cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19628702
my friend who still lives in palo alto gave me permission to share this mailer he got.
there’s unhinged and then there’s tech unhinged
image in post has two photos of people wearing EEG electrodes, one xray of a human head, an EEG data plot over a silhouette of a head, and this text:
REM sleep is the next Al
The upcoming era of physical reality integrated with dream worlds advanced by the REMspace startup
- Controlling a smart home from dreams
- Transferring speech from dreams
- Controlling virtual cars from dreams
- Interacting with dream worlds using brain implants
- Social media for sharing dream journals
- Smart sleep masks powered by Al
- Many other breakthroughs from our lab (videos and tech)
Don't miss the pitch of the year for potential partners and investors
Aug 29th Palo Alto
Above the image is an (inaccurate) BlueSky label saying "Possible tumblr screenshot" with a "hide" button.
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the guy behind this startup:
- (CW bloody photos) "I confirm the information published in the Daily Mail. On May 17, 2023, I performed by myself trepanation, electrode implantation, and electrical stimulation of my brain's motor cortex. I needed it to test brain stimulation during lucid dreaming"
- https://www.newsweek.com/russian-implants-chip-brain-control-dreams-hospital-1814256
I mean, to be fair, they were.
What started as an allegory for the path of a trans person realizing they're trans and taking "the red pill" to find the reality of their world and escape "the Matrix" that forces them into a confined box in which they don't actually fit...
...turned into the dumbest bro'd out bullshit from people who think the "red pill" means you're the strongest smartest man who is has figured out society and you're a superman like Neo who can fly and shit.
Honestly, I'm on the side of executives on this one. Most people are too fucking stupid for it.
From what I’ve read, The Matrix wasn’t created as a trans allegory, it’s just that you can apply the fundamentals of its story to many concepts. One of the most popular interpretations happens to be gender identity because its creators transitioned years after the original trilogy ended.
Part of the script that got cut by Hollywood was literally Switch being a different gender inside the Matrix and outside.
That's literally why they were originally named "Switch." Switch is in the original film and dies in the original film. Not the sequels.
But sure, not a trans allegory.
The part that gets said is a "trans allegory" but isn't is the red pill as a stand-in for estrogen.
I went back and looked at the articles I had read and dug a little deeper to get to an interview with Lilly Wachowski herself:
https://www.them.us/story/lilly-wachowski-mentoring-the-matrix-interview
To be honest, her statement doesn’t seem like either a denial or confirmation to me so 🤷♂️
Yeah, it sounds to me like she has issue with just that specific thing being treated as a trans allegory rather than the whole thing, the film, The Matrix, itself, as trans allegory as a whole, and the idea that it was purposeful rather than happenstance.
It sounds more like "we were closeted at the time, and we unconsciously were putting in trans allegories to our own paths and ideas" which still means its trans allegory, even if it was unintentional at the time, because they still hadn't "come out" to even themselves yet.
In other words, it's undeniably trans allegory, but perhaps that wasn't consciously on their mind at the time they wrote it.
Thanks for the link, I hadn't read that one. Definitely clears it up a little.