Aug. 8, 2021, 11:27 a.m.
nothing here but outsourced torture - issue 146 - 8th August, 2021
Nothing Here
nothing here but outsourced torture
issue 146 - 8th August, 2021
MJW: I’m coming atcha from Wurundjeri lands in Melbourne, in lockdown number 6 (Lock Fast, Lock Furious), and I can’t travel more than 5 kilometres from my house. Again. This time we’ve got a robust climate section (there’s just so much going on, though I never read it ‘cause I spend enough time crying in the shower…) as well as billionaire migration, anarchist prepping, memes, Celestial Blues and more.
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’ve also got bonuses planned once again.) 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
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Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
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m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / ecopoet // Dark Extropian Musings / pryvt.rsrch
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Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - also Mia Walsch. Professional reject. Hectically nuerodivergent. This is where I get my bleak on.
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Corey J. White (CJW) - it is what it is.
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Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts. Sci-fi writer, futurology researcher and essayist. @lidiazuin
Climate Change & The Environment
DCH: When Will It Get Too Hot for the Body to Survive?
According to the best climate models, large swaths of the United States will experience several weeks of hot wet-bulb temperatures by the middle of this century—that’s in 30 years. “By 2050, parts of the Midwest and Louisiana could see conditions that make it difficult for the human body to cool itself for nearly one out of every 20 days in the year,” ProPublica reported in September. During these periods of deadly heat, shade and hydration won’t save you. Any human without access to reliable air conditioning risks death.
There are greenhouse emission models that suggest areas in Phoenix could reach these breaking points 6 months out of the year. Large swathes of the US southwest would become inhospitable driving migration to the already overcrowded north and east. In a few decades similar shifts would see the same play out across the entire US with migration further north into Canada.
Climate change is already responsible for 37% of all heat-related deaths across the globe. That number will only grow in the decades to come. Coming to grips with the cost of preventing these needless deaths is paramount.
The new paper, published today in the journal Nature Communications, estimates that we would have to prevent 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere to save one life. That amount equals the lifetime carbon emissions produced by 3.5 Americans.
Bressler’s paper revises the social cost of carbon from $37 per ton, and past the White House’s current value of $51, to a whopping $258 per metric ton. This figure represents all of the societal damages that result from emitting each ton of carbon—such as agricultural losses, lost productivity caused by storms, damages caused by sea level rise, and the money spent to clean up climate-related floods—plus adding in the cost of lives lost to excess heat.
Doing so, however, seems increasingly unlikely given several tipping points are now imminent:
Of 31 “vital signs“—key metrics of planetary health that include greenhouse gas emissions, glacier thickness, sea-ice extent and deforestation—they found that 18 hit record highs or lows.
We’ve had these klaxons before. Neoliberal incrementalism has never been able to keep pace with climate change. Even agreements like the Paris Accords don’t do enough, fast enough – at their best it’s a decade too late.
We need to be carbon neutral this decade. We need to claw back in the next decade. We need to be carbon negative by the decade after that.
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CJW: Plans of four G20 states are threat to global climate pledge, warn scientists - Robin McKie, Toby Helm & Fiona Harvey at The Guardian
A key group of leading G20 nations is committed to climate targets that would lead to disastrous global warming, scientists have warned. They say China, Russia, Brazil and Australia all have energy policies associated with 5C rises in atmospheric temperatures, a heating hike that would bring devastation to much of the planet.
This is Australia’s legacy going forward, and apparently our politicians are so corrupt/stupid/shortsighted/ideologically-compromised that they wouldn’t have it any other way…
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MKY: Queen secretly lobbied Scottish ministers for climate law exemption
Stop simping for the elite - royals even more than (non ‘royal’) billionaires, stop watching their propaganda, just stop… and put on the sunglasses of ideological critique already.
-series of They Live! memes with lizardqueens go here-
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MKY: These 6 countries are most likely to survive a climate change-caused societal collapse
TL;DR - this is why, if i ever get to writing book 2 in my series, it’ll be all about taking back Tasmania and New Zealand back from the ecofash elites. Gotta respect how matter of fact this is though. The only good queen is the red queen from Resident Evil.
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MJW: Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse
Sometimes we all need to have a good cry. If that’s you, I recommend reading this article and then trying to find the point to your silly little life.
