Monoraaail! Monoraaail! Or, My June 2025 in Media
June saw me embark on a terrible quest to attempt to understand the AI-drenched hellscape we’ve suddenly found ourselves immersed in, as well as the minds of the wealth-addled dweebs who got us here. Have I been successful? A bit. Do I feel better for it? Weirdly, yes. Have I annoyed friends and loved ones by going on unsolicited tech bro rants? No, but probably only because unsolicited rants are one of the things they have had to accept about me.
Anyway, let’s go!
Books read:
Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination by Karen Hao (2025)
Format: Audiobook, read by the author (Penguin)
This book came strongly recommended by Brian Merchant, author of Blood In The Machine, which is an absolutely ripper non-fiction documenting the Luddite uprising and drawing lines between the industrialists of the 19th century and the tech billionaires of today. Karen Hao is a tech journalist who has been following advances in “Artificial Intelligence” since Silicon Valley got semi-serious about pursuing it. Formerly a believer in the mission of OpenAI (as started by co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman), here she charts the company’s birth as a non-profit organisation with the goals of producing open source software to enrich the human experience, to its seemingly inevitable pivot into a profit-chasing, environment destroying, military courting whatever-you-need machine.
This is an excellent intro to the concept of Artificial Intelligence as it currently sort-of exists, covering arguments for and against, the ideological fractures that exist within the AI programming industry, the ethics, worker and environmental impacts, and the key players involved in the AI boom. It’s also a fantastic portrait of Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder and current CEO, who may be one of the great grifters of our time. Think of Lyle Lanley, the monorail salesman from the Simpsons, and you’ve got Altman.
A huge recommend on this one. It’s a long but fantastically thorough and thought-through piece of journalism which Hao has made very accessible to readers with no tech industry experience.
Careless People: A story of where I used to work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025)
Format: Audiobook, read by the author (PanMacmillan)
Christ, I hated this book. What I thought was going to be a fairly serious whistleblowing piece and new insight on the culture of sexual harassment and the world-breaking, genocide-stoking lack of ethics at Facebook in its prime (despite the cheesy-ass cover, I for some reason thought the tone might match the severity of the allegations) turned out to be a meandering 400+ page fish-out-of-water memoir about an apparently hapless New Zealander who couldn’t possibly have understood what she was getting into in her bonkers new workplace… despite, of course, being a seasoned, well-connected lawyer working for the UN who aggressively pitched and pursued the job at Facebook the year after The Social Network publicly outed Zuckerberg as a toxic dweeb.
It was Wynn-Williams who personally, and actively, pushed Zuckerberg and Facebook to become more involved in global politics. Were her intentions good? Sure, if we take her narrative in good faith. But given the bizarrely comedic tone of the book, and the minimal amount of self-reflection or accountability Wynn-Williams shows in either the micro or macro, I’m not all that willing to extend it to her. A genocide she had a personal (if unintentional) hand in is presented outside of the chronological flow of the book, presented as an addendum to a narrative much more concerned about what a tragic little loser Mark Zuckerberg is, delivered with about the same weight as the revelation his inner circle lets him win at his favourite strategic board game. An eerie sequence in which Sheryl Sandberg demands, in front of a plane of silent witnesses, that Wynn-Williams come into her private bedroom and submit to assault is obliviously undercut by Wynn-Williams’ looking to Sandberg’s usual victim and wondering why she wasn’t throwing herself on this sexual assault grenade, and never does Wynn-Williams reflect on how often she’s been the silent witness to Sandberg’s sexual misconduct, nor does she ever check in with her victims, or try to raise the flag on their account.
It’s not that I wanted Sarah Wynn-Williams to self-flagellate on the page for the entire book, it’s that the book is—ironically—written with an enormous lack of care. Wynn-Williams’ desperation to be liked and excused of all wrong-doing absolutely clouds the narrative, changing the order with which she delivers information (if at all) and turning her story into a needy, toothless tell-some.
I won’t tell you not to read this book, but if the temptation is there purely to piss off Mark Zuckerberg (a worthy pursuit), then I suggest hitting him where it actually hurts: ditch Meta’s services if you can, refuse to use his shitty new chatbot if you can’t, and never, ever stop heckling him for the Metaverse.
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretsa (2025)
Format: Paperback (Text Publishing)
Theory & Practice (this year’s Stella Prize winner) is my first novel by Australian literary darling Michelle de Kretsa, and while I didn’t fall in love with it, I did have a good time.
Theory & Practice is presented as a faux memoir, with a protagonist who shares much of the author’s identity but is revealed late in the book to be named Cindy. Cindy has a difficult relationship with her mother and has instead glommed onto Virginia Woolf as a spiritual replacement. But as she makes Woolf the subject of her masters thesis, she is confronted by a diary entry exhibiting Woolf’s particular disdain for the people of Sri-Lanka (then Ceylon). At the same time, Cindy forms an obsession with the woman who’s boyfriend she’s having an affair with. Across these two situations, Cindy contemplates the gap between the theory and practice of her own feminism, academia and progressivism.
