[BONUS] nothing here but a double-century

issue 200 - 27th November, 2022

CJW: With issue 200* it seemed like a time to pause and look back at what we’ve done, so you’re getting this unlocked bonus issue covering the history of the newsletter to date, and the next real issue back-to-back. I hope you enjoy going over this retrospective as much as I enjoyed diving into the archives and remembering it.

*Originally I didn’t count bonus issues toward the issue number, but then when we moved to Buttondown it gave an issue number to everything we’d sent up until that date. It seemed needlessly confusing to try and keep 2 separate numbering systems going, so I just started using the Buttondown numbers. They’ve since changed things up so those numbers aren’t listed in the back-end (at all, as far as I can tell), but we’re locked in now. Deal with it. Sunglasses.

2018

July 1st, 2018, a day that will live forever in our hearts and minds…

Actually, looking back at the very first issue of NH, I thought it had been earlier than that. I thought it was pre-Oh Nothing Press (RIP), pre- a whole lot of other shit that I’ve since discovered or done. That first issue was also very light on links. These days we’re arguably too heavy on links, but when everything happens so much, it’s hard to keep track of things in a succinct way. This newsletter would probably have bigger reach if it were more focused, but that’s my problem – I don’t have any real deep interests, just shallow and broad ones. I want to understand everything. That’s impossible, but I strive for it. It’s another way I can put too much pressure on myself.

That first issue we were already covering the West’s horrible and horribly racist border policing initiatives, and sadly in the past 4 and a bit years, things have only gotten worse on that front. Issue 2 we got on to Douglas Rushkoff’s meetings with the 1% to advise them on how to flourish after the collapse, and related, in issue 3 we had a great discussion on emergent ecofascism. That Linkola piece really helped to set me on a path to writing a cli-fi bodyhorror novel, which may never see the light of day, but I learned a lot writing it both in terms of building my writing skillset and in the huge amount of research I did into ecofascism and the philosophies that underpin it or attempt to counter it.

The third issue is also where I announced Repo Virtual. Oh, sweet innocent child. You had no idea what was in store for that poor book.

One thing I notice going back to the early issues of the newsletter is that if we do have a focus, it’s injustice. It’s just that injustice rears its ugly fucking head in so many areas of life.

And though he didn’t officially join us until much later, our December 2nd, 2018 issue includes some links via Dan. It was meant to be.

What’s stuck with me from 2018:

• Nyx Land’s Gender Acceleration black paper, for being a really provocative and fascinating bit of theory, and probably one of the first I really grappled with after getting most of my intro to philosophy and theory from different podcasts (check out Wyrd Signal, oh, and of course Buddies Without Organs).

• My Disco - After discovering their album Severe in 2018, My Disco has been on constant rotation, particularly Environment, for which I’ve racked up over 150 listens just on my laptop alone. My Disco, Lorn, and Rafael Anton Irisarri (who I only discovered in 2019, shhh) would, together, make up the vast majority of my listening over the past 4 years.

• This essay from Charlotte Shane on animals and death. (I’m being deliberately vague, you should read it.)

• This CCK Philosophy video on Hauntology.

2019

Ah, 2019. It feels like a lifetime ago.

We started the year with a lot of talk about dystopia and utopia. I also thought it was interesting to realise I came across library socialism (though not called that) in this essay by Chenoe Hart before I heard the SRSLY WRONG boys talking about it. It’s the idea that we could rearrange society so that instead of buying whatever we want or need, we could instead borrow it from a library-type institution. In a recent episode of SRSLY WRONG they mentioned that a hammer is used on average for just 3 minutes across its life. How many hammers are out there sitting unused, and how simple would it be to arrange for hammer borrowing? Marlee has gotten involved with a local Tool Library, which is cool, though obviously that’s for more expensive and specialist tools than just a hammer.

In a similar vein, 2019 is when we started talking about maintenance (which should become increasingly important as we recognise the carbon and other environmental costs associated with constantly making new things instead of maintaining what we have) via this article on GAP in Italy.

I also think that in 2019 our coverage of climate change ticked up a notch or two. It’s not difficult when there’s constantly more and more about it out there…

Honestly, this long-arse issue from March, 2019 (featuring Damien Williams) might be one of our best.

2019 is also the year we started doing bonus issues for paid subscribers, and Austin’s piece on Cartoon Metaphysics might be my favourite of the year.

What’s stuck with me from 2019:

• Library Socialism as per Free Shipping: Delivery robots will redefine the meaning of every object they transport by Chenoe Hart for Real Life Magazine.

• Sex Education (Netflix) - the show started in 2019 and I wrote about it then. Can’t remember if I wrote about it again later, but season 3 was incredible. It really delivered on the story of each of the characters as it had been developing and landed some really powerful emotional beats. Plus Gillian Anderson is super hot forever and always. I’m expecting S4 to drop soon, but who knows.

• The horrors of social media moderation, as introduced via The Trauma Floor by Casey Newton at The Verge, but there were also other pieces we shared on the topic.

• The OA. I still stand by my thoughts here. I will never forgive Netflix for not giving them a third season.

• That we had reason to come up with a name for the sole surviving member of a species: Endling.

