nothing here but the doomed tech right
issue 290 - 8th June, 2025
CJW: It’s that time of the fortnight - more nothing here. Welcome, and thanks.
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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, babydoll (1 of 2).
Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Writer, fulltime goth and metalhead.
Climate Change & The Environment
DCH: Almost 40% of world’s glaciers already doomed due to climate crisis study - Damian Carrington at The Guardian
Schuster added that it was “not too late to act now, because this study shows every tenth of a degree less of global warming matters”, potentially reducing the human suffering caused by glacier loss. “We hope the message gives people some hope that we can still do something.”
If we stay on trend the number skyrockets to 75% of the world’s glaciers which would obviously endanger millions of people, increase climate related mass migration, and create chaos we’re not ready for.
//
‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects - Tess McClure at The Guardian
Just the headlines:
Seattle woman brings first-ever wrongful death lawsuit against big oil - Dharna Noor at The Guardian
Geopolitics & Empire
DCH: The Massacre of Nine Children of the Al-Najjar Family - Donya Abu Sitta at Drop Site News
Meanwhile, their mother, Alaa, had heard the news and rushed home. By the time she arrived, her husband, Hamdi, had been taken to hospital with severe injuries, while the charred, dismembered bodies of her children were being lifted out of the rubble. Three children had already been retrieved and she watched, weeping in distress, as four more were carried out. When her daughter, Rivan, was pulled out, she begged rescuers to let her hold her body.
I don’t think I could ever process this much personal tragedy. The most recent figures I’ve seen have the death toll at over 54,000 so far during this genocide. Israel has to be held accountable.
//
CJW: To Live and Die in Gaza - Fatima Ayub at The Conversationalist
This same siege today, almost three months since all aid to Gaza has been cut off, has driven people to famine. The cost of flour, if you can find it, careens wildly, swinging from an already farcical $100 USD to an impossible $700 USD. The bread bakeries have shut down. The World Central Kitchen says its warehouses are bare. Children have been dying of malnutrition and under bombs all at once, like fish in an increasingly shrinking barrel. To quote a DC pundit, “The war in Gaza is not really that different than other wars.” A beat. “Well, except I guess they can’t run away.”
I just don’t know how this was ever allowed to happen. It is unfathomable.
//
“There is no way of speaking about Gaza as an Israeli genocide alone. It is an American-Israeli genocide. The American political, security and media establishments have shown greater antipathy to those who find the genocide unbearable than to those committing it. Nor is there any ambiguity about the provenance of the missiles that set children like Abed, Mohammed, Amal, Maryam and Silwan on fire, nor the provenance of the software that enabled it. And every day this nightmare persists and its perpetrators go unpunished is a promise that the U.S. and Israel will consign ever more children to the flames.” If We Were in Hell, Would We See More Children Burn Than We See in Gaza? - Spencer Ackerman
Stopping The Genocide of Palestinians Will Stop Attacks Like Colorado - And another one from Ackerman
Just the headlines:
Kentucky Coal Country Loses Its Last Democrat - Meagan Day at Jacobin (DCH: This cuts deep for me since I have family ties in the region.)
Tech & Design
DCH: The ideological rift on the tech right - Paris Marx
Drawing a distinction between the new military industry complex and the Network State movement isn’t to root for one over the other. They’re both efforts to try to push as far as possible toward a political reorientation that serves their interests. We could even see one as a hedge against the failure of the other: if the effort to capture the US government fails, then tech plutocrats could still decamp to their semi-autonomous zones where they rule with an iron fist and can do as they please. They must both be stopped, as they have horrible implications for our collective future.
I’m not even sure I buy these as two genuinely different factions. As Marx says Thiel has been the poster child and de facto leader of both at different times. Sometimes even at the same time. This is all just a hedge to make sure they come out on top regardless.
//
DCH: AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion - Tina He at Fake Pixels (via Sentiers)
What makes us human is not the absence of pain, but the experience of it as ours. AI, in its idealized form, offers collective agency, a solution to loneliness, an optimization of every choice. But as both Heidegger and Evangelion warn, the cost may be unbearable: the flattening of selves into a seamless, computation-ready mesh.
This is probably one of the best critiques of AI I’ve read this year. I’ve come back to it a few times already since I came across it in the last few weeks. Will definitely have to check out more of her writing.
//
CJW: Toolmen - Mandy Brown
Engaging with AI as a technology is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach. It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.
There are a number of people who I otherwise consider to be intelligent who have gotten on the "AI" train, sullying their newsletters and blogs with genAI images and sharing so much tech wank/bullshit about the current grift, with no care for the environmental destruction it wreaks or the rapacious theft it was built upon. I have lost much respect for these people. Anyway, Mandy Brown is always on point, here talking about "AI" as an ideology rather than a tool. I previously shared a piece linking "AI" to fascism, just in case you wonder what alignment I think this ideology has. I daresay Brown agrees…
The ideology beneath AI is nothing more than white supremacy glammed up by a techbro aesthetic, white hoods swapped for tactical pants, the old racial slurs upgraded to anti-DEI rhetoric, the burning cross traded in for midnight reductions in force.
