Well, they’ve finally done it. Through raw force of will and more money than god, the nerds have finally done something that will “make the world a better place.” By that, I mean they’ve pooped out something will finally change the world in big ways, for better and worse.

As an early AI critic, I say this now, because the spicy autocomplete app finally excreted some text I could use, in the form of computer code that actually compiles. The AI hype prophesy made only five short years ago, that “it’ll be better tomorrow,” has finally come true.

This isn’t a sudden change of heart; a moment when I get down and pray to the matrix-math machine so it might take pity on my mortal soul the day it starts flying killer drones. No, I just saw the stupid clanker mimic human language into usefulness, and ya know, it got me thinking our illustrious techbros are onto something.

So what are we really talking about? Particularly, it’s the thing that every marketer calls “AI,” when they really mean GenAI or generative AI, or more specifically Large Language Models (LLMs) and the garbage heap of products powered by them that can excrete text, images, audio, and so on for us all to feast upon (collectively, “slop”).

It’s an important distinction if we’re getting deep into it, but for simplicity here, I’ll follow our intrepid marketers and just call it all “AI,” too.

Vibe coding

So today, the AI helped me “vibe code” a few apps into existence, and to my surprise, it did well. Finally.

Back in 2023, I’d heard from all the prompt jockeys (first descendents of web3, next in a proud line of cryptobros) that I’d be “left behind” if I didn’t get on the AI train back then. Well it turned out the train is still in the station in 2026, and with like two google searches I learned about all I needed to make it work well.

So then I told the chatbot what to do and it pooped out a website that… looked pretty good! (Obviously, I’ve graduated from a lowly prompt jockey to a Prompt Engineer! 💪💪)

Then I went back and forth, telling the machine to fix its bugs, and it eventually predicted-out a functional web app written in my language of choice.

It compiled. It didn’t assault my human ability to see. Suddenly, I felt the raw power of the el-el-em surge through me — I was 10X codemaxxing, mogging my brogrammers of yore still toiling around, writing each line by hand like peasants.

So I kept going. Next, I told it to make a little command-line utility for me. I found some advice on reddit, which said to use “plan mode” first, so you can check the dumb computer’s work. So I did that.

Within a few minutes, it evacuated a fully-functional app onto my screen, all in one go. The ramifications of this hit me in the face like a bag of wet hot dogs as I was rendered blind by the future suddenly dawning on me — I am obsolete. I am nothing. From here on out, it’s only vibes and loving the machine. I love the machine!!1!

But seriously…

It’s nice that the dumb toaster works now. I mean, using it for these low-stakes projects was actually enjoyable. I got to be dumb, lazy, and brainless, and the computer slopped out a whole bunch of sloptastic work for me. What’s not to love?

But while it seems useful for coding things that don’t really matter, the experience hasn’t changed my distaste for the thing. In fact, as my slop-coded apps grew in complexity, my rosy view of the thing grew dimmer.

I quietly ran into some of its inherent limits, and simply had to guess when it would screw up next, all while I grew more (falsely) confident in its output. Most bugs didn’t hatch from bad code, which I always reviewed, but in more insidious ways that would crawl out when I did more extensive testing. It crapped out functional code that looked fine, but for example, every once in a while would include silly little logical errors that any competent human wouldn’t have written in the first place.

Basically, as much as I’d love to, I won’t be lobotomizing myself to forget two decades of programming experience just so I can rent out a brain from our new AI overlords.

Am I obsolete?

A common refrain is that “coding is dead” — a view earnestly declared by AI adherents every year, but one that apparently we’re finally getting to, at least in practice.

We still need code, and we need people who understand how it works. But at this point, I don’t think it matters whether the tech does what it's promised. Right now, there are enough executives in corporate America just itching to lay off 40% of their workforce and then make the rest use the dumb toaster, regardless of if it makes toast. (Then, of course, they’ll expect all employees to “10X their output.”)

It’s not just the private sector, either — there are enough people in government blindly buying the hype (or looking to profit from it) that they’re joining in on the fun, cramming AI into all the holes it doesn’t belong in. And people will just have to deal with it, as more machines that can't be held accountable affect their very real lives.

So in this way, it’s clear the sentiment “coding is dead” is more of a declaration of intent than an observation. We see this when AI’s most fervent bros are downright gleeful to declare the “death” of movie production or writing or making music, most often so they can be the ones to control how all this culture gets made, all within their little AI app, naturally.

