nothing here but dicks in space

issue 144 - 25th July, 2021

CJW: Welcome, welcome. You'll notice below that I've decided to replace the Articles, URL, and Data Viz sections with topics. That way you can home in on the subjects you're interested in and skip over the ones you aren't. It makes so much sense I don't know how I didn't think of it before now.

If you would still like to support the work we do here, and gain access to the full bonus archive, just go here to become a premium subscriber. We appreciate any and all support. And if there’s someone who you think will appreciate the newsletter, please forward this to them.

The Team

• Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey

• m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / ecopoet // Dark Extropian Musings / pryvt.rsrch

• Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Professional reject. This is my doom vent.

• Corey J. White (CJW) - Brain sturgeon.

• Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts. Sci-fi writer, futurology researcher and essayist. @lidiazuin

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: Our climate change turning point is right here, right now - Rebecca Solnit at The Guardian

A building collapsing is an ideal specimen of news, sudden and specific in time and place, and in the case of this one on the Florida coast, easy for the media to cover as a spectacle with straightforward causes and consequences. A crisis spread across three states and two Canadian provinces, with many kinds of impact, including untallied deaths, was in many ways its antithesis.

The idea of a turning point, and the implication that we can latch on to one now to come to grips with climate change, is nice, but I don't know that it's necessarily a useful narrative. Solnit compares America's recent extreme climatic events to the apartment building collapse in Miami, and the media reactions to both, but there's no suggestion (in this piece or that I've seen elsewhere) that the attention on the building collapse will lead to any substantive changes or repercussions for the parties at fault (and in that way only is the comparison apt). Similarly, what changed in London housing after the Grenfell Tower fire? What changed in US gun culture after Sandy Hook?

Turning points might sound useful, but without a state willing to push back against the interests of capital (and thus their own economic interests), or without a people's movement, the so-called turning points alone won't change anything.

Related: How to Live in a Climate 'Permanent Emergency' - David Wallace Wells at Intelligencer (via Sentiers)

I know there have been a lot of warm-up acts and preshows, but it really feels like the climate apocalypse said ‘WELCOME TO THE BIG SHOW’ this week,” the poet Saeed Jones wrote on Twitter. “This moment will be talked about for centuries,” the meteorologist Scott Duncan predicted. But will it?

[...]

What worries me more, as an avowed alarmist, is not that dire warnings inspire leaders and potential activists to give up but that, in shifting our expectations, they encourage us to count as successes any merely catastrophic outcomes that fall short of true apocalypse — and make us see what should be freakish showcases of climate horror nevertheless on a continuum with “normal” rather than as signs of profound ecological disjuncture. Adaptability is a virtue, or at least a tool, in a time of cascading environmental change like the one we are stepping into now. It is also a painkiller or a form of climate dementia.

Covers the recent IPCCC leak and the piece by Sarah Miller we shared last issue. As ever, DWW on climate change is must-read, and this definitely feels like it's in conversation with the above.

MJW: Who knew that the human race would ultimately be defeated by weather. I'd like to say I didn't see that one coming, but I really, really did.

For an Australian perspective on climate change, Jane Rawson and James Whitmore's The Handbook: Surviving and living with climate change is excellent.

MKY: i for one am definitely heartened by the continued excellent governance in the world as we enter a series of neverending, interrelated crises and take comfort in knowing that the very best people are on it. That our institutions have been fortified. That our scientists are guiding policy. That the market’s place is in the market and nowhere else. I mean, right?! If they weren’t we’d be like, obligated to do something about it..?

DCH: Towns and cities from Erftstadt, Germany to Zhengzhou, China are underwater. Lytton, British Columbia was scorched off the map. Baby birds of prey are killing themselves to avoid extreme heat on the US West Coast. Fires in Oregon are so large now they’re generating their own freak weather. Nowhere is safe.

Hell, there are weather apps now that report on your likelihood to survive heatwaves. Too little, too late for another "turning point" we just won't listen to.

//

CJW: Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs - Damian Carrington at The Guardian

The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb, scientists have confirmed for the first time.

The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.

Most of the emissions are caused by fires, many deliberately set to clear land for beef and soy production. But even without fires, hotter temperatures and droughts mean the south-eastern Amazon has become a source of CO2, rather than a sink.

thisisfine.jpg etc etc. Obviously it’s horrible what Bolsanaro has allowed to happen to the Amazon since he took office, but I also don’t know what people expect under capitalism. Globally people condemn Bolsonaro and Brazil, but are any other nations stopping their own domestic deforestation? Not as far as I’m aware (we’re certainly accelerating here in Australia). Finger-wagging at Brazil, or paying them to stop, won’t make any sort of impact because people still need to eat, and corporations are still driven to maximise profits. Maybe we save the Amazon but at the cost of an equivalent amount of deforestation elsewhere.

