nothing here but a phony renaissance

issue 278, 5th January, 2025

CJW: Welcome to 2025. Let’s hope it surprises us all by being less awful than 2024. Surely that can’t be hard…?

Anyway, we’re glad to have you here for our first issue of the New Year. It’s a bit scattershot because we’re getting back up to speed after the holidays, but there’s still plenty of interesting stuff for you to pore over.

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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. Hates the internet.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, vampire in the corner.

Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Writer, fulltime goth and metalhead.

Geopolitics & Empire

DCH: With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance - Sophia Goodfriend at 972 Magazine

Over the last few years, however, the tide has slowly shifted — both in the United States and Israel. Today, American tech founders view themselves as a new warrior class, proudly remaking their country in the image of Israel’s “warrior nation.” Israel’s far-right government and Silicon Valley’s royalty adhere to a “peace through strength” security doctrine, touting lethal displays of force as the only way to shore up national security — or what Palantir’s Alex Karp describes as “scaring your enemy shitless.”

Emphasis mine. The tech bros are finally letting their monstrous sides really show.

“Jetliners being accidentally blasted out of the sky has become the leading cause of commercial-aviation deaths over recent years, marking a new trend running counter to an otherwise improving safety picture.” Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers By Daniel Michaels and Benjamin Katz at The Wall Street Journal ($)
A MAGA civil war is breaking out by Taylor Lorenz (DCH: basically the Loomer contingent hates the Musk wing because the former wants a mass lockdown on immigration and the latter wants highly skilled tech laborers to be exempt. Now that Maggots control everything the factions are baring their teeth over actual policy.)

Tech & Design

DCH: Meta Expects AI Characters to Generate and Share Social Media Content at Pymnts

Hundreds of thousands of AI characters have already been created using a tool that Meta launched in the U.S. in July and plans to expand in the future, though most of these characters are currently being kept private by users, according to the report.

Most but not all. There are a few tell-tale signs of “AI Influencer” accounts popping up on Instagram using these tools. And many are in the style of thirst trap accounts. Instagram is more than happy to shadowban and outright ban them when IRL sex workers post content like this but it's apparently fair game for their fakey accounts because of engagement..

DCH: The phony comforts of useful idiots by Edward Ongweso Jr

It’s not clear why anyone should entertain Newton’s false dichotomy, especially if they spend more than a second thinking about this. There is obviously AI that is fake—our world is littered with Potemkin AI, or digital software constructed such that it obscures the humans performing supposedly automated labor. There is obviously AI that is real, such as the recommendation algorithms that structure our experiences on platforms. There is obviously AI that sucks and does not work: think of algorithmic products that claim to predict crime, determine whether pretrial bail is granted, or detect welfare fraud. There is obviously AI that is dangerous—such as products that let armed forces and intelligence agencies use drones to perform assassinations.

Casey Newton kicked off a shitstorm in tech and tech journalism circles recently with a polemic so intellectually dishonest I refuse to link it here. Thankfully we have folks like Edward Ongweso who call him out on his bullshit.

“On December 13th, a number of iPhone users got a weird notification from the BBC. “Luigi Mangione shoots himself,” according to the venerable British news agency. Obviously, the alleged shooter of the United Healthcare CEO did no such thing; this was a complete fabrication concocted by Apple Intelligence, Apple’s newly launched generative AI feature.” The Critical AI Report, December 2024 Edition by Brian Merchant (DCH: an already polluted info ecosystem is getting even more junked up)
AI-Generated Fake War Images Passed Off as Real - Punctr Art

Society & The Culture

DCH: Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome? By Hua Hsu at The New Yorker

We’ve been conditioned to want hyper-personalization from our digital surroundings, with convenience and customizable environments the spoils of our age. For Pelly, it’s a problem less of taste than of autonomy—the question she asks is if we’re making actual decisions or simply letting the platform shape our behaviors. Decades ago, when you were listening to the radio or watching MTV, you might encounter something different and unknown, prompting some judgment as to whether you liked or loathed it. The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.