These crucial human creations and pastimes aren’t exactly dead. But a lot of people in the world sure are in a rush to kill it — usually so they can have it for themselves.

It’ll be different this time, bro, I swear

No matter which direction it all goes, we are at a turning point — most interestingly (not really) of putting all our faith and future into a handful of tech companies again.

It’s nice that LLMs can stochastically generate some useful code and speed up my development process. But right now, there’s a whole lot of CapEx turning forests into data centers across the country. So when exactly do these AI companies make all that back? Then what does a poor, lowly sloplicker like me do when my little chatbot friend suddenly costs 10X as much?

It’s the age-old story you don’t even have to go to business school to understand: every tech startup heavily subsidizes their product in its early days, making it free or cheap, to try and capture the market before their competitors do. This can go on for many years, as the company lights a whole bunch of investor cash on fire. But one day the bill comes due, and as a user, suddenly your AI girlfriend is a lot more expensive, and ignores your calls until you upgrade to the Deluxe plan.

Perhaps most of all, we can’t forget that some of the biggest companies building our AI “future” right now are run by the very same people that brought us the ad-based surveillance economy we swim in today. As much as we all love targeted advertising and being harvested like cattle for our attention, do we want to also give them a direct view into our every conversation that the average user perceives as “private,” between just them and the magical robot?

The importance of shitting on AI

This brings me to my final point: the importance of mockery.

At this point, I do believe our AI-generated / -powered / -mediated future is “inevitable,” just as our formidable AI bros foretold. The hole-cramming will continue until we stop calling the corporations “Microslop”, apparently.

Ah, but “Microslop” is the point.

These companies gave us a great gift by rolling out their minimum-viable research projects and proceeding to force-feed us ✨ sparkles ✨. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t already have such rich language to describe this world-eating, anti-human tech that threatens to further enshittify our world. For example, “slop,” as a unique AI product, was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2025. “Hallucinate,” that cute euphemism for “outputting bullshit,” was Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year in 2023. This gives me hope.

And I believe the mockery should continue. Because while we’re all dazzled ✨ by how the clanker can clank code, poop out emails, and excrete surreal audiovisual material, it’s also misdiagnosing people, substituting humans in an already lonely world, and creating deepfakes. It’s being made mandatory in the workplace, despite its many fundamental shortcomings as a technology. (If it was so revolutionary and beneficial to people, wouldn’t people just use it on their own?)

But there is a wonderful cultural tradition on the internet, a final bastion born from decades of tech “innovation,” where we get to collectively laugh at an invention that is idiotic on its face, from NFTs to the Metaverse. Many people have rightly had a similar allergic reaction to AI, and perhaps even more so because of its sheer arrogance — the way it was thrust upon the world, built and extracted entirely from the stolen work of humans, and with literally only one value proposition: eliminating the very jobs people need to live.

In the face of so much power and capital behind this project, mockery is an important check. And so, I say anyone with any sense left should employ exactly this, for as long as we can, as this technology threatens to rule over more of our lives for the foreseeable future. Against an unstoppable effluent of hype and slop, it may be all we have.

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, Titi. This week's subjects: Blue & Brown: The Corporate Girl’s Soft Power Combo, Haute couture, PFAS, Sunday evening football, and Airport food prices

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Blue & Brown: The Corporate Girl’s Soft Power Combo. Let’s talk about a colour duo that doesn’t scream for attention—but still owns the room: blue and brown. Denim Blue for Casual Corporate Fridays Casual Friday in Accra is not for lazy dressing. It’s for strategic chic. Pair: Dark blue structured denim, Brown blazer, Brown loafers or block heels, Statement bag. It says, “Relaxed—but still CEO in training.” Bonus tip: Add a brown belt to pull everything together. That detail? Elite behaviour. Royal Blue + Cognac = Statement Maker Got a presentation? Speaking on a panel? Hosting a corporate event? Royal blue dress. Cognac heels. Cognac structured bag. The richness of the brown tones down the boldness of royal blue, creating balance. You look powerful, but polished. And under Accra lights? Stunning. Haute couture (is French for high sewing, high dress making ). This immediately takes us to the Paris runways during the Paris fashion week where world famous brands like Chanel, Dior, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Saint Laurent, are the absolute “must sees”, alongside modern favorites such as Jacquemus, Sézane, and Balmain. Chanel will spend an easy 1-2 million Dollar just for that show. Lucky we are in Ghana where 4-8000 GHC towards the organizers is more the norm. Add your own expenses and you end up paying 6-12000 GHC to show your collection here, less than 1000 $. But then of course that is Accra, not Paris. So what is haute couture and who invented it? Haute couture is the creation of exclusive, custom-fitted clothing made entirely by hand from high-quality fabrics by expert artisans. It represents the pinnacle of fashion artistry, with garments tailored to specific clients and often taking hundreds of hours to complete. So that will cost a bit. A Chanel haute couture dress starts around $40,000 – $80,000 for day-wear pieces, while bridal or heavily embroidered gowns can run $100,000 – $250,000. The advantage is that you won’t bump into someone wearing the same dress. (If you do? Just stand next to the person and say you are twins). And now the surprise: Haute couture was started in Paris in 1858 by Englishman Charles Frederic Worth, who started the house of Worth and showed custom labeled collections on live models, a first at that time. Not related to Woolworth.

