nothing here but amazon prime for fascism

issue 286 - 13th April, 2025

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here, my dear friends. For me, it’s been an intense couple of weeks since the last issue, but thanks to the rest of the team we’ve still got plenty to share with you here.

As ever, if you would like to support us, you’ve got a couple of options:

Another thing you can do to help spread the word is forward this email to someone you think might enjoy it.

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, visitor.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

An Ode to My Family’s E-Bike - Elizabeth Endicott at The Atlantic (via Sentiers)

Just the headlines:

By zapping seawater with electricity, scientists make a solid carbon-negative building material - Anthropocene Magazine (via Sentiers)

Geopolitics & Empire

DCH: ICE director says deportations should be run like ‘Amazon Prime for human beings’ By Marina Dunbar at The Guardian

Several speakers, Homan included, echoed the opinion of having a deportation system that is run like a business, with assurance that the Trump administration is depending on the private sector for completion of its mass deportation agenda.

Make no mistake: what they’re talking about here is essentially a slave trade. Round up immigrants, hand them over to the mass incarceration complex where they can be used as cheap labor for capital. We’re already seeing the broad strokes of that start to play out with Trump’s “deportations” to El Salvador’s CECOT: (via El Salvador And The Dark Lessons of Guantanamo by Spencer Ackerman at Forever Wars)

It's impossible for me not to see the shadow of Guantanamo Bay in so many cases of indiscriminate arrest and transfer to a horrific, lawless prison. Long before CECOT existed, people entered into the custody of the United States military at Guantanamo because foreign intelligence agencies dumped their undesirables there, or as the result of vendettas with people who used the U.S.' bounty offers to settle scores. Ironically, Trump's earlier plan to vastly expand Guantanamo's migrant detentions has stalled. But CECOT reflects an important difference that indicates the Trump people have learned from what the Bush administration perceived as a vast judicial overreach opposing Guantanamo.

“The government has not stated any legitimate foreign policy interest that is negatively impacted by Mr. Khalil but instead erroneously attributes prejudiced views to him for participating in the student encampment at Columbia University and speaking out against the United State’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The government has not met its burden and Mr. Khalil should be released.” Trump administration admits it’s trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil over his political beliefs By Michael Arria at mondoweiss
“Where do you bury a little boy’s leg?” By Nawel Abdallah at Protean Magazine

Just the headlines:

In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves - at Haaretz (Use archive.md to get around the paywall)
Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp By Meron Rapoport at 972 Magazine

Science & Space

DCH: Mars Attacks: How Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars threaten Earth by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith at The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.

When the people responsible for the Doomsday Clock say they’re worried about the geopolitical ramifications of Musk’s space ambitions, maybe it's a good idea to listen?

Just the headlines:

China’s SpaceSail is expanding where Elon Musk is stumbling By Lam Le at Rest of World
Space Pirates Are No Longer Confined To Works Of Science Fiction By Ryan Erik King at Jalopnik

Tech & Design

“It is dangerous to approach scientific and empirical questions such as climate change, heath or the environment with a political lens as left/right leaning,” Abeba Birhane, a senior advisor on AI accountability at the Mozilla Foundation, told me in an email. “The ‘both sides’ approach here is false-equivalence, like that of treating an anti vax conspiracy theorist on a par with a scientist or medical doctor. One is illegitimate and dangerous, the other driven by verifiable empirical evidence.” Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides” By Emmanuel Maiberh at 404 Media
Musk’s XAI deal offers unexpected win for X investors By Kurt Wagner, Katie Roof Los Angeles Times

Just the headlines:

YouTube removes 'gender identity' from hate speech policy by Taylor Lorenz
Zuckerberg on the Stand: The Trial to Break Up Facebook Starts Monday by Matt Stoller

Society & The Culture

DCH: What If We Made Advertising Illegal? By Kōdō Simone

Even as an advertiser (especially as an advertiser), I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change. More than lowering the price of eggs.

I mean, dream big right? The bit about advertising as free speech made me lol. There’s a litany of harms we’ve endured as a result of ads but ads are only the tip of the spear of capitalism.

CJW: Intersectional Antifeminism, or: What is a White Feminist, Anyway? - Talia Bhatt

Intersectionality, then, is a revolutionary theory that asks us to reckon with the reality of the multiply-marginalized woman on her terms, rather than picking and choosing the parts of her that are most useful or convenient to us. It uncompromisingly asserts that in order to effectively advocate for anyone, we must ensure that we are advocating for and listening to the most marginalized amongst us (who is usually a woman), instead of aiding in her epistemic burial.
And ever since its publication, no one has forgiven Crenshaw for making that point.

