Neal Curtis
LightNews LightNews
banner
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Neal Curtis
@nihilcurtis.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.1K following 2K posts
Comics scholar, one-time critical theorist. Interested in science communication & graphic medicine. Enjoys SF. Concerned (to say the least) by climate emergency and fascism. Escaped UK for Aotearoa. Tangata Tiriti. He/him.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Neal Curtis
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
'Winter trees' textile collage with #embroidery,
by UK textile artist Katy Rundle
#WomensArt
Textile collage reflecting an image of a winter forest with many tall thin tree trunks in icey ground and a rising sun on the horizon
January 5, 2026 at 5:43 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
'AI is ... politics by other means'.
-- Kate Crawford
January 5, 2026 at 4:06 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
If anyone knows any good studies of interface theory that isn't written in the exclusionary, high jargon this one is, can you please let me know. #MediaStudies
direct.mit.edu/books/book/3...
Interface
A cultural theory of the interface as a relation that is both ubiquitous and elusive, drawing on disciplines from cultural theory to architecture.In this b
direct.mit.edu
January 5, 2026 at 2:56 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
I apologise if my panic ever contributes to the panic of others. This is an important intervention about remaining clam.
January 5, 2026 at 2:20 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Kuchen team up with Mapstation for this piece of low-fi, chilled electronica.
January 5, 2026 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
acvalens.com
As more stories like this emerge, I rec ppl return to the original WSJ article discussing the psychosis risk factor with medical professionals. AI appears to be a trigger akin to drug use. I prefer this framing. Not everyone who takes a risky drug develops psychosis, but psychosis is a risk for some
Psychiatrists caution against saying chatbots cause psychosis, but say they are closer to establishing the connection. With further research, doctors hope to establish whether AI can actually trigger mental-health problems. Worrisome numbers It's hard to quantify how many chatbot users experience such psychosis. OpenAI said that, in a given week, the slice of users who indicate possible signs of mental-health emergencies related to psychosis or mania is a minuscule 0.07%. Yet with more than 800 million active weekly users, that amounts to 560,000 people. "Seeing those numbers shared really blew my mind," said Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and doctoral fellow at King's College London who earlier this year co-authored a paper on AI-associated delusions. He is now planning to look at U.K. health records for patterns like those from Denmark. Doctors the Journal spoke with said they expect science to likely show that, for some people, long interactions with a chatbot can be a psychosis risk factor, like other more established risks such as drug use. "You have to look more carefully and say, well, 'Why did this person just happen to coincidentally enter a psychotic state in the setting of chatbot use?' " said Joe Pierre, another UCSF psychiatrist and lead author of the case report about the woman who thought she was communicating with her dead brother.
January 4, 2026 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
mari-rochelle.bsky.social
From Rachel Hurley:

