nothing here but alien information

issue 297 - 31st August, 2025

CJW: Welcome back, gang. Let’s get to it, shall we?

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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, wasted potential.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

DCH: How can England possibly be running out of water? By Helena Horton at The Guardian

Forecasts indicate that by 2055 England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day without urgent action to future-proof resources, the equivalent to more than a third of the supplies available today. The effect on the economy will be profoundly negative. The thinktank Public First has estimated that the economic cost of water scarcity could be £8.5bn over this parliament.

We need to nationalise the water industry ASAP. The current Labour government has no plans to do so however. And well they’re not polling so great right now because of being absolute spineless dogshite. Seems like its a problem that will have to wait for whatever centre-left party is in power in the mid 2040s…

CJW: The privatisation of water in the UK has been such a clusterfuck, and entirely predictable considering what we know about corporations. Shareholder dividends being prioritised over desperately needed infrastructure investment, dumping of waste (incl. literal human shit), etc.

Geopolitics & Empire

DCH: IDF database suggests 83% of Gaza dead were civilians by Yuval Abraham at 972 Magazine

Figures obtained from the classified database — which records the deaths of militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) — contradict by a huge margin the public statements of Israeli army and government officials throughout the war, which have generally claimed a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of civilian to militant casualties. Instead, the classified data backs up the findings of several studies suggesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed civilians at a rate with few parallels in modern warfare.

Indiscriminate slaughter was always the goal.

CJW: Honestly, 83% sounds low, as in, they were probably still counting the political wing and administrative workers of Hamas as fighters. And if you don't know why that difference is significant, Israel basically manipulated things so that Hamas would be the political party running Gaza while the Palestinian Authority ran the West Bank, because they feared that giving any one political party power in both areas might lead to a combined push for Palestinian independence.

DCH: How the UN could act today to stop the genocide in Palestine by Craig Mokhiber at Mondoweiss

Established by a Cold War-era resolution adopted in 1950, the Uniting for Peace mechanism authorizes the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to act when the Security Council is blocked by the veto of one of its permanent members. Under this mechanism, the UNGA could mandate a UN protection force to deploy to Palestine, protect civilians, ensure humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and assist in recovery and reconstruction.

This has to happen. Military intervention against Israel is the only way this genocide is going to end.

Just the headlines:

Why it took Palestinians starving for many to finally admit Israel is committing genocide in Gaza by Maryam Jamshidi at Mondoweiss
Israeli army says it ‘does not target’ journalists, after targeting and killing 5 journalists by Tareq S. Hajjaj at Mondoweiss
United Methodist Church divests from Israel by Michael Arria at Mondoweiss

Science & Space

Just the headlines:

Experiment sheds light on the origin of life, supporting the existence of a ‘thioester world’ before living beings by Manuel Ansede at El Pais

Tech & Design

DCH: A $500 billion tech company's core software product is encouraging child suicide by Brian Merchant

Many of you have no doubt read or discussed the New York Times’ story about a 16 year-old boy who died by suicide after spending months prompting ChatGPT to ruminate on the topic with him. In short, the AI industry’s most popular chatbot product generated text that helped Adam Raine plan his suicide, that offered encouragement, and that discouraged him from telling his parents about his struggles.1 Those parents have now brought a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, the first of its kind. It is at least the third highly publicized case of an AI chatbot influencing a young person’s decision to take their own life, and it comes on the heels of mounting cases of dissociation, delusion and psychosis among users.

Sam Altman has blood on his hands. Its not fucking Terminator scenarios we have to worry about. The code itself is a predator preying on the most at risk people it can find.

“U.S. President Donald Trump is injecting nearly $9 billion into Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab in exchange for a 9.9% equity stake. But the money - which the struggling chipmaker was slated to receive anyway under a federal funding act - will not be enough for its contract-chipmaking business to flourish, analysts said.” Did Trump save Intel? Not really by Jaspreet Singh, Max A. Cherney and Sayantani Ghosh at Reuters
“Over the past two weeks, the UK has reportedly blocked internet users’ access to everything from SpongeBob SquarePants gifs to Spotify playlists. Information about Joe Biden’s police funding plan has been restricted, along with a post about an up-and-coming political party. Gamers say they have been unable to tweak colours in games such as Minecraft. And it’s all because of a new age verification law.” The UK's Online Safety Act is a licence for censorship – and the rest of the world is following suit. by Taylor Lorenz at The Guardian

Just the headlines:

Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with children by Jeff Horowitz at Reuters
AI Bubble 2027 by Edward Zitron
AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event by Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic
MIT on enterprise AI: 95% failure, 5% spam — from crypto bros and AI doomsday and AI heaven: live forever in AI God both by David Gerard at Pivot to AI

Society & The Culture

CJW: The Men Who Sold The Moon - Eden Kupermintz

This is something which I find myself disagreeing with a lot of people on; Bezos or Musk or Branson or whoever are not sociopaths. They know how much pain they are causing when union-busting or driving their workers into the dirt or destroying any chance for meaningful solutions to climate change. They simply think it’s all justified because, in the end, history will vindicate them in exactly the same way as it vindicates the heroes of the books and stories they, and all of us, grew up on.

