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.

MJW: Welcome to this, the fifty-eighth installment of this newsletter, coming to you from the endless, timeless void that is level four restrictions in Melbourne. I have no idea how long I have been here, how long I will continue to be here, my entire life is house. 

DCH: Thanks for joining us for another bonus letter. We need to talk about how Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple & other companies use forced labour to make their products in China. Meanwhile at the same time lives hang in the balance as Facebook executives pander to Nationalist politicians in India.

Content warning for descriptions of torture and genocide and other atrocities.

//

Big Tech’s supply chain keeps Uyghurs in chains

CJW: Thanks for joining us for another issue of nothing here, and a big welcome to our new readers. Hope you enjoy what we’re doing here.

If you know someone you think might appreciate this newsletter, go ahead and forward it along.

The latest bonus was the opening couple of chapters to a gonzo, psychedelic spy-fi novel Austin and I wrote a few years back - . To read it, future bonuses, and the full archive, you can . A list of if you want to see what you’re in for.

CJW: Welcome to the latest edition of the nothing here newsletter. The last 2 weeks have gone by very quickly. I think that’s because under lockdown every day is exactly the same, and the lack of delineation makes them blur together.

I wrote our latest bonus letter, Bad Ideas. I’ve had trouble focusing on much of anything other than the day job and novel edits lately, so I put together a selection of story ideas - free to good home - with some notes about where they came from (the age-old question), and what I would do with them if I was going to develop them further. Could be good fodder for the fiction writers reading this, or just an insight into my brain for anyone who’s interested. To access it, future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to . An updated list of if you want to see what you’re in for.

To be entirely honest, I struggled with what to put together for this bonus. The past two weeks I haven’t really been able to find the energy or inspiration to do much beyond the day job, novel edits, and playing Death Stranding*. I’ve haven’t even been able to keep on top of my newsletter reading (as in, all the articles and such I read to see what’s worth including in the newsletter), so it’s no wonder I had trouble with this bonus.

I guess I have to blame the pandemic, and the stress of being back under lockdown here in Melbourne. Has anyone else noticed weird side effects coming up recently? My short-term memory is suffering badly, to the point where I can barely keep track of what number circuit I’m on when I’m working out. I don’t think it’s actually my short-term memory - more like the increased background radiation of stress makes it harder to concentrate, and that lack of concentration leads to memories not being stored properly.

Anyway, the above is all to explain why today’s bonus is something of a mixed bag. I’d wanted to write a follow-up to my Simulation piece, or maybe a Twine game, or maybe finish a piece on Masculinity that I started ages ago, but instead you get this: a selection of possible story ideas. I thought it could be interesting for people to see what a story seed looks like, and how my brain develops it. Also, I’m not precious about these ideas (I’ve long believed the development of an idea was the important and hard part, not the idea itself), so if any of them tickle your fancy, feel free to take them for yourself and see what you can do with them.

*I will definitely be writing something about Death Stranding, but I need to finish it first to make sure my views on the first chunk of the game aren’t completely irrelevant by the end of it.