nothing here but a birth of violence
issue 138 - 16th May, 2021
CJW: Hello again and welcome.
Our latest bonus was Becoming (though it looks like I accidentally sent it to everyone…?)
Latest unlocked bonus: Field Notes from the proto-Invisibles Monastery 5 - on Galactic Citizenry and the Breakaway Civ.
Full list of unlocked bonuses.
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The Team
Corey J. White (CJW) - Stressed and depressed.
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - I’m also this guy. Quite mental. On Wurundjeri land.
m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / ecopoet // Dark Extropian Musings / pryvt.rsrch
Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Articles
CJW: On Palestine, the Media Is Allergic to the Truth - Branko Marcetic at Jacobin
I could have quoted the opening 5 paragraphs or so, but instead you should just go read it. The piece is ostensibly about the media’s portrayal of the current situation with Israel-Palestine, but in making his point, Marcetic also offers additional context, making it a good encapsulation of events.
As media critics have pointed out for years, if you came in with little to no idea of what was going on and simply surveyed the headlines from the past few days about “clashes” between Israeli forces and Palestinians, you’d never know Palestinians were protesting an Israeli land grab. Nor would you know the “clashes” were happening because Israeli police had decided to attack Palestinian worshippers in one of Islam’s holiest sites. In fact, in one particularly egregious case, you might have been completely misled in the opposite direction, with the New York Post attributing to Hamas the killings Israel had carried out on Palestinians, who were in turn recast as Israelis (the Post later corrected the headline).
- World roundup: May 13 2021 - Foreign Exchanges
There’s no ceasefire in sight, mostly it seems because the Israeli government doesn’t want one, and there’s no comment from the United Nations, because the US government won’t permit it.
FX is an invaluable resource for helping keep abreast of geopolitical events in general, not to mention their coverage of Israel-Palestine in particular.
- A Deleuzian View of Palestine (Contra Israel) - Matt Colquhoun
Palestine, in particular, gives a violently literal form to [Deleuze’s] otherwise literary allegories. A nation of fatherless sons and motherless daughters, it is primed for revolutionary renewal and its struggle is all of our struggles. Solidarity with Palestine is to strive for a new way of life on earth, on which a home is not a foundation for humanity, as Locke would have it, but rather a space that humanity must itself build together in solidarity.
And here’s something for the theory-heads (though if you’re a theory-head, you already read it).
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MKY: Arabian cult may have built 1000 monuments older than Stonehenge
This is very cool and interesting and all. I just can’t help noticing that some dudes flew from WA to check out some weird ancient shit in the special magical Middle East cradle of civ - when they could’ve just gone for a drive around Aus and oh wait - the fucking mining companies keep blowing up places like 46 thousand year old cave sites and Ancient Cult Dieties know what else they’ve gotten away with, what all the mining and other “civilized projects” have erased or denied or. But yeah. Cool.
Instead, I guess we should be thankful that there’s enough existing sites and knowledge that’s been salvaged to belatedly do this kinda super science - Ancient Australian ‘superhighways’ suggested by massive supercomputing study:
the researchers compared their routes to the locations of the roughly three dozen archaeological sites in Australia known to be at least 35,000 years old. Many sites sat on or near the superhighways. Some corridors also coincided with ancient trade routes known from indigenous oral histories, or aligned with genetic and linguistic studies used to trace early human migrations. “I think all of us were surprised by the goodness of the fit,” says archaeologist Sean Ulm of James Cook University, Cairns.
The map has also highlighted little-studied migration corridors that could yield future archaeological discoveries. For example, some early superhighways sat on coastal lands that are now submerged, giving marine researchers a guide for exploration. Even more intriguing, the authors and others say, are major routes that cut across several arid areas in Australia’s center and in the northeastern state of Queensland. Those paths challenge a “long-standing view that the earliest people avoided the deserts,” Ulm says. The Queensland highway, in particular, presents “an excellent focus point” for future archaeological surveys, says archaeologist Shimona Kealy of the Australian National University.
Who knows what wonders lie beneath the oceans or buried within our own deserts.
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MKY: ‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl
Or, yeah, our legacy ain’t gonna be weird shit in the desert, it’s gonna be massive involuntary parks caused by our hubris and inability to plan long term, let alone take responsibility for our mistakes. Something something something I’ve seen the future and we’ve been crushed by HYPERBOJECTS. But sure, let’s have another round of ‘the only way to save the world is to go nuclear power’ instead of, well… fucked if I know tbh. I’m pretty sure a little bit less SCIENCE WILL SAVE US, a little bit more of hey, let’s think this through first and look at prev examples… which is some kinda kray idea that maybe the sciences and arts should never have been separated? But again… what do I know?! Which is to say - We now have the technology to develop vaccines that spread themselves [out in teh mythical wild] BUT SHOULD WE? Congregation, please open your copy of Echopraxia by Peter Watts and read the opening bit -- not the vampires breakout, tho that’s rad af, but the bit about how ‘nature’ in the near future has been littered with broken gene drives and other fuckups from our failed attempts to become Engineers.