Short of global socialist revolution, we won’t see significant change unless we do something drastic, like literally put a price on elements of our natural world (I'm not actually advocating for that, it's just the first thing that came to mind). Because the almighty dollar is sadly very fucking almighty in this current moment, and we don't take environmental factors into consideration when pricing so many of our cheap goods (hence why they're cheap).

//

• Exxon Admits Capitalism Created The Climate Crisis - Nathan J. Robinson at Current Affairs - CJW: Good follow-up to the report we shared last time.

• Men have a bigger carbon footprint than women, thanks to their appetite for cars and meat - Hannah Ryan at CNN

• Are We Prepared for Pandora’s Box of Climate Catastrophes? - Simon Whalley at Common Dreams

• ‘Wobbling’ moon will cause devastating worldwide flooding in 2030s, Nasa warns - Nick Allen at The Telegraph

Geopolitics

DCH: There Is No Silver Lining to South Africa's Zuma Insurrection - Benjamin Fogel at Jacobin

South Africa is not a normal country. Almost half of the labor force is unemployed; the number rises to 76 percent for young people, who have no hope for their future. South Africa has the highest inequality rate in the world, with extreme wealth living next to extreme poverty. It is a country in which violence, state dysfunction, and broken services are normal. It is a country that lacks a strong opposition party, despite the fact the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government is no longer able to govern.

This is the best read I’ve found that sheds a light on the terrible situation in South Africa. It’s a perfect storm of factional politics, ethno-nationalism, social deprivation, and lack of credible leadership and vision. South African democracy is on fire.

South Africa finds itself in this crisis due to the never-ending factional drama of the ANC. While President Ramaphosa preaches unity, his fellow party members are burning down the country. This is closer to Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel’s strategy of “narcoterrorism”: escalating violence against the Colombian government to avoid extradition, rather than a “color revolution” or classic military coup.

//

DCH: One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps - Tahir Hamut Izgil at The Atlantic

The Chinese government’s mass internment of Uyghurs was in full swing. This campaign had begun in Kashgar, Khotan, and other predominantly Uyghur parts of southern Xinjiang. Now it had reached Urumqi, the regional capital, where our acquaintances were regularly disappearing. Every day, hundreds of Uyghurs who had moved here over the decades—finding work, starting families, buying houses, coming to consider themselves locals—had been shipped out to concentration camps known as “study centers.” Nearly everyone I knew from the labor camp where I’d been imprisoned two decades earlier had already been rearrested. My turn would clearly come soon.

An inside look at the Uyghur genocide in China that is well-worth your time. Izgil has escaped for the time being and is now in America currently seeking asylum. Given Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net how long he remains free remains to be seen.

//

• Were Haiti's Capitalists Behind the Assassination of President Moïse? - Interview with Kim Ives at Jacobin

• Letter from Delhi: Trolls will enforce India's new media censorship laws - Aman Sethi at Coda

• Israeli Settlers and Military Made Joint Attacks on Palestinian Villages - Yuval Abraham at The Intercept

• The Controversial Prosecutor at the Heart of Julian Assange Case - Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept

Science & Space

LZ: If You Transplant a Human Head, Does Its Consciousness Follow? - Max G. Levy at Wired

Remember when Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain was released and there was a cameo of a doctor that looked just like Sergio Canavero, that guy who promised to be making a head transplant? Well, all those aboard the hype train have found a dead line because this really didn’t happen -- for good, I guess? But Canavero is just one more to the list as Levy points in this article about the book “Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher” by Brandy Schillace which addresses the work and research of surgeon Robert White. Yes, during the Cold War, this guy was making head transplants on monkeys, but the question that still begs is: even if the surgery was successful, does consciousness follow?

MKY: these are the questions! Also, can I legally acquire this kray Vietnamese action movie that was like, ‘Face / Off times ten fused to the "ordinary guy with crazy skills" conceit of the first Bourne film and the visual aesthetic of The Man From Nowhere.’

//

DCH: Jeff Bezos eyes space as a new ‘sacrifice zone’ - Justine Calma at The Verge

Long before rich, white men were catapulting themselves into space, they approached whatever was the “frontier” at the time with dollar signs in their eyes and destruction in their wake. As a result today, land sacred to the Shoshone and Paiute tribes was designated a nuclear dump site in Nevada. A rural stretch of land along the Mississippi River, where formerly enslaved people and their descendants made their homes, became Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” after more than 150 refineries and petrochemical facilities moved in.

Nothing here but dicks in space. If Bezos cared about “this beautiful gem of planet” he wouldn’t advocate for space tourism and it’s terrible environmental impacts. If he cared then he’d do something about Amazon’s dirty shipping problem. Or maybe not exploit workers so badly that they miscarry on the job? It’s a real shame they let the bastard back on to Earth.