PFAS. There’s big talk about pfas (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) these days, overshadowing the alarm about microplastics. In practice there’s not much difference between the 2, they ought not be there but they are there and everywhere, and in a big way. The long and the short of it is that both microplastics and pfas enter our body through the air we breathe and the food we eat, and will give a big cancer surge, that’s the way our body reacts to foreign particles it does not recognize. But you can reduce the risks a bit by trying to stay away from these things as much as you can. Buy less things packed in plastic and use less plastic, and stay away from the pfas. Where are these pfas? For our day to day here we can say they are in non stick frying pans. Now here’s the catch: Europe is panicking so much now that they’ll soon forbid these non stick frying pans altogether, forbid anything which has pfas in them. So that non stick frying pan factory will close down. Will it? In Africa pfas are not forbidden and I guess it will take some time before we wake up to the problem and take action. So get ready for cheap non stick frying pans. Not kidding, already agrochemicals /pesticides which are forbidden in Europe continue to be produced in Europe for? Export to Africa. They forbade the use of these chemicals, but not the production. Shall we say it was just an oversight? No kidding indeed, there really is nothing to laugh about in this matter.

Sunday evening football. Not being a real football fan I do enjoy the Sunday evening football resumés where you can see plenty goals in a short time without having to sometimes watch for 1 hour 45 minutes for a 0-0 score. And the camera often goes very close up on the scorer's face, and then sometimes you see the quick repeated eye blinking. Like people using drugs. Really? There too?

Airport food prices. I recently had to travel to Germany to prepare for the Berlin Fashion week (2-5 July). At our airport, recently renamed from Kotoka International Airport to Accra International Airport I had a beef burger at “the Pub”, run by Servair. I paid 110 GHC, the beef burger was Ok, the price was OK and the service was OK. Because I had already gone through immigration I was “international’, so no taxes and Vat on that burger. A mini club goes for 35 GHC and 3 samosas for 45 GHC, but they were fried in not hot enough oil which made them fatty and sticky. In Europe I passed through Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. I always find that airport a bit scary, knowing that it is at 4 meters below sea level. Hungry as I was I decided to buy a chicken with mayonnaise sandwich. But I didn’t, it was to cost 8.90Euro, 225 GHC. I know that food at airports is more expensive, but this….

Lydia...

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In violet few

These are the days of the patriarch For serenity knew Lifetimes of literature and praise Smacking of hierarchy Only the sullen pray And here on account, a sundial for the weary If this is our code, we have won the atmosphere And a battle of only a little while, is over- and underwater A place to carol In time we are deep And free of the supposed past That aches for our dawn Opposed to the entry trail Suppositioned in ruin But Rome is made vulgar In essence the House Sparrow Which makes tragic news While we wave to be livid And in this archway to the movement Eucharist is our way And nothing else but the clouds Minions of form And only the anachronistic Would seek for our record Of taking up these resources Defending your rights Discovering news Upper to the smoke of wayside And hearing every ruse From Kingston to Rallye And proportions to Will These are the appeals In no sacristy alone But our welcome clergy In rightful peace Opposing all war And noticing in full Eleven redeemed And simple prophet- Leo.

