espresso martini

We are in London now. We met up with dear old friend N at the bar at our hotel and then went to Shoreditch House for drinks with him and some of his friends here. N works in tech at a very big bad company but one that we don't talk or think about that much day to day. Some of his friends also work there and some others work for other more publicly controversial places.

Fun gossip turned into I guess one would say "political" discussions, the details of which–to me– are too bonkers to recount in detail. It was fascinating overall in the sense that maybe I've given people who work in tech too much credit for knowing what's going on. They were all clearly very intelligent, but had such strange ideas about things. For instance, they all had only recently read about incels in the news–something that the rest of us have been talking about for about a year. Also this one woman from Mexico was so mad about "latinx." She is "latina," she said emphatically. Everyone–including me–was very nice to her about why that is okay for her personally but the idea of the x is also fine and I felt confused because I had this conversation in 2013 with like, my parents and they came to understand it then. D wisely excused himself to go to the bathroom as this part of the conversation took off.

The topic of eugenics came up and someone deemed it inevitable that in the next few decades either state-sanctioned or corporate eugenics programs would be commonplace. He said this was just fact and also said population control was the number one thing that made sense to like, work toward considering the coming issues on our plate globally speaking. This was incredibly freaky in that it was like, void of any ethical or moral considerations. Like, he insisted that we would reach this point with the brewing techno-political whatever situation, but my counter was that it seems more important to draw a line somewhere and say that sure, this could be happening, but we say it's bad and won't get on board.

N mentioned that this person he had been involved with from the middle east (vaguely, generally speaking) had cut ties with him because of his work for the big bad company due to their contracts in the region. He seemed sad or annoyed about it; D and I assured him that he wasn't at fault and the person was being sort of shitty, letting this conflict of interest so strictly dictate their romantic goings-on. However, ultimately, I guess I admire their conviction, while I still think being so dogmatic is not the nicest way to carry on interpersonally or something? The company is definitely bad. But N's job seems lovely and his life is good and he'll pay off his student loans and be alright so I can't fault him for that because he's a dear friend and I want the best for him. Can't blame the person either though as the issue is close to their heart.

Everything seems complicated, but most of all frightening in that writ large these people who actually work for the companies that are doing all the Stuff are blissfully unaware and have the politics of someone entering their freshman year at a liberal arts college. For once,  I feel glad to be in the art world.

Also, everyone seems to drink espresso martinis in Shoreditch and claims it's as good as cocaine.

We danced a bit, but the DJ played this awful remix of "One Thing" by Amerie and I concluded that I miss New York and my friends who despite everything seem to have their heads screwed on straight.