NM Update: Astonishment (Sept 2026)

After a month in North America, we’re back—coming to you from Berlin with some reflections on that time and thoughts on the AI doomstorm that’s defined this year’s fall rentrée. Lil Net, currently writing on Bernadette Corporation’s film Get Rid of Yourself (2003) for the Julia Stoschek Foundation, draws a path from Y2K era empire to the blackboxed Cthulhu it’s become today. "The twin towers didn't fall, they were uploaded." — Lil Net Carly, involved in a local land-use dispute over a country road, notes how, at least in the US, there’s no civic mechanism to value the intangible benefits of something that’s slower and higher-friction, only its measurable “improvement.” Plus: trance music and Y2K airport globalism; birth of the non-space; 9/11; the contentification of theorems; data centers; and the K-shaped everything. “They are themselves so astonished that they can do these things. And they have so much fun in doing it. But they miss a little bit more of intelligence. Strategic intelligence [...] they are too confused because they are too astonished about their own being made.” — Werner von Delmont (Stephen Dillemuth) in BC’s Get Rid of Yourself (2003) https://newmodels.io