New York Magazine - USA (2019-11-11)

46 newyork| november11–24, 2019

MAY 6

Showtime
startsairing
Desus& Mero
two times
a week.

MAY 10

Electronic

musician

HollyHerndon

releasesa

popalbum,

PROTO,using

anAInamed

Spawn.

PHOTOGRAPHS:

©

DANIEL

DESLOVER/ZUMA

WIRE/ALAMY

STOCK

PHOTO

(LIZZO);

TETRA

IMAGES/ALAMY

STOCK

PHOTO

(PODIUM);

CHRISTOPHER

GO

WER/UNSPLASH

(LAPT

OP);

JONA

THAN

NEWT

ON/THE

W

ASHINGTON

PO

ST/GETTY

IMA

GES

(BEZ

OS)

MAY 9

JeffBezos
announces
planto
develop
a lunarlander
calledBlue
Moon.

Desus & Mero

Will Define Late-Night TV

(And This Is How Its

Head Writer* Sees the Future)

Greta Thunberg will be 26,

so she’ll still be trying to save

the world, but she’ll also be

deep into her post-college what-

does-it-all-mean-I-guess-I’ll-

take-an-improv-class-and-start-

a-podcast phase. I’ve been to

severalLizzoshowsandfelt

the energy in the room, so I can

confidently say that by 2029

she will be a full-on cult leader.

(Also, I will definitely be in this

cult.) After her imprisonment in

the Hague, Ivanka Trump will

emerge a changed woman.

She’ll be devoting herself

to a life of service, renouncing

material wealth ... or more

likely have a Fox News show

called Ivanka Now. Having

harvested enough zinc oxide

to sustain his colony for another

dozen millennia, Stephen Miller

will finally shed his human

exo-skin and slither

back to the ancient

Arctic crevasse from which

he emerged in the mid-’80s.

But first he’s got to wow the

judges with his paso doble on

Dancing With the Stars! Mark

Zuckerberg will be forced out

of Facebook by the board after

the site finally transitions to

being a distribution platform for

deep fakes of Zendaya reading

government propaganda.

This will all be covered in

The Social Network 2:

Macedonian Nights (2029).

—*MICHAEL PIELOCIK

Space Travel Will Get Banal—

And Depressing

BLUE MOON IS SCHEDULED to launch in

2024. If this mission is successful, its cost to
      each of us could be profound. What’s it going
      to feel like for most of us, the non-billionaires,
      to look up at the moon at night and know that
      one of Bezos’s toys is strutting around on the
      surface? The answer might be something
      similar to what Gil Scott-Heron expressed in
      his response to Apollo 11: “Whitey on the
      Moon.” The space class doesn’t have to be

practical.Theirdreamsaren’ttethered to

mereterrestrialconcernslike health care or

studentloans; they can affordto throw

moneyawayonrocketsthat blowupand spin

out.Meanwhile,thecommonpleasure of the

nightskymightcometofeellesslike an open-

ingtotheinfinitethana membrane of mod-

ernrobber-baronex cess—something we are

trappedunder, ratherthanlivingwithin; less

ourstoadmirethantheirstocontrol.

—JOANNE McNEIL

You Will Love

the Music Written

by Robots

“WE STARTED TRAINING it with my voice and

[my husband] Mat’s voice, both of which are in

the hundreds of megabytes of Spawn’s training

info. I made a data set where I sang random

phrases within a comfortable range for me, like:

Aluminum cutlery can often be flimsy.

She wore warm, fleecy, woolen overalls.

Alfalfa is healthy for you.

Spawn would digest that information, which

could take anywhere from one to 20 minutes.

We’d all be on Slack together, and we’d get

updates like: “Spawn released a new track.”

Pretty soon, we’ll have very accurate voice mod-

els of past vocalists, and that’s going to open up

questions about what we do with our forefa-

thers’ and foremothers’ voices. I used to say

we’ll have infinite Michael Jackson records, but

that probably won’t happen anymore.

Infinite Aretha Franklin records may be

the better example!”

—HOLLY HERNDON,

AS TOLD TO ANDY BETA



Jeff Bezos

introduces his

lunar lander.