nothing here but deadly slop

issue 294 - 20th July, 2025

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here, we’re glad to have you.

As ever, if you like what we do and would like to support us, you can do so with either of these links below:

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. Meme collector.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, impossible light.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse - at Intellinews

A major ocean current in the Southern Hemisphere has reversed direction for the first time in recorded history, in what climatologists are calling a “catastrophic” tipping point in the global climate system.
[...]
The ICM’s data show that the flow of the DWBC current reversed from northward to southward for several consecutive months in 2023 — the first such event in 30 years of continuous monitoring.

It’s a bit more nuanced than the headline suggests, but also:

There has been a lot of speculation that the whole AMOC (otherwise known as the Gulf Stream), could come to a halt. The AMOC brings warm water to Europe from the equator, and when it stops flowing that will lead to a mini-ice age in Europe with winter temperatures dropping by 10-30C. While scientists are 98% certain that the AMOC will stop flowing by 2100, recent studies suggest that the collapse could come as soon as this year, or at least in the next few decades.

But hey, the people with all the wealth and power are going to be dead before that happens, so let’s keep riding high on the fossil hog.

MJW:

A screenshot from The Simpsons of Ralph Wiggum sitting on the school bus. The text reads: (chuckles) I'm in danger.

DCH: Cultivating Well-Being On A Damaged Earth - Nils Gilman at Noema

>Given the predicament of the Anthropocene — of global pandemics, industrial pollution, cascading biodiversity losses and the climate crisis — Antonovsky’s concept of salutogenesis has an augmented relevance. What if the most salient factors shaping health today lie not within the atomized individual or even their immediate social milieu, but in the fractured, volatile relationship between our species and the Earth system itself?

A fascinating read on the theory of planetary salutogenesis. First put forward by Aaron Antonovsky decades ago, the idea is gaining new advocates.

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: 'Like a video game': Israel enforcing Gaza evacuations with grenade-firing drones - 972+ Mag

In the reports, all Palestinians killed were listed as “terrorists.” However, S. testified that aside from one person found with a knife and a single encounter with armed fighters, the scores of others killed — an average of one per day in his battalion’s combat zone — were unarmed. According to him, the drone strikes were carried out with the intent to kill, despite the majority of victims being located at such a distance from the soldiers that they could not have posed any threat.
“It was clear that they were trying to return to their homes — there’s no question,” he explained. “None of them were armed, and nothing was ever found near their bodies. We never fired warning shots. Not at any point.”

Anyone insisting on Israel's right to "defend itself" as justification for this genocide is either stupid enough to believe the propaganda, or hateful enough not to care. I fucking hate that this is still ongoing. That we the people have been speaking up, and it doesn't matter. All that's done is given our increasingly fascist governments an excuse to crack down on protest (which they were already doing in regards to environmental protest, because imperialism is behind genocide and extractivism).

CJW: Insoumission - Tariq Ali interviewing Jean-Luc Mélenchon at New Left Review

An empire is only an empire if it can maintain control of certain resources, and this is precisely what is playing out today. The US has decided to redraw the map of the Middle East, using Israel as its instrument and ally. It knows it must reward Israel for this work, and this takes the form of support for the political project of a Greater Israel, under which the Palestinian population in Gaza and elsewhere must disappear. If Europe and the US had wanted to stop this war, then it would have been limited to three or four days of Israeli retaliation after October 7th. Instead, it has lasted more than twenty months. So no one can say that the Americans don’t know what they’re doing, as some have said. What’s happening in the region is all deliberate, planned, organized jointly by the US and Netanyahu.

Starting with the Middle East before moving on to the war against China the West is seemingly desperate for, and other, interrelated geopolitical issues. Ends with a lot of talk about French politics, which I'm less interested in…

Just the headlines:

Children queuing for supplements killed in Israeli strike in Gaza, hospital says - BBC News
ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court - The Intercept
Trans People Have Disappeared From ICE Records, Against Congressional Orders - The Intercept
Over 100 Trans Inmates Presumed Dead After an Israeli Airstrike “Flattened” an Iranian Prison - Abby Monteil at Them - CJW: The genocide of Palestinians is directly linked to the genocide of trans folk, particularly in the UK and US.

