nothing here but shareholder infernos

issue 260 - 7th July, 2024

CJW: A big thanks to Marlee for sending out the last issue while I was off frolicing. You may or may not be pleased to know that the newsletter gods punished me for abandoning you with a dose of covid. I do not recommend it.

Hoping to break ground on my next novel in the coming days, just so long as the covid brain fog doesn’t stop me. Wish me luck.

As ever, if you would like to support our work here, 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 spread the word by forwarding this email to someone you think might enjoy it.

The Team

Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer & visual artist. Concerningly anaemic middle-aged goth.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, life of the party.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

MJW: The Owls Who Came From Away by Jude Isabella at Hakai Magazine

They seize suburbs. They seize cities. They seize habitat a continent away. They arrive uninvited. They stay indefinitely. They are indomitable. Who? Barred owls. Strix varia.
They have taken a fancy to the Pacific Northwest. From an Airbnb next to the I-5 highway plowing through Seattle, Washington, my friend sends me photos of a barred owl perched in a spruce tree outside the kitchen window. In a newspaper, I read about a barred owl in Vancouver, British Columbia, startling people at a bus stop as it swooped past with talons full of pigeon. And in my hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, I watch a squirrel race up and down a chestnut tree, chirping menacingly in a bid to browbeat a barred owl from the neighborhood. Wherever you go, there they are.
Over the past century or so, barred owls have swooped across North America from east to west, inspiring wonder, admiration, and fear about the future of other owls, often all at once. Their story is complicated, as are the labels people attach to them. Are they native or not? And what can their presence in the Pacific Northwest reveal about what it means to belong to a place at this particular moment in history?

The march of the Barred Owl across the US shows that the species who can adapt the fastest to how humans are changing the planet are the ones that are thriving, at the cost of everything else.

Just the headlines:

California Apple Manufacturing Facility Has 19 ‘Potential Violations’ of EPA Regulations - Jules Roscoe at 404 Media

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: The Supreme Court Wants a Dictator - James Risen at The Intercept

The court’s immunity ruling is nearly a blank check for Trump, a brazen attempt to protect him from his ongoing criminal cases and to grant him virtually unlimited power if he gets back into the White House. With its ruling, the Supreme Court’s right-wing block has made it clear: They are tired of democracy. The justices want a dictator.
[...]
The right-wing court is engaged in a radical revolution, and its objective is to rewrite modern American history. Through their rulings, the conservative justices are revealing what the American right has until recently tried to keep quiet, which is that the right doesn’t accept any of the major changes that have happened in American society since World War II. They have in their minds a fantasy version of 1940s America, even though almost none of them were alive at the time. What they yearn for is a nation before integration and civil rights, before women’s rights and reproductive rights, before gay rights, before the modern expansions of free speech and press freedom. Above all, they want a return to a less diverse America, a nation in which white male power was unquestioned. They want it so badly that they are willing to abandon democracy to get it.

There's basically been nothing but bad news coming out of the States lately, but this Supreme Court ruling is as disturbing as it is unsurprising.

DCH: oh and SCOTUS legalised bribery recently too. You know just coincidentally after all the hullabaloo with Clarence Thomas taking decades of bribes from GoP mega-donor Harlan Crow.

CJW: Conservatives Plan to Ban Abortion and Cut LGBT Rights Starting Next January - Melissa Gira Grant at The New Republic

On January 20, 2025, conservatives plan to resurrect a 150-year-old defunct law to ban abortion across the nation. This is not a secret plan—far from it. It’s part of the 180-Day Playbook produced by Project 2025, detailing priorities for an incoming conservative president on day one. These 900 pages lay out a Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist.

If you're an American and you aren't familiar with Project 2025, this piece is a must-read and must-share.

CJW: Israel announces largest West Bank land appropriation since Oslo Accords - Times of Israel

The amount of land declared to be state land in 2024, some 5,852 acres as of July, far outstrips any other year this century. The highest previous total was 1,181 acres in 2014.

The Israeli state wants to eliminate all Palestinians and to steal all lands the Palestinians could claim. Forgive me for repeating myself, but it's sickening that the West is standing with Israel as it conducts these myriad war crimes, international crimes, and crimes against humanity.

CJW: How Israel destroyed Gaza’s ability to feed itself | Israel-Palestine conflict News - Al Jazeera

Satellite images analysed by Al Jazeera's digital investigation team, Sanad show that more than half (60 percent) of Gaza's farmland, crucial for feeding the war-ravaged territory’s hungry population, has been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.

The satellite images in this piece really tell the story.

