Sept. 5, 2021, 12:57 p.m.
nothing here but slime molds and Heisenberg cubes - issue 150 - 5th September, 2021
Nothing Here
nothing here but slime molds and Heisenberg cubes
issue 150 - 5th September, 2021
CJW: Welcome to issue 150 of the nothing here newsletter. We’d planned to do something interesting for a bonus around issue 150, but then I went and brought it forward with August Movie August. We’ll still dish up something cool for you soon though, don’t worry.
If you like what we do here and would like to support this work (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. Notorious bisexual.
Corey J. White (CJW) - Little and brittle.
Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts. Sci-fi writer, futurology researcher and essayist. @lidiazuin
Climate Change & The Environment
CJW: Ted Talks - Evan Malmgren at Real Life Mag
Kaczynski’s most significant contribution to the work of 20th century anti-industrial thinkers is the bare fact of the bombings, which deftly played to the demands of a fear-driven media ecosystem. In refusing to grapple with this, contemporary accounts fail to capture a difficult truth: that the very decision to uplift Kaczynski’s message roughly vindicates his conviction that violence was an ugly but effective medium.
Really interesting piece about Ted K and the reaction to his killings and his writings, and the disparity therein. Mirrors my own thoughts inasmuch as I wasn’t much impressed by the ideas or writing in Industrial Society and its Future.
MKY: and back down that rabbit hole I went. Cheers Corey!
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CJW: The Stability Fantasy - Emmett FitzGerald at Orion (via Inhabit)
Humans have long thought of our planet as fully knowable—that we could tell our children when to expect the first frost, when to plant the fields come spring. You might have drought-stricken or snowless Januarys, but they would be outliers against an otherwise predictable trend line. But as we leave the Holocene behind, scientists are forced to abandon models that have governed our understanding of the planet for hundreds of years. As the world becomes less predictable, Marcia Bjornerud says it’s challenging our old delusion that nature is just a stable backdrop: “Now we’re realizing that the scenery is going to start directing the play.”
On climate change and the fantasy of stability we live under due to our previously stable climate systems and inability to perceive things in large time spans.
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DCH: Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames - Kim Stanley Robinson at The Financial Times (paywall)
But saving the biosphere is not the highest rate of return (surely clear proof of another market miscalculation) because that rescue involves replacing most of our infrastructure, while also building what will be in effect a planetary sewage system, retrieving and disposing of the waste we’ve been dumping into the atmosphere.
This is no one’s idea of a high-return investment, because no one actually wants thousands of billions of tons of dry ice. Pulling that much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is simply a cost — the cost of survival, but not the highest rate of return. So private capital will not invest in it, and if we allow that judgment to stand, we are cooked.
Consider this a memo from the Ministry For The Future. It’s a fantastic rundown of the climate emergency and what needs to be done to stop it. More from Kim here:
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Extinction is Everyday - The Salvage Collective (via Inhabit)
Judge Halts Massive Alaska Oil Project Over Climate Concerns - Audrey Carleton at VICE
'Carbon Neutral' Container Ships Are Greenwashing, Experts Say - By Aaron Gordon VICE
Fleeing Disaster Is Hard. Climate Change Is Making It Harder By Matt Simon Katie M. Palmer WIRED
Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana and then didn’t really weaken. Why? By Eric Berger Ars Technica
Shape-shifting storms like Ida are cities’ worst nightmare Justine Calma at The Verge
Fukushima nuclear water to be released via undersea tunnel by Mari Yamaguchi Associated Press (via TechXplore)
Geopolitics
MKY: BRI vs New Quad for Afghanistan’s coming boom (via Brendan)
Maybe you’d like some big picture, wtaf is going in geopolitically in the central asian region?
More in this discussion with the author of the above piece, Pepe Escobar, in his guest appearance on the Moderate Rebels podcast.
