nothing here but our unlikeable selves

issue 246 - 4th February, 2024

CJW: Welcome to the latest issue of nothing here. Today is gearing up to be 37 degrees Celsius here (98.6 F, apparently), so I'm struggling to say anything more than coherent in this introduction. But I'm glad you've chosen to spend some time perusing these links, recs, and opinions.

If you want, and are able, to support us, you’ve got a couple of options:

Both give you access to the full bonus archive, as well as new bonuses as they are posted. You can also help by forwarding this email to someone who might enjoy what we do, or posting the link to social media.

The Team

Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer & visual artist. Middle-aged greying goth.
Corey J. White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, glitch dreamer.

Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts.

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say - Jonathan Watts at The Guardian (via Sentiers)

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, [2023 and 2024] will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed,” [James Hansen] said.
“Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.”

Not surprising when last year really did seem to be marked by more and worse climate events.

“An alarming new paper published today in the journal Nature looked at available data on 1,700 aquifer systems worldwide and found that groundwater is dropping in 71 percent of them. More than two-thirds of these aquifers are declining by 0.1 meters (0.33 feet) a year, while 12 percent are notching a rate of 0.5 meters. (Think of this decline as like looking down into a well, then coming back the next year and seeing that the water level is 0.1 meters lower.) Nearly a third of the aquifers are experiencing accelerated depletion, meaning the decline is speeding up, in particular where the climate is dry and there’s a lot of agriculture that needs watering.” The World’s Essential Aquifers Are in Deep Trouble - Matt Simon at Wired
The Potent Pollution Of Noise - Jeffrey Arlo Brown at Noema

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: ICJ's Israel genocide decision: Historic victory for Palestinians and Global South - Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report

In short, one side – the Palestinian people, and its supporters in South Africa and most of the Global South – truly supports international law, whereas the other side – the Israeli government, and its Western sponsors – blatantly disregard and violate international law, while pretending otherwise.
Responding to the decision, the US State Department blasted South Africa’s allegations of genocide against Israel as “unfounded”, despite the fact that the ICJ stated that there is sufficient evidence for them to be investigated. That means they are the opposite of unfounded.

Worth reading the full article because, as ever, Ben Norton has done a fantastic job of gathering all the relevant threads in one place.

CJW: Defunding UNRWA Is Collective Punishment - Seraj Assi at Jacobin

Just one day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its killing of civilians in Gaza — ruling that the country may be violating the Genocide Convention — Western countries, led by the United States, halted funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, better known as UNRWA.
It was a stunningly punitive move, a brazen act of collective punishment amid widespread starvation in Gaza, where more than two million people depend on UNRWA for basic survival. UNRWA runs shelters for over one million people, providing food and primary health care to displaced Palestinians. About three thousand staffers, most of them Palestinian refugees, continue to operate in Gaza under relentless Israeli bombardment. (At least 156 UNRWA workers have been killed by Israel in the past three months, and Israel has also bombed countless UNRWA shelters and schools, slaying thousands of displaced civilians.)

Not only has Israel not ceased its attacks on Palestinians, now the genocidaires have found another way to harm desperate civilians, while also punishing the UN for daring to side with South Africa at The ICJ.

You can donate to the UNRWA here.

I also saw a report that Belgium is one of the only Western countries not to cut financial support for the UNRWA and so, just coincidentally I’m sure, Israel has bombed the building in Gaza where the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation was based.

"Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza has already killed over 24,000 Palestinians. But the environmental effects of the war — from pollution of groundwater and soil to destruction of Gaza’s olive trees — will have devastating impacts long after the bombing stops." - Israel’s Assault Is Making Gaza Unlivable - Joshua Frank at Jacobin
“Dozens of artists have joined the worldwide street art movement known as Unmute Gaza, which is harnessing creativity and community to call attention to Israel’s ongoing war. Supporting photojournalists, the campaign aims to shed necessary light on the devastation unfolding each day.” - Unmute Gaza Calls for Communities Worldwide to Uplift the Voices of Palestinian Photojournalists at Colossal - CJW: Art at the link.
U.S. Troops in Jordan Killed in Retaliation for American Support of Israel - Murtaza Hussein at The Intercept - CJW: Includes broader discussions about the region.
"This backstory tells us a great deal about how the U.S. views international law: meaning, the U.S. has complete contempt for it, and sees it purely as a tool that can sometimes be used against our enemies, but can never be permitted to apply to us or our allies like Israel." - Will the U.S. Block the ICJ on Gaza? It’s Thwarted the Court Before. - Jon Schwarz at The Intercept
“The right to mourn is only one among all the other rights that are deferred in the absence of the right to have rights. In the meantime, martyrdom sutures the political community ruptured by the colonizer’s state solutions. Regardless of whether the International Court of Justice recognizes the assault on Gaza to be a genocide, there is one lineage in Palestine that cannot be broken by Israel: Al-Qassam is a martyr, Ghassan Kanafani is a martyr, Shireen Abu Aqleh is a martyr, Hiba Abu Nada is a martyr, Refaat Alareer is a martyr, and every girl or boy killed in their home will have been martyred.” Palestine’s Martyrdom Upends the World of Law - Bassem Saad • proteanmag.com

