Only Natural
February 2017 France has been training golden eagles to neutralize drones during military exercises. It's a satisfying sight gag, cartilage and claw tearing through robot. As a species we exert a disproportionate influence on the planet, making it easy to forget the natural world is the site of our most universal vulnerabilities. As technology and data grow more bloated, national and personal security will return to primitive (as in, primary...not unsophisticated) methods of deterrence. If you ever feel overwhelmed by the surveillance dragnet broadcasting your metadata, leave your phone at home. Suddenly the dragnet seems as complicated as a keychain. A cloth wrapped around your face is an effective subversion of facial recognition software. And smashing a rock through glass and lithium is one way of hacking a computer, isn't it? Climate changes, death takes inventory, but the timeline of nature continues uninterrupted, curving around these effects. Earth's hardware is harder wearing. We're responsive to nature but nature remains indifferent to us, its vines creeping across the best laid plans. A lesson common to history and a truism of capitalism: When humans are motivated by power, they compromise survival. While nature, driven only by an impulse towards survival, manages to retains its power. I don't care about power, I care about survival, and because I'm not afraid of dying I care about your survival more than mine. Which makes me a bad socialite, but a good animal.