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CJW: Finishing what ISIS started? Turkey attacks Yezidis in Iraq - Meghan Bodette at Roar Mag
These strikes are part of a pattern of Turkish attacks in the region going back to 2017, just over a year after Sinjar was liberated from ISIS control. While Turkey never fought ISIS in Iraq, they continue to threaten the community more impacted by ISIS atrocities than any other — leaving many on the ground wondering if NATO’s second largest army seeks to finish what ISIS started.
[…]
While the United Nations, the European Union and the United States have recognized ISIS atrocities against the Yezidi people as a genocide, they remain silent when Turkey bombs the survivors.
On Turkish attacks against the Yezidi people, and the historical and current context.
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CJW: Afghanistan: The Taliban Victory in a Global Context - at Crimethinc. (via Dan Hill)
Based on what I saw, US counterterrorism operations are chiefly about creating markets for US military technologies and products and securing resources for the US empire. For 20 years, we propped up local and regional warlords, giving them weapons, money, and arms so they wouldn’t attack our forces. We green-lit their death squads and called them the Afghan Local Police.
More on Afghanistan, this piece from a veteran who served there before becoming radicalised (in the anti-imperialist sense of radicalisation).
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DCH: Taliban Helps China Target Afghan Uyghurs to Woo Beijing - CJ Werleman bylinetimes.com
Today, there are an estimated 2,000 Uyghurs living in Afghanistan, but despite most having lived in the country for years and many having Afghan citizenship, their official identification forms still state that they are “Chinese migrants”, prompting fears that they will be used as a bargaining chip or diplomatic gesture by the Taliban to curry favour from Beijing.
The Taliban, like Pakistan and too many other Muslim nations, have decided to turn a blind eye on China’s oppression of the Uyghurs.
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DCH: The Afghanistan War is Not Over Until the US Legacy of Impunity Ends by CJ Werleman at Byline Times
“The bodies were covered in blood and shrapnel, and some of the dead children were still inside the car,” the United States “always says they are killing [the Islamic State] al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but they always attack civilian people and children.”
Joe Biden was in the Oval Office for 9 of the 20 years of the War in Afghanistan. More than any other elected official he bears a culpability for the mess in the region. But on the 2020 campaign trail he denied ANY responsibility for it.
So fuck Joe Biden.
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War crimes witness in hiding after blast at her NSW home - Mark Willacy at ABC News
Was There a Plan in Afghanistan? - Gary Brecher at Naked Capitalism (via Dan Hill) - CJW: A great and succinct history of American operations in Afghanistan.
The US Has Held Me For 19 Years Without A Charge. I Have Just One Chance To Be Freed. - Ahmed Rabbani at Huffington Post
The US may have a new top secret space weapon. What is it? - Tim Fernholz at Quartz (paywall)
These Witches Are Trying to Hex the Taliban By Matthew Gault VICE
Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections By Isaac Arnsdorf ProPublica
Victims of A Drone Strike, Momentarily Visible By Sam Thielman foreverwars.substack.com
Science & Space
MJW: What Slime Knows - Lacey M Johnson at Orion with photography from Alison Pollack
Here in this little patch of mulch in my yard is a creature that begins life as a microscopic amoeba and ends it as a vibrant splotch that produces spores, and for all the time in between, it is a single cell that can grow as large as a bath mat, has no brain, no sense of sight or smell, but can solve mazes, learn patterns, keep time, and pass down the wisdom of generations.
CJW: On slime molds, but also the history of taxonomy and its connections to white supremacy.
We share a common ancestor with gorillas and whales and sea squirts, marine invertebrates that swim freely in their larval phase before attaching to rocks or shells and later eating their own brain.
2022 goals.
MJW: 2023 goals:
Physarum polycephalum, which recently made its debut at the Paris Zoo, is a bright, egg yolk yellow, has 720 sexual configurations and a vaguely fruity smell.
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DCH: This May Be a ‘Heisenberg Cube’ From the Nazis’ Failed Nuke Program, Scientists Say - Becky Ferreira at VICE
The cutting-edge research sheds new light into the Nazis’ secret efforts to develop atomic bombs, an outcome that could have upended World War II if it had been successful. In addition to these historical insights, the rare cube is also used as a training device to help prevent illicit trafficking of modern nuclear materials.