It’s an interesting little book (little in the literal sense, being only 200-ish pages) and I can see why it’s captured the hearts and brains of the Australian litfic crowd. De Kretsa keeps a steady hand on the rudder of this fairly freeform narrative, and serves us with a vibrant window into 1980’s Melbourne, the contradictions of late-stage second wave feminism, and the complicated, often disappointing relationships between mothers and daughters, heroes and fans. Well-worth checking out if you enjoy litfic, and especially if you need to be talked out of doing another postgrad degree.
The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller (2022)
Format: Audiobook, narrated by Elle Potter (TOR)
By pure accident, I have read The Bone Orchard at this time of year, every year, for the past three years. Come the rain (Australian winter), come the bones.
The Bone Orchard is a standalone science fantasy following Charm, an indentured brothel madam-slash-necromantic scientist who is charged by her emperor to figure out which of his repulsive sons has fatally poisoned him and keep them off the throne, in exchange for her true freedom. What ensues is a great deal of women’s politics and a coming of self story told through two women and a bunch of necromantic clones.
You ever come across a book that feels like it was written just for you? This is mine. Charm is a wonderfully complex protagonist, active despite the physical restraints of her position, clever, bold, and not afraid to be disliked. Her alliances are fascinating to follow, and she gives me the rare gift of decimating a man who in any other story might be painted as a tragic romantic hero. The world-building is rich and efficient, the politics juicy yet grounded, the science-magic cool but not overbearing. Some people think this book is trying to do too much, but for me it’s a full and perfectly balanced meal. Can’t wait to read it again next year!
The Lamb by Lucy Rose (2025)
Format: Paperback (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Reading four current-year-release books in one month must be some kind of record for me. Be proud, everyone!
And now be faintly disgusted, because new release number four is all about people who eat people. Specifically: eleven-year-old Margot and her deeply detestable mother Ruth, who work as a pair to lure “strays” (lost hikers) to their little house on the edge of the woods, where Margot drugs them so that Ruth can skin, cut and cook them. Until, that is, the day a stray becomes Ruth’s new romantic fixation instead of dinner, and Margot finds herself the third wheel in a very dangerous relationship.
This is, unsurprisingly, a horror novel. And while I don’t think it was entirely successful (the pacing gets a bit sluggish in the back end, the sparse prose—while effective—gets a little repetitive, and the sheer quantity of murders by these women who live on a school bus route without anyone sniffing around really starts to stretch credulity, particularly after they eat someone in the community) but I really appreciated its commitments to its themes and use of symbolism. This is a story about an abused, neglected girl born to a woman who didn’t want children, and whose love is passionate, obsessive, and fickle… all consuming, if you will. It’s grody enough that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t already a horror reader and can tolerate a certain amount of awful shit, but I found it an engaging and interesting piece of work, and while enjoyed isn’t the right word for the content, I like that the author had the courage to pursue the ending she did. I’ll be very interested to see what she does next.
MEDIA WATCHED:
Silicon Valley (Seasons 1 - 3, 2014 - 2016)
Streamed on Max
This was the inevitable next step after reading Empire of AI. I’m a fan of a few of Mike Judge’s screen creations (Office Space and King of the Hill, plus a certain fondness for Beavis & Butthead, if only because it begat Daria and I liked the Windows ‘95 game) and I saw and enjoyed the first season of his commentary on the tech industry back when it aired (if only because of the parallels with the TV industry), but then I must have lost track of it by the time season two came around. And I’m thrilled I did, because now I get to watch it in a more compressed format (hah!) with some actual tech bro context. And I’m loving it!
Silicon Valley is a half-hour comedy about Richard Hendrix, a coder cursed with ethics and genuine passion trying to navigate a cutthroat industry to get his game-changing (and often stolen) file-compression algorithm to the public before any of his diabolical billionaire competitors do. It is VERY funny, and exquisitely crafted. The writers play with audience expectations so effectively that I’m often surprised by the turn an episode will take, and then delighted by how well it was set up. It does, unfortunately, feature piece of shit TJ Miller in the ensemble, but I hear he gets fired in an upcoming season and the rest of the cast are fantastic. I actually have no idea how the series ends, and I’m very excited (and stressed) to see what lies in store for poor Richard.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster (2025)
Streamed on Netflix
I am easily the most online person I know, and as such was on Twitter for the entirety of the OceanGate disaster. The memes, the jokes, the theories, the discourse, the backlash to the memes and jokes, the defence of the memes and jokes with examples of newspaper memes, jokes and poetry sourced from the original Titanic disaster… it was an experience, and probably the last all-tweeters-on-deck communal moment I had on the platform before I ditched it. As such, I already knew quite a lot of the details covered in the new Netflix doco, and yet, I was hooked.
