nothing here but terrible wrath for a sick, sad world

issue 284, 16th March, 2025

CJW: I am in a lot of pain, so let’s get right to it.

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The Team

Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer & visual artist. Hates the internet.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, freeborn.

Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Writer, fulltime goth and metalhead.

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: All Ecology Is Queer - adrienne maree brown and Amy Ray at Orion Magazine

amb: One of my favorite aspects of queerness is that we have to be really intentional about who we bring into the world and how that happens. We’re in this period where there’s so much that has not been thought about, buildings built, structures created, and children born. And then all of a sudden, you have this explosion of queer relationships where it’s not a given that you’re just going to get pregnant anytime you fuck. And I remember having this lightbulb go off—the more queer people there are, the better it is for Earth. What queerness means is, there’s a certain level of intentionality around creating future and creating family and creating that is good for the ecology of the planet.

There's a level of positivity to this discussion I can't quite get behind for the obvious reasons, but I still thought it interesting enough to share.

“A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.” - Amazon rainforest cut down to build highway for COP climate summit - BBC - CJW: Are you fucking kidding me? Rare Lula L.
“Since DeepSeek’s launch, a swathe of Chinese companies — from automakers to appliance firms — have joined the frenzy to incorporate the homegrown artificial intelligence model into their products and services.” China’s AI frenzy: DeepSeek is already everywhere – cars, phones, even hospitals by Kinling Lo at Rest of World (DCH: ...and this is exactly what we were worried about. Even if Deepseek uses less power, if it's folded into everything then it’s still going to be an environmental blight.)
A Climate Solution On The Half Shell - Oysters - Aryn Baker at Noema

Just the headlines:

Well-managed solar farms can boost wildlife - study - BBC
Only 17% of global cities had safe air in 2024, air quality report finds by Stuti Mishra at The Independent

Geopolitics & Empire

DCH: Memo: 'Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries' by Gil Duran at The Nerd Reich

On February 5, a group of anonymous researchers published a memo that reads like a techno-political thriller—except every word is real. The document, "Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries," details how Elon Musk—the wealthiest person alive and a man who once declared, "Government is the ultimate corporation"—has orchestrated a stunning takeover of federal power.

Gil Duran has spent a long time talking about the far-right and their philosophy of the network state at outlets like The New Republic so he’s a good person to vet the accuracy of what’s laid out in the memo.

DCH: The Abduction of Mahmoud Khalil by John Ganz

On Saturday, March 8th, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized 30-year-old student activist Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia housing in the night. He was taken in front of his pregnant wife, an American citizen, who was threatened with arrest. The agents told Khalil’s lawyer that his visa was being revoked upon orders from the State Department. When his attorney informed them that Khalil was a legal permanent resident—a Green Card holder—they said they were revoking that instead. His attorney and family did not know where he was being held: they thought initially he was in New Jersey but now it appears that he is in a DHS detention facility in Louisiana.

Trump’s police state is taking action against people who stood up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He’s already threatened that Khalil is the first of many. Days later he even said Tesla protesters would be charged as domestic terrorists.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media is also reporting on the 200+ sites and apps that ICE contractors are using to surveil dissidents.

CJW: Your rights are being eroded so Israel can commit genocide without criticism - Dave Milner at The Shot

All this means the Zionist project is inherently reliant on brutal military aggression. It simply could not exist without it. (If reading this feels at all jarring, it’s because we’re doing the logic thing, not the gaslighting thing, today.) And this historic truth was both foreseeable in advance, and has been proven today by countless human rights reports, by livestreamed slaughter, by 78 years of atrocity, land theft, and cover up. If anyone ever asks you the disingenuous gotcha question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’ the only response is to answer with another question: ‘Can Israel exist without committing genocide?’ At that point, you have a real discussion.

Really great piece. Nothing you haven't seen before, on these pages, social media, or your own thoughts, but it's a succinct encapsulation of the gaslighting we're all subjected to in the West when it comes to the situation with Israel-occupied Palestine.