It should come as no surprise that while hundreds of these Nazi uranium cubes were consfiscated during the Allied Alsos Mission, most “disappeared” and went off the books. Presumably absorbed into the US nuke program.
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DCH: So … What If Aliens’ Quantum Computers Explain Dark Energy? By Stephon Alexander WIRED
So far, so good: None of these ideas about quantum computers is anything other than mainstream, not radical. But Lanier and I went a step further to propose that alien computers are not only topological quantum machines, but that they are gravitational. The particles they tie knots with are gravitons. And this takes quantum computers into the realm of dark energy.
Perhaps a nugget of an idea for some of the NH team to play with in their next sci-fi story. In this excerpt from Fear of a Black Universe, Stephon Alexander recounts a pretty wild thought experiment he and Jaron Lanier had
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CJW: COVID-19 Long-Haulers Are Fighting for Their Future - Ed Yong at The Atlantic
A really interesting long read on long-COVID, with a focus on the ways it overlaps with other chronic illnesses.
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Scientists Captured Footage of Tardigrades Walking Around And It’s Adorable - Becky Ferreira at Vice
Ozone recovery is offsetting Southern Hemisphere climate change trends in summer
Failed HIV vaccine trial marks another setback for the field
One-third of Sun-like stars may have eaten their planets -greek mythology joke goes here-
A Signal from Space Is on a 16-Day Cycle. Scientists Just Ruled Out an Explanation - Becky Ferreira at VICE
An Experimental Birth Control Attacks Sperm Like a Virus By Sara Harrison WIRED
Collins Aerospace to provide life support for privately run LEO outpost by Jason Rainbow at Spacenews (DCH: this is some straight up Moonraker shit. Someone is building a private LEO space station.)
Tech & Design
CJW: Trust Me, You Want This - Camilla Cannon at Real Life Mag
A host-read ad can convince a consumer that a given product or service is not incongruent to their existing attitudes and beliefs simply because it becomes part of the show. It draws on the consumer’s desire for social validation: Familiarity with the advertised product becomes a token of both the parasocial connection with the host and the fact of belonging to the larger podcast community. The host, the listener, and the rest of the community all share an insider’s frame of reference toward the ad, as if they are all in on its necessity. If the empowered resistance of the listener hinged on being too smart to fall for ads, it now pivots to a sense of being smart enough to know that the host is trustworthy, despite their mouthing an ad’s words.
A while back I was talking to a friend about Cumtown after he’d recommended it. It was precisely the ad-libbed ad-reads detailed here that I bounced hard off of, my deeply-ingrained hatred of marketing bristling at the way this merged the content of the podcast with the interrupting signal of the advertising. Not only does it make the ad difficult to skip, but I also grated that even if I could skip it, it would mean missing the (in-ad) banter that was the show’s raison d’etre.
I should have realised that my aversion could have signalled something about this form of advertising, but no bother that I failed to explore it before now, because this piece covers the phenomenon in plenty of detail.
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DCH: If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship Around the World - Kurt Opsahl at The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Apple is a global company, with phones and computers in use all over the world, and many governments pressure that comes along with that. Apple has promised it will refuse government “demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users.” It is good that Apple says it will not, but this is not nearly as strong a protection as saying it cannot, which could not honestly be said about any system of this type. Moreover, if it implements this change, Apple will need to not just fight for privacy, but win in legislatures and courts around the world. To keep its promise, Apple will have to resist the pressure to expand the iMessage scanning program to new countries, to scan for new types of content and to report outside parent-child relationships.
When this news first broke weeks ago Matt Webb and I had a good long chat about it. Obviously child pornography and child sex trafficking is a blight but is this the solution? Big tech companies have long been scanning their cloud services for this sort of content but to start doing so on the device itself is a massive step change.
Never mind the fact researchers have already found flaws in the hash that Apple is using for these scans. Never mind the fact Apple knowingly turns a blind eye on the worst of China’s harms. I say this as a survivor of child abuse – I do not want this.