Tech & Design

DCH: Deadly Slop - Sophia Goodfriend at The Baffler

Yet many of these essays also strike me as incomplete. Slop is certainly characteristic of our present political moment, in which tech moguls are capitalizing on AI applications that allow creators to flood social media platforms with AI-generated content. But slop is also the correlate and counterpart of contemporary war. Across the world, rising authoritarians are hurtling into intractable military conflicts with the assistance of artificial intelligence, which is busily churning out both an endless supply of questionable military targets and low-grade memes—a deadening and deadly mess of synthetic material saturating battlefields and content streams alike.

Israel and other countries using AI to help target people don’t care about pesky things like accurate data or truth or precision. War only cares about scale.

DCH: New UN report reveals the companies getting rich off Israeli occupation and genocide - Jonathan Ofir at Mondoweiss

Military tech surveillance is a big part of the Israeli colonialist displacement regime. Israeli companies such as the NSO Group have built a global market for their surveillance technology, but the report also names several well-known international corporations and outlines their roles in supporting Palestinian displacement. These include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Palantir. [DCH note: also Anduril.]

Obviously there are more than just tech companies profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza but I wanted to draw special attention to them nonetheless. This report is obviously a big part of the reason why the Trump administration has sanctioned Francesca Albanese. Gotta keep those silicon valley billionaire donors happy!

CJW: Digital Eugenics and the Extinction of Humanity - Émile P. Torres at Tech Policy

[Philosopher Derek Shiller] concludes that we should then “engineer our extinction so that our planet’s resources can be devoted to making artificial creatures with better lives.”
We must call this out for what it is: pro-extinctionism. The biological transhumanism of Thiel and the digital eugenics of Altman, Faggella, Yudkowsky, and the others—all of these views aim to supplant the human species with some kind of successors, which would then proceed (on the most popular view) to plunder Earth’s remaining resources and launch itself into space to conquer the universe. This is overtly pro-extinctionist, and given that some of the most powerful people in one of the most powerful centers of society—Silicon Valley—accept it, we must conclude that pro-extinctionism is not a fringe ideology, but closer to the mainstream.

A good piece summarising the anti-human philosophy behind the AI transhumanist push.

Just the headlines:

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features - The Guardian
AI coders think they’re 20% faster — but they’re actually 19% slower - David Gerard
Grok Is the Latest in a Long Line of Chatbots To Go Full Nazi - Nikita Mazurov at The Intercept

Society & The Culture

CJW: The Yoorrook Justice Commission has found genocide occurred in Victoria. Here's what it says needs to happen next - ABC News

After more than four years and over 1,300 submissions, Australia's first Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry has handed down its final report.
It has found the First Peoples of Victoria have endured crimes against humanity and genocide since the beginning of colonisation in Victoria — and they are still being impacted by systemic injustice today as a result.

Countries in the global north refuse to recognise Israel’s genocide against Palestine and Palestinians, because then they would have to reckon with their own histories, which goes against the nationalist myths they’ve all built themselves upon. So we need more of this. More indigenous-led truth-telling, with enough backing from the rest of the populace to force the government to act.

CJW: Two Days Talking to People Looking for Jobs at ICE - Yanis Varoufuckice at n+1

The motivating force behind American career fascism would appear to be wanderlust. My conversations with prospective Enforcement and Removal Operation officers tended to follow the familiar script of engagement with the most banal people on Tinder, the kinds of people who post airplane emojis in their bios. Granting that the banality of evil, as an explanation, has itself become banal, it was hard to know what else to make of all this. The US is filled with “pretty nice guys” who are ready to inflict, who have already inflicted, senseless and life-shattering violence on innocent, impoverished people.
[...]
This is a disgusting country, I thought, irredeemable visually, psychically, morally, and ethically, and whatever is likable about our people’s warm patter does not in any way forgive what we have done to the world. Furthermore, it isn’t hard to bring politeness and evil into view at the same time.