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DCH: Is Mars Ours? by Adam Mann The New Yorker
Neilson, who studies the life cycles of stars, is Mi’kmaq; the indigenous nation that he belongs to extends over parts of eastern Canada and northern Maine. It’s difficult to be sure, but it’s possible that he is the only First Nations faculty member in astronomy or physics in Canada. “It’s hard for scientists, especially in terms of astronomy and space exploration, to see themselves as anything but ethical,” he said. “There’s a whole system built around this idea of space exploration being ethical and pro-human, but it’s also one that doesn’t necessarily hear voices from non-Western perspectives.”
Nice longish read on how the Kakaze from Red Mars were right basically. If you’re wondering how can colonizing Mars be as problematic as past efforts, then look no further than the fact that indigenous peoples are getting fucked over here on Earth to make room for Mars missions...
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DCH: NY lawmakers want to ban Bitcoin mining for 3 years to study environmental impact by Andrew Paul inputmag.com
“A single cryptocurrency transaction uses the same amount of energy that an average American household uses in one month, with an estimated level of global energy usage equivalent to that of the country of Sweden,” reads Senate Bill 6486, citing numbers that are of particular concern to the Empire State. As Business Insider notes, upstate New York’s cooler climate is extremely hospitable to large-scale cryptocurrency mining facilities, and the region already has seen a number of companies set up shop there, often in former coal and natural gas power plants.
Companies like Greenidge which have recently reopened coal plants for the sole purpose of mining BTC. Until Bitcoin universally adopts proof-of-stake methods it is always going to be a climate disaster. Even after that point it’s still a ponzi scheme that fucks people over.
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CJW: Why the 2060s Are So Important to Climate Change - Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic
Last week, two major papers on sea-level rise were published. Both try to answer the greatest outstanding questions about sea-level rise: How much will the oceans rise, and how fast? Their conclusions are either reassuring or frightening, depending on your optimism about how quickly the world will get a handle on its carbon pollution.
Interesting not just because of the facts on offer but also because of the effort to frame carbon removal and climate change impacts across the next few decades in a way we might be able to better grasp.
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DCH: Where in the World is Q? Clues from Image Metadata by Abigail W. Xavier, Robert Amour and the Q Origins Project at Bellingcat
We know that Q, or a very close associate, flew to Shanghai Pudong Airport prior to February 8, 2018; that they stayed at The Peninsula hotel in Bangkok prior to or on February 10, 2018; that they stayed at the Cordis Hotel in Hong Kong prior to or on March 7, 2018; that they stayed at the Chongqing Fuli Hyatt prior to or on February 14, 2019 and flew into Chongqing prior to that same date.
If we ever actually figure out who Q is then it’s largely going to be thanks to the Q Origins Project at Bellingcat. This work is exhaustive and the team shows a deep abiding commitment to sleuthing this out.
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DCH: The Pentagon Inches Toward Letting AI Control Weapons by Will Knight at WIRED
General John Murray of the US Army Futures Command told an audience at the US Military Academy last month that swarms of robots will force military planners, policymakers, and society to think about whether a person should make every decision about using lethal force in new autonomous systems. Murray asked: “Is it within a human's ability to pick out which ones have to be engaged” and then make 100 individual decisions? “Is it even necessary to have a human in the loop?” he added.
I’ve long argued that Slaughterbots are a criti-hype distraction from the dangers of AI that we already see today (job destruction via algos firing workers, income inequality via the gig economy, etc.) but I contain multitudes and can worry about the future too. It looks, unsurprisingly, like the US wants to move at pace into that dark future.
Newsletters
CJW: Slow worries 25 (#diving #environment) by Andrew Macrae
And the disorienting thing is how quickly we adapt to the loss. We shrug. That’s just the way things are now.
It’s like we defend ourselves against the shock of the scale and speed of the unfolding catastrophe by a wilful failure to contemplate what we have lost.
Because it hurts too much to think about.