Another dense dose of highly-readable trans feminist theory from Talia Bhatt, this time on intersectionality and the ways it is used, abused, ignored, etc in order to serve those with more power.

Health, Cooking, and Related

DCH: DNA's real value: advertising, authoritarianism, apartheid by Edward Ongweso, Jr.

This shit has always been junk science. Genetic data’s real value is not in discovering new drugs or gene therapies, nor in revolutionizing primary care, nor personalizing medicine, nor reducing the cost of health. The real value of genetic data is not as a commodity or a business model of its own. The real value is as an input to existing models (e.g. advertising) or reactionary projects (e.g. bolstering police or immigration authorities in a fascist polity) or undermining public empathy for others (e.g. naturalizing hierarchies that justify coercion or domination or exploitation), all as part of the desperate attempt by the least among us (skull measuring freaks, apartheid lovers, libertarians ghouls, free market jihadis, new fusionists, etc.) are undertaking to save capitalism by purging it of recent half-hearted reforms in response to social movements over the years.

A great bit of writing by Ongweso predicated on 23 & Me’s recent bankruptcy announcement. If you have used the service then I’d definitely recommend–as have many Attorney Generals–deleting your account / data as soon as you can.

“We hear all the time, ‘I’ve never had allergies before, and now I suddenly feel like I have allergies,’ or ‘I feel like my allergies are getting a lot worse,’ and that’s because the allergic load is that much higher because of climate change,” Mendez said. Welcome to the Worst Allergy Season Ever By Umair Irfan at Wired (DCH: I’ve read elsewhere previously that this is pretty much a global phenomenon and not just a matter of US concern)
“The initiative would make it illegal for an insurance company to “delay, deny or modify any medical procedure or medication” suggested by a licensed physician in the Golden State, which could have serious consequences such as “disability, death, amputation, permanent disfigurement, loss or reduction of any bodily function,” the document stated.” Proposed California ballot initiative ‘Luigi Mangione Act’ would make it harder for insurers to deny medical care by Iman Palm at KTLA5
“Elon Musk and RFK Jr. have both recently posted their addled thoughts on bird vaccination, asserting that avian flu should just be allowed to rip through flocks, killing the “vulnerable” birds and leaving the strong, a kind of ketamine-warped and brain worm-inspired Great Birdington Declaration.” Bird Flu and Other Assorted Pestilences by Abby Cartus at Protean Magazine

America Is Done Pretending About Meat By By Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic

Labour & Economics

DCH: Turning the little screws by Brian Merchant

This is the kind of place that secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick is talking about when he makes the rounds on TV news shows trying to sell Donald Trump’s tariffs on China and the rest of the world. In one of the clips that went viral on social media, Lutnick enthuses to a CBS anchor about an “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones,” explaining how “that kind of thing is going to come to America.”

Trump wants to convert large swathes of America into Foxxcon Cities complete with suicide nets…

Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s By Dominic Preston at The Verge
California in settlement talks with Uber, Lyft over wage theft claims By Suhauna Hussain at The Los Angeles Times

Movies + TV

LZ - Scavengers Reign and Common Side Effects

I recently learned about these animated series created by Joseph Bennett, a Brazilian comic artist. I would never guess he was Brazilian from his name, but I guess we are stealthily everywhere. I haven't finished the series yet, but I can tell Scavengers Reign has a strong Moebius influence in its aesthetic, a bit of Josan Gonzales too, since it's about some kind of space colonization story. In that sense, it kind of reminded me of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis saga and Miyazaki for the creatures you find in the jungle. It's a very trippy series, and I would recommend watching it when you're high, although the themes are complex too. Common Side Effects seems to have the same references to drugs and hallucinogenics, but it's in contemporaneity, and it tackles the pharma industry, I believe. I would recommend these two series to those who liked Midnight Gospel too.

CJW: Scavengers Reign is easily one of the best pieces of SF to come out of Western film/TV in the last few years. The world and all its biological oddities, the designs, the characters… the show is fantastic, and it’s criminal that it was axed after 1 season.