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Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather systems, experts say - Hina Alam at The CBC
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June heatwave was the ‘most extreme’ on record for North America - Justine Calma at The Verge
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Governments Must Focus on Degrowth to Combat Climate Change - Thomas Perrett at The Byline Times
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A close look at declining water reserves in the west - Jason Weiseberger at BoingBoing
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America’s Nuclear Waste Has Nowhere to Go and More Is Coming - Matt Gault at Vice
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Emperor penguins ‘will be extinct’ by 2100, scientists warn - Catrin Einhorn at The Independent
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Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds - Oliver Milman at The Guardian
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The Gulf of Mexico’s ‘Dead Zone’ Is Now the Size of Connecticut - Radhamely De Leon at Vice
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These 6 countries are most likely to survive a climate change-caused societal collapse - AJ Dellinger at mic.com
Geopolitics
CJW: The toppling of Saddam’s statue: how the US military made a myth - Alex von Tunzelmann at The Guardian (via Dan Hill)
Baudrillard’s argument that the 1991 Gulf war did not take place was not an exact fit for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the end of that war, as signified by pulling down the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square, was a perfect Baudrillardian simulation. The media turned an impromptu performance by a few American soldiers into a highly convincing television series finale in which the Iraqi people defeated their dictator. It was repeated in broadcasts and newspapers across the world. It was not true.
A really interesting piece (excerpt, actually) on simulation and propaganda. Recently I’ve been noticing and thinking more about the ideological web that ties most US media directly to the state and/or to capital, so this came along at exactly the right moment.
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CJW: Daniel Hale Makes Case Against US Drone Program - Ryan Devereaux at The Intercept
I can’t tell if this piece is trying to straight-forwardly report The Intercept’s involvement in Daniel Hale’s case, or if they’re trying to big-note themselves for being involved in another US intelligence whistleblowing case… If it’s the latter though (and it feels that way), then it’s pretty fucking rich considering:
Another Whistleblower Bites the Dust as The Intercept Adds a Third Notch to Its Burn Belt - Whitney Webb at Mint Press News
The indictment against Hale makes him the third Intercept source to be charged with leaking classified information to the outlet in less than two years. Notably, both of the government whistleblowers that have already been prosecuted and convicted by the Trump administration – Reality Winner and Terry Albury – were Intercept sources who were outed as whistleblowers by reporters working for the online publication.
There’s also a great summary by Chip Gibbons at Jacobin: Daniel Hale Went to Prison for Telling the Truth About US Drone Warfare
DCH: tfw you realise you’ve personally done more to protect whistleblowers than The Intercept.
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DCH: The CIA’s Outsourced Torture Is Lost To History - Spencer Ackermann at The Forever Wars
The absence of renditions records, even to the Senate torture report, is no longer exactly news. I reported it in 2016 in this 20,000-plus-word, three-part series for The Guardian. But what has bothered me ever since is how little attention and care that absence has ever received. In the wake of our recent Forever Wars piece about naming the dead, I’ve been thinking about that more and more – the enormous gap in our historical knowledge of renditions; the likelihood that if the Senate torture report couldn’t go there, then we’re probably notgoing to fill those gaps; and the fact that pretty much no one gives a shit.
The awful conclusion is that disappearances work.
Ackermann has long been one of the best writers exploring the miasma of the war on terror. His new newsletter (sign on Substack) is a great read for anyone wanting to round out their understanding of some of the darkest corners of geopolitics.
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MJW: Google co-founder Larry Page is now a New Zealand resident
Ooooh, the majestic and rare ‘flight of the billionaires’ continues in its varied forms. We must really be in the shit.
MKY: what was i saying? BRB, gotta a lil errand to run across teh ditch….
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- Greece aims long-range sound cannons at migrants across its border - Isobel Cockerell at Coda
Science & Space
LZ: The surprise lies in the fact that billionaires still exist, not that they are going to space
So this is one essay that I published a couple of weeks ago, first in Portuguese and then in English. It was super controversial around here in Brazil! Some people understood that I was criticizing the fact that billionaires are going to space and igniting the industry, but in fact my premise was: all good, great, I hope one day we all go to the Moon if we wish, however… isn’t it weird that billionaires exist in the first place?
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DCH: Space Travel’s Most Surprising Future Ingredient: Mushrooms - Nick Hilden at Scientific American
In a new “astromycological” venture launched in conjunction with NASA, Stamets and various research teams are studying how fungi can be leveraged to build extraterrestrial habitats and perhaps someday even terraform planets. This is not the first time Stamets’s career has intersected with speculative space science. He also recently received an honor that many researchers would consider only slightly less hallowed than a Nobel Prize: the distinction of having a Star Trek character named after him.
Art imitating life here.