“The Israeli army is developing a new, ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence tool and training it on millions of Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians in the occupied territories, an investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.” By Yuval Abraham 972mag.
The attention economy is devouring politics by Henry Farrell

Just the headlines:

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem hit new peak by Georgia Gee 972mag
State of Siege: Israel is conducting its largest mass expulsion campaign in the West Bank since 1967 by Mariam Barghouti at Drop Site News
Trump Sells $10 Billion in Weapons to Israel by Ken Klippenstein

Science & Space

We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable - Michelle Starr at Science Alert (via Sentiers) - CJW: Apparently this was first published 2 years ago, but we missed it first time around. I love this though, unlocking millennia-old secrets by - and this is the part that I think is important - disregarding the ‘wisdom’ that says we know better than the ancients did. Read the piece and you’ll see what I mean.
Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI by Joseph Cox at 404 Media (DCH: worth remembering that the CEO of Clearview has ties to neo-nazi groups, the creators of the Pizzagate conspiracy, and the far-right broadly. Also why exactly does NASA need facial recognition services?)

Just the headlines:

NASA’s new telescope will create the ‘most colourful’ map of the cosmos ever made by Deanne Fisher at The Conversation
Scientists Propose Injecting Astronauts With Tardigrade RNA After Finding It Prevents Radiation Damage by Victor Tangermann at Futurism

Tech & Design

CJW: The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians - Evan Ratliff at Wired (use archive.md if the link is paywalled)

The more time I spent following the group that some called the Zizians, the more their story started seeming itself like some kind of basilisk. Just by virtue of having examined its events, you were trapped in its world, subject to its terms. Inside that world it felt like some future evil was rapidly approaching, ominous events waiting just beyond the horizon. But speaking of them could usher them faster, closer. I was certain the story as I understood it was incomplete but unsure where to look to complete it. Or if I did, whether I could tell it without attracting the basilisk’s gaze myself.
So I set the story aside, and waited.

A really great write-up about the so-called Zizians. If you haven't heard of them already, it's hard to summarise the situation, but think: true crime cult if the cultists were so deep down the SV "rationalist"/lesswrong rabbit hole that they became incredibly hostile to that whole community.

And here’s the hot, metafictional takedown of the Basilisk meme you didn’t know you needed.

DCH: This shit is wild.

DCH: AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged by MJ Crockett at The Guardian

But a closer look reveals how the study’s methods disadvantaged the human mediators. All communication took place over an online chat interface. Anyone who’s ever tried to resolve a disagreement by texting knows how much crucial information vanishes across a digital divide. Effective mediation involves attuning not just to what people say, but how they say it: their tone of voice, facial expressions and body language are vital cues that help us distinguish grudging acceptance from hearty agreement. AI mediators might have an edge in online discourse that excludes these cues, but that’s no reason to assume they’re superior tools for healing our political rifts – not least because online discourse contributed to those rifts in the first place.

MJ Crockett has been at the vanguard of research on the outrage economy and the harmful effects of tech for well over a decade now. Fantastic to see her tackling the BS claims around AI now too.

CJW: Exclusive: Adobe slammed for use of AI-Generated images of Indigenous people and artworks - NIT

AI-generated Aboriginal artwork has also been discovered on the platform, leading to fears that real traditional designs may have been used to train AI models without permission.
Indigenous artists community members have questioned whether Adobe sought consent from traditional custodians before producing these works and whether the AI-generated content is replacing or devaluing real Indigenous artists.

I can answer these two questions for you in order: No. Yes, and that's entirely the point of this explicitly fascist technology (sorry, friends who still fuck with LLMs, but it's true).

“At the height of the dotcom mania in the 1990s, many critics warned of a creeping reactionary fervor. “Forget digital utopia,” wrote the longtime technology journalist Michael Malone, “we could be headed for techno-fascism.” Elsewhere, the writer Paulina Borsook called the valley’s worship of male power “a little reminiscent of the early celebrants of Eurofascism from the 1930s”. ‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley by Becca Lewis at The Guardian
Gaming Democracy. How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right by Régine Debatty at we-make-money-not-art.com
Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat by Cory Doctorow
Are Other AIs Possible? by Eryk Salvaggio at Cybernetic Forests

Society & The Culture

DCH: How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic

Another way that COVID may have accelerated young people’s Rechtsruck in America and around the world was by dramatically reducing their physical-world socializing. That led, in turn, to large increases in social-media time that boys and girls spent alone. The Norwegian researcher Ruben B. Mathisen has written that “social media [creates] separate online spheres for men and women.” By trading gender-blended hangouts in basements and restaurants for gender-segregated online spaces, young men’s politics became more distinctly pro-male—and, more to the point, anti-feminist, according to Mathisen. Norwegian boys are more and more drawn to right-wing politics, a phenomenon “driven in large part by a new wave of politically potent anti-feminism,” he wrote. Although Mathisen focused on Nordic youth, he noted that his research built on a body of survey literature showing that “the ideological distance between young men and women has accelerated across several countries.”

