CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. This time around we’re joined by Ospare! You’ve seen their name grace these pages plenty of times before (with shared links, and when I’ve recommended their newsletter), but it’s great to have them on-board officially.

Our last bonus was a piece I wrote on . To get access to it, our future bonuses, and the full archive, you can .

Marlee’s going to have something good for you next time around, but at the moment she’s busy fighting with her landlord and trying to help low income families get tech to help them keep in touch during the lockdown. So that means you’re stuck with me today.

It’s easy to see things through the lens of the pandemic. It’s especially easy when you’re talking about a video game set in America, after the nation collapsed following the release of a weaponised flu virus. So here’s me, talking about the Division, and drawing some parallels to the real world. I just hope it makes sense if you’ve not played the game (and haven’t been paying attention to twitter)…

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. This issue we welcome Dan Harvey to the team! You may know Dan from his brilliant 20 minutes into the future newsletter, focused on taking tech companies to task for the many ways they abuse staff, manipulate users, disregard privacy, and generally try and run roughshod over society at large. I’m sure some (more) of that will sneak in here thanks to Dan, but he’s also sharing some great art, comics, music, and more.

Welcome aboard, Dan!

Bingewatching the end of Civilisation

Or, The Year Without Summer Blockbusters

Greetings my fellow (in)voluntary shut-ins. We all live in Invisible Monasteries now. But, instead of dropping the last installment of those writings, I figured a good old fashioned DXC-style rant about entertainment at the end of civilisation might be in order, so here goes:

CJW: This is a bit of an odd issue, because, well, these are odd times. 2 weeks ago the COVID-19 situation seemed like a distant concern (in my part of the world, at least), but in the past 2 weeks it’s become all anyone can think or talk about. I hope you’re staying safe and well. Please stay to the end - we’ve got some links that might prove useful, and also a community call-out that I hope people respond to.

This issue we say goodbye to Austin. We’re almost 2 years in, and 2 original contributors down. In another 3 years there will be no one here, just a sophisticated GAN I’ve trained to scour the internet and share links and rants with no need for human interference. But, until that hallowed day, you’re stuck with me (Corey J. White) at the helm, your current events sin-eater. And I'm still joined by (MJW), your fabulous goth aunt, and (MKY), your pop culture pundit for the end of the world.

CJW: Greetings from the land of no toilet paper, where panic buying has stripped our shelves of countless basics as people prepare for… I don’t know? Judging by the amount of TP they’re buying, I can only assume they’re preparing for 6 months of self-quarantine, or they hope to shit themselves to death with a little dignity.

I've seen a few people say something along the lines of "if only we reacted to climate change with the fervour of our reaction to coronavirus." And I get what they're saying, but the big difference is that Coronavirus is a situation in which we (think we) can consume our way to a solution. Masks, hand-sanitiser, hoarding food and toilet paper, or at an infrastructural level building new hospitals - the media can point us in the direction of things to buy and we can do so at a panic bordering on hysteria. But the only genuine response to climate change is to address our addiction to consumption, to embrace de-growth, and refocus on local sustainable production instead of a wasteful, capital-driven global network of trade. No one has worked out how to profit from climate change, so no one is willing to act. (Of course plenty of us are acting as individuals and in small groups, I’m talking about our corporate overlords and our politicians who are in their pocket.)

So, right now I’m a little exasperated, and kind of disappointed in my fellow Australians, particularly the selfish, racist, and just plain stupid reaction to the current situation. As for Coronavirus in general - I’ve got some tabs open to read, but haven’t gotten to them yet. Maybe next time.

I think I first heard about Ursula Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas on an episode of Chapo Traphouse, which is probably an odd place for a sci-fi writer to discover a seminal short story in the genre, but here we are. If you’ve not read the story you should, it’s short and important, and available to read here.

CJW: Hello and welcome. Here we are with another edition of the nothing here newsletter, beaming a dense dose of cultural, social, environmental, and political happenings directly into your eye holes.

The work we do here is supported by paying subscribers, who also get access to bonus letters - essays, experiments, fiction, rants, and whatever else we’re feeling at that moment. The latest bonus was a piece of original fiction from Marlee Jane, The Husband in Your Head. To get access to it and all the other bonus letters in the archive, just go .

This, and the last short fiction piece I published as a bonus, Voyeur, have done the rounds of short fiction markets. ALL the rounds. I had no luck, not because the stories were bad, they all said, but because they were not a good fit for the publications at the time.

I think I write a lot of stuff that is not a good fit for anywhere at any time. These past two years have been a rejection-palooza for me (bar one, bar one really good one), and I flip-flop around between thinking perhaps they aren’t the right fit, or perhaps they are just bad.

But I don’t think they are bad, myself. I have confidence in my work. My plotlines are simple, yes, but I know my writing is good. It’s just… weird.

CJW: Welcome to another issue of the nothing here newsletter. Our latest bonus letter was Part 4 of m1k3y’s Field Notes from the proto-Invisibles Monastary. To get access to it, our future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to .

Greetings and salutations fellow netizens,

here’s the fourth instalment of those #invizmon writings from 2016. In this episode I talk about drifting off-line and why. A quick skim of the PDF shows there’s a few notes to myself in there, which hey maybe one day I will actually revisit.