Update: Apple has delayed the rollout of this initiative. It’s important to note they’re still committed to launching it in some form however. Keep an eye on this shit.
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DCH: Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago By Kaitlyn Tiffany The Atlantic
Let me explain. Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls, and idly curious lovers of chitchat. One might, for example, point to @_capr1corn, a Twitter account with what looks like a blue orb with a pink spot in the middle as a profile picture. In the spring, the account tweeted “i hate texting come over and cuddle me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna hug you,” and then “i hate texting just come live with me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna kiss u,” which got 1,300 likes but didn’t perform as well as it did for @itspureluv. But unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it. Person or bot: Does it really matter?
Keep an eye on this one. It might even seem on its surface that it’s a fun conspiracy theory like days of yore. But as we know, we can’t have nice things and this is sure to turn darker soon enough.
CJW: This is an interesting conspiracy theory in that I could believe it’s in spirit, but not in the particulars. Like, yes, between algorithmic interference, advertising, advertorial, influencers, bots, etc etc, a lot of the internet is surely fake, but taking it as far as some do leads to the same sort of solipsism as people who believe they’re surrounded by NPCs. Anyway.
That particular conversation continued down the bleakest path imaginable, to the point of this comment: “If I was real I’m pretty sure I’d be out there living each day to the fullest and experiencing everything I possibly could with every given moment of the relatively infinitesimal amount of time I’ll exist for instead of posting on the internet about nonsense.”
Same, anon, same.
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DCH: They saw a YouTube video. Then they got Tourette’s By Grace Browne WIRED UK
Not only were the tics complex in nature, involving several muscle groups, even more bizarrely the symptoms of each patient bore a striking resemblance to one another. “The symptoms were identical. Not only similar, but identical,” she says. Although all had been formally diagnosed with Tourette’s by other physicians, Müller-Vahl, who has been working with patients with Tourette’s syndrome for 25 years, was certain it was something else entirely. Then a student came forward who knew where she had seen those tics before.
Interesting story about dozens of people developing Tourette’s-like symptoms via a popular Berliner YouTuber. This is a WIRED story so expect lots of hardware/software metaphors for neurological/physiological conditions like Tourettes and FMD.
Even more interesting is this paper from Oxford about the phenomenon:
We report the first outbreak of a new type of mass sociogenic illness (MSI) that in contrast to all previously reported episodes is spread solely via social media. Accordingly, we suggest the more specific term “mass social media-induced illness” (MSMI).
CJW: This is like something out of a horror movie or a cyberpunk novel.
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Australian police given extreme surveillance powers under ‘excessive’ bill - Cam Wilson at Crikey (Paywall)
Clearview AI Offered Free Facial Recognition Trials To Police All Around The World - Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins Antonio Pequeño IV at BuzzFeed News
We Talked to a Dealer Selling Ivermectin Through Shady Facebook Ads By Tim Marchman VICE
Tech lobbies more the bigger it gets. A new paper explains why. - protocol
Facebook mistakenly labels Black men ‘primates’ - Al Jazeera (DCH: like Google before them)
Society & The Culture
CJW: “I Saved the World Today:” Eurythmics and Communism - Marcello Tarì at Protean Mag (via Inhabit)
Deleuze and Guattari said once that the State has always existed as a virtuality, even when it did not yet exist. But they forgot to mention that the same is true of communism; it is always there, even when not in force, it is there as inexhaustible power of the angel of justice.
A really interesting excerpt (from a book I now want to read) on communism and how we could use the current fragmentation of society/culture/etc to create space to reach toward non-capitalist futures.
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MJW: Stop Asking Sex Workers to Fix Sex Work - Charlotte Shane at The Cut
What most people don’t understand is just how difficult it is to conduct basic business as a sex worker, even when your work is ostensibly legal
I just wanna run my small ‘me’ business. So does every SWer. We’re just trying to keep the bills paid. Stop asking us to fix the issues inherent in SW (they are many) and start asking how you can help.
