil silken tendrils at the nape of my neck.
Apocalyptarians—Or: “What the F*%K is Solioonensius??”
The future is here. And it’s weird. Very weird. Are you one of the weird ones—one of the Apocalyptarians—who can consciously assimilate the weirdness and use the meta-crisis as evolutionary fuel?
Songs of Gratitude and Fields of Wonder: A Review of Maía’s Portraits
In Maía’s poems, there are worlds inside of worlds, the metaphysical hidden in the physical, the mythic hidden in the mundane, the political hidden in the personal.
It’s Hard To Compete With Simplistic Spiritual Leaders
I’m both horribly insecure and a huge snob, sometimes at the same moment. So it makes sense that, when I meet wildly successful spiritual leaders and writers, I often feel a combination of envy and disdain.
On the Welcoming of the Unexpected Guest
Reflections on deep time, archaeology, and the origins of civilization, prompted by the accusation of thought-crimes by a reader in an online comment
We are Ghosts. This is Hades.
Has the world already ended? Are we dead? Neither literally nor metaphorically, this essay argues that we have become spectral beings in our image of the world.
Call for Submissions: Writing from the Future
Imagine you have survived the ecological crisis of the next hundred years and you are writing as if you were of that era about the state of things.
Ascendit Icarus (AI)
A poem contemplating Icarus’s flight, intertwining ancient themes with modern pathos. This is complemented by images of the sculpture that inspired the poem and an audio performance by the Editor.
Hiraeth (four poems)
I wish I had been a child then // long, slender / circular years / peeled years / sloshing around / in the fluids of my thinking
The Opening of the Records
A virgin will rebuild from ash the burning library at Alexandria. She will not take any prisoners. Her large eyes will be tests that you must pass. For a third time will the Argo sail, outperforming Voyager One. You will learn of how this ship is not different from your body. It will move beyond the speed of light.