Twenty-twentyfive

A quarter of this century is now complete. We've been closer to the third decade of the 2000s than the second for a while now. As always, we're standing at the precipice of the future, and the edge of the past.

In twenty-twentyfive, I stood at a frontier, a front-line. The war for an "intelligence" to match our own is raging in the foreground. Shadowy spies deliver extracted intelligence to a government that uses it to send people to concentration camps. Capital is gathering in attempt to fund The One that might get us there. When once engineers sat far from the action, we now sat in ivory towers above the streets, watching as the world shifted through our keystrokes.

I began this year living alone on the corner of a busy street. Cars would pass and honk at one another and on occasion they'd honk so long I would have to step outside and yell at the person inside: just go the fuck around..

My neighbors across from the hall from me and their kids kept things alive. I would smoke with them and talk about the changing surroundings, the lack of parking and where the good food was. One of my neighbors grew up a couple of miles from where I did in LA. The other was from SF. They made a great couple, and cared for more family than just their kids. I got to meet a lot of their family (which wasn't always by blood), and they would tell me about things they seen and have yet to see. I hope they get to.

The beginning of the year always means my birthday and new music. I turned 23 this year and had just started a new chapter of my life. I called the music produced in that time 'init'; a reference to the start of new software. My music has gotten to a very conscious place—I am choosing exactly what to put out now instead of throwing darts. I spent a lot of time trying to capture what it felt like to be in this place at this time with these people. I'm happy with what I created this year.

Within the month that followed my birthday, I began going oncall for my job. I would be woken up in the middle of the night to attend to something that may or may not be broken and may or may not be fixable by me. I began to dread my phone's buzzing—the association between the pages, my phone's buzzing and anxiety was built up almost immediately.

This year went by so fast. I spent a lot of it working. I thought being a good engineer would protect me from the dynamics I created by questioning things: I would argue that we should be building the right things and not the expedient things. Now at the end of the year, I'm headed towards a blank slate at a new workplace. The last place valued velocity and delivery. They always wanted more..

More revenue. More data. More cameras. More datacenters. More capital. More. More. Don't stop. That competitor will catch up. China will catch up. The French already fell behind. We just gotta keep going, and faster, and–

In the year twenty-twentyfive, I'm grateful to have taken my foot off this particular gas pedal.

There were a lot of new and old faces this year. In the middle, I moved in with an old friend from high school and a new friend from the prior fall. We moved into the Mission district of San Francisco, and began to learn about the community we were entering. I had already learned this particular fact; but I was reminded that the people who grew up in the city or Bay rarely want to leave. They love their homes, but the rising costs makes that option less reasonable as time progresses.

Our floor of a classic three story San Francisco home is cozy. It sits above the street and has a back where many late night conversations take place; where music is shared, created and understood; where people meet and reconvene. Our large windows let us see the sun, the moon and the city. Being enclosed by the walls of buildings somehow is comforting; I can never truly tell where a sound has come from, but it means someone else is out there living their own life. We contribute our own sounds.

Since our move-in, we met a lot of musicians—some of which clicked with us and others that didn't. One of them was at the beginning of her journey in live performances, and we got to work toward making her visions into reality. In a world where art is becoming even more commodified and less real, she brought a new sound to people's ears and we got to be backup for her. Go check out Sofia RB—you need to hear.

Someone we met through Sofia was her now-manager Alberto aka OSO. He has been a huge source of support, creativity and drive. His music is crazy good. The grainsssss,, So meticulously crafted. We happen to have a lot of overlap in taste, so I'm always in a good mood when Alberto is on. Go listen to Club Kuma 1, 2 & 3.

Back home in Los Angeles, the homeboys have been refining their crafts. Awoken's Revival EP (which really should be called an album) is "pretty fucking minimal" as Slyder would say. It's a house project that needs to be played on loud speakers with good sub. Nothing less. They've putting together crazy sets, mixing in vinyl discs and then post-processing with effects—all while they mix songs in and out. I'm so fucking proud of them.

I also had online friends this year. It's not typical of me at all—I'm a pretty offline person, but everyone has been so inviting, kind and accepting. They are pushing the boundaries of hyperpop and electronic music in ways that make so much sense to me. I believe in their collective direction and dedication to each other so hard. Go support Ultrapop on Bandcamp, you'll find at least one artist you fuck with (I fw all of them).

In the year twenty-twentyfive, I am grateful to have been surrounded by musicians who were making tomorrow's sound become today's. (And wouldn't compromise their politics to do so.)

Can you tell that voice you're hearing isn't that dead artist? Can you see in between the pixels? That image wasn't captured or crafted. Can you remember who answered your question? Was it a friend or a teacher or something else you can't quite name?

Generative AI became good enough to be indistinguishable this year. It's genuinely hard to tell now. Yet, it cannot shape the future in an imaginative way. As of today, that's uniquely human, since these large models are only ever pattern matching based on historical data. I hope in 2026 that people decide to give their attention to other humans.

There is more than ever available to us to consume. As a result, the world seems to move quicker and quicker. At the same time, disasters are happening more often and people are being watched and bombed more. When all this seems to continue accelerating, will our answer be to focus on the community in front of us?

The United States' march towards fascism isn't new. Those in power have been slowly building and strategizing while the loudest voices bickered over cosmetics. To those who truly listened to their words, this is nothing new. However for most people, this year will mark a turning point—an irreversible change that will be written about for decades to come.

There was a week where the administration announced that they would be bring in the three letter agencies and the military to 'clean up' the city. People went into hiding and created plans. For that week in the Mission, neighbors whispered in the back of their stores a little more and lounged with their garages open a little less. Even though the three letter agencies never arrived, they still chilled the atmosphere during the warm SF summer (which happens to be in October). My housemates and I were a small part of people's plans with our safe enclave above the street.

Despite it all, people create: sousveillance is being developed—if they're watching us (surveillance), we must watch them (sousveillance). When men in masks demand of us to produce documentation, we should—at the very minimum—know who they are. May their names live in history. An old friend from Berkeley is conducting great reporting on this. There are many such efforts, but they should be guarded as well as they can be.

Art is being imagined, derived from the feelings this year brought. People cry their tears onto canvas, wipe their blood onto walls and put their screams into the bytes on our phones. It's more important than ever to give our time and attention and support and care to these efforts amidst the anger and AI garbage.

Going into twenty-twentysix, I don't have any predictions. My friends know I like to predict the future a lot—sometimes in meaningless ways and other times in the deepest of ways. I predicted my fate at my last job, but I also predicted that the clubs would be playing electro house the summer of twenty-twentyfive. Somehow I don't have any going into twenty-twentysix. A lot of the future looks foggy and unclear to me.

I still understand this world, but we are navigating in uncharted territory. I can see a stormy economy on the horizon, but it's unclear when the clouds will evaporate. Will they stop there? There is war brewing across the water—and this nation-state I live in is creating more enemies daily, but it's unclear how it will reach the mainland. This 'intelligence' we speak of is getting better, but it's unclear if it will match our own.

I do know what I can control: I can restock our community fridge, or offer a ride or a shoulder to cry into. I can repost an effort, I can be present at a gathering, I can dance to someone's music, or I can put my computer skills to good use. I can save the receipts and names of those whose history should be remembered. You can too :)

See you in twenty-twentysix,
Alexander