MJW: What cannot fungi do? Soon the fungi will BE the ship, if my imagination is correct.
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We should explore alternatives to the Standard Model of cosmology - David Merritt at Aeon - CJW: Well, this has done a pretty good job of convincing me that dark matter is unscientific bullshit.
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Space: The Lamest Frontier - John Ganz at Gawker
Tech & Design
DCH: Citizen’s New Service Helps Paying Users Summon the Cops - Boone Ashworth at WIRED
Citizen has also been accused of stoking paranoia and discrimination. If a user is inundated with a constant flow of notifications about imminent nearby dangers, it can make them feel like they are more unsafe, and more likely to call the police—an action that can be potentially disastrous for Black people and other people of color.
“They’re essentially creating the Karen of apps,” says Jason Kelley, an activist and associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I wish it were not that way. I wish that such an app would be used only for good. But that’s not how it works.”
Don’t let the headline or article fool you – it’s not just the cops (that would be bad enough). But private security. Mercs. This is Uber for Blackwater. Fuck Citizen.
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DCH: Suburbs of Surveillance - Sarah Holder at Bloomberg
Local police rely on private communities and homeowners’ associations to install the Flock license plate readers and share the data they collect. And to sell more devices to those coveted private clients, Flock relies on the help of the police. Documents obtained by Bloomberg CityLab through public records requests reveal how those relationships were fostered in Vacaville and elsewhere. In police stations across the U.S., law enforcement officials have played a starring role in endorsing Flock and creating consumer demand, seeing the cameras as a way to fight crime in their communities. Flock’s approach mirrors ones employed by other companies in the neighborhood watch space, like Amazon Ring and Nextdoor.
“Built into the marketing strategy of this company is a wink and a nod saying: Police, if you help us market this device to consumers, you will get a perk,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has done research on Flock. “That perk being more surveillance that you would not have access to otherwise.”
Same as it ever was. We’ve seen the same playbook used by Ring and Palantir. Silicon Valley’s surveillance arsenal’s has always marketed on and profited from, the inherent racism of surveillance.
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DCH: Imagining the first global Simulation War - Matt Webb at interconnected
And maybe that’s part of my fear now? That threat in the 2030s won’t be about somebody realising that social media propaganda can destabilise a society, or some organisation spotting the new ability for a computer worm to infiltrate uranium gas centrifuges and destroy a nuclear program (a decade later and nobody has claimed responsibility for Stuxnet and its cyberattack on Iran).
The discovery process will be automated.
The probing of the attack surface of society will be automated and a thousand times faster than anything we’ve seen to date, whether it’s software engineering or social engineering or knocking out a water treatment plant. Imagine finding a zero day on the economy.
Abyss gazing from my friend Matt. What happens when it’s not madmen like Surkov sowing chaos across the world but AI?
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He couldn’t get over his fiancee’s death. So he brought her back as an AI chatbot - Jason Fagone at SF Chronicle
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The Metaverse Has Always Been a Dystopian Idea - Brian Merchant at Motherboard
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The Manifest Destiny of Computing - Jesse Daniels at Public Books \
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H.G. Wells’ “World Brain” is now here—what have we learned since? - Diana Gitig at Ars Technica \
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Facebook reportedly wants to securely mine your encrypted data to target ads - Ivan Mehta at The Next Web
Society & The Culture
MKY: New Zealand to make dawn raids apology, but the Polynesian Panthers want more than words
New Zealand has achieved cult status as a progressive haven at the bottom of the world, but talk to Pacific Islander people and many will tell you about the 1970s and the “state-sanctioned racism” that ripped them from their homes…
Related:
‘The Panthers’ is a six-part drama series that follows a group of young radicals from New Zealand who form The Polynesian Panthers, inspired by The Black Panthers in the USA.
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MKY: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” - Phil Torres at Current Affairs (via Johannes Kleske)
[Longtermism] is the idea that what matters most is for “Earth-originating intelligent life” to fulfill its potential in the cosmos. What exactly is “our potential”? As I have noted elsewhere, it involves subjugating nature, maximizing economic productivity, replacing humanity with a superior “posthuman” species, colonizing the universe, and ultimately creating an unfathomably huge population of conscious beings living what Bostrom describes as “rich and happy lives” inside high-resolution computer simulations.
This is what “our potential” consists of, and it constitutes the ultimate aim toward which humanity as a whole, and each of us as individuals, are morally obligated to strive.
CJW: Love to see eco-fascism masquerading as some new bullshit ideology coming out of SV. You really want to read the whole piece to see how they’re not just saying the quiet part loud, but writing papers about it.