2020

Obviously 2020 was the year that Covid-19 swept across the globe and because of the sheer scale of that, I forgot that here in Australia we started 2020 blanketed in smoke from massive bushfires, with people donning masks to be able to breathe clearly with particulates filling the air. And yet still people reacted with anger when a virus required us to do the same…

February 9 was our first mention of the pandemic, though the fact it wasn’t at the top of the email means it obviously wasn’t yet apparent how poorly things were about to go. By March 8 that was beginning to become apparent - though in Australia that was largely people panic-buying toilet paper - and by March 20 the virus was everywhere, both literally and in the media. I still think Social Contagion is likely the best single piece written on (and in) the early days of Covid-19. It’s also been released as a book that I’ve been meaning to buy…

Speaking of books, my debut novel Repo Virtual came out in April 2020… It really sucked. Not the book, the book won the Aurealis Award for Best Science-Fiction Novel (tied with The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay), but the situation. The shit hitting the fan with global logistics means that copies of the book for the Australian market didn’t even reach these shores until 3 months after release, there were no events for me to attend to talk about the book because everything was shut down, and seemingly no one heard about the book (despite positive reviews, it being featured on Amazon, etc etc) because everyone was too busy dealing with the complete overhaul of life as we knew it. All of this to say that if you want a book that is the cyberpunk of the now, with a focus on the personhood of non-biological intelligences, that features an AI heist, found family, robot dogs, streaming cults, violence and a whole lot of heart, please buy my book.

That only takes us to April (2020 was a fuck of a year, wasn’t it?), and history wasn’t done with the year yet, not by a long shot. May 31st saw our first issue with coverage on the George Floyd uprisings. Two and a half years on, it’s hard to say if anything substantive has changed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection between the community cohesion we saw on the streets at that time and the wave of unionisation happening across America. If only due to the realisation that nothing will be given freely and solidarity means more hands with which to take what we need from those who would otherwise deprive us (whether that’s rights and dignity, or simply the resources we need to live).

I think it’s obvious we’re all still living in 2020’s shadow (and its pandemic, contrary to appearances). It’s hard to sum up the year when it feels like it’s still not done with us yet. But maybe that’s just me. I won’t lie, 2020 fucked with my (already poor) mental health badly.

I’m surprised that we were still able to keep up with a fortnightly bonus schedule throughout 2020 - though sticking with it then is definitely why I burned out and had to drop the schedule back in 2021. I’ll just share some of my highlights - a couple of pieces where I was able to tie the pandemic in to different video games, The Division and Death Stranding, and our group watch of Prometheus: A Christmas Carol.

What’s stuck with me from 2020:

• Seeing someone die.

• Social Contagion.

• Dorohedoro (Netflix). I’ve watched Season 1 three or maybe four times now, and seeing as it’s been a couple of years with no word, I’m assuming there might not be a season 2. Anyone want to buy me all 30ish volumes of the manga? I’ll send feet pics. It’s an incredible and weird urban fantasy anime series, and if you’ve not already watched it, you should.

• This piece on Full Employment by Cory Doctorow.

• Recycling is mostly a lie. Here’s one link. (I was aware of this prior to 2020, but some people still think recycling is magic.)

2021

I’m going to be able to cheat a bit here because we did a 2021 retrospective issue, which is probably lucky, because I can’t remember much of the year. I know that the first 6 months of the year were some of the worst mental health times I’ve had, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s because - however unlikely I knew it to be - part of me wanted the New Year to bring a bit of a reset and leave all the shit of 2020 behind, and when that didn’t happen something had to give. Or maybe it was just the inevitable crash after holding things together against the odds throughout 2020…

Oh, yeah, 2021 is the year I decided to give up on masculinity. Agender is where it’s at. They/them out causing may/hem. I wrote about it here, but even then that was early in the piece and my thoughts/feelings have evolved a bit more since them.

January 24, 2021 is the first time a meme for meme’s sake made it into an issue. It took a little while to become a staple, but I’m glad we got there in the end (August 8th, to be precise). Everyone needs some memes to help the medicine go down. We tend to share a few these days (there’s a lot of medicine, after all), and usually there’s at least a couple of us providing those. We don’t bother tagging those, so sometimes I don’t even know who drops them in (but reckon I can usually guess - people’s chosen memes are like fingerprints).

Some bonuses worth pointing out from the year: And I Feel Fine, on nihilism as survival mechanism, and our second Christmas movie chat - Batman Returns. We need to figure out another one for this year. Die Hard is too obvious. Wake In Fright would be good if we all wanted to feel terrible. Maybe Strange Days for NYE rather than xmas?

What’s stuck with me from 2021:

• Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix) - This is another show Netflix cancelled prematurely, and one I’ve watched 3 times now? More thoughts here.

• Blindsight by Peter Watts. I’ve read this twice since picking it up last year. Such a great book, and ties in to Ligotti’s Conspiracy Against the Human Race and Metzinger’s work (Watts cites Being No One, whereas I read The Ego Tunnel which seems to cover a lot of the same ground but is written in simpler language) which I was already into before I got around to reading Blindsight. Anyway, it’s a first contact story unlike any other first contact story, with a truly alien species, and a crew of variously augmented and atypical humans plus one resurrected vampire mutant. I can’t recommend it enough.

• The fact that “False Memory Syndrome” was made up by a guy who was accused of sexual assault by his daughter. That he made it up in response to the accusation.

• The US military is a bigger carbon emitter than some entire countries and, of course, the US state has lobbied for that to not be counted against their emissions… I’d come across that well before 2021, but here’s the first link I noticed in the archives.

• This was a really great story. Still a favourite: Patients and psychiatrists fought against fascism together at Saint-Alban by Ben Platts-Mills at Aeon

• We’re all fucking riddled with micro-plastics if this is any indication.

And that’s it for this little trip down memory lane. Thanks for joining us, for this issue and for as many of the others as you’ve been around for. We really appreciate your eyeballs and support.