//
“The splashiest measure in the House bill may also be one of the least likely provisions to make it into law. States would be banned from drafting their own AI regulations for the next 10 years.” Trump’s Big, Beautiful Handout to the AI Industry - Matt Sledge at The Intercept
Technology Does Not Solve Political Problems - Hamilton Nolan
AI, indulgences, and the false promise of salvation by Edward Ongweso Jr (DCH: it's a long and heady read but I’m pretty sure Ongweso is the only person critical of AI and big tech that could have made the link between AI and the old notion of Catholic indulgences). It pairs nicely with Tina He’s article above.
The Who Cares Era - Dan Sinker (via Sentiers)
Society & The Culture
“The New York-area PBS station WNET has scrubbed its archives of at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression, The Intercept has learned, as Congress and the Trump administration target public broadcasters with attempts to strip their funding.” PBS Station Wipes Drag and Trans Content After DOGE Outcry - Nikita Mazurov at The Intercept (DCH: Spineless cowards. And here I thought NYers were supposed to be made of sterner stuff. Shameful.)
Just the headlines:
Authors Are Accidentally Leaving AI Prompts In their Novels - Matthew Gault at 404 Media
Health, Cooking, and Related
Just the headlines:
Cancer-fighting immune cells could soon be engineered inside our bodies - Cassandra Willyard at Nature
A Flesh-Eating Parasite Is Advancing Toward the U.S. - Sarah Zhang at The Atlantic
Labour & Economics
Get a job coding they said. Everything’s computers they said. Whelp it turns out computer science majors have double the unemployment rate (6.1%) of philosophy majors (3.2%) or art history majors (3%). College Majors With the Lowest Unemployment Rates: Report - Sherin Shibu at Entrepreneur
A new paper by Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard states bluntly: “AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation.” [The Register; SSRN, PDF]
Just the headlines:
Workers describe abusive treatment in Taiwan’s semiconductor factories - Hsiuwen Liu at Rest of World
VC money is fueling a global boom in worker surveillance tech - Gayathri Vaidyanathan at Rest of World
Books
LZ - Skulls, portrait of the dead and the story they tell
So I got this book mostly because it was beautiful and full of pictures of skulls. I didn't think of it being more than a coffee table book, but it has some interesting information for those who are not so versed in collecting real human skulls. I'm not, so it was a fruitful read anyway, as I learned about exploding skulls, which are these medical models that broke the skull into many pieces and displayed it as if it was literally exploding.
I also learned about how people can get preserved skulls of headhunter victims, kappalas (decorated skulls used as cups in ceremonies), saw many pictures of children's skulls and their teeth incrusted into the jaws, but it was absolutely the relic of a saint that caught my eyes the most as I do love relics. They are usually not found in private collections but in museums or churches instead, but this book interviews many collectors around the world, though mostly in the US and Europe.
It gets boring after a while since everyone was asked the same question, and I have the feeling it was all an email exchange as the words are too curated to be in-person interviews in some cases… but, well, it's cool. I wouldn't recommend it as a book to read, but if you want a nice decor piece for your living room, then maybe that's an option for you.
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MJW: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King
I’m not sure if I’ve talked about The Tommyknockers before. We’ve been doing this newsletter for a long time and I’m not known for my memory, long or short term. It makes sense I might have mentioned it, because it’s one of my favourite Stephen King books. Controversial! King himself thinks it’s drivel. But I’ve been listening to the audiobook (yes again, shut up, these are my comfort horror novels) and enjoying my visit to Haven, Maine. If you’ve never encountered The Tommyknockers, it’s one of King’s cocaine-era books, and you can tell because the structure is all over the place. But the characters keep me firmly on The Tommyknockers side: Western writer Bobbi, doomed alcoholic poet Gard, obvious ADHD child Hilly Brown, plus the insights we get into the townspeople throughout the 2nd act. Even if he was off his rocker on nose candy at the time, King still kills it with character insight and backstory like always. The Tommyknockers is about aliens, but it’s also about addiction. Gard’s fleeting insights into his alcoholism are frequently devastating. Even Hilly Brown, only a child, shows addictive foreshadowing in his backstory. It’s not a perfect novel by any means, but it’s still a wild ride through a town taken over by a strange alien force that compels them to do science! And murder! There’s even a killer vending machine. 5 stars!
Movies + TV
LZ: Tillsammans (2000)
I recently watched this Swedish movie portraying a shared house situation in Sweden in the 1970s. I was told that it was a very realistic film, although not a documentary. If you watched the Swedish movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, you will recognize the actor who plays the journalist in this movie too, and, surprise, surprise, he's also an abusive man there.