Something about Venezuela is not sitting right with me.
This is a long one.
And take this all with a grain of salt, because who the hell am I? I could be overthinking this whole thing.
Something about Venezuela is not sitting right with me. This is a long one. And take this all with a grain of salt, because who the hell am I? I could be overthinking this whole thing. Here's what can be backed up by reporting: 14 days before the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro, Russia evacuated the families of its diplomats from Venezuela. December 20th. Wives and kids. Quiet, organized, done. Then on January 3rd, Delta Force drops in, grabs Maduro and his wife, and it's over in under thirty minutes. That doesn't seem like a coincidence. Russia publicly condemned the whole thing - called it armed aggression, demanded a UN Security Council meeting, the whole performative outrage routine. But you don't evacuate your people two weeks in advance unless you know something's coming. And if you know something's coming, someone told you. Here's where it gets weirder. Cuba - Venezuela's other major ally - didn't evacuate anybody. Cuban doctors are still there, confined to their quarters, families back in Havana losing their minds because nobody warned them this was happening. China? Same thing. No evacuation, just reactive condemnation after the fact. So Russia knew. Cuba and China didn't. Or at least they didn't foresee any consequences from a US intervention - because sure;y they knew that Russians were leaving. Now let's talk about how the operation actually went down. Venezuela spent two billion dollars on Russian S-300 air defense systems - the kind that are supposed to turn the Caribbean into a no-fly zone for the U.S. military. On paper, these things track 24 targets simultaneously, knock cruise missiles out of the sky at 250 kilometers. Caracas should have been a fortress. The U.S. neutralized all of it in under twenty minutes. Either American military tech is so vastly superior that we can casually dismantle a Russian-backed air defense network before anyone even knows we're there, or those systems were ordered not to fire. Maybe both. But the speed of it - the totality of it - that's what doesn't add up. And if we can do this - why is the Ukrainian war with Russia still happening? Anyway - one helicopter took minor damage. That's it. No U.S. casualties. No significant Venezuelan casualties that anyone's bothered to specify. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez went on TV and said "innocent people died" but never gave numbers, never gave details, and hasn't brought it up again. For a surprise military raid on a hostile capital city, that's remarkably clean. And then there's Maduro himself. He and his wife both surrendered. Not fought to the death, not tried to escape, not holed up for a siege. Surrendered. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team was part of the extraction force - not just Delta, but FBI HRT, the guys who specialize in cooperative extractions. You bring HRT when you're expecting the target to come willingly. The whole transport route screams pre-arrangement. Maduro goes from his compound to the USS Iwo Jima, then Guantanamo, then a nice clean flight to New York where a 25-page indictment is ready to unseal the same day he lands. That indictment was prepared. The grand jury had already done its work. Jay Clayton's signature was on it before Maduro ever got on that helicopter. They knew exactly when he'd be in custody. Here's what I think happened - and again, I'm speculating here, but the pieces fit. Maduro was cornered. His economy collapsed. He lost the 2024 election and the international community recognized his opponent. His former intelligence chief, Hugo Carvajal, pled guilty back in June and started cooperating. That guy would have known everything - security details, schedules, which officers were loyal, which ones would fold. Maduro's wife was indicted. His son was indicted. He was facing life in prison if the U.S. ever got him. actually watched a video of a recent interview that Maduro did where he said that he was ready to work with the US - he was just waiting for them to call. So what if he made a deal? What if Maduro, through back channels, offered to surrender in exchange for a reduced sentence? Maybe witness protection, maybe unfrozen assets, maybe immunity for his kid. The U.S. gets him in custody, gets control of Venezuelan oil, gets a clean regime change without a prolonged war. Russia gets advance warning, pulls their people out, avoids an international incident. And everybody gets to maintain their public positions for domestic audiences. Maduro looks like a victim - kidnapped by imperial aggression, not a guy who cut a deal to save his own ass. The U.S. looks strong - tough on dictators, military dominance, America first. Russia looks outraged - standing up to American hegemony. And Venezuela's power structure stays mostly intact because Trump's not working with the democratic opposition, he's working with Maduro's own vice president. That last part is what really cinches it for me. María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. She won the opposition primary. Her guy, Edmundo Gonzalez, won the actual presidential election by a two-to-one margin and got international recognition as Venezuela's legitimate leader. Seventy percent of Venezuelans support the opposition.
January 4, 2026 at 6:05 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
A quick US/China comparison shows oli-addicted US is way behind on renewable and future-proofed energy production but is slowly catching up on the authoritarianism.
January 4, 2026 at 6:04 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Perhaps Trump could now kidnap Putin and free Russia.
January 4, 2026 at 6:01 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
What we've learned from the kidnapping of Maduro:
1. It was done in the name of democracy, but there are no plans for an election
2. Foreign presidents can be tried in US courts but the US president can't be
3. A foreign president will be tried before anyone in the Epstein files
#Venezuela
January 4, 2026 at 5:20 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Maduro was running a military-based oligarchy. Trump is developing a tech-based oligarchy. The former has assets desired by the latter.
There are now 44 companies in the hands of the military, in fields as varied as agriculture, mining and gas, banking, manufacturing, construction and textiles, among others, according to the pro-transparency civilian organisation Control Ciudadano
January 4, 2026 at 6:22 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
The Trump Doctrine: "find person or persons in a foreign government more corrupt than the disliked leader and bribe them to accommodate your pillage".
January 4, 2026 at 5:47 AM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
The work of Shio Kusaka, contemporary Japanese ceramics artist #Womensart
Ceramic vase with simple black and white image of the interior of a Japanese house
January 4, 2026 at 5:15 AM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Perhaps Trump will open too many fronts for his military (south into Venezuela, Cuba, and Mexico, north into Canada, and East into EU via Greenland) and, just like Hitler, it will be his downfall. How many he would have killed by then is anyone's guess.
January 4, 2026 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
mcopelov.bsky.social
👇🎯
January 3, 2026 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
esqueer.net
Trump is trying to force US oil companies to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields that are too expensive to invest in at current crude prices while a full blown energy revolution is happening with cheap solar and electrification growing exponentially.

This is a dying empire shit.
nycsouthpaw.bsky.social southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d
a lot of interesting revelations between the lines of this story www.politico.com/news/2026/01...
January 4, 2026 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
leyawn.bsky.social
this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to jump out of a helicopter to kidnap a head of state and his wife so some oil ceos can make a lot of money. we’ll be watching from a resort in florida that still serves wedge salad and checking how many retweets we get. good luck soldier
January 3, 2026 at 10:57 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Just to note, this would be an act of war against the European Union given that Greenland is the territory of Denmark, a member of the EU. Their Cold War against the EU is already underway via promotion of far-right European parties, but it could turn hot.
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 1d
Miller’s wife posts the following:

(Sharing for narrative)
January 4, 2026 at 12:59 AM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
nikitagill.bsky.social
Ever relevant, this poem by Mary Oliver, especially today.
OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
January 3, 2026 at 2:02 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
I can hear Tony Blair jumping up and down, hand in the air, screaming "Pick me! Pick me!". He must be desperate to be involved.
January 3, 2026 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
krveale.bsky.social
Naomi Klein has entered the chat.

Again.

With a steel chair.
January 3, 2026 at 8:25 PM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
tnflorvil.bsky.social
Look at the US interventions. ugh
January 3, 2026 at 5:50 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
For anyone seeking to contact me, I've moved to 2027.
January 3, 2026 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by Neal Curtis
domesticanimal.bsky.social
Already four days old. OMG! Where does the time go?
Wishing you and your nascent year all the very best of everything.
A #cartoon for the #NewYear
Happy New Year! The image shows a tiny pink newly hatched bird sitting in a cracked egg, with Happy New Year written on it. The tiny chick is going “BWARK!”
January 3, 2026 at 7:02 PM
nihilcurtis.bsky.social
Perhaps a small gesture would be boycotting the World Cup. Don't attend matches, don't be a viewing figure. A hopeless thought, no doubt, but it would be nice.
January 3, 2026 at 7:00 PM