Dr. Patrick Brock

My essay on Brazilian Afrofuturism is out in @SFRAReview ! Many thanks to the editors and especially to @VirginiaLConn for the invitation. @cofutures @theoryfrom @UniOsloHF sfrareview.org/2023/07/19/bra…

LOS FUTUROS PERDIDOS DE LA COMPUTACIÓN ARGENTINA | Del Proyecto Manhattan de la IA a Clementina y Oscar Varsavsky, Ernesto Román reconstruye otra historia de la computación y recupera una tecnología pensada para planificar el futuro. revistasupernova.com/nota/los-futur…

"Reporters and editors who get their ideas from their social-media feeds — which is most of them, most of the time — can mistake a paid simulation of public interest for the real thing and then make it real by covering it. " vulture.com/article/social…

🚨 🇨🇳 🚢 Hours after Xi told Trump in Beijing that China "opposes the toll system" and the Strait "must remain open", China's UN ambassador blocked a U.S.-Bahraini Security Council resolution demanding exactly that. Fu Cong: "We don't think the content is right, and the timing is not right." China holds the UNSC presidency this month. Fu said if it were up to China, the resolution would not go to a vote. Both Russia and China vetoed a similar resolution last month, arguing it was biased against Iran. Xi said one thing in the Great Hall of the People. China's ambassador said another at the UN.

🚨 EXCLUSIVO: o Intercept Brasil obteve mensagens, documentos e áudios que revelam como Flávio Bolsonaro negociou diretamente com o banqueiro Daniel Vorcaro um pagamento milionário para financiar “Dark Horse”, filme sobre Jair Bolsonaro. Vorcaro, dono do Banco Master, pagou pelo menos 10 milhões de dólares para a produção do longa, segundo documentos analisados pela reportagem. As conversas mostram cobranças por dinheiro, negociações de bastidores e a participação de outros intermediários, como Eduardo Bolsonaro e Mário Frias, ex-secretário da Cultura do governo Bolsonaro e roteirista de “Dark Horse”. Neste vídeo, você ouve um áudio enviado por Flávio Bolsonaro cobrando pagamentos e alertando para o risco de paralisação da produção. Leia a reportagem completa no site do Intercept Brasil: intercept.com.br/2026/05/13/aud…

EXCLUSIVE: Trump's abrupt U-turn on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after Saudi Arabia suspended U.S. access to its bases and airspace. nbcnews.com/politics/white…

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States for the seventh time won the war that wasn’t a war, so the United States can open the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the not war. The not war that started to get the uranium that was completely obliterated, so that the Iranians can’t build the nuclear bomb that they weren’t building for the not war that the United States started. Then the United States which has nuclear weapons threatening to use nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous. If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

More on Lula's White House visit tomorrow: * I suspect Brazil's goals are primarily DEFENSIVE. Prevent Trump from being a factor in October's election, from interfering on the Bolsonaros' behalf. Keep US-Brazil relationship positive, as it has been since September, despite voices inside Trump admin pushing for return to a bellicose approach. * White House's main goal is rare earths -- Brazil has world's #2 reserves behind China -- but lacks capital and know-how to exploit. Lula govt seems amenable to US investment -- BUT doesn't want any country to have monopoly -- and also wants to add value in supply chain, not just be an extractive colony * Tariffs and organized crime also on the agenda. Brazil has a plan to combat PCC & other mafias but will it be enough to avoid a terrorist designation as Trump has applied to other cartels? I don't know. Vulnerable area for Brazil. * This is, as always with Trump, an UNPREDICTABLE meeting. Arranged quickly and odd timing. It probably goes fine but there's a ~10% chance it devolves into a Zelensky 2, especially if Lula insists on Brazil's position on Iran or Venezuela Will be interesting to watch

Associate Press wins a Pulitzer for showing how across the world, surveillance technology – often made by Silicon Valley and sold with US government blessing despite sanctions – is increasingly monitoring the moves of citizens who have done nothing wrong. trib.al/r2ZVHZz

Brazil's most underappreciated strategic asset is a tree. Brazilian eucalyptus is the most efficient timber crop on Earth. Eucalyptus in Brazil reaches harvest in 6 to 7 years. Pine in the U.S. South takes 22 to 40 years. Pine in Canada and Scandinavia takes 60 to 100 years. Brazil's average eucalyptus yield is 35.7 cubic meters of wood per hectare every year. That is almost double the productivity of pine plantations in the Northern Hemisphere. Same hectare. Same year. Twice the wood. Brazil now operates more than 10 million hectares of planted forests. Three out of every four trees planted in Brazil for industrial use are eucalyptus. Suzano alone operates 2.7 million hectares across seven Brazilian states. That makes Suzano the largest pulp producer on the planet, and Brazil the global leader in cellulose, tissue, and packaging supply chains. Climate, soil, and decades of breeding research at Embrapa. Three structural advantages no Northern Hemisphere forestry operation can replicate. The most underappreciated industrial advantage in the world is growing on Brazilian land right now. Most investors are still treating forestry as a slow asset class. In Brazil, it compounds in 6 years.