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DCH: TikToker Makes Script to Flood Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site With Fake Info By Joseph Cox VICE
An activist has made a script to flood a Texas website used to solicit information on people seeking abortions with fabricated data, according to a TikTok video from the developer and Motherboard’s test of the tool. The developer, whose social media identifies him as Sean Black, also made an iOS shortcut making it easier for non-technical activists to participate as well.
Good trouble. We need more techies like Sean Black. Thankfully GoDaddy has shut down service for the narc site.
Let me take this as an opportunity to say this; Fuck Governor Abbot. Fuck the Texas GoP. Fuck SCOTUS for enabling this bullshit. Fuck these so-called “whistleblower” bounty hunters. And fuck Governor DeSantis for trying to roll out the same bullshit in Florida.
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After the OnlyFans debacle, these new sex work platforms prioritize design and equity - By KC Ifeanyi Fast Company
I’m an Adult Performer. Here’s Why I’m Abandoning Amazon Wishlists. By GoAskAlex VICE
Riot police, body scanners and social breakdown in toy town - Dan Hancox and Kasia Tomasiewicz at Coda
The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis - Yohann Koshy at The Guardian
Why Florida’s Covid Surge Is Screwing With the Water Supply (Hint: Oxygen) By Matt Simon WIRED
Labor & Economics
MKY: The cryptocurrency dons of Beirut (via @lifewinning / Ingrid Burrington)
Generally speaking I fucking loath all things cryptocurrency, but this is one hell of a ‘what would Leggy Startlitz do’ / HIGH TECH COLLAPSE LIFE story.
And this ep of TrueAnon is matchy matchy.
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DCH: Billionaire Sacklers granted lifetime legal immunity in opioid settlement By Beth Mole Ars Technica
However, that $4.325 billion will be doled out over nine years. In that time frame, the Sacklers’ wealth will rise from about $11 billion to an estimated $14.6 billion, according to an analysis commissioned by state attorneys general.
The agreement also grants the Sacklers—who have not filed for bankruptcy—“releases” from liability for harm caused by OxyContin and other opioids. The immunity extends to the Sacklers’ other companies and trusts and to hundreds of associates.
As my friend Casey opined, “they’ve riched their way out of consequences. The Sacklers have so much blood on their hands. According to WHO data there’s half a million deaths due to drug overdose. 70% of those are opioid-related.
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DCH: Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It’s About the End of Capitalism By Hannah Steinkopf-Frank VICE
It imagines a world where energy, usually from the sun or wind, can be used without harming our environment. Where green roofs and windmills allow humans to live in harmony with nature. On the surface it might seem like a rosy, perhaps even naive perspective for our moment, when climate change-fueled disasters are in the news every other day. But imagining Solarpunk purely as a pleasant aesthetic undermines its inherently radical implications. At its core, and despite its appropriation, Solarpunk imagines an end to the global capitalist system that has resulted in the environmental destruction seen today.
A really terrific long read on Solarpunk that features some of the movement’s leading contributors. And nice nods to it’s special significance in Brazil. One for Lidia and M1k3y to devour for sure.
MKY: That is def VICE doing a writeup on Solarpunk. Nice to see some friends getting some good quote there. Especially looking forward to our prev recurring guest, Andrew Dana Hudson’s new book getting to print.
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Prop 22 Was Declared Unconstitutional, and It’s Just the Beginning - Edward Ongweso Jr at Vice
The Human Cost: Life in the Abattoir By Chas Newkey-Burden Byline Times (DCH: Here in the UK the meat industry is petitioning the Govt to allow them to use prisoners as slave labor.)
Books
LZ: Las Cosas que Perdimos en El Fuego, by Mariana Enriquez
Also available in English (Things we lost in the fire), this book is a collection of short stories written by the Argentine writer and journalist Mariana Enriquez. I met her during a conference about Robert Aickman and I was surprised to hear her saying she wished she could write so well like him, but it turns out that I found “Cold Hand in Mine” super boring and Mariana’s book is extremely promising. I’m still on the first pages, but I highly recommend you check the work if you want to learn more about South America and how Mariana blends horror with actual stuff – criminality, religious practices, diversity, poverty, local history etc. The first story has already captivated me with the insertion of the character Lala, described as being “born an Uruguayan man, now living as a Brazilian woman.” Good recommendation for those who have been enjoying contemporary horror fiction.