Just the headlines:

Will the U.S. Block the ICJ on Gaza? It’s Thwarted the Court Before. - Jon Schwarz at The Intercept

Science & Space

DCH: Two Nations, a Horrible Accident, and the Urgent Need to Understand the Laws of Space - Khari Johnson at Wired

“A single American company—SpaceX, through its Starlink subsidiary—owns and operates more than half of the active satellites orbiting the planet today. In 2021, the director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, argued that Musk is effectively “making the rules” in space, squeezing rivals out of radio frequency allocation and open lanes in low Earth orbit. According to a growing contingent of advocates, academics, and officials around the world, this narrow dominance of orbit resembles something all too familiar: a colonial land grab. According to some scholars, it may even amount to a violation of the Outer Space Treaty itself.”

This was a fascinating read about the history of the Outer Space Treaty, repo robots in space, and how lawyers and jurists in the global south are standing up to the likes of Musk.

CJW: Related: Elon Musk’s Texas Takeover - Christopher Lee at Mother Jones

On Musk's agency capture, flaunting of various rules (particularly environmental ones), and the hoovering up of federal, state, and council funds that would be better spent on the community rather than as incentives to corporations who have no interest in providing more jobs or putting more money into the local economy than is absolutely necessary.

“But we are now entering a new period in which space launch is cheap and ever more open to nations, corporations, and private individuals. In this era, the United States is the major space power, and it is now pushing the most libertarian legal framework for in-space property rights.” Space Isn’t the Final Frontier By Zach and Kelly Weinersmith at Foreign Policy

Tech & Design

CJW: A New Lawsuit Shows How Recklessly Facebook Endangers Kids - Rob Larson at Jacobin

Not helping the case is recent reporting, led by the Wall Street Journal, on Instagram’s video feature, Reels, which is designed to maximize user interaction much like the rest of the online platforms. Starting with the simple observation that many accounts of young women influencers, like gymnasts or product reviewers, have large numbers of adult men among their followers, the Journal created dummy accounts to follow these same young women.
The dummy accounts were then encouraged by the algorithm to follow other adult users who post extensively about sex with adults and young people, and then shown video after video of adult sex, young people engaged in flirtatious activity, and ads for national brands. The paper’s reporters concluded that “while gymnastics might appear to be an innocuous topic, Meta’s behavioral tracking has discerned that some Instagram users following preteen girls will want to engage with videos sexualizing children, and then directs such content toward them.”

It will be difficult for Meta to top its promotion of genocide, but building a gymnastics to CSAM pipeline has got to come close.

DCH: The Downward Spiral of Technology by Thomas Klaffke at Creative Destruction

“The crucial thing however, is the approach! Solving climate change requires system change, solving inequality requires system change, solving racism requires system change, solving the mental health crisis requires system change…
The problem is not that the “machine” of humanity, of earth is broken and therefore needs an upgrade. The problem is that we think of it as a “machine”.”

Thomas Klaffke with copious references to Ted Gioia, Ed Zitron, and more on the unyielding wave of enshittification that has washed over modern software and hardware.

Just the headlines:

Elon Musk: $56bn Tesla compensation package voided by court - Mariko Oi at The BBC (DCH: Get fucked)
Tesla's in serious trouble - Paris Marx at Disconnect
Sam Altman's self-serving vision of the future - Paris Marx at Disconnect

Society & The Culture

DCH: The Life and Death of the American Mall - Matthew Christopher • Atlas Obscura

“The failure of larger anchor stores presented another catastrophic problem. The very size of malls became a liability: dead ends, darkened storefronts, and vacant corridors created eerie, lifeless pockets—and a death spiral. Fewer tenants, fewer shoppers, decreased income, more unkempt areas. Where an outdoor strip mall could simply tear down an underperforming section and build something else, malls were static islands surrounded by seas of asphalt. When online shopping grew, it stabbed a victim that was already bleeding out. The pandemic and inflation didn’t improve the situation, either. In the 1980s, there were roughly 2,500 malls in the United States. Today, there are approximately 700—a number most analysts expect to continue to decline.”

