There was a tweet I can no longer find1 that said something along the lines of this:

If we’re all living in an ancestor simulation then there’s a possibility that our social media posts are the only concrete record of our original’s lives, and everything about our lives between those posts is just extrapolation.

MJW: I’m light in this issue because I’m busy with a shitfight battle to manage both my mania and my outrage. The list of bullshittery gets longer and longer, with new players (or old ones you weren't paying attention to) entering the game from all sides, and all of it is IMPORTANT and FUCKED and LOUD. 

My cohort of sin eaters has corralled some of the world’s flaming shit for you, and posted here, so ENJOY!

But really: take care, friends. It’s hard and rough and scary but remember we’re in it for those who don’t have a fucking choice but to engage because it’s their lives. SO, try and eat a vegetable, and if you can’t sleep, try at least to rest. Keep hydrated, look in on yr loved ones and don’t forget to floss: you’ll need good teeth for when we eat our slumlords. Xx

Written late last year, obvz. Insert fresh metaphors and horrors since to suit…

CJW: Welcome to the final Nothing Here for 2020. We hope you have a great holiday (of whichever sort you happen to celebrate), and hopefully have had (or will have) some time to decompress a little before we have to get up and do it all again in 2021.

Got some bonuses to share:

CJW: Happy holidays good people. We decided that with Christmas approaching we’d have a little fun with this bonus, and also send it out to everyone - partially to say thanks for sticking with us, and partially because I’ve got no idea how next week’s issue is going to look, it being Xmas and all.

If you've spent any amount of time on the internet in the past few years, then you are no doubt sick of hearing about how Die Hard is a Christmas movie (or you're one of the sickos still talking about it). Let's expand the narrative a little, shall we? is a movie set around Christmas time, but herein I argue that is a in both the secular and religious sense.

MJW: I’ve emerged momentarily, from my months-long migraine fog to write one single paragraph in this fortnight’s edition, so I took the reins on the intro too. Look at me, I’m performing functionality! If I keep this up, maybe I’ll be a real girl again soon (tho not likely.) This week there’s the usual: other newsletters (we’re not the jealous type), thoughts on various Media Content, and more links to hectic news shit that you can follow if you are able to engage with the world at all (say hi for me, I’m not ready yet!). Enjoy.

I wrote our latest bonus issue - Gould’s, about the kinda-traumatic experience that made me the only book-obsessive who hates the smell of old books. For future bonuses and access the full archive, just go here to . Unlocked bonuses are .

People love the smell of old books, that musty, almost vanilla scent.

I do not.

When I was twelve, I went into Gould’s bookstore on King Street in Newtown with my mother. Newtown was my dreamland and I took solace in its dirty nineties streets, full-regalia drag queens and alterna-vibe that was so different from the suburban misery and bigoty-crush of the Central Coast, where I grew up. Gould’s was a Newtown institution, a massive shop crammed tight with second-hand books. I say massive and I say crammed tight but that doesn’t convey it. The dust was epic. The pages fluttering, old spines falling apart. Behind each row of books was another row of books. There were no prices. It was a place to get lost and stay lost. Gould’s was where old books went to die.

CJW: Welcome to another edition of nothing here. It’s a comparatively skint issue this time around - if I’d realised this is how it would pan out I could have held something back from the last overstuffed issue.

Let’s pretend we’re giving you a light one so you can focus on Thanksgiving (where applicable), and that it’s not because the last week or so has been pretty bad for your favourite (?) newsletter family.

Our latest bonus was , a personal essay of mine that originally appeared in . I’m really proud of this piece and think it came together quite well in the end. I hope to write more in a similar vein down the track.

This personal essay was originally published in Creeper Magazine Issue 1.

I don’t remember the first model kit I built.

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here, your fortnightly dispatch of the now.

I wrote our latest bonus issue Wandering the Icelandic States of America, about , its timeliness and not, climate change, and accidental socialism. Quite by accident I posted it on the anniversary of the game’s release, so (to celebrate?) I thought I’d so anyone who’s played the game, or has been thinking about playing it, can have a read. For future bonuses and access the full archive, just go here to . Unlocked bonuses are (and I unlock new posts every couple of weeks, so it’s worth keeping track of).

CJW: On a recent edition of Alasdair Stuart’s fantastic positive pop-culture newsletter The Full Lid, he mentioned Operation Adopt-a-Book, to whit:

CJW: A bumper issue this time around, and it’s been a while since I had to say that.

The latest bonus is The high cost of convenience about Amazon’s bodycount, poor working conditions, their stance against worker’s rights, and the ways the pandemic has helped them further consolidate online sales. Dan’s doing important work over at , tying together disparate strands to demonstrate the full depth and breadth of the damages Silicon Valley is wreaking on our society, economy, etc.

MJW: This is nothing here, and I’m mjw, coming at you from day 116 of LOCKDOWN 2 in Melbourne, Australia, where there is officially no point to anything any more! The only things keeping me alive are hazlenut gelato and memes! In this issue we’ve got the obligatory pandemic shit, radicalised hackers, Ruby Rose and ethical sex work advertising platforms, plus a bunch of other good content that might help keep you alive too?

