nothing here but cute chaos

issue 279 - 19th January, 2025

CJW: It’s a big one this issue, so let’s get right to it.

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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, supersonic yellowjacket.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

DCH: L.A. Blowin’ In The Wind - Nathan Gardels at Noema

Long before widespread human habitation of the hills, mountains and canyons, the Indigenous Chumash named the San Fernando Valley “the valley of smokes.” That was because the chaparral-covered terrain that surrounds the flatlands there, like much of the rest of the now urbanized southern California landscape that stretches from the desert to the sea, burned every few years.

Make no mistake that the LA wildfires are a climate disaster but that’s not all it is. As with so many climate disasters, human greed and ignorance of nature lit the fires this time.

CJW: Yes, plant-based meat is better for the planet - Matthew Hayek and Jan Dutkiewicz at Vox

But years of research on the environmental impact of food make one thing clear: Plant proteins, even if processed into imitation burgers, have smaller climate, water, and land impacts than conventional meats. Apart from environmental impact, reducing meat production would also reduce animal suffering and the risk of both animal-borne disease and antibiotic resistance. The criticisms against the new wave of meatless meat appear to be more rooted in broad opposition to food technology rather than a true environmental accounting — and they muddy the waters in the search for climate solutions at a time when clarity is sorely needed.

I could drop a few more pull quotes easily, so if you have any questions about plant-based meat alternatives, they're probably answered here. Debunks all of the criticisms against plant-based meats, quite easily.

“As of Monday, almost 900 incarcerated firefighters have been deployed to fight the devastating and deadly wildfires tearing through Los Angeles County. In California, hundreds of incarcerated people help fight wildfires year-round, earning a maximum of $10.24 per day plus an additional $1 per hour during emergencies.” What it’s like to be an incarcerated firefighter - Natalia Mesa at High Country News
“The European Copernicus climate service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, as well as the world's hottest on record.” 2024 first year to pass 1.5C global warming limit Mark Poynting, Erwan Rivault and Becky Dale at BBC (DCH: New normal I’m afraid. Hope you enjoy burning.)
Hey Hey, Blinky Bill - Ayla Gard at Orion Magazine - CJW: One for Aussie millennials

Just the headlines:

Supreme Court allows Hawaii climate change lawsuits against energy companies to move forward - Melissa Quinn at CBS News

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: A Cease-Fire in Gaza Is Far From Enough - Seraj Assi at Jacobin

This is a deplorable deal, negotiated in bad faith. Calling it a “cease-fire” is misleading. It’s a pause in genocide to allow the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. It’s by no means permanent, merely a temporary pause in fighting with no guarantees that Israel would even adhere to the deal, especially since Israeli negotiators have insisted on keeping troops in Gaza as Israeli forces have continually violated a cease-fire agreement in Lebanon over one hundred times. (Israel’s long history of violating cease-fire agreements in Gaza is well documented.)

It's hard not to feel some joy and relief at the announcement of the ceasefire, but it would also be incredibly fucking naive to expect Israel to stop the genocide just because they've agreed to this deal. Best hope that "the international community" is more serious about forcing Israel to stick to this agreement than they've been about forcing Israel to follow international law.

Five Journalists in Gaza Reflect on Ceasefire Announcement - Drop Site News
The Gaza “Ceasefire” Deal and the Loopholes Netanyahu Could Exploit - Jeremy Scahill at Drop Site News
A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza - Brett Murphy at ProPublica
Biden & Trump take credit for Gaza ceasefire - Annelle Sheline at Responsible Statecraft (via Foreign Exchanges)

Trump’s success in achieving a temporary ceasefire and hostage deal, combined with the disastrous political effects of Harris’s unwillingness to break with her boss on foreign policy, both demonstrate the folly of Biden’s unconditional support for Israel. If Biden had used the United States’ considerable leverage to achieve a ceasefire, his party might not have lost the election.

We've known the whole time that the US had the leverage to enforce a ceasefire since the start, so it's infuriating to be proven right and to see it was Trump that made it happen.

Just the headlines:

The PayPal Mafia is taking over America’s government - The Economist

Tech & Design

CJW: Meta Now Lets Users Say Gay and Trans People Have ‘Mental Illness’ - Kate Knibes at Wired

In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”
In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.

According to some trans folk I know, Facebook hasn't been moderating according to their own policies anyway, but it's still shocking and a little scary to see them go mask-off and embrace hateful far right ideology like this.

Remember when we kinda wanted to see Zuck kick Musk's arse in the octagon? Now they are entirely on the same side. Hard to tell if Zuck is just desperately copying Twitter under Musk because he has no original ideas and can't think of any other way to keep users from abandoning his platforms, if he's a fair weather fascist, or if this is just him embracing his inner jackboot.

‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes - Jason Koebler at 404 Media

“I find it very hard to understand how explicitly carving out which groups of marginalized people can have what we otherwise classify hate speech directed at them will be beneficial for the communities we hope to build on our platforms.”
“This change is unacceptable on all levels.”
“Someone went into this policy and not only removed protection, they actually doubled down and made it explicitly okay. Absolutely wild.”
“I had to reread the policy language many times to believe what I was seeing—a very clear statement that we’re okay with people attacking others based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. I cannot begin to fathom why we think this is acceptable or helpful to our community and our company’s mission. I’ve never felt so strongly that we’re on the wrong side of history. This is going to cause so much harm. Please reconsider this change.”
“When I first joined this company, people would criticize me for working here all the time. I defended y’all time and time again, always anchoring that in the end we do try our best even if it doesn’t work out sometimes - but this? appalling.”
“I think it’s clear that the policy team is not open to any feedback here and is committed to an ideological project that sacrifices some of our communities in order to achieve their goal,” one employee wrote. “Just call me a tranny and close the discussion here. At least it would be honest.”

Brazil gives Meta 72 hours to explain new fact-checking policies - France24 - The rest of the world is being schooled by Brazil constantly. What must it be like to have progressive leadership? (Or worthwhile leadership of any sort…)
Sanism in anti-trans propaganda: it’s all about conversion therapy, stupid! - Maddison Stoff at Nonsense Newsletter
How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads - Tech Crunch

CJW: Copyright-free images - John Coulthart

People keep using AI slop to illustrate articles, newsletters, books, etc. Guess what? You don't need that shit. There is so much copyright-free art and photography out there. At the above link, John Coulthart shares a whole list of resources. One for artists and designers to bookmark.

Related: Public Work - Here's another one I saw people sharing on sosh that i didn't see on the above list.

DCH: Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook by Jason Koebler at 404 Media

In the last day, “Liv,” has gone particularly viral because the bot is a particularly offensive caricature of what a gigantic corporation might imagine a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller, your realest source of life’s ups & downs” might be like and post about. In one slideshow post from February 2024, Liv’s AI children have blurry faces and fucked up hands in one photo, are completely different children with a darker skin tone in the next, and, in the final photo, are white and blonde and are watching a “movie” that is made of chalk drawn on the wall. Liv, a fake person, also posts about helping her community by “leading this season’s coat drive,” which, again, “she” did not do.

Why pay out influencers when you can just make your own? We recently talked about the fake porn influencers overtaking Instagram. Consider this the boring SFW version.

"For months, Meta has been restricting content with LGBTQ-related hashtags from search and discovery under its “sensitive content” policy aimed at restricting "sexually suggestive content.”" - Instagram blocked teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months by Taylor Lorenz (DCH: Platforms often conflate LGBTQ+ content with “adult” content as means to censor it. Should come as no surprise IG does the same.
"But brain rot is not just a linguistic quirk. Over the past decade, scientific studies have shown that consuming excessive amounts of junk content — including sensationalist news, conspiracy theories and vacuous entertainment — can profoundly affect our brains. In other words, “rot” may not be that big of an exaggeration when it comes to describing the impact of low-quality online content." The effects of ‘brain rot’: How junk content is damaging our minds - Facundo Macchi at El Pais
“The relationships we have built with computers over the years have never been without ambiguities and tensions. Nicolas Nova further complicates the human-machine perspective by presenting us with some of its most enigmatic characters: trolls, ghosts, Trojan horses, Roko’s basilisk, Shoggoths, sprites, daemons, etc. We thought they belonged in the past, in folklore and in fantasy books. Not in the rational Western societies we live in. These creatures have left Mount Olympus and Scandinavian forests to enter our mobile phones and laptops, showing us that modernity can still coexist with the otherworldly.” Monsters and wonders inside our machines - Regine Debatty at we-make-money-not-art.com (DCH: A lovely farewell to the brilliant Nicholas Nova who passed away recently.)
"What concerns me most isn't whether the labs are right about this timeline - it's that we're not adequately preparing for what even current levels of AI can do, let alone the chance that they might be correct. While AI researchers are focused on alignment, ensuring AI systems act ethically and responsibly, far fewer voices are trying to envision and articulate what a world awash in artificial intelligence might actually look like." Prophecies of the Flood - Ethan Mollick at One Useful Thing

Just the headlines:

Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M - Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica (DCH: Your privacy is worth roughly $20.)
Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users - Joseph Cox at 404 Media
A $30M plan to take back social media from billionaires - Taylor Lorenz (DCH: an open-source scheme backed by Cory Doctorow amongst others)
Government Sites Across the U.S. Are Awash in Hardcore Porn - Nikita Mazurov at The Intercept

Society & The Culture

CJW: Is Accelerationism the Same Thing As Falling in Love? - Spike Magazine

Hopefully, when we present this to people – “here’s the philosophical account of the core dynamic of what accelerationism is … and it’s exactly the same thing as falling in love or being cute” – we’re throwing a spanner in the works of all these stupid ideas about accelerationism – that it’s all to do with making things worse, or destroying humanity, or bringing forth the great singularity, or whatever. It’s accelerationisms in the plural that are actually what’s interesting; what type you build just depends on where you think the points of ingress of the future are.

