CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here, your fortnightly dispatch of the now.
I wrote our latest bonus issue Wandering the Icelandic States of America, about Death Stranding, its timeliness and not, climate change, and accidental socialism. Quite by accident I posted it on the anniversary of the game’s release, so (to celebrate?) I thought I’d unlock the bonus so anyone who’s played the game, or has been thinking about playing it, can have a read. For future bonuses and access the full archive, just go here to become a supporter. Unlocked bonuses are here (and I unlock new posts every couple of weeks, so it’s worth keeping track of).
The Team
Corey J. White (CJW) - Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back. Naarm/Melbourne.
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - Author. I’m also this guy. Your fabulous goth aunt. Living and working on Wurundjeri land.
m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / ecopoet // Dark Extropian Musings / pryvt.rsrch
Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Articles
CJW: Trump Proved That Authoritarians Can Get Elected in America
I suspect that the Republican leadership is sanguine, if not happy, about Trump’s loss. It’s striking how quickly Fox News called Arizona for Biden, and how many Republican leaders have condemned the president’s rage-tweeting and attempts to stop the count. They know that Trump is done, and they seem fine with it. For them, what’s not to like? The Supreme Court is solidly in their corner; they will likely retain control of the Senate; House Republicans won more seats than they were projected to, and they are looking at significant gains in state Houses as well, giving them control over redistricting for the next decade. Even better for their long-term project, they have diversified their own coalition, gaining more women candidates and more support from nonwhite voters.
I don't expect much good out of a Biden presidency (while recognising that of course a second Trump term would have been its own brand of nightmare), but for anyone tempted to celebrate, this is an important piece on the future of American electoral politics. Celebrate now if you want to, but don’t stop paying attention to the machinations of the powerful, and don’t stop fighting for the rights of those the status quo would neglect or even murder.
We’re approaching (ever more) difficult times, and there will always be bigots, fascists, authoritarians and others desperate to steer us down a worse path for their own ideological reasons and/or their own material gains.
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DCH: US ELECTION 2020 The Trump Shadow Presidency Begins
The ‘Make America Great Again’ President will leave office with his army of 200 million social media followers and near editorial control of the country’s most watched cable news network, Fox News – platforms he will likely use around-the-clock to second-guess, ridicule and undermine Biden. Trump was an attention-seeking television celebrity before entering politics and he will return to that role once out of the Oval Office.
And that doesn’t even take into account how dangerous he can be in the 11 weeks he has left as President. One, unexpected and maybe unlikely, saving grace we may have is that he will lose his “public interest” protections on Twitter come January. Trusting Jack Dorsey and team to do the right thing though…
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DCH: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health
What once sounded like progressive pipe dreams—decriminalize it, legalize it!—is now increasingly interpreted as simple common sense, and not just when it comes to cannabis. [...] On Tuesday, Washington, DC, voted to decriminalize psilocybin, and Oregon’s voters approved two landmark reform measures—Measure 109, which legalizes psilocybin therapies, and Measure 110, which decriminalizes personal possession of drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids.
In addition to the above, other states like New Jersey, Arizona, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Montana all voted to piss on Nancy Reagan’s grave. Long overdue.
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CJW: Patriotwave's Boogaloo: Engineering an Aesthetic of Violence (via Ahmet A. Sabancı)
The specific kind of content they post is important, because it creates a ‘sameness’ and a framing of values, thoughts, and political platforms and beliefs shared across the group. These are ‘deep memetic frames’ that are manifested within the group and bleed into their offline and online lives as actual beliefs. “Deep memetic frames” are a descriptor created by Ryan Milner and Whitney Phillips to explain how memes and movements create “sense-making orientations to the world" which "shape what we know, what we see, and what we’re willing to accept as evidence"… "establish the identity of the bad ‘them,’ as opposed to the valiant ‘us,’ and prescribe what can or should be done in response." Phillips was using this framing specifically in a Wired article to talk about the dangers of QAnon, but it can be applied to Boogaloo bois as well.