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LZ: The Incorruptibles: A Study of Incorruption in the Bodies of Various Saints and Beati by Joan Carroll Cruz
I always found the topic of incorruptible saints a very interesting and curious one. I never read anything particularly about it, but then I found two books (this one and Heavenly Bodies, which I still aim to buy since it’s full of beautiful photos) and began with Joan’s work. It’s somewhat funny to find out that Joan is a housewife that decided to dedicate herself to writing books about such topics, and it is a very complete work. There are dozens of mini bios of saints and blessed individuals who were supposedly buried without going under any process of conservation or embalming, though their bodies kept fresh, flexible and even fragrant for months, years, centuries even! When you try to find scientific articles about the topic, it’s like scientists have already dismissed it, understanding that most of the cases are not well documented and that a more minute analysis would lead the team to find out that some technique was employed but maybe not registered. Kinda creepy, I know, but it’s curious.
Movies + TV
LZ: Beanpole (2019)
Super weird and slow movie about two women living in post-World War II Leningrad. With astonishing photography blending rich green tones with black and brown, the film has a couple of dialogues that may become unforgettable. One of them is when one of the women is invited to meet the parents of her “boyfriend”, and the mother seems to be prejudiced about the fact that she was a “companion woman” during the war. When she faces the mother saying that she wouldn’t even last one day on the front with such an attitude, the lady replies that they are more similar than they seemed. Well, I will leave it to that so you may grow curious! :)
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LZ: Promising Young Woman (2020)
Very interesting movie. Maybe as a stand-alone piece it’s not that great, but the message and the idea behind the plot is brilliant. Several contemporary horror movies with female protagonists have been using real world fears like misogyny, rape, motherhood etc as a haunting topic. This one I learned about during a conference on gothic studies and I loved to follow Carey Mulligan’s path of revenge against a friend who was gang raped. The protagonist here is named Cassandra, something that I wonder has something to do with the Greek mythological prophet.
It was such a coincidence that I was discussing with a friend that Lars Von Trier’s female characters tend to have a “masculine” identity which would ultimately cover up his own fragility (according to her), because if a woman decided to do what his female characters do (like in Nymphomaniac, Melancholia, Antichrist etc), they wouldn’t be as successful as they were in his stories. Well, Promising Young Woman tells much about that: when you try to avenge like a man (take Falling Down, for instance), but you are a woman… Well, it might not work as intended.
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CJW: Love on the Spectrum (rec via Austin)
I’m not sure how widespread this show will be across streaming platforms around the world as it’s an Australian production, but it’s a reality tv/documentary series following different people on the autism spectrum as they navigate love and dating. It can be incredibly sweet and incredibly awkward (for me anyway, as I feel sympathetic anxiety about some of the clumsier social interactions), and it’s just a really humane/caring look at a community that is so often ignored or actively maligned.
They approach dating with an openness and forthrightness that is often lacking in the realm of dating, and you love to see it. I also wanted to find thoughts on the show from someone on the spectrum, and found this here, just in case you’re interested.
Video
I’m not exactly a fan of the franchise, but I was positively surprised after watching this gameplay trailer for the next COD. Several other games announced at Gamescom 2021 have surprised the audience with the inclusion of female protagonists – this seems to be a trend now, and I love it. I never played COD’s campaign mode but this one is so cinematic and so exciting that I’m really looking forward to playing it. Basically the story is focused on the battle of Stalingrad and you play Polina, a Soviet soldier trying to survive after a Nazi bombardment. Great stuff.
The Memes
Context: Blizzard to change name of Overwatch’s McCree following sexual harassment lawsuit
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MJW: Fucken burrrrrrrn.