Hopefully reporting like this finally puts to rest the myth that the young are some sort of monolithic far-left social justice calvary that’s going to ride in and save the day. And this rightward lurch of first-time voters isn’t unique to America as it's playing out globally. Thompson touches on a lot of different reasons as to why this has happened but I thought the role that tech has played in it deserves repeating yet again.

“New research by psychologists from University of Staffordshire and the University of Birmingham, published in the Journal of Social Issues, identifies spite as a key factor that underlies conspiracy theory belief.” Spitefulness linked to belief in conspiracy theories at University of Staffordshire
The B-movies of Paul W.S. Anderson double as acts of devotion to his muse, Milla Jovovich - Jesse Hassenger at AV Club (via Jared Shurin) - CJW: The writer of this piece must have seen a different Monster Hunter movie than me, because I found it incredibly dull, ugly (and also cheap-looking), and forgettable. But beyond that bone picking, I have a soft spot for Paul W.S. Anderson's B-movie output, so I enjoyed this write-up… even if I'm not entirely sure what point it was trying to make.
“Don’t let anybody else screw it up,” Cubby Broccoli warned his children before he died. “You can screw it up if you want to, but don’t let other people screw it up.” License to Shill: Inside Amazon’s 007 Takeover by Benjamin Svetkey The Hollywood Reporter

Just the headlines:

30 officers accused of facilitating 'gladiator fights' among minors at L.A.-area juvenile hall by Dennis Romero NBC News

Health, Cooking, and Related

DCH: Sick, Sad World by Kristen Martin at The Baffler

“The life cycle of the diseases [microbes] cause rests on the political order of things: the medical advancements that come with understanding the science of contagion, as well as the social dynamics that form our environment,” historian of science Edna Bonhomme writes in A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shapes Us. Put another way, contagions like Covid-19 spread in ways that both reflect and reproduce societal divisions that are born out of how we define who is deserving of health, autonomy, and care.

A good conversation between Martin and Bonhomme on the latter’s book about the injustices that cause the poor to suffer more than most during pandemics.

CJW: New report from European medical orgs declares unwavering support for gender-affirming care - LGBTQ Nation

A new report from a slate of European medical organizations emphasizes the importance of gender-affirming care for transgender youth. It also condemns the UK’s controversial Cass Review that claimed gender-affirming care is dangerous for young people.
The new 400-page report, released last week and written in German, included 26 medical and psychotherapeutic professional organizations from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. According to an analysis and translation by transgender journalist Erin Reed, the guidelines recommend puberty blockers for trans youth, as well as individualized care.

It's been heartening to see some semblance of leadership and normalcy coming out of Europe in response to America's mask-off fascism. Will it be enough? Who knows, but the above is encouraging. I hope Wes Streeting chokes.

“As of Tuesday, at least 223 people in Texas have been infected with measles since late January, and one child has died from measles, the first such death in the country in a decade.” Rural Texas Scrambles to Respond to Measles by Pooja Salhotra at Undark
“Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe.” The New Rasputins By Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic (DCH: A good rundown on RFK Jr. and his ilk across the world.)
How to Keep Providing Gender-Affirming Care Despite Anti-Trans Attacks by Shawn Musgrave, Jessica Washington The Intercept
How much should Americans worry about Elon Musk's ketamine use? By Shayla Love at The Atlantic

Just the headlines:

For the 1st time in Canada, surgeons put teeth in patients' eyes to restore sight at CBC

Labour & Economics

DCH: The Juggler by John Ganz

He was elected on “being good on the economy,” essentially because he was rich and people figured that they’d make him rich, but he seems so determined to unsettle investment prospects and upset markets that some see a deliberate plot to destroy the United States economy. Businesses need some expectation of normality to make decisions about hiring, capital expansion, and inventory. The only thing wrong with that theory is that it’s too coherent: it suggests some underlying rationale. Might I humbly suggest that Trump’s beliefs about the economy are contradictory and not terribly well-thought-out?

John Ganz on the chaos of Trumponomics.