DCH: Some thoughts on the UK general election 2024 - Mark Carrigan (via Paul Graham Raven)

I’m increasingly convinced that the apparent direction of travel for Labour will lead to some moderate improvements but in a way which fails to address the underlying problems in British society. The result would be five or ten years of Labour government but with an ever growing far-right better able to exploit the politics of environmental collapse. What we’re seeing in France now is, I suspect, where the UK is likely to be a bit further down the line.

Keir Starmer aligned himself with the police over BLM, with TERFs over trans peoples’ rights, and with big business over labor and is largely in power as PM now because pro-business think tanks threw tons of money behind his bid.

It's nice to not have the Tories to worry about but this really isn’t the “sunlight of hope” we’re being sold on…

The Collapse of Zionism - Ilan Pappé at New Left Review - CJW: An interesting opinion piece on the possible collapse of Zionism - or even the state of Israel itself.
In his will, Bushnell listed a stipulation. “My friends can mourn my death however they wish,” he wrote. “If there is to be a funeral, I do not wish it to have any religious elements, nor do I wish for any members of the Community of Jesus to be present. They are in love with the system that I am trying to burn.” Aaron Bushnell’s Agonies by Simon van Zuylen-Wood New York Magazine (DCH: I wept reading this story.)

Just the headlines:

62 Democrats Join 207 Republicans in Vote to Conceal Gaza Death Toll - Prem Thakker at The Intercept

Tech & Design

DCH: The Scourge of Self-Checkout by David Moscrop The Walrus

Enshittification thus gets into everything, creating what Doctorow has christened the enshittocene. It’s a broad expansion of the capture–exploitation–decline cycle that can explain our analogue existence more and more as consumers become increasingly bound by limited choice, high prices, and poor experiences in oligopolistic markets.

Do your community a favour and shop in the actual checkout queue whenever you can. You’re helping to save someone’s job. And in the case of the elderly that sometimes work those tills, you’re probably helping to save their sanity from loneliness a bit too.

DCH: Destroy AI by Ali Alkhatib

I’m gravitating away from the discourse of measuring and fixing unfair algorithmic systems, or making them more transparent, or accountable. Instead, I’m finding myself fixated on articulating the moral case for sabotaging, circumventing, and destroying “AI”, machine learning systems, and their surrounding political projects as valid responses to harm.

Ali is right. It’s time to pick up the hammers and engage in some algorithmic sabotage.

“South Korea's Gumi City Council announced the robot was found unresponsive after having apparently fallen down a two-meter (six-and-a-half foot) staircase last week.” S. Korea administrative robot defunct after apparent suicide - France 24
"Earlier this week, Google revealed that its emissions have increased by 48% in just five years, despite its previous promises to hit net-zero emissions by 2030. Much of that increase is driven by its push to accelerate AI deployment. The picture is much the same at Microsoft." - Generative AI is a climate disaster - Paris Marx
Overthrowing Our Tech Overlords by Yanis Varoufakis at Noema Magazine
On the Supreme Court rulings, the great debate disaster, and how big tech stands to profit from it all by Brian Merchant
Roundup: Uber's war on workers' rights continues by Paris Marx
Roundup: OpenAI says some artistic jobs shouldn’t exist by Paris Marx

Society & The Culture

CJW: This is War - Matt Bors

We've shared some of Matt's comic work here before, but this piece is an interesting look at recent culture and the ways they relate to the current American moment - including Civil War (which I've not gotten around to despite one review that made it sound legitimately interesting [possibly despite itself]) and two favourites of mine - Omar El Akkad's novel American War (seriously, read this book), and The Purge franchise.

What all these stories I’ve mentioned have in common is that, by their end, whether a more just society is restored or small battles are won, millions of lives have been lost and ruined forever. The satisfaction of seeing tyrants machine gunned is tempered by the realization that the point at which a real victory was achievable was long before these stories take place. They are glimpses into total political failure.

CJW: Liberal Infernos - Ian Alan Paul at Ill Will

It is a bleak irony that the liberal regimes that defined themselves through their opposition to the genocides of the 20th century now resolutely cooperate with one another to facilitate genocide in the 21st. Indeed, any remaining defenders of liberalism must ask themselves not why the liberal order has failed to put an end to the genocide in Palestine, but why the liberal order so eagerly supports and sustains it. Alliances remain firm, logistical supports stay online, trade routes flow, the international system survives, while an entire people is buried beneath burning debris. What is liberalism other than the demand that its processes be respected, that its rules be followed, and that its elected leaders be knelt to, even as its forms of devastation burn without restraint? To remain a free and open society, the population must be brutalized and the prisons must be filled. To defend universal human rights, the killing must continue at a steady pace. To save the soul of liberalism, no one who steps out of line can be spared. This is the reality of today’s liberal order: a sweeping and unrelenting violence executed by those who say “never again.”

