Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.
What’s that you say? AI has a more than 10 percent chance of killing all humans? I like those odds!
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Now, I’m not usually a gambling man, but after reading this cheery prediction from a researcher at Anthropic, I figured, “Hey, what have I got to lose?”
So I’ve put everything I own—my house, my dog, my record collection—on omnipotent machine intelligence wiping out every single last one of us.
It’s not that I don’t trust the nerds and saddos to do everything they can to prevent this terrifying outcome (rest assured, “Anthropic is trying its best”), I’m just hedging my bets so I’m not disappointed either way.
Rated
WATCHING 240 HOURS OF 9/11 FOOTAGE (TO OWN THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS)
Fair play, Titanic is like three hours long, and I always thought that was a bit much for a film where you know what happens at the end, but watching 240 hours of footage of 9/11 is something else. Reading about the 2001 Live X account’s plans to recreate the tragedy with 410 real-time posts got me thinking: Has anyone thought of doing a special-edition DVD with director’s commentary? Obviously Osama bin Laden isn’t available, but what’s George W. Bush up to these days?
ARTIFICIAL
The casting here is inspired, as Sam Altman’s face is what you end up with if you take a photograph of Andrew Garfield and ask ChatGPT to “create an exact replica of this image, don’t change a thing” a hundred times.
SILVERWINGKILLER ARE THE CAPTAIN NOW
What do you mean you’re still listening to bands that have Spotify accounts and shit? These days, I’m all about beats by armed terrorist groups and clandestine criminal organizations. But I’ll make an exception for SILVERWINGKILLER’s new single “WORLDSTAR,” as the electronic punk duo liken their upcoming EP to “a Somali pirate in deep, lawless waters.” In fact, it’s a really exciting time for hijackings off the Horn of Africa, and Somali pirates are one of my favorite acts right now (just don’t ask me to name any of their songs).
YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING
You might think that Elizabeth Holmes, the subject of a new documentary from Nathan Fielder, was jailed for defrauding investors in the blood-testing company Theranos, but that was actually just an elaborate rehearsal set up by the Canadian comedian to help her overcome trauma. Building a life-size replica of Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, is undoubtedly his most impressive accomplishment yet.
“WALK & WHINE”
Watching this white dancehall rapper perform his new single while wearing a Keith Haring hoodie, I can’t help wonder how his Jamaican accent would’ve gone down in 1980s New York. I like to imagine that, had MDotR been around 45 years ago, Andy Warhol would’ve acted as a mentor, like he did for Keith, helping him develop as an artist with something to say about identity in an age of hyperglobalization. He’d start spitting bars about how he wanted to “open up that batty like a can of Campbell’s Soup” and how he be “slurping on a big bowl of tomato bomboclaat” as an increasingly distressed Andy attempts to make a gelatin silver print of his face.
slated
THE KIRKIVERSERY
This article from The Intercept argues that, following his death last year, Charlie Kirk has not become a saint but a meme—but why does it have to be one or the other? If they were around today, the Catholic saints would all be treated like schizoposters. We’d watch TikTok clips of Francis of Assisi befriending a wolf that had been terrorizing an Umbrian village and argue over whether or not it was AI. I guess Italian brainrot is older than we think.
META’S NEW AI AGENT CALLED MUSE
It’s sad to think that there’s a future where Muse are almost entirely forgotten about and when you hear their name you think of Meta’s AI agent rather than the band who wrote the original version of “Starlight” by AI Homer Simpson.
HAVING NO CLUE HOW GOOD AI MUSIC HAS GOTTEN
Should my consciousness be uploaded into a fruit fly trapped inside a fractal prison for the rest of eternity, then I might as well say how I really feel: if this vapid, insubstantial buzzing is the future of music, then sticking a canister of bug spray up each nostril while licking the electric insect zapper is the only hope I’ve got of ever feeling anything again.
FILMS TO HEAL YOUR TOXIC MASCULINITY
I keep watching Paul Mescal films and waiting for my toxic masculinity to heal, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe I’m watching the wrong ones? I just finished Gladiator II, and now I’m walking around in a helmet and a loincloth, ready to fight for my actual life. The new Beatles biopic is out soon, though, and I’m pretty sure none of them ever did anything bad [Paul McCartney gives the thumbs-down, and his fans tear me limb from limb and feed my remains to the lions].
THE SEWERS OF ENTERTAINMENT
While I appreciate an important clarification in brackets, everyone knows the original “sewers of entertainment” is VICE (magazine). So while Cum Town comedian Stavros Halkias is trading his life force for Netflix specials and Hollywood roles, I’m burning through mine while writing articles like this. Forget about being cheek-to-cheek with Oscar winners, I’m down here with the rats, living on a raft of Dude Wipes and dreaming of the day I’m invited to visit a podcast studio so I can steal some fresh toilet paper to take back to my fetid underground lair.
Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi
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