Given my age (50 in a few short days) it should come as no surprise that I spent a chunk of my youth going to, being in, and coming back from, malls. Yes their history is mired in racist social structures, yes their capitalism at its most crass and tacky but also yes to sneaking in and out of cinema showings, yes to the best arcades, yes to laughing at dumb shit at Spencers, and yes to food courts. I love these kinds of anthropological reads on malls.

CJW: Want to sell a book or release an album? Better start a TikTok. - Rebecca Jennings at Vox

“Authors are writing these incredible books, and yet when they ask me questions, the thing that keeps them up at night is, ‘How do I create this brand?’” says literary agent Carly Watters. It’s not that they want to be spending their time doing it, it’s that they feel they have to. “I think that millennials and Gen Xers really feel like sellouts. It’s not what they imagined their career to look like. It inherently feels wrong with their value system.”
Because self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream — working for yourself and making money doing what you love. The labor of self-promotion or platform-building or audience-growing or whatever our tech overlords want us to call it is uncomfortable; it is by no means guaranteed to be effective; and it is inescapable unless you are very, very lucky.

I don't really agree with the large chunk of this article about the "selling out" aspect of self-promotion because I’ve never considered self-promotion “selling out,” nor have I heard writers discussing it in those terms. I just hate all this brand building bullshit that writers, musicians, etcers are expected to do because a) social media self-promotion has a negligible effect, b) self-promotion itself seems far less effective than word-of-mouth (of course you're going to tell me your book is great and I should read it, but if someone/s else says it I might pay attention), c) the fucking publisher should be doing the promotion work - they have the money, and they make more from your work than you do - no matter how much they'd rather downsize their marketing department and outsource to you, and d) I want to be writing (and reading, and editing, and staring at the wall, and all the other writing-adjacent stuff), not learning (and often re-learning) how to manipulate various platforms for engagement.

So, yes, fuck the corporate outsourcing that has led to us having to do all this bullshit.

MJW: I wrote about this recently in an illustrated essay on the Tryst Blog. This attention economy bullshit relies on forms of social media that change rapidly. The loss of Twitter cost many people their audience, which means they need to ‘pivot to video’, and fuck that shit. I hate the churn that creativity has become. Plus:

If you're not likeable in video-length bites, or photogenic, or funny, then you're up shit creek.

"Multiple experts believe that extremism and conspiracy theories could still be at the root of what happened. “Some have been quick to write Mohn off as mentally unwell and while this may be accurate, this incident illustrates the threat of anti-government extremism and conspiracy theories, which have become all too common since the 2020 election,” Katherine Kenealy, the head of threat analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, tells WIRED. “He was so steeped in anti-government beliefs that he not only viewed his father as a ‘traitor’ because of his purported job, but selected him as a target because of it.”" - A Decapitation May Have Roots in Far-Right Border and Immigrant Paranoia - David Gilbert at Wired
What we talk about when we talk about The Future - Dave Karpf (via Sentiers) - CJW: Interesting piece on different types of futurists - "the pundit, the professional optimist/futurist, the Cassandra and the sci-fi author." I'm probably a mix of the latter 2, where the former 2 are where you at least make money…

Just the headlines:

A Bad Office Can (Maybe) Become a Good Apartment by Justin Davidson Curbed

Health, Cooking, and Related

DCH: 1,374 Days: My Life With Long Covid - Giorgia Lupi The New York Times

> ”Even if my body, from the outside, resembles the old me, long Covid has rewritten my core personhood on a cellular level. I have been able to push myself to work at my desk most days (my job often feels like the only piece left of my old self), but I am never symptom-free, and I can see how this confuses people. This paradox is part of what makes treating this invisible illness, as researchers are starting to understand, so complex.”

In-depth personal account of ongoing challenges of living with long covid by renowned data visualisation design Giorgia Lupi.

How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus - Avir Mitra at NPR

Just the headlines:

Five Deaf Children Have Hearing Restored by AAV-Based Gene Therapy - Geneng News

Labour & Economics

CJW: Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands - Associated Press

The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.