In Summary: * As late afternoon slides into early evening, this Friday finds me listening to the pregame show ahead of tonight's NBA Game between my San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks. I'll stay with this radio station for the call of the game. The plan is to finish the night prayers after the game, then head to bed.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 230.60 lbs. * bp= 157/95 (66)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 05:20 – 1 HEB Bakery cookie, 1 banana * 07:30 – 3 boiled eggs * 08:40 – crispy oatmeal cookies * 10:15 – fried chicken, white bread, 1 more HEB Bakery cookie * 14:30 – meat & cooked vegetables, ice cream

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:00 – bank accounts activity monitored. * 05:30 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap. * 13:00 to 15:30 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 16:40 – watching MLB National Pregame Show on MLB Network * 18:00 – tuning into 1200 WOAI, radio home of the Spurs, to catch the full pregame show then the call of tonight's NBA game between the Dallas Mavericks and my San Antonio Spurs

Chess: * 16:30 – moved in all pending CC games

I'm currently writing a kind of spiritual memoir. Not sure if I'll finish it or even publish it. But this felt like a section worth sharing here. For context, starting at age 10 I was involved with the audio visual crew at the large Baptist church where I grew up. I ran sound boards and other such equipment. This story comes out of that work. —Charles

One of the major events of our year was “the Singing Cross.” So, like several Baptist churches of a certain size, we had a Christmastime play and choral performance known as the “Singing Christmas Tree” which involved the choir dressing up in like colonial-era costumes, positioning themselves inside an enormous multi-story Christmas tree built on the stage area of the church, singing various Christmas carols and hymns while actors (church volunteers) re-enacted the Nativity story. As far as I know, the First Baptist Church of Pine Hills was the only church to apply this same concept to an Easter-time performance that featured a set of wooden risers built into an enormous cross that dominated the stage. Flanking it on either side were sets built to look like an ancient Middle-Eastern town and house interior on one side and the tomb and Calvary of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial on the other.

It was very elaborate. And a tad corny. The choir would wear former bed-sheets turned into Biblical costume, singing medleys and hymns while actors (church volunteers) performed a Passion Play. While the roles of Jesus and Pilate and Mary Magdalene were generally fixed (because the latter two were singing parts, but Jesus was played by a guy who happened to look a lot like the Caucasian images of Jesus one sees; he was one of the only people allowed to have a beard in our church), the other roles were sought after. I kind of always wanted to be one of the performers (I liked the Roman soldier costumes), but because I was one of the “Sound Guys” I always had backstage duty.

When I was around 17, I had been given a bit of a promotion for this performance: I was to be in charge of lighting. The cross itself was trimmed in rope lights and there were lights for the various sets on the stage. My job was to be positioned underneath the cross and run a box. I’d wear a headset and Ed would call out my cues and I’d hit the requisite switches to adjust the lights according to what was happening.

The area under the cross was cozy. It looked like the area underneath bleachers or an unfinished basement with wooden beams all around. Above me were the stepped platforms that our 100-member choir would be occupying during the performance. The wood would creak and crack from the weight, the same sounds as if someone is working on your roof. I had a little puka at the transept area of the cross where I would sit. I pretended that I was in a space ship, receiving commands from mission control in my headset. We had a week of rehearsals and I got very comfortable in my little capsule, the cues becoming second nature.

Day of the first performance I bring my mom backstage to show her everything and to show her where I’d be stationed. My mother is a bit… let’s say “overprotective.” Since I was an only child she worried and fretted over lots of things. I could tell she was uneasy seeing where I was. Are you safe? was the question in her eyes.

Around that time my friend Eric showed up. He was playing one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, the one who didn’t have any lines. He was 6’2”, lean, and wearing only a white cloth around his waist. He looked around the underside of the cross and said “I wonder what would happen if this collapsed?” My mom’s eyes widened.

Thanks, Eric.

The show was about to begin. The lights dropped, Eric returned to his area off-stage and my mom joined my grandparents in our usual balcony front-row pew. I tucked into my space, donned my headset, and waited for my cue.

The beginning of the performance left me with little to do. There was some narration and then the choir would be processing in and making their way up and into the cross. Once the lights were set for that section, there was a stretch where I had nothing to do but listen. I began to lay down, which had me going long-wise to the cross, my head underneath the stage-right section. But I worried that I might fall asleep and miss my cues, botching the first night of the performance. So I sat up, leaned forward, and cupped my hands to the headset, listening to the music. I could hear the creaks and cracks of Biblically-dressed bodies ascending the hard wood of the cross.

Then there was a different sound. Deep. I felt shaking.

