So the world pretty much went to shit since our last issue, huh?

I don’t want to be too much of a downer but here in the US we witnessed our 248-year-old democracy in its fall to fascism, aided and abetted by a cadre of sociopathic oligarchs who are determined to replace art and artists with computer-generated “content”—depriving creatives with a life as anything other than wage slaves, so they can continue to line their own pockets with wealth so vast, that until quite recently, it was reserved for mid-sized nation-states, not individuals.

These real-life Bond villains have used technology to propagandize and divide us—and, like lab rats, as long as we keep pushing the button, responding to the algorithm, they will keep feeding us their poisoned pellets—widening the chasm between their privilege and our collective misery. And the digital crack they keep mainlining into our eyeballs requires an enormous amount of computational power, and thus energy.

As I write this, the catastrophic climate change our consumption hastens has claimed the great American city of Los Angeles to fire, as our corpulent President-elect salivates over the prospect of seizing Greenland, by force if necessary, to pillage its natural resources so the oligarchs can continue to distract us from their plunder, all but assuring perpetual climate emergency, an unending cycle of wildfires, flooding and violent storms.

Now you may be saying, “hey I just wanted the price of eggs to be cheaper!,” deluding yourself into thinking, “he was President before and we survived.”

I hate to break it to you, but we are so fucked.

Reading the many terrifying positions advocated in the 2025 policy roadmap drafted by the incoming administration’s political operatives—including incoming White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller and incoming Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought—it is quite clear the Republican Party fully intends to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy, including a ban on pornography.

In Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation laments that, “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” He goes on to state that “pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

Understand though this is not simply about access to erotica. Note how pornography is linked to transgenderism and drag queens. In a recently passed Kansas law limiting access to pornography, the state’s definition of porn is so broad as to include “any act of homosexuality.” It is beyond obvious that the coming regime will work to repress all sorts of sexual behaviors and identities it disapproves of.

It is worth noting that the world’s richest man Elon Musk—who purchased twitter to evangelize white supremacy and champion authoritarians around the globe—was instrumental in the coming administration’s electoral win. Perverting twitter into a neo-Nazi propaganda machine came at a steep financial cost to its ketamine-fueled overlord.

Since purchasing twitter, and rebranding it into X, Musk has mismanaged his investment into a loss of nearly 80% of the company’s value when he first took the reigns.

Musk is the world’s richest man in spite of his ownership of twitter. Not so Mark Zuckerberg—his nearest competitor for the title, and a more recent convert to the fascist cause—who acquired his more than $200 billion net worth precisely because of his control of a massive communications platform.

A platform, it should be remembered, that he created as a way to judge the looks of his female classmates in college. When a classmate reacted with incredulity that users were voluntarily giving Zuckerberg their data he replied, “They ‘trust me’ Dumb fucks”.

And now Zuckerberg is working very hard to be more obsequious than Musk, cozying up to a cruel and vindictive President with authoritarian intents, and promising to remake his social network into a mouthpiece for the coming regime.

I mention Musk and Zuckerberg because, for better or worse, the tools they own are the tools we use to  communicate and to share our art. It has been discouraging to launch throb. in this environment, navigating shadow bans and censored content, and feeling complicit when using these platforms to promote our work.

As these kleptocrats seek to further ingratiate themselves with the theocratic right, expect art that champions queer voices, supports our trans community, or otherwise challenges authority to be further repressed.

It is going to get worse.

But more than ever, this is a moment not to be discouraged but to stand and speak truth to power. It is our job as artists to create, and to use our talents to reflect our values to the world.

Stanley Kubrick, waxing philosophical in a 1968 interview with Playboy observed, “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

In his 2017 return to Twin Peaks, David Lynch—as his on-screen alter-ego FBI bureau chief Gordon Cole, has a conversation with the FBI Chief of Staff, Denise Bryson, a trans character portrayed by David Duchovny.

Duchovny’s character first appeared in Twin Peaks season 2, which aired in 1990. That a trans character was depicted as normal, and treated with compassion and not as a punchline was quite groundbreaking at the time, so it feels as if Lynch himself and not his character is speaking to the audience when he says, “When you became Denise, I told all of your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die.”

On a deeply personal note Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch are two of my very favorite artists and the work is very important to me. I can think of no better way to honor two men whose work has brought me so much joy than to loudly promote their values.

So let me close by sharing our new mission statement that will guide our work moving forward:

At throb. we are champions of queer voices.

We publish art that unapologetically promotes our values of kindness and inclusion, and challenges our adversaries to fix their hearts or die.

We strive to create light.

I hope you join us on this journey.