Herein I learned the reason behind the name "Boogaloo bois." Unicorn Riot have been doing a lot of interesting research into, and analysis of, internet-based far-right movements, and this piece does a great job of outlining the boogs in particular.
DCH: Courtesy of my pal Caroline Sinders and company. Caroline’s fantastic and does important work. Well worth a follow.
Also worth your time ICYMI the last time we shared it is this great read about influences like Little Miss Patriot are selling Qanon to suburban moms via domestic aesthetics.
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DCH: Why Is Post-COVID China Embracing A Cyberpunk Aesthetic?
Cyberpunk has reemerged as a total lifestyle aesthetic for Gen Zers in China. Dreadlocks, silver eyeshadow, shiny clothes, neon colors, and high-tech-inspired photo filters have infiltrated the country’s magazine covers, luxury campaigns, trendy cafés, and social media. While the West remains gripped by the fear of a second-wave epidemic, increasingly clinging to lowkey designs, China’s fashionistas have moved in the opposite direction through techno glamour.
I can't shake the feeling this article was written by a GPT-3 process fed on a diet of Gibson and chunks of Infinite Detail and Repo Virtual.
CJW: This is kinda cool, but also kinda depressing. A big part of why I wrote Repo Virtual was to recontextualise cyberpunk in/for the current moment. But the current moment insists on a cyberpunk aesthetics divorced from the anti-capitalist/anti-corporatist ideology inherent in much of the cyberpunk canon (indeed, you could say the movement discussed in this article is anti-anti-capitalist), which makes for just another vapid avenue for consumer culture and/or cultural consumption.
MKY:something something NEO-CHINA has arisen? Would like to think that somewhere, in a corner of the net the censors haven’t found yet, some brave souls are making nailhousepunk a thing. ‘Cause this is so very far from what Cyberpunk is, but definitely what it’s meant to be rebelling against/hiding out from. Ie it’s the High Tech part, where are the low lifes? (The crumbling west probs.)
CJW: Cross nailhouse (it doesn’t need the punk suffix because on its own it sounds like a genre of noise music) with cli-fi/solarpunk - holdout nature reserves defended by high-tech low lifes against the encroaching systems of Capital.
MKY: NOW WE’RE TALKING.
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CJW: Capital and COVID: Why the Left Needs Disability Liberation (via Inhabit)
It goes almost without saying Republicans take a perverse glee in the brutality of capitalism, seeing it as people “getting what they deserve.” Democrats take pleasure in feeling superior to that sadism and stop there, without bothering to do any actual good. I’ve had conversations with Democrats where they (rightly) point out the party defends against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But Democrats also oppose Medicare for All (or any other single-payer system) and an end to the means testing that forces disabled people into poverty.
On disability, capitalism and Marx, and the failures of our society to adequately consider disability and access issues. There's definitely parallels here to stuff we've shared before, but I thought this piece does a great job of outlining and connecting those issues in a clear and concise way.
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CJW: Seize and Resist | Thea Riofrancos (via Inhabit)
“Deglobalized capitalism” verges on an oxymoron. Since its dawn in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Indigenous dispossession, the profit logic exerts a centrifugal force; the drive to accumulation is a spatially totalizing one. Whatever might be possible in theory, actually existing capitalism has always relied on the globally uneven cheapening of labor and nature, the sacrifice of far-flung lives and ecosystems at the altar of relentless production, and the constant expulsion of populations alternately surplus and super-exploited.
On the (unlikely) end of globalisation, and the planetary mine (ie. The planet as a mine for capitalist enterprise), as well as other related topics. This piece by Thea Riofrancos is both a review of Arboleda's Planetary Mine, published this year by Verso, and a worthwhile essay in its own right.
Landscapes and labor are intimately tied together: the same built environment transformed by capital-intensive extraction and its supporting logistical infrastructures brings into being the “collective laborer,” an internally heterogenous organism comprising engineers and domestic workers, coders and truck drivers who reside in a segregated landscape of gleaming towers and polluted shantytowns.