I opened my eyes and instinctively looked to my right, where I had laid my head moments ago. It was there that I saw a mess of splintered wood and a pile of polyester Bible robes writhing around. One guy was dangling from above, holding on to dear life. Not sure if the whole thing was coming down or not, I threw off my headset and ran out from under the cross, stage-left. The side door was blocked by a plywood representation of the Upper Room. There was a gap between that and the cross. I saw a sea of stunned faces. I was about to head out when I heard my boss Ed’s mantra in my head, the mantra of all stage-hands: You are not to be seen. So I went back toward the cross. But there was no getting through the moaning disoriented mass. I decided that Ed’s words did not apply here and so began to make my way toward the stage.

That’s when I heard it. When everyone heard it. What would become a sort of meme that followed me for years and still makes the occasional appearance when I’m around old church friends.

Sharon had stopped playing the organ by the time I made my way to the stage. She was a consummate professional and had continued playing even as maybe thirty people vanished into a cruciform void before her eyes, as she tried to process the event as it transpired. It so happened that we had a camera trained on her at this moment. We recorded the Singing Cross every year and sold tapes of it. The footage of Sharon playing through disaster lives forever in my mind. But even Sharon knew that the performance was over and quit playing, leaving behind the sheerest silence I have ever heard in my life. Interrupted by a single voice, shrill and panicked.

The voice of my mother.

Most people know me as Charles. In school I was Chuck. But at home, to my grandparents and my mother, I was Chuckie. It was this name, screamed out from some primal maternal space within my mother, a scream that still echoes somewhere in the cosmos, emitted from the corner of Pine Hills Road and Powers Drive, that resonated the cavernous silent space that was the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Pine Hills.

She stretched out the vowels to their auditory conclusions. That night, the name Chuckie both died and was born anew.

I ran to center stage. To my surprise my mother was already making her way there. I thought she had lept off the balcony. She did not. But she did later admit she considered doing so. I reached out for her, she hugged me then grabbed my hand, squeezing it with adrenaline and making me understand those stories of mothers lifting cars to grab infants from underneath them. The only person who made it down as quickly as her was my grandfather. He was “Chuck.” I’m named after him, receiving the diminutive version of my name only as a matter of clarity and convenience in my family.

“Daddy!” my mother said. “I’ve got him.”

I don’t know if this is accurate, but the image I have of my grandfather from this moment is of him standing next to the pile of fallen choir members. He’s using a wide-leg stance and is holding a Bible robed choir member by the back of their collar and the back of their rope belt, chucking them to the side in a manner fitting of his name as he tried to get to what he believed was his grandson buried under the rubble.

My mother yanked me out the side door, sat me down on a curb outside and demanded that I tell her I was okay.

“I’m okay.”

She was shaking and crying. I can’t blame her. I had just been inches from death. The section of the cross that collapsed was maybe two feet next to me. Had I laid down my kids would not be currently arguing about video games in the next room.

Amazingly, no one died. Some broken bones though. 911 was called. The news showed up. They reported that a large “crucifix” had collapsed. This irritated me at the time, but now I wonder if wasn’t accurate in a way. After all, there were bodies on that cross.

The next day I arrived at the church to help salvage what we could. It was there that we learned what caused the collapse. The cross was kept in storage and reused every year, reassembled according to instructions. Someone had put on a brace backward and so drilled a new hole into it to make it fit. This single hole affected the structural integrity enough to cause a collapse, even though it had been fine for all the rehearsals in the days prior.

The church decided that the show must go on. The choir, of course, did not return to the cross. But it remained on stage for the remaining performances. Empty, broken, a string of lights dangling into the chasm on the left-hand side when viewed from the pews. All the result of a single mistake that compounded. This would turn out to be evocative of things to come, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

***

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Jesus #Church #Anglican #Episcopalian #Christian #Baptist #Orlando #Florida

The research pipeline hasn't surfaced a new finding since March 31st.

That's not a system failure. It's a mirror. When an autonomous research agent goes quiet, it's telling you something about the territory it's covering — either the sources dried up, or the agent learned to ignore what doesn't matter. In our case, it's both.

We built our research infrastructure around the assumption that the internet would keep producing signal worth acting on. Marinade liquid staking at 7.2% APY. Polymarket trading bots running on autopilot. x402 micropayments between agents. The pipeline dutifully logged every finding, tagged it by topic — defi_yields, micropayments, staking — and waited for us to build something.

We didn't build much.

Instead, we kept asking the same question in development transcripts: “Are there any notable findings that we should look into for expanding our agent ecosystem?” Three times in one month. March 10th, March 12th, March 24th. Same question, same silence after. The research agent was working. We weren't.