//

• Mexico, Brazil, Denmark, Australia and the US — hard sciences are under attack around the world - at Coda - CJW: It's sad but unsurprising that Australia is on the list of countries where science is being attacked for ideological reasons (I was going to say "ideological and economic," but same-same).

• Leave the Billionaires in Space - Paris Marx at Jacobin - MKY: I need to get the Overview Effect Enforcement Agency band back together again.

• Lithium Landscapes - Samir Bhowmik (via Sentiers)

• What Asthma Triggers Matter the Most?

• Exploding stars may have assaulted ancient Earth

Tech & Design

DCH: The Inevitable Weaponization of App Data Is Here - Joseph Cox at Vice

"Experts have warned for years that data collected by advertising companies from Americans’ phones could be used to track them and reveal the most personal details of their lives. Unfortunately, they were right," Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement, responding to the incident. "Data brokers and advertising companies have lied to the public, assuring them that the information they collected was anonymous. As this awful episode demonstrates, those claims were bogus—individuals can be tracked and identified."

If you want the TL:DR: A rightwing homophobic Catholic Substack outed a potentially gay priest based on Grindr data. Said priest was forced to resign. Oh and plot twist: this was the same priest that was going to deny Biden communion and shit.

The real story, of course, is that there is no such thing as anonymised data and there never has been. Not really. Companies like Grindr sell users' data. Companies like Facebook sell access to users' data. Smart data brokers can buy that data and do whatever they want with it.

If you haven’t already by now then at fucking least turn off location services.

//

• Luxury Surveillance - Chris Gilliard and David Golumbia at Real Life Mag

• 20% of Americans believe the conspiracy theory that microchips are inside the COVID-19 vaccines, says YouGov study - Bethany Dawson at The Insider

• The gig economy’s dark-money, astroturf “community groups” - Cory Doctorow

• The danger on our devices - Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review

• Dogecoin Co-Creator Says Crypto Is 'Right-Wing, Hyper Capitalist' - Jordan Pearson at VICE

• Is It My Body - Lauren Collee at Real Life

• What is Pegasus spyware and how does it hack phones? - David Pegg and Sam Cutler at The Guardian (part of The Pegasus Project)

• How does Apple technology hold up against NSO spyware? - Alex Hern Stephanie Kirchgaessner at The Guardian

Society & The Culture

LZ: Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online - Sarah Manavis at NewStatesman

Recent heat waves in Canada and in the US have killed dozens of people, but this is nothing new. Maybe the novelty is that this is also happening in the global north, after all, African farmers and Bangladeshis have already migrated due to climate change before. And as much as fascism is rising basically everywhere on Earth, no doubt environmentalists need to deal not only with negationists but also eco-fascists. In this article, Manavis gives us a glimpse of what this movement is and how it could connect to other philosophies.

CJW: I'm a bit wary of the way Manavis ties eco-fascism directly into anti-Semitism and overt white supremacy, only because I think eco-fascism is broader than that (but this piece is from 2018, so maybe the author's views have changed since). I have no doubt that liberal states will easily integrate eco-fascism into their governance without having to embrace that sort of overt racism (I say "overt" because globally so many of our systems are based on white supremacy even as governments and corporations publicly condemn racism). As the effects of climate change accelerate, it will be "they are using too many resources”, "they are having too many children”, "we need to look after our own people before helping them over there”, etc etc - whatever justifications they need to make in order to leave the world's poorest and most at risk to their fate (that we made). That rhetoric can, and indeed already does, exist under liberalism.

//

LZ: Mamoru Hosoda: 'Japanese anime has a problem with women and girls' - The Japan Times

I used to like anime back in the day, but contemporary character design has been making it too hard to enjoy. Of course there are exceptions like Attack on Titan and this is nothing new if you consider Evangelion -- in fact, it took me a while to finally watch the anime due to the first episodes full of fanservice and that cringey Shinji boy. Anyways, here is an interview with Mamoru Hosoda, a Japanese director that was posed to be Miyazaki’s successor, but in the end he criticizes the way female characters are portrayed in anime. Father of a girl, he wants to write empowering female characters and not keep feeding this fire for lolis. Must check his latest title, BELLE.

//

• The Delta Variant Is Surging in Missouri - Ed Yong at The Atlantic

• ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients - Dennis Pillion at AL.com

• The Olympics Could Be a Covid-19 ‘Super-Evolutionary Event’ - Adam Rogers at WIRED

Labor & Economics

CJW: Jeff Bezos Thanks Workers Who Pee in Bottles for Paying for His Space Trip - Edward Ongweso Jr and Jordan Pearson at Vice

There's a direct line between Amazon's sprawling logistics empire, its inhumane working conditions, and the wealth that has flowed into Bezos's coffers and was burned in the Blue Origin suborbital launch. Bezos was able to go to space because Amazon pushes workers so hard that they miscarry, pass out in heat waves, work ten-and-a-half-hour graveyard shifts called “megacycles,” piss in bottles and defecate in bags, and much more.

