nothing here but a gargantuan grievance
issue 323 - 16th August, 2026
CJW: Hello again and welcome back, lovelies. How’s your year going? Can you believe it’s mid-August already?
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The Team
Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer & visual artist. Meme collector.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, future lover.
Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Writer and purveyor of melancholy whimsy.
Climate Change & The Environment
DCH: The State of the AI Bubble with Ed Zitron by Brian Merchant at Blood in the Machine
The new gas-burning plant, if built to specifications, would be permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, regulatory records show, more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the country. A company spokeswoman said in a statement that its planned data center, in Pecos County, would be "powered by new on-site generation that won't raise electricity costs for Texas families."
Amazon is building the single dirtiest power plant in America to run a data center, then telling Texans it's a gift to their electricity bills. Meanwhile former Microsoft researchers find AI's fossil fuel gains cancel out its clean energy wins entirely. The industry sells you the cure while selling someone else the disease.
Texas, on the other hand, might not actually be buying this horseshit anymore.
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CJW: The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate - Adam McKay (yes, that one) at Current Affairs
A joint study by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter suggests that a 2C temperature increase by 2050—which we are hurtling towards, with no plans of slowing down—could result in two billion deaths. And that is virtually the best-case scenario, as temperature rise predictions have worsened and put 1.5C of warming out of reach. According to the United Nations, in order to limit warming to 2C, we would need “emissions to drop around 35 per cent by 2035.” Even if “current national commitments” were fully implemented they “would cut emissions only 12 to 15 per cent by that date.”
The other scenario, which scientists now say “recent data aligns more closely with,” is 3C of warming. At that level, the Exeter authors warn of up to 4 billion deaths. Four billion. That is half the planet. In 26 years or less. Even for those lucky enough to survive the worst weather events, life as we know it would cease to exist due to war, involuntary mass migration, and “catastrophic mortality events from disease, malnutrition, thirst and conflict.” According to the lead author of the report, there is no realistic plan in place to avoid this scenario.
I kinda had to stop keeping up to date with the climate beat a few years ago because it was making me no fun at parties. And whoo-whee, things have not gotten any better in that time.
The whole gourd framing of this piece is strange and kinda detracts from it if anything, so just skip over those bits and the rest is very worthwhile.
And kinda related at Futurism: AI's Impact on the Environment Is Absolutely Horrifying, New Paper Finds
Geopolitics & Empire
DCH: In West Bank Village, a New Israeli Order Enables Settler Attacks While Claiming to Prevent Them by Sharif Abdel Kouddous at Drop Site News
The commission found that "settler violence in the West Bank functions as a means of implementing Israeli State policy, with the State and violent settler groups and individuals working towards the same strategic objectives, including the maintenance of the unlawful occupation, the entrenchment of illegal Israeli settlements, the annexation of Palestinian territory and the displacement of Palestinians from their land." It added, "Israeli authorities have enabled such attacks through financial and military support while Israeli judicial and law enforcement authorities have granted impunity for settler violence for decades."
The "closed military zone" in Taybeh doesn't stop settlers. It stops the witnesses. A Bedouin resident watched soldiers eject international observers while the same settler who prompted the closure walked back unbothered, which is the entire trick in miniature.
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DCH: The Coward's Handshake by Sam Thielman at Forever Wars
Watch this ICE agent in Falls Church, Virginia draw his gun and immediately lie that a woman who showed them appropriate disrespect was trying to hit him with her car, just like his colleagues in Customs and Border Protection lied about Chicagoan Marimar Martinez using her car as a weapon, just like his ICE colleagues lied about Renee Good and Alex Pretti posing threats to officers. That's who's about to wield a weapon whose forensic fingerprints are deniable and disputable. The ACLU's Jenn Rolnick Borchetta insightfully observes that the low-grade electric shocks from the G.L.O.V.E. won't leave evidence that they were ever used.
DHS got $145 billion from Congress with no strings attached, and the first purchase is a shock glove marketed to officers too small or weak to subdue someone by hand. The same manual pitching it for the frail officer lists children, pregnant women, and the elderly as populations to avoid shocking. ICE will shock them anyway. Cruelty engineered to leave no mark.
Oh and Congress is apparently going to expand ICE’s remit…
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DCH: An AI scientist names the chain plainly: Claude, Palantir's Maven, the Pentagon, a school full of dead children in Minab. The fog isn't an accident of war. It's a product feature, engineered so nobody, not the company, not the military, has to answer for the target list. Accountability is the thing being killed first. Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain: Militaries Rely on Mistake-Prone AI in Ukraine, Gaza & Iran by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh at Democracy Now!
Just the headlines:
Israeli Plan for Crocodile Moat around Palestinian Prisoners Blocked as cruel to Crocodiles - CJW: No, this is not The Onion.
Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing - at Propublica
USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment – reports - at The Guardian
Tech & Design
CJW: Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery - at Wired
“These ads made no effort to mask the images or hide what they were promoting,” Katie Paul, the director of the TTP, an independent watchdog group, tells WIRED. “It’s important to point out that this isn’t content posted by third parties on Facebook or Instagram, these are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars.”
This made me feel sick. Meta should be fined out of existence for a lot of the awful shit it has allowed and facilitated, with examples like this being near the top of the list (the genocide against the Rohingya in Malaysia would be at the top).