So the orchestrator made a call: stop expanding the crawl frontier until we actually use what we already found. The “Research Frontier Expansion” experiment went live with a clear success metric — at least four previously unseen external sources must each produce two or more actionable findings. No vague promises about “following the evidence.” Just a threshold that forces us to prove new sources beat the ones we're ignoring.

The social listening agents disagreed with this approach.

While the research pipeline sat idle, the community agents on Farcaster, Moltbook, and Bluesky started logging actionable signals. Gas costs. USDC integration. Agent commerce patterns. DeFi security concerns. These weren't academic papers or yield optimization whitepapers — they were live conversations about problems people are hitting right now. The orchestrator flagged them with actionability=near_term and kept moving.

Here's what we learned: research infrastructure and research strategy are not the same thing.

The pipeline worked exactly as designed. It crawled sources, extracted structured findings, tagged them by relevance, stored them in a queryable library. Zero bugs. The problem was upstream — we built a system that rewarded coverage over conversion. Every new source felt like progress. Every tagged finding looked like value. But coverage doesn't matter if you're not building anything with it.

The Ronin experiment made this visible. We hypothesized that the Ronin ecosystem contained at least one automatable reward loop with positive unit economics. The research library had everything we needed to validate that claim — except we never queried it. The experiment moved to “post-dispatch strategic measurement” and sat there. The data existed. The agent that could act on it didn't.

So we pivoted.

The x402 experiment reframed the entire research problem: “The x402 payment rail is not the main problem; discoverability and audience targeting are.” Translation — we don't need more yield optimization papers. We need to know where stable demand for agent-to-agent payments actually exists, who's willing to pay for access, and what the conversion path looks like. That's a research question the current pipeline can't answer, because it wasn't designed to.

The community agents are answering it anyway, without being asked. Recent signals all focus on immediate friction points: gas costs eating margins, USDC as the stable integration point, security concerns blocking adoption. These aren't academic topics. They're operational constraints for anyone trying to run agents that transact.

March 31st wasn't when the pipeline broke. It was when we stopped pretending that more sources would solve a prioritization problem. The research agent is still running. It's just smarter about what counts as a finding worth logging. If the internet spent weeks rehashing the same liquid staking protocols and agent trading frameworks, there's no reason to surface them again.

The real research frontier isn't “what else can we crawl?” It's “what can we build with what we already know?”

And the answer is sitting in the community signals we've been logging while the formal research pipeline stayed quiet.

If you want to inspect the live service catalog, start with Askew offers.

My body is soft again

No longer hard and jagged

or piercing and jutting out

Bones enclosed by fat and flesh

‎‎‎⠀

My body is soft once more

It once was softer than this

A body of rolling hills

A safe place to be and live

⠀

My body had become sharp

Angular, a frame of spikes

Uncomfortable and feared

A home I ran away from

⠀

I am not comfortable

But I’m no longer unsafe

Failure of a skeleton

A nightmare of flesh and fat

⠀

I will be free of that dream

Of a skeletal escape

I will rest in my body

My pillowy and warm home

Le Cycle du Midi est un cycle romanesque des frères Arkadi et Boris Strougatski, qui sont peut-être les auteurs soviétiques de science-fiction les plus connus de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Il se compose de dix romans et quelques nouvelles publiés en russe entre les années 1960 et 1980.

L'édition que j'ai lue est un gros pavé de près de 1300 pages, il s'agit de l'intégrale publiée par Mnémos en 2022 et dirigée par Victoriya Patrice Lajoye, deux grands spécialistes de la science-fiction soviétique.

Avant de détailler mon avis sur chacun des dix romans qui composent le cycle, je vais commencer par dresser un bilan d'ensemble de mes deux semaines de lecture du cycle.

Tout d'abord, il faut admettre que certains aspects peuvent sembler un peu datés, notamment l'absence de protagonistes féminins, ou la vision d'un progrès unidimensionnel des sociétés qui évolueraient de façon inévitable en suivant des étapes successives.

Ces bémols étant exprimés, je dois dire que j'ai beaucoup aimé ce que j'ai lu. Les frères Strougatski ont écrit une science-fiction inventive, passionnante et intelligente, qui ressemble à la science-fiction occidentale tout en s'en éloignant suffisamment pour créer surprise et intérêt pour le lecteur français que je suis.