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CJW: Un-Fracking Futures (via Sentiers)
If our decisions and actions reduce the options space available to those in the future, they’re objectively bad. We’re strip mining the potential of the future.
Especially if we think about the context of climate change — increasingly the only lens and context I think of as relevant at all, as a livable planet is a pre-condition for just about any societal thriving at all — we need to consider irreversible damages done.
Echoes some thoughts I've had and some other things I've read, but I can't remember what I've shared here before… On futurism, the future, and the way rampant capitalism is stealing from the future to fuel this system of inequality we find ourselves living under.
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DCH: San Diego’s spying streetlights switched “on,” despite directive
Thousands of streetlight cameras were supposed to be disabled this fall, the Voice of San Diego reports, but there is no software switch for doing so. In lieu of disabling the cameras, the vendor responsible for them at the time instead simply cut off the city's network access to the devices.
We’ve written about big tech surveillance before. This example takes the cake in terms of just how blatantly Orwellian it is. San Diego will literally be plunged into darkness unless they opt-in to constant surveillance.
Related: Exclusive: Spyware firms in breach of global sanctions
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DCH: The Vulnerable Can Wait. Vaccinate the Super-Spreaders First
Even if a targeted strategy works as designed, it can lead to outcomes that feel morally questionable. Let's say you've got one course of the vaccine and two people to choose between: Candidate 1 is a college student who doesn't social distance, wears his mask slung beneath his chin, and plays beer pong all weekend at underground frat parties. Candidate 2 is his 87-year-old widowed grandmother, who lives on her own and has barely been out of the house since March. If your goal is to protect the more vulnerable person, you should vaccinate grandma. If your goal is to reduce transmission, you should vaccinate the frat bro. From society's perspective, he's a jerk; from the network's, he's a hub.
Long read here but worth your time.
Movies + TV
CJW: Spring
The other week I watched Spring, which is by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who also did the fantastic The Endless (which we talked about a while back). It's about a newly-orphaned guy in his early 20s, who uses his inheritance to get a flight to Italy, and finds himself in a sea-side town that is quiet when it isn't being beset by drunken British and American tourists. He soon falls head over heels for a local woman, which is where things start to get interesting.
I don't want to say much more beyond that, because the real strength of the film is the way it slowly unfolds in such a way that you're never really sure where it's going to go next until it goes there. The same story in the hands of a different writer could have become something schlocky and unambiguous, but all those obvious paths are left only in your mind as you're watching, and then quickly dismissed as the movie continues on with more interesting ideas.
My only complaint about the movie is that it feels the need to explain its science a little too much, where I think less would have been more. I won't say more than that, but if you go and watch it (and I recommend it), you'll probably know what I mean.
MKY: i love that weird ass lovecraftian italian holiday movie SO MUCH, and can’t wait to see their next one, hopefully at a freshly re-opened drive-in even. As the gods intended.
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CJW: Sputnik
Sputnik is a new Russian sci-fi movie, set in 1983 with delightfully Soviet design and costuming. It's about a cosmonaut who returns from orbit unable to remember what happened prior to his landing - but it's soon revealed that he didn't return alone. Every night (unbeknownst to the drugged cosmonaut) a symbiotic alien creature emerges from his gullet, and is slowly acclimating to local conditions. Tatyana Klimova is a psychiatrist (perhaps?) tasked with trying to help the cosmonaut survive this ordeal and finds herself bonding (against better judgement) with both the man and the alien within him.
Unlike Spring, this one is a little obvious in the back half, but I still really enjoyed it, and wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Hollywood remake in the next few years.