God, fuck every one of these people (except the pseudonymous reporter and the single protestor). Willow should run off the job and let (some of) the problem sort itself out… you'll know what I mean when you read the piece.

Just the headlines:

DHS Tells Police That Common Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’ - Wired - CJW: The US descent into fascism continues. All power to the protectors.
Cultural theory was right about the death of the author. It was just a few decades early - Henry Farrell

Health, Cooking, and Related

Just the headlines:

Tireless health workers keep rural telehealth alive despite USAID cuts and poor internet - Jesmin Papri at restofworld.org
UnitedHealth’s Campaign to Quiet Critics - David Enrich at NY Times

Labour & Economics

DCH: AI-Driven Worker Displacement Is a Serious Threat - Holly Buck at Jacobin

In her new book, Empire of AI, Karen Hao describes OpenAI and other power players as empires: during colonialism, empires seized and extracted resources, exploited subjugated labor, and projected racist and dehumanizing ideas of their own superiority and modernity to justify the exploitation and the imposition of their world order. The metaphor resonates. But Hao maintains that at this pivotal moment, it’s still possible to “wrest back control of this technology’s future.”

Empire of AI is a good read. Highly recommend.

Just the headlines:

Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood’s AI Civil War - Steven Zeitchik at The Hollywood Reporter

Books

LZ - The Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This is the kind of book that they say every woman should read. I don't know, but I bought it last year and started reading it slowly. It's not a very easy read, even though I am used to academic books. This one is not necessarily academic, but it's written by a PhD in psychology, and her focus is mostly on Jungian psychoanalysis and mythology/folklore narratives. So she takes several tales as examples to talk about womanhood, maturing, being in contact with your wild self, liberating yourself from culture and sexism, connecting to spirituality, and ancestrality.

I liked most of the book, especially the first chapters and the analysis of the story Sealskin, which talks about love and death (surprise, surprise!). The last chapters were a bit more tiresome, in my opinion, which made me think that the book is unnecessarily longer than it needs to be.

LZ: The Book of Forgotten Witches, by Balázs Tátrai and Lilla Bölecz

I bought this book thinking it would be a collection of stories about lesser-known witches, but it's more about folklore around the world — some more known than others, depending on how much you're into the topic. The book is very beautiful, hardcover, and has many great illustrations by Lilla Bölecz.

The content is organized in categories that are also connected to the alchemical stages (nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo) and related tarot cards. Every part also contains some short stories that retell certain tales and involve actual people (Elizabeth Bathory, Isaac Newton, etc).

These stories were a bit confusing to me because I couldn't tell if they were really folklore or just fiction written by the authors, based on folklore, but they are very enjoyable nevertheless. Props to the inclusion of Matinta Pereira, a Brazilian witch/folkloric creature, but boo to the misspelling of her surname (they wrote Perera).

Movies + TV

LZ: Sandman Season 2

I'm not the best one to review this series because I didn't read the comics, but what a delight to have a new season to watch. I binged it and finished the six new episodes in two days, but there are more coming up on the 24th. I love it so much. The actors, the photography, the universes, and the messages there. During the first season, for some reason, Desire's actor made me cringe a little, but now I think they are BRILLIANT, and I only noticed now that they have a tattoo that says “gender” but it's crossed out on their chest. I also love that Indya Moore is in the series, too. She's so beautiful and such a great actress!!!

MJW: I think it’s wrong to support the IP of monsters like NG. I’m not going to separate the art from the artist, because the art just makes me think of sexual assault now. Some artists have done irredeemable things and have ruined their beautiful creations with their disgusting behaviour. I don’t want to play the killjoy here, but watching this show lines NG’s pockets. He is now using his wealth to legally attack his accusers, and I refuse to contribute in any way to his continued abuse of them.