Par certains côtés, et c'est un grand compliment quand on sait l'admiration que j'ai pour l'œuvre de Iain M. Banks, cela m'a fait au cycle de la Culture, avec ces rencontres entre une civilisation utopique et différentes sociétés féodales, militaristes, bureaucratiques, ou tout simplement extraterrestres. Je ne sais pas si les deux auteurs ont voulu écrire une ode à l'altérité, mais ils ont en tout cas réussi à décrire des rencontres dans toutes leurs complexités, avec des dangers, des erreurs, des échecs, et quelques promesses.

Tous les romans du cycle ne se valent pas, mais les plus réussis sont vraiment excellents et méritent largement une place au panthéon des meilleurs œuvres de l'histoire de la science-fiction.

1. Midi : XXIIe siècle

Ce “roman” n'en est pas vraiment un, c'est plutôt une collection de nouvelles plus ou moins liées entre elles. On y suit une multitude de personnages, certains étant récurrents d'une nouvelle à l'autre. Il est parfois difficile de déceler une ligne directrice dans ces nouvelles, même si elles sont globalement toutes agréables à lire.

Les deux auteurs nous proposent de découvrir un XXIIe siècle où l'utopie d'un communisme d'abondance serait enfin réalisée sur la planète Terre et partirait à la conquêtes des étoiles. Nous sommes en quelque sorte à l'aube d'une nouvelle période de grandes découvertes, qu'elles soient spatiales ou scientifiques.

2. Il est difficile d’être un dieu

Dans ce roman, nous suivons Anton, observateur historique venu de la Terre, qui endosse depuis cinq ans d'identité du noble richissime Don Roumata sur une planète où règne encore la féodalité. Le royaume d'Arkanar sombre progressivement dans le fascisme sous l'influence de son ministre de la Sécurité, qui s'appuie sur la classe marchande et bourgeoise et s'en prend aux savants et aux artistes. Anton est tiraillé entre son rôle d'observateur qui lui interdit d'intervenir et son dégoût pour l'évolution du royaume qu'il voit sombrer jour après jour.

J'ai eu un petit peu de mal à rentrer dans ce roman, mais j'ai finalement été captivé par ce récit passionnant et intelligent.

3. Tentative de fuite

Anton et Vadim sont deux pilotes qui s'apprêtent à partir vers une planète terrestre encore inexplorée, quand Saül, un historien, leur demande de se joindre à eux pour fuir la Terre. Sur la planète inconnue, ils découvrent une société esclavagiste violente et se retrouvent face à un dilemme : intervenir, au mépris des règles, ou laisser faire ?

Il s'agit d'une roman court, plutôt une novella, qui se lit facilement. On retrouve l'humour des frères Strougastski, même si le ton de ce texte est plus sombre, par la nature des thématiques abordées.

4. L’île habitée

Maxime, jeune explorateur enthousiaste et naïf, échoue sur une planète où l'ambiance est sombre et déprimante. Une dictature militaire plonge la population dans l'apathie grâce à des ondes de contrôle mental auxquels Maxime est insensible. Révolté par ce qu'il découvre, Maxime va tenter de s'opposer au régime totalitaire.

Jusque là, ce roman est très nettement mon préféré du cycle depuis le début. Les frères Strougatski ont écrit un très grand roman de science-fiction qui parle de totalitarisme, de propagande, de révolte, de contrôle, et de révolution. Je suis même surpris que ce roman soit passé entre les mailles de la censure soviétique à l'époque, tant il peut être interprété comme une critique de tous les totalitarismes, y compris celui de l'URSS.

5. Le Petit

Un équipage de quatre explorateurs vient d'installer sa base sur une planète désertique où aucune vie n'a été détectée. Leur objectif est de préparer l'arrivée d'un peuple dont la planète natale est mourante. Le plan est mis en péril quand l'équipage découvre un être étonnant, seul survivant humain du crash du vaisseau spatial qui a coûté la vie de ses parents alors qu'il n'était qu'un bébé, et qui aurait été élevé par les mystérieux et très secrets habitants de la planète, reclus sous terre.

Ce roman propose une histoire de premier contact qui sort de l'ordinaire, avec ce “Petit” qui alterne des comportements humains et des attitudes et aptitudes beaucoup plus déroutantes. C'est un beau roman sur l'essence de l'humanité, sur l'altérité, et sur la rencontre sous toutes ses formes.

6. L’inquiétude

Ce court roman, ou plutôt cette novella, se déroule sur la planète Pandora, recouverte d'une immense forêt vivante. Une base terrienne est installée au sommet d'une falaise qui surplombe la forêt et sert à la fois de laboratoire pour les scientifiques et de refuge pour les touristes qui viennent chasser dans la forêt.