URL
CJW: The Pleasure Principle — on ethics & desires | by Vex Ashley | Nov, 2020
We absolutely do need to make room for more realism and especially diversity in the porn we most commonly encounter but to eradicate artifice altogether is to give up the idea that good sex on film can be anything and say anything more than un-curated documentation. Instead of rejecting fantasy and performance, it can be expanded. More voices, more ideas, exploring the potential of sex on film in both a more real and more allegorical way. Making more exciting and varied work possible rather than simply swapping the constraints of tradition for the constraints of ‘authenticity’.
Really interesting speech given by Vex Ashley at a recent festival (link is text, not video), about sex, pornography, desire, ethics, and the quashing of legitimate expression by social media corporations who want everything to be sex-free even while their platforms are used to promote violent rhetoric and real life violence.
And it ends with some words I think are important considering the state and trajectory of our society:
[...] in a world that feels often at the moment like it’s burning, it can feel selfish, vacuous or even, unethical, to focus on sex and pleasure. We’re often encouraged in times of turmoil to minimise our desires, to expect less. But experiencing and investing time in joy, can be a radical act. Treating your body and your life as one worthy of pleasure reminds others that theirs are too. To desire is to be alive, we can’t just accept passive existence we have to push to really live and to explore all the messy, wonderful complexity that that brings.
Technocapital would reduce us all to automatons working for their ever-increasing profits. Pleasure can remind us we’re human, and push back against their dehumanising tendencies. (And if me mentioning “technocapital” makes you roll your eyes, then you haven’t been paying attention to Amazon the past few years.)
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CJW: Subscriber City — Real Life
Cities have always been unequal, of course, but this has always been tempered by the time it took to reassess the value of land, years-long lease contracts, and the legal rights of tenants and homesteaders. The subscriber city would offer no such refuge: It would be able to wall off parts of the city on the fly without changing the physical landscape. Individuals would be unable to predict the behavior of doors, queues, and prices, as these would be subject to the whims of platform owners. One could be anywhere and suddenly find oneself outside looking in.
A great essay on walled gardens, user data and privacy, the loss of the online commons, and related topics. Some great dystopian speculation going on here too (and not at all unrealistic, either).
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CJW: PegLeg (via Ospare) & They call me doctor leech... (via Ed at Restricted Academy)
Wanna become a mobile file sharing node? Want pet leeches? Then golly, do I have some links for you…
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CJW: Decision Trees
On the potential uses of machine learning tools to help guide/sculpt/"think" our way to a better ecological future.
If Mark Fisher proposed “Terminator vs. Avatar” as the two competing futures Hollywood imagined — representing the technological singularity and the return to an untainted nature, respectively — what Bratton posits is a synthesis: an emerging artificial intelligence that is bent not on monomaniacally murdering humans but on modeling planetary systems and mastering the subtleties of as-yet-undiscovered forms of biosemiotics.
Every section of this piece is filled with interesting research and speculation, like a paperclip maximizer for forests… Seriously, this is sparking all kinds of fiction thinking for me.
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DCH: The complex web that links the new administration to tech, visualized
If politics is all about people, the tech industry might be set for an excellent four years. Analysis by Protocol shows that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their teams have close and sprawling links to the industry, with almost all of the major tech companies represented in some capacity.
Lots of talk in the media about Biden/Harris potentially getting tough on big tech. Worth exploring the connections the incoming administration has with Silicon Valley. Might need to wait for President AoC to get out those guillotines.
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DCH: My Little Crony
A visualization of the connections between Tory politicians and companies being awarded government contracts during the pandemic, based on reporting by openDemocracy, Byline Times, and more.
Terrific work by Sophie Hill. She’s well worth a follow on Jack Dorsey’s hell-site.
Comics
Are you fed up with how conservative and reactionary superhero comics are? So is leftist comic book writer and wrestling podcaster Aubrey Sitterson. If an interracial pair of himbo brothers beating up cops and landlords sounds like your bag then consider pledging today.
Music
CJW: Zeal & Ardor - Wake of a Nation EP
Another great EP from Zeal & Ardour - the first track in particular is a powerful response to 2020.