Hypocrisy? From the US of A?! Scandalous. In seriousness though, this piece covers a really detailed investigation by the AP into forced prison labour, the abuses that workers are subject to (including the sexual assault of female prisoners), injuries and deaths, the lack of protections, and the companies that profit from the whole fucked situation.

Yes, we’ve all seen 13th Amendment, but I guarantee you’ll find something shocking in here still.

“The AI boom ahead can either further exacerbate or help close the yawning inequality gap. Reducing that gap entails not just breaking up the concentration of wealth at the top, but building it from below through broadly expanding the investor class who will own the robots. In short, the best way to fight inequality in the digital age is to spread the equity around.” Wages Vs. Wealth In The Coming AI Boom - Nathan Gardels at noema
“Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that over the past year, as more companies have debuted or doubled down on mandates, the number of people working from the office hasn’t changed much. About 78 percent of workers ages 16 and older worked entirely on-site in December 2023, down from 81 percent a year earlier. Of course, some professions like tech workers, who often have more flexible work schedules, have much lower averages, with only 34 percent working entirely on-site last month compared with 38 percent last year.” No, office mandates don’t help companies make more money, study finds - Danielle Abril at The Washington Post

Books

LZ: In the dust of this planet, by Eugene Thacker

This is the first title of the trilogy Horror of Philosophy and it offers an overview of what Thacker means with this concept. It is as ambiguous as it sounds: it is not necessarily a philosophy about horror as a genre, but it's seeing philosophy through the lens of horror. Or, more specifically, it is about realizing and acknowledging the limits of philosophy and thought and how humans can't fathom things after a certain point. I don't quite remember him using Wittgenstein to address this presupposition of what's beyond language, even though this idea is constantly being revisited, but just so you get the jist of it.

The cool thing (and even really relatable) is how Thacker uses art as a source for reflection. Apparently, this is going to be more central in the third book, Tentacles Longer Than Night (yes, he's super good with titles!). It was also surprising to me to see him starting the book using Black Metal as a reference to what he means when he speaks of black, dark(ness), void, nihilism, etc. It is surprising though that he didn't mention cosmic black metal with bands such as Darkspace being around since 1996… but that gives me an opportunity to write a piece on that, so keep an eye.

Thacker also visits the works of mystics such as Dyonisus the Aerophagite, Saint John of the Cross, Agrippa, Eickhart, and so forth. It's even a bit repetitive sometimes, especially when you're reading the second book. Thacker doesn't necessarily assume that you read the previous one, so he will get back to some of the same topics, but in even more detail. However, in the introduction, we learn that the first book was about presenting the concepts of nothingness and unhumanity, whereas the second book is more about darkness itself and philosophy, and the last one is more focused on art (or specifically horror titles).

It's really exciting, quite academic sometimes, which makes the almost 200 pages a bit longer to finish than, let's say, a YA novel. But it's cool to think something about what's written there and a few paragraphs later Thacker speaks precisely about that.

CJW: I read this book soon after release because of the hype and didn’t vibe with it at all, but I also had little-to-no basis in philosophy generally at that time, so I’ve been meaning to go back and revisit.

MJW: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

When I saw someone saying that I Who Have Never Known Men was a classic of feminist dystopian literature, I wondered why I had never heard of it. It’s a 90s book, written in French by a Belgian author and translated by Ros Schwartz. I love me a bleak dystopia, and this is as bleak as they come. 39 women and one child are held in a cage, fed and watered but unable to touch for fear of whips wielded by inscrutable guards. They have been there for many years. One day, a siren sounds as the guards are opening the cage and they leave, the women left to fend for themselves in a bizarre world. The main character, the child who grows into a woman during the narrative, is the one who will never know men, and she’s strangely separate from the other women. She has no memory of the world, where the other women can’t forget the lives they left behind. It really was a bleak read but also fascinating to explore this world.

Movies + TV

LZ: White Noise (2022)

The movie is very much a literal adaptation of the book, but it's so… fast! My husband watched it with me and I wonder if he understood some parts that were featured so quickly, so discreetly, whereas in the book some details and quirks felt more relevant to me.

It was also interesting to see how some characters had their ethnicity changed and how it worked pretty well. It was a great choice that the director decided to make Mr Gray white trash instead of Asian like in the book.