A fantastic interview with Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic about their new book Cute Accelerationism. Anyone want to send me a copy of the paperback? That would be very cute.

DCH: There is No Safe Word - Lila Shapiro at Vulture

Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’”

Content warning for rape and sexual assault. It took me days to get through this article. Gaiman stands accused as a rapist. Palmer reads as complicit. More info here.

DCH: Fatbergs turned into perfume - inside Britain's bizarre new industrial revolution - Pallab Ghosh at The BBC

In a gleaming laboratory in Edinburgh, robotic machines whirr and mix. The final product that they are creating will be a pine-smelling chemical that can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. But the starting point is very different: a brown, gloopy, fat mixture, recently fished out from below ground - fatbergs.

I can’t think of a more emblematic metaphor for UK industry. Maybe human methane mining? Should I stop giving them ideas?

CJW: Sometimes I love our stupid, fucked up future.

CJW: The Question Has an Answer - Talia Bhatt

A simple look around at the current state of affairs should clue in even the most tuned-out of us to the blindingly obvious: liberal feminism is fucking dead. It failed to protect abortion rights, it failed to meaningfully issue a challenge to patriarchal rape culture, and absolutely fucking failed every single trans person.
This is not a eulogy. It is not fanfare at witnessing the doddering, shambling corpse of this ideological dead-end finally collapse. It is an autopsy, an accounting, and first and foremost a reckoning with a feminist project that sought to liberate women while refusing to take into account the male-supremacy endemic to patriarchy.

Talia Bhatt is always required reading.

“Clothes aren’t fashion anymore; they’re infrastructure. Gen Z doesn’t pick outfits—they select tools to navigate the modern world. Puff jackets and sneakers aren’t stylish; they’re functional default settings. In a globalized system where aesthetic diversity is crushed by mass production, these items are the universally compatible operating system for human bodies. Practical, unobtrusive and designed to work in any environment, these clothes are less about identity and more about surviving the interface of late-stage capitalism.” Portable comfort and commodified rebellion: the rise of frictionless conformity - Pascal Wicht at Whispers & Giants (via Sentiers)
"This was not the first time Welch had interactions with police. He pleaded guilty in March of 2017 to federal charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and transporting a firearm over state lines in the incident that has come to be known as “Pizzagate.”" "Pizzagate" gunman killed by Kannapolis police after he pulls gun on officer - Elisabeth Strillacci at Salisbury Post
Trans representation isn’t trans liberation - Kai Cheng Thom at Xtra

Health, Cooking, and Related

“Today, regulators at the FDA announced that they are pushing forward with a rule that would dramatically limit how much nicotine can go in a cigarette. The average cigarette nowadays is estimated to have roughly 17 milligrams of the drug. Under the new regulation, that would fall to less than one milligram. If enacted—still a big if—it would decimate the demand for cigarettes more effectively than any public-service announcement ever could.” America Just Kinda, Sorta Banned Cigarettes - Nicholas Florko at The Atlantic
Three Years On, West Virginia HIV Outbreak Lingers - Taylor Sisk at undark (DCH: Driven largely by local politics effectively outlawing needle exchange programs which are proven to work in terms of curtailing the spread of HIV.)

Labour & Economics

DCH: what the fuck are we doing anymore - Kate Wagner at The Late Review

The crux of my argument is this: the tools we have used to make our living are no more in any meaningful or honest way. The only available path they will provide us is one of further atomization, barbarism and weaponization. Hence, to me, what has emerged is a new cycle of proletarianization: staff jobs are eliminated, writers go independent on platforms like this one — if that’s even still possible anymore — all while legacy publications pick up, as freelancers making way less money, those people who are already popular on these platforms.

One writer’s breakdown in a great personal long-read. I’m sure many of us can relate.

“According to a new analysis from the hiring platform Greenhouse, about one in five jobs posted last quarter was a “ghost job.” Greenhouse found that on average, between 18 and 22% of jobs posted online would classify as “ghost jobs,” meaning one that was published online, but no hiring activity was ever conducted for it.” One in five job postings is fake, according to a new study - Ben Kesslen at Quartz (DCH: Legit surprised it’s not a higher figure.)

