Point of Exquisite Suspension

Thoughts & life experiences of a Chicago area graphic artist

02 September 2025

Al & the Arts

 


Creating Thoughtfully in a Digital Age

Al Is Here!
Al is part of how we create music, stories, performances, and visual art, Let's explore it with curlosity and care!

New Creative Tools
Al can help us sketch, mix music, plan stage designs-and brainstorm ideas. Use it to explore-but don't let replace your vision.

What Makes It Original?
Al can imitate style, but only you bring real emotion, meaning, and experience. Make it yours.

Learn & Grow
Think about how you use Al. Does it support your story? Respect others? Express something true?

Be Wise, Be Kind
Again, think about how you use Al. Does it support your story? Respect others?

The Future Needs You
What's your dream art project? Could Al help bring it to life? How would you make sure it still feels like YOU?


Created in collaboration with ChatGPT

31 August 2025

Peter Thiel vs. Elon Musk – How They Influence Democracy

 

Two of the most powerful people in technology today, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, both have strong influence on American democracy. While they are both billionaires, the way they shape politics and culture is very different. Thiel works quietly behind the scenes in politics, while Musk is loud and visible in social media and business. Together, they show how wealthy individuals can affect the way democracy works.

Peter Thiel’s main influence comes from money and ideas. He has given millions of dollars to political candidates such as J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, who share his views. He also funds fellowships for young people with big ideas, hoping to shape the next generation of leaders. Thiel believes democracy has limits, and he prefers a system where powerful elites guide the future. His approach is about long-term change, focusing on who gets to make decisions and how the system is run.


Elon Musk, on the other hand, influences democracy through culture and communication. By owning Twitter, now called X, Musk controls one of the world’s biggest platforms for public debate. His choices about what voices are allowed and how “free speech” should work have direct effects on how people talk about politics. Musk also has power through his companies, like Tesla and SpaceX. For example, his Starlink satellites played an important role in Ukraine during the war, giving him influence over governments. 

The difference between Thiel and Musk can be seen as long-term versus short-term. Thiel wants to slowly reshape politics by supporting leaders and ideas that may last for decades. Musk, however, has the ability to change the conversation instantly with a single tweet or a business decision. Both forms of influence matter, but they work in very different ways.

Together, Thiel and Musk show how technology leaders can change democracy not only through politics, but also through culture and media. Thiel uses money and strategy to shape the future, while Musk uses communication and popularity to shape the present. Their power shows the new challenges democracies face in the modern world, where business leaders can sometimes hold as much influence as elected officials.


Article and illustrations created through prompts and interactions/editing by Chat GPT.


23 August 2025

What's Up with Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures?

Billionaire Thiel, seen here in “regular guy” mode, hopes to
generate technocratic policy-shaping buzz with his Antichrist lectures
.

Peter Thiel’s forthcoming series, The Antichrist, is positioned less as a devotional Bible study and more as an elite salon on religion, power, and technology. Hosted by the nonprofit ACTS 17 Collective at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, the four Monday night sessions are ticketed as a single off-the-record program that has already sold out. The schedule emphasizes community and dialogue—receptions bookend a lecture plus Q&A—suggesting Thiel wants a sustained, cumulative argument rather than one-off talks. The basics are public: dates (Sept. 15, 22, 29 and Oct. 6, 2025), venue, timing (5:30–9:30 p.m. PT), and the off-the-record ground rule. (Luma, ACTS 17 Collective)

The promotional notes say Thiel’s remarks will be “anchored on science and technology” while engaging theology, history, literature, and politics, and they name an unusual reading list: René Girard, Francis Bacon, Jonathan Swift, Carl Schmitt, and John Henry Newman. The format lists a Q&A led by Peter Robinson (of Uncommon Knowledge), reinforcing that the conversation will range across intellectual traditions, not just biblical exegesis. In other words, expect a hybrid of seminar and strategy session—aimed at people who design or govern powerful systems. (Luma)

A plausible arc emerges from those sources and Thiel’s recent public interviews. Girard frames how mimetic desire inflames rivalry and scapegoating; Bacon represents techno-optimism and the research state; Swift lampoons grandiose “progress” schemes; Schmitt opens questions of sovereignty, emergency, and the katechon (the “restrainer” of 2 Thessalonians); and Newman supplies the classic Christian synthesis on Antichrist. Thiel has already previewed a key tension: modern technologies (nuclear, bio, AI) give history an apocalyptic edge, yet a centralized, emergency-power response—“a one-world state with real teeth”—risks becoming Antichrist-like itself. He has said the task is to find a narrow path that avoids both Armageddon and a counterfeit savior—language that will likely structure the series. (Hoover Institution)

So the series matters as an attempt to recode “Antichrist” from caricature into a diagnostic of systems that concentrate power, compel conformity, and promise salvation through administration. Watch for two interpretive moves: first, a shift from a single villain to a structure that acts like one; second, a search for plural, accountable restraints—cultural, institutional, legal—that can “hold back” chaos without collapsing into total control. Given the off-the-record setting and the curated audience, the live discussion may shape how tech and policy insiders talk about risk governance this fall, even if no official transcript ever appears. (Luma, ACTS 17 Collective)

Speculative preview based on public syllabus
and prior commentary; not official.

Here's a bit of a preview, if you will:

Created with help from ChatGPT

06 August 2025

Carl Sagan's Warning

 



Transcript of quote:

We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology in which no one knows anything about science and technology. Who is running science and technology in a democracy if people don’t know anything about.


Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human infallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions - to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who ambles along. 