The whole thing starts when the sister of one of the dwellers of this hippie community asks to move in after her husband hits her again. She brings her two children, and then you see the contrast between the lifestyle of a regular family and couples in an open relationship, exes living together, and children taught to celebrate the death of Franco.
It's supposed to be a comedy movie, and there are indeed some tongue-in-cheek moments, but it's mostly questioning the extent to which you can keep up with certain ideologies and leitmotifs. In that closed environment, they are able to live without a TV, no meat, and walk naked around the house, even with children living there. But when faced with the reality outside those colorful walls, some will not accept bending the rules of their ideology and leave, others will go with the flow, and in the end, each and every character is just trying to be happy in their own way – not perfectly, not as the epitome of a certain morality.
It's also very refreshing to see when some characters get inspired by someone's bold move and finally take hold of their own lives. That's so Swedish to me, somehow. They are culturally not very confrontational people, but when pushed, they will obviously take action, and sometimes that's the spark they need for their fire to burn.
Dream Scenario (2023)
That Nic Cage movie in which everybody dreams with him. Yep, sounds like a great premise, right? And there's no one else who could be the actor in such a film like that. In fact, Cage does what he does best: playing an awkward character who loses his marbles at some point, but in spite of that, the movie is unfortunately pretty lame. As many reviewers pointed out on Letterbox, it's a shame that such a good premise has lost its track halfway through the movie.
First, you start to wonder why this random, very average, if not mediocre, man is populating people's dreams. Then, you wonder what that would actually mean in the real world, and you see Paul becoming famous, attracting attention from people he would never have. You see his family taking advantage of his visibility, but then, suddenly, with no actual explanation, he starts to become evil and violent in people's dreams, and so everybody hates him.
The movie takes another turn to address cancel culture. While it is a worthwhile topic to be addressed, it's not really well handled here, as the main character is not really doing anything, but people are simply dreaming of him, without his control. And still, his life is ruined, but he's still the “martyr” of a new startup which creates a device that allows you to enter someone else's dream – either for the sake of experiencing something different, or for product placement with influencers. This, in itself, was an interesting topic, but unfortunately also very underexplored.
For a 100-minute-long movie, this one felt like an eternity, and so many interesting topics were left behind. If Tillsammans managed to address so many things so profoundly in the same amount of time, Dream Scenario failed a lot. Too much time wasted on showing how average Paul is and then rushing through the implications of him populating people's dreams. At some point it felt like I was watching Beau is afraid, which makes a lot of sense when you see that Ari Aster produced this film, but… well… it's the sort of watch that you feel like you didn't completely dislike it, but it's more due to it concept than the application.
The Sunshine Makers (2015)
Interesting documentary about underground chemists who were producing shitloads of LSD in private labs and taking part of the drug counterculture in the 1960s United States. It's fun to watch, the two chemists Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully are quite the characters, the first one being a bit of a more bragging kind and the second the ultimate autistic dude. At some point the direction takes a more true crime style though as, obviously, they were caught by the police, so it’s a bit boring in my opinion, but it's still fun to see their passion and dedication to the cause as they did saw the use of LSD as something that could not only open up people's mind but possibly even make society a better place to be. We all wish it were that simple… if that were the case, then just put some LSD into the water and let everyone take a sip asap haha
Fantastic Fungi (2019)
Another interesting and fun watch, a documentary too. It starts a little slow and very childish, like with an interviewee saying the most obvious things, like, oh, fungi are not animals nor vegetables, but something in between. Slow clap. But it slowly becomes more interesting, especially as we learn more about Paul Edward Stamets, who is also quite a character. He's a popular name in the mycology community, but I think it's mostly his personal accounts and his enthusiasm about how mushrooms are revolutionary and basically the core of everything that stands out the most. Because, indeed, fungi are such interesting creatures and they indeed have so many possibilities, usages, and characteristics we haven't quite grasped yet, so it's ok to be the equivalent of the aliens meme guy but with fungi. My only comment would be that I wish they had talked more about fungi as species and characteristics rather than talking about their usages.
Art
MJW: Cosmo Danchin-Hamard at Instagram
This French illustrator has worked with some big names, and I adore their fun, colourful, classic-y cartoon style stuff.
The Self-Promotion
CJW: Wrath Month - An Anthology of Queer Rage at Kickstarter
Bona Books is running a Kickstarter for their Wrath Month anthology, including some amazing writers in the line-up, including these two:
If you like dead rapists, dead cops, and trans girls standing together to fight for one another, then you’re going to love our story. It’s wild, and utterly unlike our other collabs, and for all that it’s still got some really personal touches to it.
If the anthology sounds like your sort of thing, please check out the KS. Would love to have you read our story when it’s out.
The Memes