The visuals are also beautiful, somewhat like a Wes Anderson movie but make it ironic, not nostalgic. I also felt consumerism was more clearly put as a solution to the characters' problem than it was in the book. The book was more subtle about this, but maybe it's because you don't really see the supermarket all the time, so in the movie the metaphor is basically punching you in the face. I also love that they made the German nurse rant in German instead of English – the characters' inability to understand her and the power of the language made such an impact!

LZ: The Worst Person in the World (2021)

I heard about this movie several times but only managed to watch it last weekend and… oh boy, I really needed it. It's good that this is not a Hollywoodian fairy tale but a Norwegian movie, so even the protagonist is not portrayed as a saint and her decisions and outcomes are really put under a questionable light.

This is the story of Julie, a woman who is always changing her mind, no matter if it's for the career she's gonna pursue, the boyfriends she's going to have, or the children she is going to bear. Since she is always in relationships with older men, it is visible the discrepancy on the way she sees life as long and full of opportunities while their partners might not think like this anymore. Not just because they are older and thus closer to death, but because they are more mature.

However, this maturity is boring to her, so much so that she always needs to feel the thrill of new beginnings and, well, no one can stop her – the privilege of being born in a Scandinavian country! This makes me think about a quote that a friend shared with me some time ago: emotionally sick people will find healthy relationships boring. And that summarizes a lot about this movie and the bittersweet message that it leaves about maturity in your 30s.

DCH: The Kitchen (2023)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgT5cEV5Qt0

> In a dystopian future London where all social housing has been eliminated, Izi and Benji fight to navigate the world as residents of The Kitchen, a community that refuses to abandon their home.

Simultaneously recognisable and relatable to today’s London and more believable and loathsome than the future cities of Bladerunner. Actor Daniel Kalyuua makes his directorial debut–alongside filmmaker and architect Kibwe Tavares–in this gripping, emotionally-charged social commentary. Terrific acting by Kane Robbinson and Jedaiah Bannerman too. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Games

LZ: Medieval Dynasty

Just don't. This is less a recommendation than it is a cautionary note. I'm so addicted to this simulator where you are a medieval peasant who needs to collect resources in the forest to build your own village…. It's like Cooking Mama meets Age of Empires…. I've been playing this for almost a week now and I spend at least 5 hours on this damn thing every day. It's insane, but it's fun and it's perfect if you want to shelter yourself from reality.

Music

LZ: Prompt-generated music

I learned about this platform, Trinity, which is basically a Dall-E but for music. In fact, it creates even a photo for your prompt which, in fact, will be turned into a snippet of a song in the style that you described. I tried Atmospheric Black Metal and it's really lo-fi and totally sounds like generated content, but there's another thing to that. Years ago I wrote this article (only available in Portuguese, sorry!) about AI singers with avatars and so forth. The guy behind them was more interested in trying out really niche music subgenres that only 2 people would be listening to on last.fm, but without the need to have a real band, budget, and all. So this kind of AI tool could actually work as an inspiration for artists. Like, if you thought one day you wanted to create some sort of music that sound like a horror movie clown playing samba and with an opera singer, this is your chance to give it a go.

LZ: Olhava - Sacrifice

Wake up baby, there's a new Olhava release!!! Love this Finnish-Russian atmospheric black metal that is mostly instrumental, but now and then you are surprised by the hellish guttural vocals typical to the genre. The cover artwork is also beautiful, I guess it's from the same artist of the previous album, Margot – she's great, follow her on Instagram and make sure to listen to this new beautiful assemble of songs that take you right to a misty forest and snowy fields (or the other way around, if you please).

LZ: Volahn - El Tigre del Sur

Californian musician who's been around for the past decade playing black metal and using Maya/Nahua tribalism as an inspiration. This is one of their best releases and it feels like you're watching a movie or something, as the song swings in moods and even adds some country-like parts that will take you to the Wild West. There are several Californian black metal bands doing this kind of combination and I find that pretty cool.

Art

CJW: In the World's Largest Cypress Forest, Surf Durrani Captures Atmospheric Autumnal Colors - at Colossal

An autumnal photograph of trees with changing leaves in a misty swamp.

Some absolutely beautiful swamp photography by Surf Durrani - more at the link above.

LZ: I'm so destroyed by AI content that I thought this was a generated image and the falling leaves from the willows were some sort of glitch......

The Self-Promotion

MJW: I’ve got art on the Tryst Blog regularly at the moment. Here’s a couple examples and links to more (plus really great articles by sex worker writers.)