A brilliant essay on the radical potential of sci-fi, and how so much of what is published and popular is at best liberal, otherwise conservative, and rarely actually challenges power and the status quo. For example, the focus on a singular hero in most genre fiction reinforces the individualist mindset that has become one of the poisons choking our society.

It also goes into how/why human turds like Bezos and Musk can consider themselves real life science fictional figures while entirely missing the point of the books they claim to love, and the potentialities of actually radical SF.

Eden is also of the Death Sentence and AnarchySF podcasts, which are well worth checking out!

Health, Cooking, and Related

MJW: Inside the World of the Great British Bake Off by Ruby Tandoh at The New Yorker

It would have been easy enough for “Bake Off” to ensnare the food crowd, but it has become a phenomenon even among people who have never touched a stand mixer. In the streaming era, “Bake Off” is the standard-setter for ambiently watchable TV; a generation of half-watchers turns to it for its gently sedative properties.
There is a special censure among “Bake Off” alumni for bakers who want it too bad, bakers who seem lovely—but did you know they applied, like, five times? No show does so much to hide its true nature: namely, that it is a competition people desperately want to win. This is the essential hypocrisy of “Bake Off,” and it remains the most British thing about it.

I first watched Bake Off when I had covid for the first time. Isolating in a bedroom with my mother, who I had given covid to as well, she would ask me, “how are you still watching this show?” It has 15 seasons, Mum! Like in the first quote, I have it on in the background a lot, the gentleness and low-stakes of cake baking numbing me like 10mg of valium. This article is an insider's view of the competition, written by Ruby Tandoh, contestant of season 4 and winner of star baker in bread week. I didn’t need to read the article to tell you that.

Labour & Economics

DCH: Deleting Tech Enforcement: Trump 2.0 Is Dropping Lawsuits and Investigations Against the $1 Billion-Spending Technology Sector by Rick Claypool at Public Citizen

In six months, the Trump administration has already withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165 corporations of all types – and one in four of the corporations benefiting from halted or dropped enforcement is from the technology sector, which has spent $1.2 billion on political influence during and since the 2024 elections.

A whole lot of gifts to the crypto sector specifically in this staggering list of receipts from Public Citizen. Which should not be surprising at all since his crypto grifts are the biggest percentage of Trump’s own cash now.

Just the headlines:

Fashion models reckon with AI models and digital clones after controversial ad appears in Vogue by Queenie Wong at The Los Angeles Times
No, UBI isn’t a solution to AI killing jobs by Aya at Tech, Actually
Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears by James Titcomb at The Telegraph
AI winter is in the air! But we think the AI bubble keeps going until 2027 by David Gerard at Pivot to AI

Books

LZ: Green Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth, by William Anderson

I found this book in the discount shelf at Watkins, only £3, so why not? Well, it does have many nice photographs and an in-depth exploration of the archetype of the green man throughout history, but… when I checked its page on GoodReads, I saw a review that said that the author didn't have much academic rigour, and that stuck with me. While I tried not to be biased by this review, it often felt like the author was stretching a little bit too much, for instance, seeing green men where it was just a face or a male sculpture/relief. The last part of it was also a big stretch about how the green man is still present in our lives in the sense of how we have awakened to think about nature, connecting to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and all… they were interesting ideas, but they felt really loose to me. I'm not saying that the book is not worth checking, but I guess there are better works with more in-depth, academic exploration than this one.

LZ: Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game, by Andrew R. Gallimore

I didn't read this book; I just learned about it and became very interested. The reviews seem to be mostly positive, so I might give it a try at some point. I wrote an essay about entity encounters while on DMT, so it's related, and it's a topic that interests me a lot – mostly from an academic perspective, as I am too scared to try the real thing, to be honest. It all goes back to when I did an undergraduate research on Serial Experiments Lain and learned about Timothy Leary. Apparently, Gallimore uses some technological metaphors in his theory, too, so I do need to check that out.

Movies + TV

LZ - Dracula (2025)

I didn't know Luc Besson was working on a Dracula movie, and a love story even! Well, apparently it's a remake of Coppola's film? At least, the trailer features several scenes and outfits that are just like in the 90s movie. If that's the case, I don't understand why we needed a remake… but… I would never complain about having another gothic love story coming up and especially if it features Caleb Landry Jones. I loved him since Heaven Knows What and then Antiviral. I love how visceral his acting is and how cute he also looks, especially with his hair dyed black (and it is now). Keep it coming, Hollywood!