I’ve mentioned Andrew Macrae’s newsletter before, but since he’s taken a break from Twitter he’s returning to it with a new energy. The above is a sort of thoughtful meditation on his local environment and the rapid changes it’s going through.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about as well. I’ve been in my current place for about 3 years, and that first year we had so many more birds in the bushes out the front and in the massive tree behind our back fence. I live in suburban Melbourne, so it’s not exactly an anecdote that carries much water, but it makes me wonder if it’s happening everywhere...
There's a tweet from Jeff Vandermeer that really struck me, but which I can't find. He talked about the abundance of animals in nature at the time of European settlement in North America, and how if you're (for example) making a movie set in that time and you don't show the rivers teeming with fish etc, then you're deliberately making the choice to downplay our destruction of the environment in the time since then.
MKY: It gets even darker. Like, citation needed and everything, but I’m 99% sure that the whole ‘passengers pigeons blocked out the sun’ mythic thang was overpopulation of the species following the beginning of the genocide of the indigenous human population of the Americas, who had been one of their predators. Obvz the colonists then hunted that bountiful resource into extinction. The birds that is. Which makes the whole DeExtinction project to resurrect/recreate/simulate them… rather interesting.
But what we’re actually talking about here has a name, and that is name is ‘shifting baselines’ theory - and if you’d like to know more, here’s a good place to start: Proving the 'shifting baselines' theory: how humans consistently misperceive nature.
Movies + TV
DCH: Exterminate All The Brutes
Powerful 4-part documentary series on the 500+ years of white supremacy. Directed by Raoul Peck and based on the book of the same name by Sven Lindquist the 4 hours trace the disasters left behind in the wake of colonialism like genoicde, the endless cycle of militarization, and more. Read more here.
URL
CJW: What are the real reasons behind the New Cold War? - William I. Robinson at Roar Mag
It is Washington that is conjuring up the New Cold War, based not on any political or military threat from China and Russia, much less from economic competition, as US- and Chinese-based transnational corporations are deeply cross-invested, but on the imperative of managing and sublimating the crisis [of state legitimacy and capitalist hegemony].
An interesting piece on the economic and political impetus behind America's New Cold War. As you see more aggressive posturing from the US state, consider that it's a (potentially dangerous) pantomime meant to help prop up capitalist hegemony just a little longer.
Related: Endless War Is A Feature of Our National Programming - by William J. Astore at TomDispatch (via Foreign Exchanges)
Podcasts
MKY: Aufhebunga Bunga
Solid, entertaining discussion of Mark Fisher’s idea of Acid Communism and what the future of the left (not the band lol) might be.
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MKY: Bringing the ‘Benin Bronzes’ home, The Foreign Desk 381 - Radio
30min news radio piece on returning looted artefacts n art to their rightful places. Which is best summed up by a quote from towards the end ~”what’s the difference between returning objects the Nazis looted vs what the other, more successful European empires did prior to the 20th Century?”.
OR… to put it more IP-driven, pop cultural terms: KILLMONGER MADE SOME VALID POINTS.
Music
CJW: Birth of Violence by Chelsea Wolfe
I loved Pain is Beauty, Abyss, and Hiss Spun, but Birth of Violence really didn’t grab me at first. I think I felt that it lacked something with its use of acoustic guitar when the crunchy electric guitar of her previous albums is such a great part of Wolfe’s sound. But the thing is, Birth of Violence is not an acoustic album by any means - it doesn’t feel stripped back or lacking, but it took me a while to come around to that fact.
It’s still haunting and brooding, and powerful, but the focus on the acoustic guitar lends the album a warmer and more intimate sound than now has me completely enraptured.
If you’ve somehow missed Chelsea Wolfe before now, check the above links. And if, like me, you slept on Birth of Violence at first because acoustic, give it another chance…
DCH: Thoroughly seconded. And I fucking live for crunchy guitars. It’s a textured album for sure. But the comparatively more spartan guitar choices helps her vocal capabilities feature more than they sometimes do. The Mother Road is a great opener and features brilliant lyrics like:
Afraid to live, afraid to die
Building a broken but precious web
Like a spider in Chernobyl
Cutting Room Floor
She Wants Your Attention, She's the Voice of the City - Naomi Credé at Failed Architecture (via Sentiers)
The Rise of Synthetic Media & Digital Creators - Rex Woodbury
Permanently Moved - 2117 - Brands Are VInfluencers Now? - Jay Springett
left alone, together (via Sentiers)
Culture beats construction in Covid economic recovery, report finds - Kelly Burke at Guardian Australia
Ted Chiang talks about magic, AI, capitalism, and superheroes
Behind The Walls Of The Iron Galaxy: El-P, Cannibal Ox & Philip K. Dick
Pentagon Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Reveals