Wither discovery in the age of algorithms? Ages ago I worked on a service that used early days algos to try to enhance discovery by occasionally feeding results from outside of known user preferences, often even diametrically opposed to them. Spotify could but would never embrace an idea like that. Not in any meaningful way that is.

CJW: Casual Viewing - Will Tavlin at N+1

Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” (“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)
One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.” A high-gloss product that dissolves into air. Tide Pod cinema.

You might have seen bits of this article getting passed around on social media, but the full thing is worth a read if you're interested in the specifics of how streaming (and Netflix in particular) has undermined both film and TV in terms of quality, and payments for the creators, actors, and other workers that actually make them.

Fun game: As you read through, see how many of the mentioned movies you've even heard of, let alone watched.

There's also a comment about how viewers prefer older movies than the new content being churned out, which anecdotally tracks. Picking a new straight-to-streaming movie, there's about a 90% chance it will be shit. But even mediocre Hollywood films from the 90s will look good, have actual intent behind them, and practical special effects.

Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill | Alone in the Basement, Naked on Stage - Juno Stump
"A healthy media ecosystem and diverse, well-funded independent journalism is the bulwark against right-wing propaganda. Instead of addressing the problem head on, policy leaders rubber-stamped problematic mergers, treated media policy as an afterthought, paid empty lip service to quality journalism, and normalized Republican propaganda." - America’s Right-Wing Propaganda Problem Might Be Terminal - Karl Bode at Dame Magazine

Just the headlines:

Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South - Samantha Cole at 404 Media

Health, Cooking, and Related

CJW: I Did Not Consent To My Body. A personal essay about trauma… - May Peterson

I don’t know how to talk to cis people about this. I don’t know how to help them conclude that our choices make perfect sense, if you have all the facts. If you understand the real source of our suffering.
I don’t know how to tell cis people that the real problem, the one they think they’re saving us from, is them.
[...]
The trans medicine debate seems like it’s about what will heal transgender people, but it isn’t. We already know. We know the cure for starvation.
The debate is about whether cis people would rather we starve anyway.

A really powerful piece on trans healthcare. Please read it. There are lines and thoughts here that resonate with me incredibly strongly. It refers to 2 other articles/essays, but you’ll be able to understand everything here from context without reading them, so don’t worry.

As a Former Athlete, I Can Say That Trans Bans Don't “Protect” Women - Talia Barrington at Cosmo
COVID’s End-of-Year Surprise - Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic

Just the headlines:

Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including significant drops in IQ scores - Ziyad Al-Aly at The Conversation
69% Blame CEO Murder on US Healthcare System - Ken Klippenstein

Labour & Economics

DCH: Sam Altman's basic-income study is out. Here's what it found. By Noah Sheidlower, Kenneth Niemeyer, Katie Balevic, Lakshmi Varanasi at Business Insider

The study found that those who received the $1,000 payments increased their overall spending by an average of $310 a month, but most of that spending went toward food, rent, and transportation. They also offered more financial support to others in need compared with the control group.

Shocking no one most of the money went toward basics like food, housing, and transport costs. People in this cohort still worked but were more deliberate in their job searches than the control group. There was no discernable difference in access to healthcare since that’s an absolute clusterfuck in America anyway.

“Ultimately, we need a government, but we need a government that can actually do work. And the McKinsification of America, the control of our state and corporate apparatus by a network of well-heeled and unethical salesmen who facilitate lawlessness and price gouging, stands in the way of a reasonable political order. That’s what Americans are mad at, even if they can’t articulate the unseen force corrupting our government and corporations.” Cutting Government Is Easy... If You Go After McKinsey by Matt Stoller (DCH: Management consultants are not-so-secretly responsible for a lot of misery.)
“But there was one particular rule that got eliminated that did matter to Musk, which is tighter screening on outbound investment to China. And it’s possible that the real game was to do a lot of distraction by getting rid of a lot of useful legislative text, in the hopes that no one would notice the real provision that Musk wanted eliminated.” Monopoly Round-Up: New Deal or Crime Spree? By Matt Stoller (DCH: another good read on the fractures in the Trump coalition)