DCH: “Common People” - S7E1 Black Mirror (spoiler-free review)

The first episode of the new season of Black Mirror is a return to form for the series and is easily one of the best of the entire run. Brooker’s writing bares its teeth in a way we haven’t seen since series 1 and 2 highlights like “The Entire History of You” and “Be Right Back.” The performances by Rashida Jones and Chris Dowd are impeccable and poignant–their love and affection for one another are absolutely believable as is the heartbreaking predicament they find themselves in.

Like the best of Black Mirror past, the anxiety and anger I felt watching it was so fever-pitched that we had to turn the tv off after it was done. Fucking hell we almost had to turn it off during. It hits hard and cuts deep.

Content warnings for anyone that’s ever been fucked over by the predatory for-profit healthcare system. Which is sadly altogether too many of us.

MJW: The White Lotus

I was actually less into this season’s storyline than I am in the rampant fan-theories about Walton Goggins’ and Amie Lou Wood’s insta love/insta feud.

Games

LZ - Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty DLC

So I finally finished the DLC after maybe more than a year since it was released? Warning for spoilers ahead:

The new plot and characters added to the game are quite interesting, and while it’s great to have Idris Elba playing the agent Solomon Reed, I don’t think he’s the most exciting addition. It’s mostly the character So Mi that adds a whole new layer to transhumanism, cyberpunk tropes, and the topics we are roughly introduced to at the original end of the game – the blackwall and the possibility of an even deeper, darker layer of the internet where tech blends with the supernatural, almost. It’s pretty much the idea that, after Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote, any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We are led to believe that So Mi is being abused by the government and corporations alike since she’s a very talented, genius netrunner. However… we got played, and she didn’t really want to help us in reality. Or at least that’s one of the four possible ends, the main one being giving her back to the NUSA and then accepting to get Johnny removed from your head. The caveat is that now you’re a normie: no chrome, no implants, no nothing. You were in a coma for 2 years and none of your lovers and friends give a shit about you anymore, except your fixer Viktor, who might be able to help you… Except he won’t.

So when you’re back in Night City, you’re just like anyone else, and you get beat up by some streetkids trying to rob you. That would never happen before; you were the bad guy, and you had all the chrome to smash those kids up. That’s the past now. But still, you meet Misty one last time before she leaves the country for good, and you’re faced with the reality that, yes, you are alive, but at what cost?

Of course, cyberpunk as a genre is pretty bleak on its own, and Night City is the representation of late capitalism in its gruesome reality, but the twist of it is the possibility of being something else other than the average Joe. No, the end of Phantom Liberty is like the fall of Icarus: you flew too close to the sun, and the only way out is living with no wings at all after you have tasted the sky. Honestly, that’s fucking depressing, and I hate it as much as I love it for being so damn grim and brilliant. Thanks, CD Red Projekt; you guys never disappoint (well, maybe only when the game was released with all the bugs, but that’s something else).

Music

LZ - Witch-house.com celebrates their 15th anniversary

I didn't even know they were still kicking, so this is great news! I should join the forum and keep an eye on what's going on in witchhouse these days. For those who don't know, I used to host an online radio show for witch house only back in the day, one called Hexcast. But I thought the movement was kinda dead after it started to blend with trap. I was wrong, and I'm happy to be wrong this time! So they are re-releasing the cassette for the witch house compilation for Akira, and they are also collecting tracks for a new compilation paying homage to The Substance.

LZ - ICEP3AK unplugged performance on a train

I like so much how bold these two are and how they have been confronting Putin for a long time now. I remember watching an interview in which they said they needed to leave Moscow because of political persecution since they had been longly supporting LGBTQ+ rights, opposing the war, and so on. The latest album has a very emblematic song about going to war, but the other tracks also speak of love and other gloomy feelings. This performance is beautiful both because Nastya's voice is simply angelic and because it's like adding a layer of dream and magic to such a trivial, blunt thing as public transportation. Love it.

CJW: DAMAG3 - PUT A LANDLORD iN A LANDFiLL

Maddison introduced me to this one - a trans femme rapper laying it down hard on landlords. Fucking yes. Check out her channel for more.

Just the headlines

What is Doomgaze? An introduction and the history of a heavy, ethereal underground genre

The Self-Promotion

LZ - New paintings up on my art Instagram account

I have been experimenting with mixed media recently, so I posted a few new paintings that mix watercolor with pen and oil pencil, but also another illustration using only regular pencil and a smudge tool. Take a look and please follow me there :)