A great essay on the violence of liberalism, and on anarchism as the best (only?) way to fight back against that violence and repression.

And when those in power demand to negotiate with representatives of the revolt, anarchy emerges as the reply that “no one could ever represent us.” For anarchy, there is no need to be redeemed or made righteous, no desire to be anointed or to ascend to a higher place, but only a struggle against power wherever our world and its inhabitants continue to burn.

DCH: Every Trans Suicide Is State Sanctioned Murder by [sarah] Cavar at Protean Magazine

Once upon a time, I could have been a statistic.
Pills were juicy, somehow, the weight more welcome than my tits.
My honkers. My jugs.
A surgeon would photograph, grope, and liken them to an old man’s. In that ____moment, I felt old. I
felt ancient, ready to croak.
I had a good mixture, a veritable salad in my palm.___ Do me a solid_______ I told ____ the pills.
Remind whoever finds me of my pronouns.

Brilliant short poem. Go read the rest of it.

Just the headlines:

Indonesia is trying to block LGBTQIA content from the internet by Adi Renaldi Rest of World

Health, Cooking, and Related

MJW: Rags to Riches by Maddie Oatman at Mother Jones

In 2014, when Naseri began to explore the possibility of using periods to diagnose disease, she approached the lab director at a high-ranking university hospital and asked if she could run some experiments. He refused. Naseri’s research partner, Stanford OB-GYN professor emeritus Dr. Paul Blumenthal, offered to spin the blood down, separating the serum from the red blood cells that give the substance its intense color. But the lab director still wouldn’t budge. “No, no, no, that can’t happen,” Blumenthal recalls him saying. “I’m not letting you put that skanky stuff in my machine.” Blumenthal believes the lab director’s disgust reflects a deep-seated perception that menstruation is “a topic that is not discussed at the dinner table and that menstrual blood itself is kind of dirty.” But, as he sees it, its utility for science might offer an opportunity to rebrand: “If your menstrual blood actually has real value, then it might not be so stigmatizing.”

10% of women suffer the fallout of endometriosis, but the medical system hasn’t really given a shit until recently. Some dude probably woke up and thought, ‘hey, we could make a profit off this.’ Love that women’s bodies and pain only matter when a specific kind of value can be attached to it.

DCH: NYC COVID cases up 250% in 2 months — and this variant's harder to duck

Mandatory COVID mitigation measures have largely been waived, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eased its recommendations for how long people should isolate themselves after getting sick. But there are still precautions people can take to avoid getting COVID or spreading it to others.

Again these surges have as much to do with new variants as they do with people and governments completely abdicating any responsibility for prevention. Particularly in NY where mask bans are now a hot topic.

Young trans activists have scaled the NHS England headquarters - Serena Smith at Dazed - CJW: Solidarity! These kids are fucking heroes.
“Using a smartphone app, the distant doctor controls the robot within the patient’s stomach. PillBot shuts down and exits the body naturally within six to twenty-four hours. In addition, the team is working on using AI to make the preliminary diagnosis, after which a physician will create a course of therapy.” Pillbot: Swallowable tiny robot with thrusters performs endoscopy at home by Jijo Malayil at Interesting Engineering (DCH: Gonna be real bad if someone ever hacks one of those…)

Labour & Economics

DCH: The Shareholder Supremacy by Edward Zitron

The Michigan Supreme Court found that "a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders [and that] the powers of the directors are to be employed for that end," and intimated that cash surpluses should not be saved to invest in upcoming projects, but distributed to shareholders, because Ford had shown that it was good at making money. Ford was directly forbidden from lowering prices and raising employee salaries, and forced to issue a dividend.

A brilliant rundown of the long history of shareholder capitalism that’s the root cause of the rot at the heart of the global economy. It’s a long piece but worth reading the whole thing. Especially the bits about Jack Welch and his “innovation” of laying people off to drive up shareholder dividends.