Movies + TV

LZ - Santa Sangre (1989), by Jodorowsky

It took me ages to finally watch this movie and it became an instant favorite. It's creative, vivid, surreal, intense, a Latin American baroque movie that deals with religion, madness, gender roles, family, an abusive almost incestuous mother-son relationship, childhood love, discovery of sexuality in a sea of eroticism, and redemption. I couldn't describe this movie without using a long sentence with a list of words, because it feels like that: one thing after the other, overwhelmingly emotional and beautiful. OMG what a beautiful man was Axel Jodorowsky (RIP) and how gorgeous he looks in this movie… I couldn't stop looking at him and admiring his beauty, the way he moves, almost like a ballerino, but with the intensity of theater actors… oof. Please, just watch it when you can and take my word as a goth latina haha. It's on YouTube.

CJW: I recently learned about this movie and have been meaning to watch it. Now I'm only more keen…

LZ - All Hallow's Eve, Terrifier and Terrifier 2

I used my Christmas break to watch all Terrifier movies except for the most recent one, Terrifier 3. They were all in this horror streaming service called Splatter, which is the Swedish version of Shudder – not enabled here. A friend of mine recommended it, so I tried it out. I'm not a sucker for slashers, but this was a fun watch.

The first movie is a sequence of short stories involving the clown Art, the only good actors being the villain and the child actress lol. It's very low budget, but you can understand why the Terrifier franchise came to be, because there was a lot of potential in Art.

Terrifier then is a continuation of the first movie events, and everything happens during Halloween, following the classic trope of other slashers like Halloween, of course. In this we have a new scream queen that survives and reappears in Terrifier 2, which is more recent and acknowledges the cult vibe it achieved.

I can't avoid but thinking that they also made a homage to Troma in the scene where they are at the clown café and people die in a most comedious way, like having a limb chopped and then watching it spill blood like a fountain. But it also gives all the 80s trashy vibes with the main character coming back to life and acting like a heroin, dressed in a sort of epic cosplay that she made herself. So much fun. Apparently Terrifier 3 is a Christmas movie instead of Halloween, so maybe a pick for our special next year? hahaha

Music

LZ: Tempestarii - Temple of Skies

Learned about this American band by coincidence and got fully into it. Though they just released a new album, A Constellation of Dead Stars, it was an older one, Temple of Skies, that caught my attention. They have the precise type of dramatic low-pitched guitar that I like so much in black metal, so it is a delight to listen to this album, especially the track Shroud of Horns. The name is also interesting, and I found out it means that:

In medieval lore, Tempestarii (or Tempestarius (singular)) were weather-making magicians who dwelt among the common people and possessed the power to raise or prevent storms at will. For this reason, anyone reputed as a weather-maker was the subject of respect, fear, and hatred in rural areas.

I am doing an evil, dark urge run in Baldur's Gate 3 and she's a drow tempestuous magic sorceress, meaning that her magic deals with bolts of lightning and she can fly every time she casts a spell. Badass as fuck. It's funny because Europe doesn't have many storms in general. When I lived in England for about 10 months, I only caught a storm once and thunders are something that I never heard… same here in Sweden. It's more about wind than thunders and lightning bolts.

Brazil has pretty strong thunderstorms, and it is common for people to die struck by lightning. Even my grandfather was struck by lightning once when he was younger. He survived but became almost completely blind in one eye. This just got me thinking about that and how intense, nearly visceral, some of the tracks by Tempestarii are.

Aliénation - Aliénation

I also discovered a new Berlin-based black metal band recently. They have tracks in French and I think they are aiming a little bit to convey Amesoeurs’ style to their music, but it's still different. A more energetic kind of black metal, even… happy, I dare say? At least it's the kind of music I would listen to when I am feeling pumped hehe. They are a duo, a male vocalist, and a female instrumentalist. I have a lot of respect for one-man bands and duos that can make such good music as these two do. Highlight to Lueurs funèbres.