This article also talks about longtermism as being akin to a secular religion, which lines up with my own thinking.
The popularity of this religion among wealthy people in the West—especially the socioeconomic elite—makes sense because it tells them exactly what they want to hear: not only are you ethically excused from worrying too much about sub-existential threats like non-runaway climate change and global poverty, but you are actually a morally better person for focusing instead on more important things—risk that could permanently destroy “our potential” as a species of Earth-originating intelligent life.
Last year I wrote about Bostrom’s simulation theory, including how it’s basically a matter of faith. So when you read this piece about how these rich white men are not just willing, but happy to witness billions of deaths in the near future for the sake of their post-human bullshit visions of the far future, it’s in the same realm as the evangelists pushing for war in the Middle East to bring about Revelations. It’s just as delusional and just as removed from reality.
MKY: yeah, i’m pretty sure Emily and I were ranting against this bullshit back in teh Grinding daze. Related, our old friend and ally Paul Graham Raven has thoughts - Longtermism is merely a more acceptable mask for transhumanism.
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Imagine You Have Two Memes…: On Memetic Negativity - Xenogothic
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Pasco Sheriff’s Office letter targets residents for ‘increased accountability’ - Kathleen McGrory at Tampa Bay Times
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Anti-vaxxers are pretending to be vegan to avoid potential vaccine regulations in the workplace - Marthe de Ferrer at euronews
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“Potentially Very Bad”: Lots of New Covid Variants in New York City Rats - Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
Labor & Economics
DCH: NLRB officer says Amazon violated US labor law - Russell Brandom, Zoe Schiffer at The Verge
Now, it appears RWDSU is getting another chance. “Throughout the NLRB hearing, we heard compelling evidence how Amazon tried to illegally interfere with and intimidate workers as they sought to exercise their right to form a union,” said RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum in a statement. “We support the hearing officer’s recommendation that the NLRB set aside the election results and direct a new election…Amazon’s behavior throughout the election process was despicable. Amazon cheated, they got caught, and they are being held accountable.”
Never mind the fact that Amazon hired noted union-busting firm, Wilmerhale to run their opposition campaign. The same firm that Uber and Actvison-Blizzard are using fwiw.
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DCH: America’s Billionaires: Borrowing Their Way to Ever More Fabulous Fortunes - Sam Pizzigati at CounterPunch
Take Elon Musk. In 2019, he took out $61 million in mortgages on five properties he owned in California. About that time he also had some 40 percent of his personal shares in Tesla pledged as collateral for still other loans. Musk’s millions in borrowed cash have been bankrolling his lavish lifestyle and new investments. These millions have also been providing a sweet end-run around Uncle Sam at tax time.
If Musk had sold some of his Tesla shares or surplus California properties to raise fresh cash, he would have owed capital gains tax on his sale earnings. But by borrowing for the cash, he let his Tesla and California property assets continue to increase in value and, at the same time, sidesteps any taxes.
Paraphrasing Cory Doctorow, the ultra-rich are different from you and me. We pay taxes. They don’t.
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DCH: Bottom Line: Dollar Stores Make Up Nearly Half of All New Store Openings This Year - Mike Mozart at nextcity.org
Dollar store openings had been on the rise even before the pandemic, but economic fallout over the last year has exacerbated wealth inequality. And as Next City has previously reported, dollar stores proliferate in low-income neighborhoods where fresh produce and other healthy food access are scarce. According to a 2018 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report, “While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it. In small towns and urban neighborhoods alike, dollar stores are triggering the closure of grocery stores, eliminating jobs, and further eroding the prospects of the vulnerable communities they target.” Pre-pandemic, cities such as Tulsa, Birmingham, New Orleans and Kansas City banned the opening of new dollar stores to avoid further saturating the market.
Find me a business that purports to help the poor and I’ll find you a business that extorts the poor. Dollar Stores are every bit as predatory as payday loan companies and other filth.
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Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States - Alex N. Press at Jacobin
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If the Food Supply Chain Collapses Will the Public Finally See Through Brexit? - Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
Books
CJW: Shall Machines Divide the Earth by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
On a graveyard star, machines run a deadly tournament and draw humans like moths to a flame with a priceless promise. Partner with an artificial intelligence and fight to the death. Win and receive your heart’s desire…
This book was recommended to me by friend of the newsletter, Maddison Stoff, and I’m so glad I checked it out. It’s a short, visceral, and compelling novella, full of action, sex, love, and loss. Reminded me of Gideon the Ninth in some ways - two very different types teaming up, navigating danger and romance whilst trying to solve the mystery behind the situation they find themselves in - but I actually preferred this over GtN. That’s not a slight, Shall Machines Divide the Earth was just more my speed.