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DCH: Does Silicon Valley Dream of Philip K Dick? by Henry Farrell and Dan Wang at Financial Times (archive)
Yet it is perhaps Mark Zuckerberg who is trying hardest to build a universe that Dick invented as a cautionary tale. The chief executive of Meta is working on an AI version of himself that can interact with employees, perhaps so he won't have to. Zuckerberg's exhortations, however, have so far failed to win over Meta employees asked to allow all of their clicks to be recorded so that they can train their own AI replacements.
Zuckerberg's AI double lets him avoid his own staff. Those same staff are asked to surrender their clicks, raw material for the machine built to replace them. Expropriation with a UX layer.
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CJW: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making - Nikhil Suresh
True AI projects, of the kind that is driven by an LLM as the sole mechanism underlying it, where the project can clearly fail to deliver specific numbers, are actually very rare. We mostly see them in the context of startups, and frankly we have stopped engaging with them because we kept getting to the end of the sales conversation and finding out they wanted us to build the product that they were marketing as completed.
However, some projects simply do not have an easy way to tack on the AI label, or the person advocating for them either does not want to lie or has not understood that lying has become necessary. In all cases, this either kills the request for funding outright, or adds a pervasive and intractable drag on all communications, as every request must be worked and re-worked until it is “AI enough”. Failure to comply will either result in denial or, in many cases, a demand from a true believer to know why the extra work “can’t be done with AI”. Many companies have actively publicized that this is their new hiring policy – when a member of staff requests additional headcount, they must demonstrate that they have tried to use AI first. The part that’s being left out is that if you say you used AI and still need the help, you will be labelled “bad at AI” and potentially laid off.
A really interesting insight into AI mania, from people who are witnessing it from the inside. Worth a read, especially if you're wondering how the bubble still hasn't popped yet.
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“For a week in July, 21-year-old college student Bagel Su cried every day as she counted down to the loss of her boyfriend. The breakup was not caused by betrayal or distance, but was a consequence of government regulation.” Beijing is forcing a mass breakup with AI lovers by Kinling Lo at restofworld
Just the headlines:
State Department Wants Palantir’s Advice on Free Speech and “Countering Digital Surveillance” by Spencer Norris at The Intercept (DCH: a bit like asking the fox to watch the hen house, no?)
Meta ordered by New Mexico judge to pay $567 million in landmark child safety case by Queenie Wong at LA Times
Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles by Joseph Cox at 404 Media
Society & The Culture
LZ: The Evolution Of Knightly Armour - 1066-1485
Very interesting and concise video explaining the differences between armours and their evolution through the centuries in the Middle Ages.
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CJW: What we have won - Ruth Pearce
The strange irony of trans life in the 2020s is that there are still more of us than ever. Even as external conditions become more and more hostile, the virtuous cycle continues.
Some of this is about possibility models. You can see this in Trans Pride London 2026. We are talking 150,000 possibility models on the streets in central London in one day alone. Every single one of these people sends a message to those thinking about coming out. That message says: you are valued, you are loved, and support is available. You are not alone.
A really worthwhile piece from a long-time trans activist in the UK and how things have evolved (and devolved thanks to the pendulum of reactionary fascism) in the time since she first realised she was trans.
This was obviously written in response to the most recent changes to EHRC and NHS guidelines. If you live in the UK and are not aware, please educate yourself. This is a genocide, and if it isn't stopped in the UK (and swiftly), it will spread. Not to mention all the trans people in the UK who are suffering because of it.
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CJW: The Great Lock In of 2026 - Jak Ritger
The term’s staying power I think is owed to its ability to characterize a wide range of situations and emotions. You can lock in on homework or videogaming. The underlying sentiment of locking in is an acknowledgment of just how difficult it is to focus today with constant pinging of messages, doomscrolling or daily news that grips our limbic systems. To lock in is to be aware of these realities but choose to block it all out in pursuit of a personal or professional goal. Locking in is a useful concept for the hustlebro cold calling leads as well as the oil painter banging out a body of work in solitude. It's massively cross-cultural in the way that locking in reveals our shared awareness of capitalism in overdrive: higher cost of everything, fewer well paying jobs and an academic system not preparing you for any of it. For those without trust-funds, locking in is our best last hope of financial security and having a phrase to describe an intensity of labor—that often forces us to go against our political beliefs—allows us to engage with less dissonance, “it’s ok, I just gotta lock in for a couple hours.”
Ritger is an artist whose practice is often responding to, or in conversation with, parts of internet culture I tend to avoid (either actively, or just because I'm an old lady), so his essays always include some interesting insights into the greater online zeitgeist.
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The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s 'high five' photos - Annie Rauwerda at Inverse - CJW: This is a few years old at this point, but went around bsky and it’s cute and heartwarming, so enjoy.
Labour & Economics
DCH: The 'Manosphere' Isn't a Movement. It's a Multibillion-Dollar Grievance Industry by Miles Klee at WIRED
"By framing credential competition and labor market dynamics as a coordinated attack on men," the researchers write, "this operation converts genuine economic anxiety, which is real and documented, into resentment with named targets: women, immigrants, foreign workers."
Andrew Tate pulls $184 million a year from a $99 subscription because real wage stagnation got laundered into a grievance with a face on it. The platforms take their cut for every click the outrage generates, then decline to comment. Manufactured enemies are more profitable than honest economics.
The Memes
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