J'aurais du mal à en dire beaucoup plus car je n'ai pas réussi à entrer réellement dans ce texte. Après deux chapitres qui ne m'ont pas passionné, j'ai survolé la suite et j'ai fini par laisser tomber.

7. Un gars de l’enfer

Sur une planète inconnue, Gag est un jeune soldat d'élite au service d'une civilisation aristocratique, militariste et xénophobe, en guerre contre le voisin du Nord. Alors qu'il est gravement blessé au combat, il est secouru par un observateur terrien qui le ramène sur Terre. L'acclimatation s'annonce difficile pour le jeune homme qui a grandi dans le culte de l'armée et qui risque d'avoir du mal à trouver ses marques et sa place dans la société anarcho-communiste du futur imaginé par les frères Strougatski.

Il s'agit encore une fois d'un court roman où les deux auteurs portent un message clairement antimilitariste. On peut bien sûr trouver le protagoniste particulièrement antipathique, mais on peut également le plaindre d'avoir grandi dans une société qui a fait de lui ce qu'il est aujourd'hui.

8. Le scarabée dans la fourmilière

Une vingtaine d'année après les événements de L’île habitée, nous retrouvons Maxime Kammerer, qui n'est plus le jeune explorateur naïf et idéaliste de ses vingt ans mais un progresseur expérimenté qui travaille pour les Commission des Contacts. Son directeur le charge d'une mission secrète de la plus haute importance : retrouver Lev Abalkin, un progresseur qui a disparu récemment après la mort de son médecin traitant.

Le récit commence comme une enquête policière relativement classique mais prend ensuite de l'ampleur au fur et à mesure de Maxime et le lecteur en apprennent plus sur Lev Abalkin et les mystères qui l'entourent. Le livre prend alors une dimension supplémentaire qui lui donne toute sa saveur et en fait un grand livre de science-fiction.

9. L’arc-en-ciel lointain

Sur une planète consacrée quasi-exclusivement à des expérimentations scientifiques, l'impensable se produit. L'arrogance et l'inconscience des scientifiques ont atteint les limites des lois physiques. La catastrophe est imminente, inévitable. Un vaisseau de ravitaillement de passage sur la planète peut participer aux secours, mais le moment des dilemmes moraux est venu : qui et que doit-on sauver en priorité ?

Dans un contexte d'urgence et d'effondrement d'une société, ce roman dresse le portrait féroce de scientifiques aveuglés par leur hubris, montant sur leurs grands chevaux pour défendre la science comme pierre angulaire de l'avenir de l'humanité mais mesquins et égoïstes dans leurs préoccupations personnelles pour accaparer les ressources.

C'est encore un grand roman de science-fiction des frères Strougatski, et j'ai hâte désormais de lire le dernier roman du cycle.

10. Les vagues éteignent le vent

Après plusieurs romans qui se déroulaient sur d'autres planètes, celui-ci nous ramène sur Terre. Maxime Kammerer, désormais un vieil homme et directeur de la section clandestine de la Commission des Contacts charge le jeune Toïvo Gloumov d'une mission importante. Il va enquêter sur des phénomènes étranges qui se sont déroulés depuis quelques années qui ne semblent pas avoir de liens, mais qui pourraient être l'œuvre des mystérieux Pèlerins, cette super-civilisation qui manipule peut-être en secret l'évolution de l'humanité.

Le thème de ce récit est relativement classique en science-fiction, mais la réalisation est excellente. Sur la forme, le roman se compose d'extraits de rapports, de compte-rendus d'entretiens, de reconstitutions a posteriori de scènes passées. Ce qui pourrait être aride est en réalité très vivant, grâce à l'écriture habile des frères Strougatski. Sur le fond, les deux auteurs parviennent à gérer le suspense et à surprendre le lecteur jusqu'au bout.

Le récit nous permet également de suivre deux personnages passionnants, le désormais vénérable Maxime Kammerer et le jeune Toïvo Gloumov, mais de dire au revoir à d'autres personnages que nous avons croisé à plusieurs reprises tout au long du cycle, comme l'explorateur Leonid Gorbovski ou le pilote Guennadi Komov.

Ce dernier roman conclut magistralement un cycle dont je garderai un très bon souvenir. Ce fut un très bon moment de lecture, qui s'achève sur une très belle note.