I’m sure Bezos didn’t think he was referring to wage theft and other ways that inequality is entrenched within the workplace, but it sure sounded like it...

DCH: I also don’t think he was looking to revive Marxist theories of surplus value but hey, we live in strange times. Oh and yeah Edward Ongweso Jr is one of my fave journalists covering this beat. If you’re not already doing so you should give him a follow on Twitter.

//

DCH; MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. - Nafeez Ahmed at Vice

“Given the unappealing prospect of collapse, I was curious to see which scenarios were aligning most closely with empirical data today. After all, the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s, and by now we’d have several decades of empirical data which would make a comparison meaningful. But to my surprise I could not find recent attempts for this. So I decided to do it myself.”

We’ve reached the point in late-stage capitalism where even a director at KPMG is sounding the alarm. Herrington’s study shows economic growth halting in about a decade. And then of course declines in food production and standards of living. Have you started sharpening your guillotines yet?

//

DCH: Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price

“The economic power of these corporations enables them to wield huge political influence, so we have a system in which farmers are on a treadmill just trying to stay afloat. Basically there’s a handful of individuals in the world, mostly white men, who make money by dictating who farms, what gets farmed and who gets to eat. Consumer choice is an illusion; the transnationals control everything in this extractive agricultural model,” said Joe Maxwell, president of Family Farm Action.

The Guardian and Food and Water Watch reveal the harms caused by the monopoly power of Big Agriculture. Farmers driven to suicide in record numbers as they’re squeezed by diminished income. Food industry workers toiling away in conditions worse than they were decades ago.

Factory farming generates over 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Monocropping, runoff and other factors are now a threat to 85% of endangered species.

//

• I'm a Frito-Lay Factory Worker. I Work 12-Hour Days, 7 Days a Week at Vice

• Rituals of submission: Amazon’s creation of the neoliberal worker - Panos Theodoropoulos at Roar Mag

• Oregon sex workers advocate for decriminalization, in their own words - John Notarianni at OPB

• What happens at Sun Valley, the secret gathering of unelected billionaire kings? - Hamilton Nolan at The Guardian

• Asset strippers are preparing to feast on Britain’s COVID-ravaged economy - Laurie Macfarlane at Open Democracy

Movies + TV

CJW: Bacurau (2019)

I don’t want to say too much about Bacurau because I went in mostly blind and really enjoyed watching the movie unfold at its own pace. It would probably be best described as a grindhouse thriller, but it’s the characters in the town of Bacurau (and I do mean characters) and the ways they support one another that keep the movie grounded. So strap yourself in for a bit of the old ultraviolence, but in the lead-up to that, enjoy getting to know the townspeople themselves.

Definitely one for NH readers - decolonial, and socialist/anarchist, with memorable characters and a great soundtrack. If you need more convincing, the trailer is here.

LZ: Bacurau was definitely a surprise for Brazilians when it was released, especially because since 2018 we are living kind of a political nightmare with the election of Bolsonaro. I’ll be writing a more comprehensive paper about the subject in the following months, but basically Bacurau not only proved that we are able to make entertaining cinema: we are actually facing our own dilemmas through the metaphors of the movie. \ Here in Brazil we have this expression “mongrel complex,” which is basically about not being able to appreciate or feel pride about our own achievements -- everything that comes from other countries is definitely going to seem better no matter what. Bacurau plays with this concept by subverting it: even in the most distant village, with not so many educated people and with not much access to technology, the dwellers are still very (politically) conscious and will not accept “gringos” fuzzing around. Speaking of which, since we Brazilians love memes, I cannot finish this comment without tagging this viral video in particular.

Music

LZ: Lingua Ignota - PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA

I doubt I will ever get tired of praising Kristin Hayter. Two years after the release of the brilliant album CALIGULA, she comes back in all force and style. I love that she changed her Twitter name for “Sad Christian Mom” because it’s more or less the vibe that she has been after, especially now. She mentioned that this new album would be even more aesthetic, and I am loving it. It’s hard to tell what kind of music she does, although Last.fm has reached a consensus that it is industrial. No matter what it is, I truly recommend keeping an eye on her work and watching her live performances. Hope after the pandemic is over, I have a chance to attend one of her concerts!

//

CJW: Holly+

Holly Herndon has released Holly+ a digital twin that allows other people to make music and art using her voice model.

More details and a link to the tool itself at the link above. Also talk about a DAO - I’ve listened to enough episodes of the Interdependence Podcast that I should know what that means, but the best my brain can manage so far is “It’s one of those internet things that in 3 years time will either be everything or nothing.”

Art

CJW: ＭＩＭＩ ＣＨＯＩ (@mimles) (via Ganzeer)

A post shared by .

Some of this work really needs to be seen in motion.