Starting over...

After ~a year and a half slopping out React code, researching European history, and recording videos in the dark early mornings before work, I'm announcing the end of Flashbang.

If you're intrigued by my work so far, grieve not! I'm going to keep hacking on some kind of accelerated AI education thing. And if you want to continue subscribing to this newsletter, I'll still tell you how it goes.

However, this newsletter is going to change shape, because I also want to write about some other things. Now's a good time for me to explore thinking about a wider variety of topics and sending out smaller works at a faster pace. The mistake I most learned from with Flashbang is that it's just so easy to get locked into a long-term relationship with a project due to sunken cost.

I'm renaming this publication Hyperpolis because I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about the future of government. And also because I joined an art collective/"network state" thinking about the same—Concept Country, whose zine I've been fortunate enough to edit and write for. (Sign up for updates here.) I see this newsletter becoming somewhere I can think out loud about the intersections of history/world politics/governance futurism and the AI/education stuff I’ve been doing.

If you’re curious to hear more, I’ve appeared on a couple podcasts lately where I’ve thought out loud a lot:

• Neomania, started by my good friend Lance Robotsun

• This Vibecamp Attendee chat with Brooke Bowman, co-founder of the unconference/summercamp I've been attending for 4 years

I'm thinking about finishing the After the End series on post Cold War history, as well as rebooting Flashbang as part of the Concept Country collective (a 'Concept School', if you will.) If there’s anything from Flashbang that you were especially excited by and still want to see in the world, let me know.

Thanks for your support and subscription! An easy way to keep closer track of my moves would be to follow me on Twitter.

- Joe