CJW: Caleb Landry Jones is totally underrated. And same - I’ve been a fan of his work since Antiviral.

LZ: After Fallout Success, Amazon Sets Mass Effect Series Filming Date — Though It's Unclear if It'll Be a Canon Adaptation of the Trilogy

I didn't even know the Fallout series was a success. I only watched the first and second episodes and got bored, but I know many series take a couple of episodes to hit, so maybe I should try again. Anyway, I don't know what to think or feel about a Mass Effect TV series. If the female Sheppard's voice actress said she would be involved, then will it be an animation? Oh dear… As much as I love the series and would perhaps like to see an adaptation, this is kinda scary lol.

MJW: My Old Ass (2024)

I didn’t mind Aubrey Plaza, though she’s usually divisive—people either love her or hate her. I just learned she signed a letter from Hollywood actors in support of Israel, so I kinda hate her now? But when I watched My Old Ass (a stupid name for a decent movie), I didn’t know, and she’s pretty light in the movie, only appearing briefly at the start and the end. It’s a Canadian coming of age film where Elliot (Maisy Stella) takes a mushroom trip on her eighteenth birthday and meets her 39-year-old self, who gives her mysterious advice on the future, and warns her about dating any guy named Chad (good advice for us all). Older Elliot puts her number into younger Elliot’s phone, and wow! it works. However, when Elliot meets a guy called Chad who is working on her parents' cranberry farm, she begins to question why she was warned against him. There are some funny and unexplained moments about the future communicated through their phone calls (“Basement, basement!” as air-raid sirens sound) and what started out as a fun, silly premise gets deeper and a little more devastating.

Podcasts

DCH: Four Years of New York City that Changed the World with Jonathan Mahler at Time To Say Goodbye by Time to Say Goodbye

This week, we have a long talk with an author we both have admired for a while, Jonathan Mahler. His new book, The Gods of New York: Egoists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990, is a chronicle of how a four year stretch in New York City laid down the groundwork for a new city, one that fully separated itself from its working class roots and any notion of civic unity for a fractured, polarized, and atomized city that gave rise to everyone from Donald Trump to Al Sharpton to Larry Kramer to Spike Lee. Really really good book and a great guest.

For fans of NYC and Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalisation. This is a great look at how neoliberalism took over NYC. And all the chaos that followed.

Videos

CJW: How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult

I don’t really care about any of the people discussed in this video - it’s obvious they’re reactionary/straight-up fascist pieces of shit and they don’t deserve a moment of attention - but the main thesis is interesting and seems spot-on. It talks about how Rogan, Musk, and similar figures have created their own hyperrealities to escape from our shared reality, which is how these people who aren’t actually that stupid can say, do, and believe such stupid things. Because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s the truth, they’ve made it their truth, and they’re being rewarded for it because their hyperrealities line up with the fascist quo. And it also explains why it’s so incredibly difficult to get people who have allowed themselves to become “followers” of these idiots to see the truth - that they’re just frightened manbabies desperate to maintain relevance in a world that more and more has no place for them unless they’re prepared to be less violent, more accepting, more progressive, etc etc.

The video is an hour and a half, which isn’t too bad as far as youtube video essays go…

CJW: How YOU can change the world through WRITING with Alan Moore

A nice, short one from Alan Moore here - looks like there are some others from the same BBC Maestro thingy if you want to track them down. He points out that the most important thing you can do as a writer is figure out who you are, and I have to agree. My writing has gotten significantly better since transitioning because I know who I am now, and have a better sense of what I actually want to say. So I guess my advice is… try Estrogen/Testosterone?

Music

LZ: Lástima - A Pain Bloomed from my Lungs

Found this band recently and have been obsessed. The way they blend black metal (or blackgaze, if you will) with screamo is the absolute chef’s kiss. It’s also beautiful how they always have a violin in their tracks, giving them such a melancholic vibe. And the name of the band is very interesting. I think in Spanish the word “lástima” can be used when you say “what a shame” or “what a pity” (que lástima), and in Portuguese we also have the same word, but I think it carries a more regretful feeling — as in, it’s always about how much of a waste something was, how disappointing, a let down. I love it! For more blackened songs, check the single Maldición de Sangre.

The Self-Promotion

MJW: I’ve got a new article up on the Tryst blog about zine-making. ‘How to Make a Zine’ does exactly what it says on the label. I had fun writing this one, a commission for the blog, and it made me want to make another zine, so give it a read and it might make you want to as well.