Less Than Analog - R30 Issue #18

I woke up at 8 o’clock on Monday, and honestly I felt it was too early, considering I spent most of the weekend behind the screen. So I went back to sleep and had a cool dream involving Robert Downey Jr. in an A24-inspired remake of Less Than Zero.

There were some great scenes featuring the signature neon lighting we all know and love from A24. The one I remember the most was RDJ in a parking lot overseeing the beach, sitting on the ground and leaning back against his car. There was the blue and red in the sky from the breaking dawn, with our hero staring off into the distance. RDJ himself was sporting a New Wave Punk haircut; lots of hairspray with a dash of The Cure’s Robert Smith. That’s not the movie’s style, more like my own creation. By the way, don’t necessarily watch the film, it’s a bit ass. Better read the book it’s based on, Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel. I believe? Could be wrong there.

Speaking of dreams, if you want a machine to hallucinate some retro-inspired AI images for you, AnalogCore v3 has been released. I’m particularly fond of this picture, showing what looks like two people inside a house at a table. Or is it outside? The lamp could be the sun at dawn, with both persons at the beach. Maybe we’re inside? I love the spooky yet cozy atmosphere. Echoes of Russian Doomer music.

Beware of spending too much time with the thinking machines, or your cognitive skills might decline: A WSJ reporter used ChatGPT to translate his emails into French, until he noticed that his French was getting worse. But it’s not just individuals displeased with their self-inflicted AI-debuff, workers are getting fed up with the AI-requirements at their job as well. Bad news if you work at Shopify, where working with LLMs seems to have become a baseline expectation. And the UK government has started a project where algorithms are used to predict future crimes. Yeah, it’s some straight-up PK Dick Minority Report shit. “The algorithm deems you a murderer.” Yeah, no, fuck off. If you keep getting annoyed by Website CAPTCHAs to verify you are indeed a human being, let it be known that AkiraBot can bypass most of them. Kewl. More humane than humans.

But will machines ever be able to love? Probably not, but they will be able to learn the Lovers Communication System by Yukio Ōta. I know very little about visual languages, apart from random toots on Mastodon, but Picto is another one. Interesting approach, never thought about designing purpose-built hieroglyphs.

I almost forgot, but after finishing Loom last week, I started the next adventure game. Called Disco Elysium. So far I like it, it feels like reading a French comic. A French comic made for people who post in r/socialism. But no, the writing is pretty good. For the most part. I like the funny bits, but when they’re trying to emulate noir-style angst-ridden inner monologues, it gets a bit too je ne sais quoi. Then again, can’t remember the last time I played a video game with this much political and social commentary. It has to be applauded for that alone.

Cars. Nothing new under the sun, just keep buying V12s until they go away.

K-Pop. No noteworthy comebacks, just the usual headlines about malnourished idols, stalkers breaking into homes, hypothetical relationships, and casual racism against black people and latinos.

Leftovers: ANREALAGE and FOREARTH printed fashion (video), Corruption Perceptions Index, The Fall of the Soviet Union

References:
https://www.vulture.com/article/a24-movies-cult.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093407/
https://medium.com/%40brianyan4321/a24-on-vulgar-cinephilia-5b71118dcd24
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9915.Less_Than_Zero
https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1jv47dx/2000s_analogcore_v3_flux_lora_update/
https://preview.redd.it/b4xosj7qpste1.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0090fccbec8d43ce202431a561b45ad16d26a911
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcaZcbain2s&list=PL3k92UZUgR7hFE6lIJZ7TzUGYm4jsYRF4
https://futurism.com/cognitive-decay-ai
https://aftermath.site/ai-video-game-development-art-vibe-coding-midjourney
https://x.com/tobi/status/1909251946235437514
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/08/uk-creating-prediction-tool-to-identify-people-most-likely-to-kill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report?useskin=vector
https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/akirabot-ai-powered-bot-bypasses-captchas-spams-websites-at-scale/
https://typo.social/@lttrspc/114312322806734492
https://societyofsigns.com/projects/picto
https://rowini30.com/post/newsletter_r30_017/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/632470/Disco_Elysium__The_Final_Cut/
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-04-08/entertainment/kpop/Kiss-of-Life-controversy-reignites-debate-over-cultural-appropriation-in-Kpop/2280311
https://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com/en/news/rls_2025/rls_20250307.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8_Fa4Cdb_0
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Soviet-Vladislav-M-Zubok/dp/0300268173

Laguna Beach in California by Levi Clancy

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