Chronaxie Infinity, vol. 16: Quantum foie gras
A roundup of articles about the slipperiness of memory, Havana Syndrome, and VAR as AI. Skip to the end to read Indiana Jones' tenure rejection letter
For anyone who is waiting for Part II of the Quantum Biology workshop roundup — as the saying goes, I bit off more than I could chew. In fact, I am currently engaged in quantum biology gavage, force-feeding my medium-sized brain an amount of information that is cruel and inhumane, and if my brain were an animal I’d be having uncomfortable conversations with PETA. But my brain enjoys no such protections, so I am now waiting for it to swell to 10 times its normal size, after which I shall write something so exquisite you can spread it on a cracker and enjoy it with a crisp Sauterne (is Sauterne crisp? I googled “what drink goes with pâté” and believed the first answer).
While I bring myself back from the brink of my utter, quantum-induced lunacy, please avert your eyes and focus on other people’s work:
Memories may depend on your relationships. At Aeon, David Robson has written the story, equal parts heartbreaking and fascinating, of his estrangement from his mother, and how it began to disassemble his existing memories of childhood. The effect is creepy as hell — like discovering an email you had sent long ago had been somehow edited in the intervening years, in your own inbox, into something you would never write. Even though I should know better, I still cling to the idea of memories as physical artifacts inscribed in our brain circuitry, relics that can’t be significantly changed after the fact. This article puts the lie to that. It will stay with me for a long time. I recommend it.
“Sufferers have described symptoms such as hearing a low hum, clicks, squeals and "grinding metal" while others reported intense pressure on the skull, dizziness and nausea.”
If you’re interested in the mysterious neurological condition that has made life hell for CIA staff and diplomats — which may be a novel energy weapon, or mass hysteria, depending on your perspective — you’ll want to know that the US government has now paid out $3 million to the victims.Magnets to revolutionise the space industry. A New Zealand startup has figured out how to get acceleration without fuel. Normally, satellites use either chemical or electrical energy to provide the thrust necessary to maintain the position they should be in. But the new system uses magnets to convert solar energy directly into momentum. “You can accelerate things in space very fast or change the trajectory of a satellite completely without fuel,” the CEO told space.com. “We are essentially looking to remove all reliance on Earth’s resources so that we can build a sustainable industry in space.” To that end, big magnets could also shield spacecraft inside mini magnetic bubbles, defending crew against the sun’s destructive radiation even outside Earth’s protective magnetopshere.
I recently saw the word “consume” used in the context of going to a concert (“we consumed a concert”, someone actually wrote, and I became ill). I have long worried about the sickness we have been given by the internet’s compulsive context collapse. The cursed phrase “consuming a concert” — like the generalised version “consuming content” — are a consequence of our small black screens sucking all the life out of art and media and humanity, dessicating them into little undifferentiated pellets for our greedy Pacman selves to consume, consume, consume, consume. The London Review of Books, a play, an antivax tiktok, a Beyonce show, a Nature paper, porn, politics, a Facebook thread selling leggings. It all becomes the same greige blob.
Agnes Callard is a philospher at the University of Chicago who studies all of this and thinks about it with a far better brain than the one I’ve got. She has come up with a word to encompass the aforementioned ick: “uni-context”. And in a modern world that is moving from local norms to global sameness, what replaces them is the psychology of money. The idea that whatever it is, it’s just something to be consumed. Read the whole interview with Derek Thompson:Topical football content alert! VAR sucks:
In a poll of 7,000 football fans published just a few months ago, in March 2026, 91% of respondents said the sport is better off without VAR and 81% said they preferred watching matches without the technology. 92% said VAR killed the “spontaneous joy” of celebrating a goal. Just 2% agreed with the statement that “VAR makes football more enjoyable.” Since its implementation in the UK’s Premier League, YouGov polls have consistently found that large majorities of viewers believe VAR “works poorly.”
In other words: It’s a ubiquitous automation and surveillance system, adopted and maintained by those in positions of power with promises of progress and improvement, despite inspiring widespread disdain among those it is promoted it as serving (football players and fans). Its public poll numbers are in the gutter. It even has its own instantly identifiable acronym. VAR is, there is little doubt, the generative AI of the football world.
Brian Merchant, excellent as ever, points out that VAR, like AI, functions mostly as an accountability-evasion tool for people who don’t want to be held accountable for their decisions.
“Dr. Jones’s interpersonal skills and relationships are no better. By his own admission, he has repeatedly employed an underage Asian boy as a driver and “personal assistant” during his Far East travels. I will refrain from making any insinuations as to the nature of this relationship, but my intuition insists that it is not a healthy one, nor one to be encouraged.”
McSweeney’s on Indiana Jones’ tenure rejection is 20 years old today.
Having now re-read this ADHD ping-pong of different topics, I can confirm that I am a child of the uni-context. Off to choke down more quantum pellets! See you when my liver explodes.
Image credit: Photo by David Valentine on Unsplash