Two economists just published a mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy. Not might. Not could. Will — if nothing changes. The paper is called "The AI Layoff Trap." Published March 2, 2026. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Boston University. Peer reviewed. Mathematically modeled. The conclusion is one sentence. "At the limit, firms automate their way to boundless productivity and zero demand." An economy that produces everything. And sells it to nobody. Here is how you get there. A company fires 500 workers and replaces them with AI. A competitor fires 700 to keep up. Another fires 1,000. Every company is behaving rationally. Every company is following the incentives correctly. And every company is building a trap for itself. Because the workers who were fired were also customers. When they lose their jobs faster than the economy can absorb them, they stop spending. Consumer demand falls. Companies respond by cutting costs — which means automating more workers — which means less spending — which means more falling demand — which means more automation. The loop has no natural exit. The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income. Capital income taxes. Worker equity participation. Upskilling programs. Corporate coordination agreements. Every single one failed in the model. The only intervention that worked: a Pigouvian automation tax — a per-task levy charged every time a company replaces a human with AI, forcing them to price in the demand they are destroying before they pull the trigger. No government has implemented this. No major economy is seriously discussing it. Meanwhile the numbers are already tracking the curve. 100,000 tech workers laid off in 2025. 92,000 more in the first months of 2026. Jack Dorsey fired half of Block's workforce and said publicly: "Within the next year, the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion." Nobody is doing anything wrong. Companies are following their incentives perfectly. That is exactly the problem. Rational behavior. At scale. Simultaneously. With no mechanism to stop it. Two economists built the math. The math leads to one place. Source: Falk & Tsoukalas · Wharton School + Boston University · arxiv.org/pdf/2603.20617

“When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark” theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/…

In this damning piece, the @WSJ explains how Trump’s war with Iran has become deeply personal: public bravado, private anxiety; tactical strikes, strategic drift; dramatic threats, improvised diplomacy, using insults as a tactic to bring Iranians to the negotiating table and screaming at aids. Constant desire to change subjects. Being angry at allies. Even his threat to destroy Iranian “civilization” was made without prior coordination with his national security team. A series of miscalculations. This is a portrait of a commander driven less by strategy than impulse, optics, and fear of failure. This is very disturbing. wsj.com/politics/natio…

Quem diria que os Indianos que apoiaram o nacionalismo cristão de Trump, seriam agora, perseguidos pelos próprios conservadores dos EUA. Um aviso pra como funciona a dinâmica pra quem não é cristão e apoia a extrema direita brasileira: são todos úteis até chegar ao poder, apenas.

최근에 발견한 '세상의 모든 음악 장르를 지도로 시각화'한 사이트입니다 텍스트로 된 장르 이름을 클릭하면 해당 장르의 대표 예시곡을 들을수 있습니다 지도의 위쪽으로 갈 수록 일렉트로닉에 가까우며 반대로 아래쪽으로 갈 수록 어쿠스틱(리얼 악기)에 가까워집니다 everynoise.com

He’s not wrong. I stopped doing theatre because you just can’t live off of being a theatre actor. TV and film for guys like me is trending the same way. My auditions for on camera went from 3 / 4 a month to 1 every three months. The pay for a middle class actor guest starring on a show isn’t fantastic anymore and you have to stretch it out until your next gig which is god knows when. If any of you are wondering why I leaned so heavily into games and animation…

The war has brought a new Iranian regime into power—one that's harder, harsher and more extreme. on.wsj.com/3Oi2rQN

US intelligence indicates that China is preparing to provide Iran with air defense systems in a matter of weeks, CNN reported. Beijing is expected to ship shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles known as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

"And now, somewhere in Riyadh, the Crown Prince is staring at a charred THAAD radar, a half-empty interceptor magazine, and a $142 billion receipt, and he is doing the math Rubio did on television: 100 missiles a month versus six or seven interceptors. And he is realizing, perhaps for the first time, that the Abraham Accords were not a security guarantee. They were a customer acquisition strategy." themiccheck.substack.com/p/the-abraham-…

UnitedHealth is the nation’s largest health insurance conglomerate. ProPublica obtained what is effectively the company’s internal playbook for limiting and cutting therapy costs. Here’s what we found. propublica.org/article/united…