It is something that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the constitution, in the Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don’t run the government. The government runs us.


Carl Sagan.


05 August 2025

Alien Contact & the Ethics of Encounter: A Philosophical Inquiry

Among the most profound and unsettling questions raised by alleged alien contact experiences is not simply whether such encounters are real, but whether they are moral. From the visceral testimony of Whitley Strieber in Communion to the more abstract frameworks proposed by Jacques Vallée, we are confronted with accounts that consistently describe a power imbalance between human beings and a form of non-human intelligence. These Visitors—be they extraterrestrial, interdimensional, psychic, or symbolic—interact with people in ways that appear intrusive, manipulative, and often traumatic. Even when they are not overtly hostile, they do not appear to operate with the ethical norms that underpin human interaction. In light of this, we must ask: What are the moral implications of these encounters? And can they ever be justified?

The first and most immediate issue is that of phenomenological displacement. Contact with these entities often plunges the experiencer into a sudden and radical estrangement from the familiar world. Individuals report being taken from their homes, their vehicles, or their very sense of bodily autonomy. What follows is not only a dislocation in space, but a collapse of meaning itself—an ontological shock. The individual is left grappling with a reality that no longer obeys the rules of time, identity, or causality. This is not a benign awakening; it is a form of existential violence. The psychological impact is often long-lasting, with many abductees experiencing symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress. Whether these beings are aware of the trauma they cause or not, they persist in a pattern of engagement that violates the fundamental sanctity of personal sovereignty.


Even more disturbing is the issue of consent. The Visitors seem driven by a desire to “know” humanity—to study us, to manipulate us, perhaps even to change us. But this pursuit of knowledge occurs without permission, without mutual agreement, and without clear purpose. Under the guise of exploration or education, human beings are reduced to mere objects, instruments in someone else’s experiment. This is where the encounter crosses an ethical line. As Immanuel Kant wrote, human beings must always be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to another's end. If these intelligences possess the capacity for abstract reasoning—and their actions suggest they do—then their disregard for consent places them outside any moral framework that we would consider just or enlightened.


Jacques Vallée’s conditioning hypothesis complicates the picture further. According to Vallée, these experiences are not just random or experimental but may be part of a long-term program to influence human consciousness. The phenomenon, he argues, presents itself in ways that challenge our beliefs, our myths, and our understanding of reality. It appears to be engaged in a form of cultural or psychological manipulation—shaping our evolution, or perhaps our subjugation. Yet even if we grant this premise, we are left with an urgent ethical dilemma: if the purpose of this conditioning is unknown, and if its methods rely on trauma and deception, can it be considered moral? Education without clarity, consent, or compassion is indistinguishable from control. Conditioning without dialogue becomes coercion.


Some have attempted to interpret the phenomenon through the lens of mythology, likening the Visitors to trickster figures—beings who destabilize, provoke, and ultimately transform. Tricksters in traditional lore are morally ambiguous, operating outside the boundaries of conventional ethics to initiate change. But even the trickster, in myth, eventually reveals something—some pattern, some lesson. The Visitors remain opaque. They provide no context, no closure. They disrupt, but do not enlighten. If they are tricksters, they are ones who leave their victims shattered rather than awakened. This raises the unsettling possibility that their purpose is not transformative, but disorienting for its own sake.


This brings us to what may be the most chilling conclusion: that the Visitors are not evil in the way we understand evil, but rather amoral—utterly indifferent to human suffering, ethical norms, or spiritual development. They do not appear to seek relationship or communion, but merely contact. They do not offer healing, but intrusion. And they do not ask for understanding, only compliance or confusion. If this is true, then we are not dealing with malevolence, but something perhaps more frightening: intelligence without empathy. Power without conscience.

In the end, the question may not be what these beings are, but what we must become in response to them. Do we fortify our ethical values in the face of the unknowable? Do we construct boundaries, rituals, or moral frameworks that protect our dignity even under cosmic exposure? Or do we, seduced by awe or cowed by fear, surrender to forces that do not share our moral language?


The stories told in Communion and echoed in countless other narratives are not just science fiction horror—they are moral parables for a world grappling with Otherness on a scale beyond comprehension. Whether these Visitors are physical beings, psychological projections, or metaphysical intrusions, their impact on the human spirit is real. And until they choose to engage with us ethically, we must treat their presence not as a gift, but as a problem: not merely a mystery to be solved, but a moral challenge to be confronted.

28 July 2025

Batman Poster Original and Enhancement

 

My original ink drawing inspired by The Batman film. 18"x24"

The enhanced drawing of my ink art after running it through FOTOR “Pin-up” Filter.


25 July 2025

Vivid Childhood Dream Recollected

One of the most vivid and striking dreams I recall from my childhood was around the time my younger brother was born. I had turned five years old a few months before. 

In my dream, I was a WW2 era soldier along with a group or company that was trudging along a suburban street with houses on either side.


I realize we are walking along my street. In fact, I see my house where my mom is on the porch holding my little brother.



I frantically wave to them to warm them that this is a war zone and to seek cover.



Suddenly, a large artillery strike hits my house which explodes in a ball of flame and is utterly destroyed.


I am shocked and bereft.



Then I saw myself on the edge of a cliff overlooking a waterfall. In my anguish and utter despair, I let myself fall over the cliff as the waterfall rages.


Then I wake up.


Although it might seem obvious to the average person, It wasn’t until I recently related the dream to a co-worker over lunch that I realized the dream was my way of processing my feelings of being displaced by my baby brother who took the role of being the youngest of our family after I had been the youngest for five years up to that point.