Movies + TV
LZ: Blood Red Sky (2021) + Llorona (2019) + Censor (2021)
Right, this is a combo because I recently wrote an essay about contemporary horror movies and the return of gothic romance in them. I still need to translate it to English, but most ideas were taken from an article suggested in the past issue of this newsletter. But because I was discussing the idea that new technologies, climate change, and political instability are rather confusing us about our own identity, some people suggested checking these movies.
Blood Red Sky is a German film with a very simple if not cliché sinopsis, though if you keep watching it, you will see that it is completely something else. It tells the story of a woman and her son going to the US for treatment for her rare condition, but it turns out that the flight was hijacked by terrorists and… well, to protect her son she releases the beast inside her. There are some very interesting bits in which the movie addresses stereotypes and prejudices, at the same time that it offers us a classic (even cringe-y) psychopathic villain.
Then there’s Llorona, a Guatemalan flick about a Latin American folk tale. I thought it was originally a Mexican story, also because I had the chance to visit the “island of dolls’‘ in the canals of Mexico City, where Llorona supposedly lived or appeared. Anyways, the fact is that there is another movie called The Curse of the Llorona that came out in the same year, but it’s not this one! I’m talking about the movie directed by Jayro Bustamante and it’s amazing to see how it connects folk tales with political issues such as the genocide of native peoples, military dictatorship, class strugle, and feminism. For those who live in Latin America, this movie will (unfortunately) feel like home, too bad there’s no real Llorona to take care of our politicians. :)
Finally, there’s Censor, a British movie about a woman who works censoring horror/splatter movies in the 70s after the premise that such violence could influence criminality. It brings a lot of the giallo aesthetics (which have been exhaustively revived in other recent titles like Mandy or The Color Out of Space, btw both with Nic Cage) and besides being a candy for the eyes, it is very interesting to see her decay into madness. Nothing really innovative, but it’s definitely a good and comfortable movie for those who love vintage horror movies and are eager for nostalgic stuff.
MKY: loved Blood Red Sky. great to see a movie like with some nuance to it. Will def be checking out those other titles.
Comics
CJW: Black Beacon - Ryan K. Lindsay and Sebastian Piriz
The latest bit of sci-fi weirdness from Ryan K. Lindsay - this time teaming up with the incredible Sebastian Piriz - is Black Beacon, serialised in Heavy Metal Magazine, and also available in individual issues at your LCS.
The titular Black Beacon calls out across the void of space, offering shelter to any race that might need it. But by the time Niko arrives, scouting the place for celestial refugees from Earth, the massive dyson sphere is at capacity, with only a tenuous peace between the resident races that might be thrown off-balance by the new arrival.
Gorgeous art and great concepts - this is one to watch.
Podcasts
MKY: Margaret Killjoy on an Anarchist Approach to Prepping in an Age of Climate Change
Music
**LZ: King Woman - Celestial Blues**
Kris Esfandiari is back and for good! Heavy, gloomy, and beautiful, this new album will delight people who were already fans of King Woman, but if you enjoy other musicians like Chelsea Wolfe for instance, I definitely suggest you check it out.
Arrakis Rippers: A Guide to “Dune”-Inspired Metal
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MJW: The oeuvre of Rhianna, looking back now that she’s a billionaire (…) (Forbes)
No commentary, just something we should all consider (sorry not sorry.)
Art
DCH: The Machine Gaze by Shardcore
A project by digital artist Shardcore, ‘The Machine Gaze’ investigates what AI (or at least one potential version of what we currently conceive of as ‘AI’) ‘sees’ when it is trained to look at pornography, what that tells us about ourselves, and what we might be ‘teaching’ our friendly megacomputational future overlords. It is deeply disturbing, like if Francis Bacon took psilocybin and then went on a 12-hour Razzle binge.
HT to Matt Muir, Faris & Rosie Yakob
The Self-Promotion
MJW: Is it self promotion if it’s for a good cause? My little Etsy venture and your local simple and slightly wonky leather stuff purveyor, bckl.fck, is donating 100% of the proceeds of my next sale to Scarlet Alliance’s Emergency Support Fund. Right now all donations are doubled by Ethical Jobs, so buy a harness and help out your local sex workers in the process.
The Memes
Jessica Lange from American Horror Story: Coven is just saying what we all know.