The latest bonus was by CJW, Our Centaur Futures, about AI’s potential as a collaborative tool rather than as an adversarial threat or as a strictly-controlled service sold to us by corporations. To get access to this bonus, future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to .

You should never work for free, except sometimes you do, and sometimes you want to. Recently someone from Digital Learning and Technology Victoria got in touch to tell me he’d read and loved Repo Virtual and had already recommended it to his friends who’ve been reading cyberpunk since the days of Neuromancer. He asked if I would like to write something for their publication, about the possible uses of AI in education. I’m not an expert at education by any means, so I approached it more from the point of view of a student (or a lifetime learner, which I hope to be). I also didn’t want to be as pessimistic as I can be (you know that, you read this newsletter, after all), so it was an interesting exercise in trying to be positive - whilst still making note of some of the ethical and political issues caught up in current mainstream AI discourse (or largely ignored by it).

I enjoyed writing it and hope they’ll end up using it, but even if they don’t, I wanted to share it with you all. It might be a little “101”, but hopefully you’ll find something interesting.

CJW: Hello again. It’s that time. Welcome. Thank your for joining us, and I hope you get something out of this issue.

Our latest bonus came from the mind of MKY - SUCCESSION: What strange beast of the global entertainment industry is this?, all about and its place in the political-entertainment oeuvre. To get access to this bonus, future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to . For a preview, . Latest unlock is part 2 of MKY’s .

It was however many days/months/years? into the Great Melbourne COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, when every day felt identical, just with different weather, and there was naught to do each night but stream TV shows and movies. But fresh content has slowed to a trickle to the extent that (as I can only imagine, as TV has trained me to), like someone fresh out of prison, entertainment media that once held no appeal had suddenly become enticing. Such was the case for me with the TV show Succession – given a new gloss in my mind upon learning to my surprise, nay shock, during an appearance on Chapo Traphouse, one of America's 'dirtbag left' podcasts, that Adam McKay (The Big Short) was not only a producer of the show, alongside Will Ferrell, but also directed its pilot.

And so it came to be this world-weary reviewer, who's filled the pages of newspapers, magazines and websites with his various pop-cultural dissections, stood at the base of a mountainous two seasons of critically-acclaimed, award-winning prestige drama, wondering just what awaited him in the sole piece of #resistancetv that seemed hospitable to him – the only one he had the fortitude to brave. The Handmaid's Tale adaptation being about as appealing as free-climbing an ice wall without so much as crampons on my boots. Maybe Ötzi the Iceman would have had the fortitude to get more than ten minutes into Miss America before begging for the sweet embrace of the crevasse, but this reviewer would've happily rappelled into the abyss. So Succession it would be, and probably Succession alone. Whatever awaited there nonetheless piqued my curiosity.

Would it be suffused with the same Dad Energy of Billions, the series it seemed most similar to upon initial reconnaissance? Would this too become a hate-watch of an overly-written, highly produced “victory lap for neoliberal hypercapitalism,” as a friend put it over a chat session, as I steeled myself to scale this outcropping of the global entertainment industry whose control it was orientated around?

MJW: Hello from my pain couch, on what is apparently around day 120 of Melbourne lockdown. I exist outside of time and only know that it is approximately 120 days because of an article I read somewhere. When CJW told me the newsletter was due today I was like, ‘no! Didn’t we just put one out?’ Time isn’t REAL anymore! You know, like jobs, the economy, or democracy. Anyway, enjoy our latest edition packed full of hectic shit, because, well… the world is a hectic place.

I wrote our latest bonus - Walking and Things - about walking, pain, lockdown, pandemic, writing, etc. It’s slice of life and perhaps an intimate look into my headspace (I don’t know if that’s good or not?). To get access to this bonus, future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to . For a preview, .

I wrote about a plague once. Not a real plague, an allegorical one, or metaphorical, or impossible. The plague-victims started to walk and they could not stop. They walked themselves to death.

There’s a plague on now. I walk a lot. The two are unrelated, it’s just that, legally, we’re not really allowed to do much else.

Before I wrote that story, I walked a lot too. I lived alone then, in a small coastal town surrounded by national parks threaded with bushwalking trails, and I didn’t know many people, so to entertain myself I walked. My preferred method was brutal-uphill-death-march style, the kind of hike where my thighs screamed as I lifted each foot and propelled myself to the top of an incline, reaching a state of endorphin-rinsed-purification at the summit. I was totally clean at this stage – no drugs, smoking, drinking. I gave up coffee. Exercise was how I got out of my head then, and the best way to get out was for it to hurt.

My masochism wasn’t only displayed in my torturous paths, but inside too, in places no one passing me on the trail could see. My collapsing arches screamed. My legs sharded by shin splints. Every step, agony. I took it and bore it to show myself I was strong.