Just the headlines:

Assessing the Recent Strike at Amazon - Luis Feliz Leon at Jacobin
The Video Game Industry Is Unionizing - Tom Smith at Jacobin

Books

MJW: It by Stephen King Audiobook

I’m doing a big relisten to some Stephen King audiobooks at the moment. While every Daddy King book has its own (extremely) problematic thing going on, I still enjoy the writing as well as the performances in the audiobooks. Steven Weber’s narration of It is phenomenal, a bit of a masterpiece even. If you’ve got 45 hours to spare, it’s a sound investment of the time. I recommend listening while doing chores, you’ll find that you suddenly have deep cleaned the kitchen while listening to the adventures of the Losers Club as they dodge bullies and go in search of It. Next on the list is Misery, narrated by Lindsay Crouse, who you may remember from her turn as Professor Walsh in Buffy.

Movies + TV

DCH: David Lynch has died

“I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he’s gone. David, I remain forever changed, and forever your Kale. Thank you for everything.”

Kyle MacLachlan’s farewell to David Lynch is staggeringly beautiful and poignant.

LZ: Metalhead (2013)

I watched this movie again after the first time, possibly about 12 years ago when it was released. It is an Icelandic movie about a family of farmers and how they lose a son after an accident in the field, the boy being a metalhead. They never really discussed or dealt with the grief, so the way the sister managed to deal with the loss was to follow her brother's steps and become a metalhead herself, learning to play the guitar and so on. But there is so much hurt and anger, she doesn't feel part of the community despite them being sort of nice to her. Metal is an obsession for her and no one else seems to care that much, and some think this is only her way of coping with grief… however, it turns out that this is who she is, and trying to change would only make her even more sad. I really like this movie, it made me cry again, but the end is actually happy, heart-warming even. And the theme song is s i c k.

MJW: Sweetpea

Fallout and Yellowjacket’s Ella Purnell is Rhiannon, a person so mousy and invisible that it’s almost painful to watch her every interaction. That is, until she starts killing. I feel weird describing it as ‘fun’, but it kind of is, in a ‘this woman is a serial killer’ sort of way. I saw one review that called it ‘a vicious spin on the coming of age formula.’ Watch if you aren’t too fussed about the sight of blood.

Comics

CJW: 20th Century Men

Front cover of the 20th Century Men trade paperback, showing the main character sitting pensively in his tank-like power armour, corpses littering the ground around him.

When I first saw 20th Century Men, I thought it must have been either a sequel or homage to the manga 20th Century Boys, which I only read a handful of volumes of, so I just kind of forgot about it for a while. But, now that I'm about halfway through the collected story, I can say it's easily on of the best new comics I've read in a long time. It has the narrative density of the best Vertigo titles - covering an alternate history Cold War powered by superscience and supersoldiers, making it a sort of spiritual successor to The Winter Men, which if you've read it you'll know is a big compliment. I was surprised that when I looked up Deniz Camp he seems to only have a few other credits to his name. I had assumed it was written by a veteran with 20 books under his belt already. It's that bold, that confident, and that good.

The artwork by Stipan Morian is sublime, almost painterly, emphasised by the richness of its colours, and the lettering by Aditya Bidikar is expertly crafted to suit the varied voices followed throughout the story. Run, don't walk, to your nearest comic/book store.

Music

LZ: Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God - Chapter 1

All right, I know Manson is a piece of shit, but I listen to and love black metal… I'm not the best in following ethical artists or at least artists who are also good people. There's actually a book about that which I want to read called Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?... but anyway.

His new album is brilliant. I was craving the old Manson stuff for years. His last releases were also cool, but something was missing… something definitely present in this new album, especially in the “main” track – As sick as the secrets within. There's even a video for it, proving that he's back to 90s/2000s vibe, something between Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, Holy Wood, and The Golden Age of the Grotesque.

It is also great that he is also bringing his other side as a painter, the album cover being one of his artworks and this being featured in the music video. IDK, I'm just glad I'm having this new revival of what made my adolescence less shitty in a moment where I need to get better. I hope any readers enjoy his comeback as the Manson we liked when we were younger.

The Self-Promotion

CJW: All My Guns are Trans and Gay and They're Ruining My Fucking Life

What if the space marine from a 90s shooter was sent to kill an alien god-ship and the only help he had was from a polycule of sentient, gay and trans guns?

This is the first collaboration that Maddison Stoff and I worked on together is now available free to read on her Patreon. Tomorrow we have something big, and very different, coming out, but you can check this one out right now.

CJW: Exopunk's Not Dead

You might have read this story before as it’s appeared in both A Punk Rock Future and The Big Book of Cyberpunk, but here it’s available to read online (or you can buy the hardcopy of Radon Issue 9).