Art
DCH: Deep Reckonings
Deep Reckonings is a series of explicitly-marked synthetic videos that imagine public figures having a reckoning. The public figures include: Brett Kavanaugh wrestling with the way he responded to the sexual allegations against him; Alex Jones grappling with his spread of deceitful conspiracy theories; and Mark Zuckerberg confronting his techno-utopianism.
Fascinating work from Stephanie Lepp. Using deepfakes for good.
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DCH: The Witch in the Lab Coat
Reconciling the worlds of science and witch(craft) requires digging up the history of gender, class and racial suppression, which are often intersected within the brutal trajectory of colonial and techno-capitalist advance, including biomedical.
Great interview with Whitefeather Hunter by Reginne over at We Make Money Not Art. Hunter arrives at her art through a transdisciplinary practice involving art, storytelling, biomedical research, feminist theory, and more. Definitely check it out.
The Self-Promotion
CJW: On a recent edition of Alasdair Stuart’s fantastic positive pop-culture newsletter The Full Lid, he mentioned Operation Adopt-a-Book. To read on, click the button below.
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MJW: Book review: Money for Something
A nice and generous review for Money for Something in an Adelaide indie news outlet.
Money for Something is expansive. The book is a meditation on drug use and mental illness; an account of sex work that is generous and intimate and funny; and an ode to the women Mia Walsch met along the way. Yet with Walsch’s good humour and generosity, it never feels too much. It sits comfortably in its vastness.
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DCH: Responsible Data
Taps mic. Is this thing on? I’ll be part of a panel / fireside chat on data responsibility.
In an increasingly online world, our definition of responsibility must change with the times. Beyond carbon reduction, fair pay, and D&I, a responsible business must include a responsible data practice. It’s more important now than ever to de-risk your product strategy from costly interventions caused by future data and privacy regulations, and get ahead of the curve.
If that sounds like your bag then why not register?
CJW: And that’s it for another issue. Should keep you busy for a while, no?
Here in Melbourne, the weather is getting warmer, and our infection numbers are staying low, so I’m looking forward to venturing out into the world to see friends and have a few drinks. Though I’m also interested to see exactly how bad the anxiety of socialising is after all these months without. What a weird fucking year, huh? And it’s not over yet.
Infection figures in the States are looking very fucking worrying, so look after yourselves, good people. And look out for each other.
Think you know someone who’d appreciate what we do here? Then…
Cutting Room Floor
Ballard in the Rear View (by and via Joanne McNeil) DCH: coincidentally I’ve been on a Ballard jag lately too, Up next for me is the recent High Rise adaptation by Ben Wheatley starring Tom Hiddleston.
9,000-Year-Old Burial of Female Hunter Upends Beliefs About Prehistoric Gender Roles
Secrets of the ice: unlocking a melting time capsule rescue archeology, it’s a thing.
An Asteroid Trailing After Mars Could Actually Be The Stolen Twin of Our Moon fuck you Mars.
A Huge Fusion Experiment in The UK Just Achieved The Much Anticipated 'First Plasma' at this rate we’re gonna have fusion power stations on a dead planet, just in time for the Bunker Era
Virgin Hyperloop transports first passengers in its levitating pod cool bunker2bunker transport tech bros
Haunted radio (DCH: Another fun read from Matt Webb)
VR Furries Are Now Running Around The Four Seasons Total Landscaping
Grant Morrison Surveys the Situation In “The Age of Horus” (via Ospare) - and he possibly identifies as non-binary? Or at least he recognises that he might have if the language was more prevalent when he was younger.
Grampians protection plan: Rock-climbing sites could be closed, dingoes, quolls could be reintroduced the headline should really be: DINGOS AND QUOLLS AND MORE OH MY, MAY SOON BE ROAMING THE GRAMPIANS
Australian researchers find native grasses could be grown for mass consumption local crops for local people? Or at least fancy local restaurants for the local elites and their friends…
Just Stopping Emissions May No Longer Be Enough to Stop Global Warming