“According to a new study published FGS Global, they see a technology that will primarily benefit large corporations, be used to surveil them and invade their privacy, and over which they will have little power. FGS interviewed 800 union workers, 800 nonunion workers, as well as industry and political leaders.” Workers know exactly who AI will serve by Brian Merchant
“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that — no matter what occurs — Google always wins. American consumers and businesses suffer from Google’s conduct,” the DOJ said in a court filing. Trump’s DOJ still wants to break up Google by Queenie Wong at The Los Angeles Times
Why the Trump administration is easing up on crypto crime at exactly the wrong moment by Benjamin Schiffrin at The Los Angeles Times (DCH: Gee, I dunno could it be because of outrageous corruption, conflict of interest, and straight up bribery?)

Just the headlines:

Trump helps BlackRock buy Panama Canal ports, to weaken China – and strengthen Wall Street by Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report

Books

CJW: Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West - Dan Sheehan interviewing Omar El Akkad at Lithub

You know, the reason I find myself having had such a hard time talking about this is because I’m just so preemptively furious at the moment, many years from now, when we’re gonna get all of those, you know, “Hiroshima”-type stories. The after-the-fact shared grief, the how-could-we-let-this-happen type stuff. I’m just so furious that we’re going to do it again. You know, we’ve got the president of the United States talking about mass ethnic cleansing as though it’s a tourism opportunity and we’re all going to sit around and wait until the taking is done and the killing is done and everything colonialism needed it has gotten. And then we’re all going to feel sad about it afterwards. And I find myself so furious about that all of the time.

Marlee's already started reading this, but I'm still waiting on my copy to be delivered. Still, American War is one of my favourite novels of the 21st Century so far, and I can't wait to read One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

MJW: I’m very slow at reading paper books, but I’ll get back to you soon.

Movies + TV

LZ - Moloch

Very interesting Dutch folk horror movie about the legend of Feike, a girl that is made pregnant by her father and then the mother sacrifices herself to the infant sacrifice god Moloch to protect her. The story revolves around the tale, but with a contemporary twist as we follow the story of Betrike, a Dutch single mom who lives with her parents in a house near a bog where archeologists find several bodies. It was interesting that one of the archeologists was a Danish man, which reminded me of yet another great Dutch-Danish horror movie called Speak No Evil – highly recommended.

I watched this movie as a recommendation from Splatter after I finished Enys Men, a folk horror in the Cornish islands, following the story of this lonely woman collecting data about the soil there and living in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Loneliness, trauma, and memories blend with local folklore and take the main character into a vortex of hallucinations and her descent into madness. A slow, but interesting and very atmospheric film.

The Love Witch

This was due a long time. I finally made it to watch this immediate classic gem which emulates 70s horror movies with its colorful palette. It is a contemporary giallo but it doesn't have all the neon lights like you would expect, although the bright colors and trippy designs, beautiful wardrobe and wavy decor are there. It tells the story of Elaine, this woman who has been reborn as a witch after a heartbreak, and she uses love and sex magic to find the love of her life. Needless to say, things don't go so well and there are a few interesting contrapoints there when you see Elaine, our supposedly heroin, supporting sexist ideas of female submission while at the same time being a… serial killer. I loved the anachronisms too, like when one character gets a phone call and takes it from an iPhone in the middle of a rococo café. Delightful watch and you can find it for free on YouTube.

CJW: Walton Goggins’s Wild Ride to Stardom - Alex Pappademas at GQ (use archive.md if the link is paywalled)

“And my mother worked for the employment department, finding people jobs. And it’s just, like, one of those things. Where your mother makes $12,000 a year, for years, until the day that she’s laid off. And then she’s not able to provide anything for you other than heat—which was questionable—and a whole lot of love. And I guess the ability to kind of believe in yourself, whenever she wasn’t around.”
He’s holding it together. Trying not to cry. “But she did give me that. And I—and I—y’know, the first time that I made”—his voice breaks on the last word—“more money in a day than my mother made in a year of work was the greatest and the worst day of my life.”
Through tears now: “What do I do, really? I just tell stories. And some people like them.” Long pause. More tears. “And then this woman is working every day, to provide for this child that she doesn’t even get an opportunity to really see.”

Well, the above made me teary-eyed, and in general this is a great profile on an actor who's at risk of stealing every scene he's in (his skill and charisma keeping multiple characters of his alive long after they were supposed to die).

The Self-Promotion

MJW: I have an essay in Someone Like Me: An anthology of non-fiction by Autistic writers which came out this week. It’s a great anthology with a really broad range of essays. You should read mine if you like oversharing and want to learn more about my experience of sensory processing disorder.