Military Robo-Cheetahs, Obamacare for Microchips and Other Techno-Dystopian Shit You Couldn’t Make Up

by Russ McSpadden / Carbon-based humanoid correspondent for the King Ludd & John Connor Institute of Anti-Technology

[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]

Genetically Modified Catnip Won’t Save You

The Pentagon has announced that it is currently investigating new mobility technologies that include a robo-cheetah that has already surpassed the fastest recorded speed of any human on Earth.  According to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) the Cheetah-droid is fast enough to run down Usain Bolt who set the world speed record for a human in 2009 when he reached 27.78 mph. The Cheetah was recently clocked at 28.3 mph and is expected, following a series of upgrades, to run much faster. In fact, it is now the fastest four-legged machine in history and it’s a predator.

But don’t worry, as the saying will soon go, “You don’t need to run faster than the fastest blood-thirsty military grade nano-titanium hell beast, you just need to run faster than the slowest flesh bag next to you.”

Drone Demonology: Flying Robots, Cop Mustaches & Resistance in the End Times

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

The first time I ever saw a drone I was sweating my ass off, hiking jugs of water through a cactus forest to drop in remote canyons for famished migrants making the deadly trek through the Sonoran desert. U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance drones patrol the skies along the border with Mexico on the daily. Like any good activist I gave the drone the bird and then quickly ducked beneath a cholla, which I don’t advise doing, as it is a cactus with a reputation.

Two 10,000-pound Predator-B border patrol drones. These are the fellas that patrol the borderlands, from Yuma, Ariz., to Brownsville, Tex.

Since his inauguration, noble peace prize winning president Barack Obama has increased the U.S. military’s use of drones and rewritten the rules of engagement in over a dozen countries around the world. Hundreds of civilians, including swaths of children and several dozen Al Qaeda operatives have been eviscerated by remote. Even four U.S. citizens have been assassinated by drones, violating due process and habeas corpus protections in the U.S. constitution. Reports put the ratio of civilians to “suspected terrorists” killed by drone strikes at about 50 to 1, meaning roughly 98% of the deaths are “collateral damage.”    

Salamanders’ Disappearance Raises Pollution Concerns

DAVID CRIGGER/BRISTOL HERALD COU

by Rex Springston /  Richmond Times-Dispatch

This is a heck of a bad time for the hellbender.

Also known as the snot otter, devil dog and Allegheny alligator, the hellbender is a slimy, mud-colored, salami-sized salamander that inspires folklore and misplaced fear.

The largest salamander in the Western Hemisphere, the hellbender has prospered in clean, cold Appalachian streams, including some in what is now Southwest Virginia, for eons, changing little since the age of dinosaurs.

And now hellbenders are dying. In Virginia and other states, scientists say, the animals have disappeared from some stream stretches.

That worries scientists because hellbenders, which breathe through their skins and are sensitive to pollution, are good indicators of water quality.

The Early History of the Robot Wars, Part IV

In which we discuss the possibility of autonomous AI class warfare, mullets as resistance, Big Brother iPhones, the Kaczynski-bot  and other shit of great and creepy importance.

by Russ McSpadden / Carbon-based humanoid correspondent for the King Ludd & John Connor Institute of Anti-Technology

Roboter Proletarier Aller Länder Vereinigt Euch!

Etymologists trace the word robot back to robota  from old Church Slavonic, a language standardized by Byzantine Greeks in the 9th Century to Christianize the Slavic peoples. It translates variously as “servitude,” “forced labor” and “drudgery.” With cognates in German, Polish, Russian and Czech, it is a word rooted in the European system of serfdom whereby bonded tenants paid rent through forced labor, maintaining the crops, roads, mines and forests of a lordly class. So, if you are slinging double fudge yuppie lattes against your will to pay for the right to have water, food, and shelter, then you are, according to its classic usage, a fucking robot. You know the feeling right?

The Bioethics of Twitter Controlled Cyborg Roaches

The Early History of the Robot Wars, Part II

In which is discussed the preposterously true details of a  cyborg cockroach enslaved by crowdsourced social media; the computer program that you are living in right now; and Smartphones that can see, smell, fart and someday screw.

by Russ McSpadden / Carbon-based humanoid correspondent for the King Ludd & John Connor Institute of Anti-Technology

[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]

La Cucaracha Robotica

Philosophers, science-fiction writers, and doctors have long pondered the cyborg dilemma–that blurred boundary where biology and machine are fast becoming one. And while most arguments tend to focus on two key questions — 1) Is it morally legitimate to use robotics to upgrade the human form and 2) Is it morally legitimate to neglect cyborg technology in the treatment of disease and disability — there are other very important questions that have yet to be raised.

For example: 3) Did you really just fit a cockroach with cyborg technology and control it with an IPhone and Twitter?