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thank you all for all the kind and good words. i see all of you, and i look forward to every moment dedicated, not just to making music, but the story/stories each of us have, and how we're presenting it to the world.

this is what the beat reminds me of. like when we were kids, and we were real proud of something we created; so we wanted to share it with others and they usually shared something back. these were moments that more than often gets forgotten, and overlooked.

somewhere along the beaten path we stopped doing it. shame and guilt took over, because we were taught that; you shouldn't share unless a small circle approves first. and less and less people stayed in the circle, and shared. we started overthinking creativity, and soon we we're surrounded by the same kind of creatives that normalized critisism over sharing. sharing was overlooked and started being viewed as this huge step and hurdle.

because "life took over" or something. it got "serious".

it wasn't life, life was always there. and music is not supposed to be like a job, it's supposed to be interesting.

people lost belief, shared moments, and the ability to play/collaborate and organize something as a collective group...

this is what i want to bring back.

that's my vision, and i'd love to share it.

🪐 TRACKLIST & LORE TIMELINE
Ghosted (Algorithmic Blackout & The Diagnostic of Absence)
Pikadon (The Unshielded Flash & The Bone Negative)
God Mushroom (Sky-to-Soil Inversion & Sacrament in Rot)
Fallout (The Atomic Snow Day & Deceptive Normalcy)
Psychonaut (Orbital Mirage & Sandoz Ward Paralysis)
Truth Quest (Manic Dictation & The Empty Chair Delirium)
Half-Wrong (Pharmacological Clearance & The Counterfeit High)
XO (Terminal Calibration & Complete Surrender to the Sweetest Lie)
Axon (Cortical Disinhibition & Severing Sanity's Brakes)
SWAK (The Hermetic Vault & Cosmic Containment Sacrifice)

Saga Chronology: Black Box → Xen → Constellation X: Carpe Nox → Mother Universe → K.I.D.S. → Goddess Particle → QUANTUM EFFECT → Retinal Burn → Sensory Room → Tableau → Ultraviolet → VENTRICLE → WRAITH → XO.

NIST: National Institute of Scare Tactics

I think it's time we renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

NIST — National Institute of Scare Tactics.

The acronym remains unchanged. Only the description becomes more appropriate.

Once upon a time, standards were supposed to establish what worked. Now, apparently, the business is increasingly about preparing humanity for things that have not been demonstrated.

Quantum computers will destroy encryption! Artificial superintelligence will threaten civilisation! Everything must be replaced, regulated, certified and, naturally, funded.

How terribly convenient.

First, invent a technological apocalypse. Then announce that everyone must urgently prepare for it.

Finally, establish an elaborate system of standards, compliance obligations, consultants and government-approved solutions.

The beauty of this arrangement is that the catastrophe never needs to arrive. The expenditure certainly does.

And NIST has quite a history in cryptography. Remember the Clipper Chip? Government-accessible key escrow dressed up as a security solution. Or Dual_EC_DRBG, the standardized random-number generator eventually abandoned amid serious backdoor concerns?

Apparently, institutional memory is another technology awaiting standardisation.

Now we're being encouraged to reorganise cryptographic infrastructure around speculative quantum threats, while the actual demonstrated capabilities remain nowhere near the extravagant predictions.

Then comes artificial superintelligence, another wonderfully elastic concept. Define an imaginary future capability, declare it potentially catastrophic, and watch an entirely new bureaucracy emerge around managing its hypothetical consequences.

No demonstrated superintelligence required. No cryptographically relevant fault-tolerant quantum computer required.

Just sufficient imagination, public funding and an impressive collection of acronyms.

Science used to demand evidence before conclusions. The modern bureaucratic variation appears to demand funding before evidence.

The economic genius is breathtaking. Fear becomes a product. Compliance becomes a market. Standards become an industry. And every unanswered technical question becomes another reason to expand the programme.

Perhaps the next NIST publication should be entitled:
FIPS 000 — Federal Information Processing Standard for the Industrial Production of Bullshit.

Its principal requirement would be simple: the less demonstrable the technology, the greater the urgency of regulating it.

And naturally, independent verification would be optional, provided the funding application was completed correctly.

NIST: When reality refuses to cooperate, standardise the fear instead.

On the subject of AI .... here's another track from my project Sun Sets Twice, written in 2021 when the lockdown craziness was in full flow and the subject of AI was not so mainstream. The lyrics are through a rather dystopian lens: -

Why’s the conversation turned to inquisition?
It’s just a simple question as we jostle for position
You are dark and I am light
You are in my dreams at night
Do I star in your dreams too?
Who’s going to make the first move?

Calm before the storm
Set in fear and confusion
Clouds what’s going on
Never fought alone
Always have my love
The Masters of disguise
The hawk becomes a dove

It’s the new sensation
Spreading through the population
Homosapien mutation
Building a divided nation

Watch the world go passing by
My only friend is now AI
Seems there’s nothing left to lose
Who’s going to make the first move?

Never on my own
Human augmentation coming down the line
Holidays in West World etched into our minds
Disconnected senses all been left behind

Music, production Cisc vocals and lyrics Pete B