“One study says a third of American workers have signed one; another puts the number at more than half. NDAs are being given out to roommates, to parents, to boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, and to bachelor-party attendees and wedding guests.” Hush-Hush Affair by Reeves Wiedeman at The Cut (DCH: I’ve never respected a single NDA I’ve signed. Sorry not sorry.)
“In an era of retrenchment in social policy, food assistance is becoming more generous and inclusive. But Republican politicians are attempting to gut one of the most popular programs: free school lunch.” The GOP Attack on Free Lunch by Colin Gordon at Dissent Magazine (DCH: I will go to war over free lunch)
Man makes money buying his own pizza on DoorDash app - Zoe Kleinman at BBC
Why Did the UAW Lose in Alabama? Joseph Van at Jacobin
The Lives of Seven Children Tell the Story of UK Inequality by Danny Dorling at Jacobin
How the ‘strong’ US economy feels for poorer Americans, in five charts at Financial Times

Movies + TV

LZ: Barbarian (2022)

Yea I'm super late with this one, but holy moly how the hype was worth it! I love how the movie breaks expectations and knows well the audience – that is, people who like horror movies and thrillers in general. Everything is very well connected, though you might need to accept some "poetic licenses" that are not so bad after all. It's a particularly nice title for women and how we are always on the verge of danger, always needing to be cautious and never trust anything or anyone. It's not a feminist movie, no, but it has a woman protagonist and she's a strong one, no scream queen. And I also love that the movie is very "serious" and quiet all in all, but the director takes some creative leaps in the intro and especially in the end when you get that synthwave-cool-horror vibes with the soundtrack and the credits editing.

CJW: I absolutely loved Barbarian, mostly for the ways it beautifully zags at the midpoint, letting a new scenario build tension fresh (after what was already a very tense opening). I saw it just appeared on Netflix (in Australia at least), so now’s as good a time as any to check it out.

LZ: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Another one that got a lot of hype and I went to watch it with the expectation that it would be about motherhood. Well, it kinda is, but in a way that I didn't think that was very clever or with enough layers. It is indeed about a single mom of three and her sister coming back for a visit, now pregnant but not willing to be. As she is assigned to protect her nephews, she discovers she has some motherly instincts in her, especially when it comes to her interaction with the youngest. Like The First Omen, this one has quite a few references to classic horror movies, like the blood elevator scene from The Shining, or then the use of a chainsaw after The Chainsaw Massacre, the resurfacing of an ancient scripture which unleashes a demon (The Exorcist, The Omen, and many more).
The actresses are good, especially the mother one who turns into a demon – to be honest, even before the transformation she already had a weird presence like Toni Colette in Hereditary. I also liked to see Morgan Davies there after seeing him in the One Piece tv series. He's so cute!

MJW: Civil War

I adore Kirsten Dunst, have enjoyed Alex Garland’s stuff in the past (The Beach is still one of my favourite books), and am historically interested in dystopian fiction (though… not as much these days), so despite reading a few negative reviews, I was still interested in seeing Civil War. Now that I have, I’m not sure if I liked it or didn’t, if it was good, or wasn’t. It’s a realistic depiction of what a civil war in the US could look like, yes. It’s no different from any war zone in any country that hasn’t enjoyed ‘peace’ in the recent past, and maybe that’s why Kirsten Dunst’s war journalist character Lee is so numb. She’s seen it before, and just because it’s the country she was born in doesn’t change that. Maybe once you’ve switched off enough to be able to bear it, once you’ve put the camera’s lens between you and it for so long, it’s impossible to feel horror again. Yeah, maybe that’s kinda relevant for us right now as we’re watching a genocide on phone screens… Anyway, she passes this detachment on to Cailee Spaeny’s self-appointed apprentice, Jessie, as they travel to DC with an outlandish plan to interview the President. At the end of the film I told my housemate: “That felt like an exercise in numbness.”

Art

CJW: A Rare Cross-Section Illustration Reveals the Infamous Happenings of Kowloon Walled City - at Colossal

A detailed line illustration showing a cutaway view of one section of the Kowloon Walled City, including laundry hanging from and between structures, and people filling various spaces.

Kowloon was built as a small military fort around the turn of the 20th century. When the Chinese and English governments abandoned it after World War II, the area attracted refugees and people in search of affordable housing. With no single architect, the urban center continued to grow as people stacked buildings on top of one another and tucked new structures in between existing ones to accommodate the growing population without expanding beyond the original fort’s border.
With only a small pocket of community space at the center, Kowloon quickly morphed into a labyrinth of shops, services, and apartments connected by narrow stairs and passageways through the buildings. Rather than navigate the city through alleys and streets, residents traversed the structures using slim corridors that always seemed to morph, an experience that caused many to refer to Kowloon as “a living organism.”

Never not fascinated by Kowloon Walled City, and this set of illustrations are fascinating.