JOHNSTONE

"The plot hole in techno-utopianism is that technologies don’t emerge in a vacuum: they are always controlled by somebody, and those somebodies always wind up being the people who control everything else."

Reading by Tim Foley.

A US-based nonprofit is planning to use AI surveillance to check for "hateful" speech about Israel inside classrooms in the genocide-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Pentagon plans to live-stream
the firing squad execution
of the Fort Hood shooter,
and my head is so very heavy,
and everything is covered in the ashes
of a burning planet.

I found the corpse of a water spirit
down by the creek where my parents live.
She used to play with me when I was small.
She was tangled in plastic
and mail-order clothes,
and someone had torn off her wings.
She would have been older
than the country I live in.

So hell, why not.
Why not live-stream the firing squad execution.
Run commercials for Kalshi and Crypto dot com
and recruitment ads for the US Marine Corps.
Let Joe Rogan host it with Kevin Hart,
and then auction off pieces of the body
to horny socialites from the Epstein files.
Let's just go all-in with this thing.

My head is heavy,
and the earth spirits are dying,
and I feel so fucking old.

I get down on the ground
and place my hands on the dirt.

"Please, tell me what to do,"
I whisper.
"Please tell me what you need."

________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch.

Reading by Tim Foley.

No one cares. They used to, but then Israel spent three years showing the world why October 7 happened in the first place. After witnessing the cruelty and savagery of the state of Israel, people get it now. Everyone understands.

Reading by Tim Foley.