Constructed entirely of existing footage, news, public archives, and sit-down interviews with key former staff, this doco is a portrait of hubris in OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush. Documentation of failures and warnings re: the unsuitability of a carbon fibre tube in a deep-sea submersible going back years are juxtaposed against Rush’s steadfast belief that everything will be fine simply because he wants it to be. It’s an incredible exploration of the dangerous delusion of the very wealthy, and of all the ways people and institutions will fall over themselves to remake the world rather than tell a rich man “no.” The only thing that really sets this story apart from all the usual horrors of capitalism is that Stockton Rush actually faced the consequences of ignoring every expert who tried to warn him that it was only a matter of time before the submersible failed—hence the macabre delight of the internet.
But for all the noise around the aftermath of the disaster, the Netflix doco is much more interested in the decisions that led to it, and on championing the one brave former employee who nearly tore his life apart trying to blow the whistle.
Ludwig (2025)
Streamed on 7+
I recently spent a week in Sydney working on the development of a crime procedural. Naturally, this led to me watching a slate of crime pilots in the evenings, but Ludwig was the one that hooked me enough to binge all six episodes of season one.
Like all cozy crime procedurals, the premise is deeply unserious: an introverted puzzle-maker (John) is forced to imitate his recently disappeared detective twin brother (James, imaginatively) in order to find hints of his whereabouts, and in doing so realises he has a special talent for solving murders. It requires a large suspension of disbelief, given how each murder so perfectly fits into a known puzzle format, and relies heavily on the twitchy, grumpy charm of David Mitchell. But, as always, the real lure of the show is its heart. John’s father abandoned their family when he was the same age that John and James are now, and he can’t bear to see his nephew and sister-in-law (with whom he might possibly be quietly in love with) suffer the same betrayal. And so, our anti-social bachelor becomes a family man. It’s sweet, it’s simple, it’s been quite-rightly renewed for a 20-episode second season. I’ve said it before, but nature (TV) is healing. Slowly, though. Very slowly.
Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
Streamed on Disney+
The crime viewing spree naturally ended here, with one of the greatest heist/gulag breakout movies ever made. It’s a travesty that Muppets Most Wanted made less of a splash than its perfectly okay predecessor, The Muppets, because it absolutely fucking slaps. An extremely clever film that knows exactly how silly to get and how much prior Muppet knowledge to lean on, it’s both an effective tribute and entry point. And I’m absolutely never going to argue* with Kermit taking his rightful place as male lead (or swapping him with an evil double).
*I will, however, argue with giving Walter so much screen time, which is an act only forgiven by hanging a hat on it with a few good jokes from the criminally underused Rowlf, Rizzo and Robin.
In Short: I finally watched Wicked Part 1 on the plane home from Sydney, and it sure is one half of a screen adaptation of an okay stage musical: pretty to look at, great performances, largely shite songs and a plot made of thin air. My partner and I rewatched Dirty Dancing earlier in the month, which is always a great time (until you realise that Johnny is supposed to be 25). My partner introduced me to Spaceballs which was very much Robin Hood: Men in Tights in space (complimentary). And I treated myself to watching Hey Cinderella! and The Frog Prince, which are two of Jim Henson’s earliest films. Both are on YouTube, under an hour, and well worth watching for panto-style fairytales and as key entries in early Muppet history (Hey, Cinderella! is Kermit’s debut as The Frog… prior to that he was just Kermit the Maybe A Lizard).
In Progress:
We are nearly at the end of Murderbot, which continues to delight, but I’ll save until it’s all out so that I can chat about it in full. I’m just over halfway through the new season of The Bear, which is one of the few shows I enjoy purely on a vibes-first level (although I also love its character work). The crime viewing spree also led me to get invested in High Potential, a glossy but still very fun and silly procedural. And as a direct result of all the tech bro reading and viewing, I’ve started a replay of Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game set in a far-off dystopian future whose villain (or, at least, one of its villains) is very Sam Altman-y.
MISCELLANEOUS NEWS MEDIA, ESSAYS, PODS and BLOGS I ENJOYED:
Dollars and Sense: A weekly economics podcast from the Australia Institute and featuring my favourite progressive economist, Greg Jericho. Greg helps me understand how the economy works and what economic terms mean while never missing an opportunity to sledge the very wealthy and all the ways they try to stymie any attempt to make them pay even a smidge more tax (aided, as always, but the Australian media). Helpful without ever trying to convince me to invest in property or shares.
System Crash: A weekly tech news podcast hosted by Paris Marx (author of Tech Won’t Save Us) and Brian Merchant (author of Blood in the Machine) that looks at news from the tech industry from a knowledgeable but distinctly skeptical and wellbeing-of-the-people perspective.
And that’s it for June 2025! Thank you so much for reading along! If you’d like to yap about any of the books, TV shows, movies or games I’ve posted here, you can always find me, as always, @feedthewriter on Instagram and Bluesky, or via a good, old-fashioned email.