MJW: Murderbot

I’ve always thought Alexander Skarsgaard was a lil robotic (in a cute way) so the role of Murderbot is a good one for him. This is a fun series with short, sharp episodes. I identified with Murderbot hating all humans, wanting nothing but to watch brainless media at all times, and being really bored. I used to work in Customer Support and was accused of being a bot at least once a week, so maybe we really do have quite a lot in common?

We watched the first five eps of this in a binge. I won’t say the show itself feels like it’s doing anything revolutionary, but it’s a fun and easy watch. I especially like John Cho’s turn as the ship captain on Murderbot’s favourite soap, Sanctuary Moon.

Music

LZ - Plastic Tree

It's my birthday on July 13th, and inevitably, as a Cancer, I get nostalgic around that date (or I'm simply like that all the time, honestly). Back when I was a teenager, I used to listen to this Japanese band all the time, only them, all day, every day. It was a time when I still used Soulseek and they had those chatrooms for genres, and there was one for Japanese indie rock. Nowadays, Plastic Tree is much bigger and has signed with a bigger label, but back then, it was a bit more “niche”. It was J-rock and sort of visual kei, but not Dir en Grey or Malice Mizer. Perhaps closer to BUCK-TICK, but they were much bigger too.

Anyway, I wanted to say they were simpler times, but they were just as shitty as ever, and that's why their music and universe “saved” me during my teenage years. I would immerse myself in Livejournal and save hundreds of prints of their photoshoots for fashion/music magazines because they were all the same in the case of J-rock. I think K-pop is a similar thing nowadays, but it's pop, obviously.

This used to be my entire aesthetic goals back then hehe!

Plastic Tree had this nostalgic vibe, with the singer Ryutaro Nakamura dressing in androgynous or childish clothes with a gothic aesthetic. Nothing glamorous like Moi Dix Mois, though. They were heavily inspired by The Cure, and there's even a sort of cover of Iron Lung by Radiohead. But, for me, my “theme song” was Planetarium, my dream universe was the clip for Kuuchuu Buranko (which apparently became “viral” on TikTok at some point?), and the song that struck me right in the feels was Gentou Kikai. I even started learning Japanese and cosplayed Ryutaro back then, so it was indeed a big part of my life when I was 14/15. Obviously no one knew what the fuck was I dressed as at conventions haha.

Anyway, here are some songs and video clips for you to get the vibe:

Aoi Tori - all the childish and circus themes featured here
Spica - more recent song, with lyrics in English
Nerveless Smile - demo song from 1995 or so. Only tr00 fans know these haha
Melancholic - classic Plastic Tree, songs with sad names and a somehow upbeat melody
Thirteenth Friday - the trivia is that I was born on a Friday the 13th, so when they released this song, I went full delulu thinking it was a sign lmao
Chiryuku Bokura - oh, the good old days of white creepers!

LZ - WE HAVE DREAMS! 13 Bands Spitting Raw Sonic Emotion - Sean Reveron for CVLT Nation

Sean started this piece with this:

I write this from a place pain and joy. I write this from a place of knowing that even in my darkest days the sun will shine. I write this from a place knowing that being in touch with my emotions is not something I should be ashamed of.

Thanks for that, man. And like Sean, I also came in late to the emo and screamo party. Back in the day when the genre was popular, I refused to like or listen to it. It was a statement because, at least in Brazil, anyone who wore black and makeup would be taken as emo, whereas I always saw myself as goth and listened only to metal or then, shoegaze like Plastic Tree. But now that I am 35, this sort of music resonates so much.

I was never ashamed of being in touch with my emotions; I just did it with gothic metal instead, but now emo and screamo are filling a void that is both nostalgic and sentimental, so learning about these new bands is refreshing and welcoming. Extra points to the fact that these bands have young members, so it seems teenagers and the youth are back to emo and making great music!