Rn I’m busy preparing for a life of escalating climate chaos — and if I was still generating content in this style I’d tell you what a fucking pain in the ass it is shopping for Air Quality Monitors and HEPA-filtered Air Purifiers that aren’t designed to plug straight into your local smart home, internet-enabled, surveillance tech waking nightmare of silval-run control.

It’s okay though, I found what I was after eventually and the dust storm that might’ve once more coated Melbourne in a fresh layer of slime didn’t hit us the other night — yeah, the streets have been running red, but it’s not from the blood of our enemies, it’s tons of top soil dumped by heavy weather — so I haven’t even needed to unbox the neat little air purifier I had to order online ‘cause they’re as absent from the shelves of our big box retailers as P2 masks are. And that’s life in the 2020s.

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. Today is Invasion Day here in Australia. I talked about it a little this time last year, but also want to point to some Aboriginal voices writing around important issues all year round. Here’s a piece by Jack Latimore on the media circus around Australia Day and what it does to black writers - Latimore writes a lot about Indigenous and Australian political issues, and is if you want to see Australia from a different perspective than the one presented by white columnists. Luke Pearson does a lot of work around , an independent Indigenous media organisation. Here he is on .

I was meant to see MY DISCO again tonight. I thought I would have a chance to write another hyperbolic review like last time, but instead I saw someone die.

I didn't see him fall, I just saw the commotion on the stairs. People stepping over what they assumed was a drunk, until someone paused for long enough to realise something was wrong. I saw the two drunks I'd been getting irritated by swoop down and do their best to help before I even realised what had happened.

I looked down from my spot over the stairs, looked down right into the man’s face. I saw the blood spattered around his head and the sick, rolling tilt of his eyes, unmoored. That image struck me, and it strikes me still. I must have seen something the others didn't, because they continued to watch as staff called Emergency, and punters administered CPR. Because they leered over the ledge watching as the paramedics tried to asses the situation - a man dying on the stairs, with an audience, with phones and flashlight, and fucking photos.

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. I had plans for this issue that I didn't quite get to because I got struck down by some sort of illness. So, for instance, there's nothing here about Iran, though that entire situation is fucked up, watching the American warhawks try to fabricate a war for the sake of political capital/profits/military-industrial hegemony/apocalyptic evangelical beliefs, all with complete disregard for the innocent Iranians that will die needlessly just so the US can wave it's big imperialist dick around. Hopefully next issue we'll have some more to share with you on Iran, but for now you could listen to these two recent Chapo Episodes, or friend of the newsletter Brendan recommends the recent episode of (patreon pay wall link).

CJW: Welcome, friends.

Last weekend I wrote a bonus letter all about the music of Refused - Refused Are Fucking (Un)dead. I’ve been listening to them for 20 years, so I had some thoughts… To get access, see our future bonus letters, and dive into the full archive, you can .

Here’s a Christmas-themed piece of micro-fiction that was originally published at Apex Magazine.

Enjoy.

//

Of course Mum and Dad have to live on opposite sides of the galaxy. Neither will relent, so I gotta spend halfa Xmas day with Mums, then get my atoms bust apart and sent across the Milky to have reconstituted Turkey with Pops in his sad little hab in the Io mining zone. Ugh.

A few weeks ago Austin and I were chatting. I asked him if he had listened to the new Refused album yet, and he told me he was more interested in hearing my thoughts on the album than the album itself. So, here we go.

//

I discovered Refused in 1999 after coming across one of their tracks on a punk compilation CD. Those were the days of the early internet, meaning I had just enough time to daydream about possibly seeing my new favourite band tour Australia before going online and realising they had already broken up a year earlier.

Refused formed in Umeå, Sweden in 1991, and for their first few years they played . I’ve never been much of a fan of – to me it just sounds too samey. Relentlessly fast-paced, with unintelligible screaming vocals, heavily distorted guitar, a flat bass tone, and a repetitive four-four beat. At least with punkrock I could understand the lyrics, appreciate the humour, and sing along, but old-school hardcore didn’t offer me any of that.

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. Bushfires are raging across Australia while our government refuses to act and refuses to provide funding for the volunteer firefighters who have been battling said fires for weeks now. And in the UK… well, shit. You poor bastards.

Our latest bonus letter was , a piece of original fiction by Marlee Jane Ward, about performance, exhibition, and self-harm in an alien zoo. I think it’s fucking great. To get access to it, our future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to .

I think, when it comes to my writing, that there will be this dividing line between my ‘bleak’ phase and something else. I feel like I’m straddling that line right now: with no clear idea where to go from here, but with a distinct feeling that I need to make something less… sad.

CJW: Welcome to the latest edition of the nothing here newsletter. Here in Australia, summer has just begun (but you wouldn’t know it from Melbourne’s weather), whilst in America everyone is off celebrating Thanksgiving (in all its problematic glory) and Capitalism (ditto).

We’ve got a whole lot of articles linked below, so hopefully you’ll find something worthwhile amongst the selection.

Our latest bonus letter was Part Three of m1k3y’s series of . To get access to it, our future bonuses, and the full archive, just go here to .