nothing here but the unbearable lightness of e-girls

issue 207 - 22nd January, 2023

CJW: Welcome friends, to another dispatch. I hope 2023 is treating you kindly so far, and continues to do so. Personally, I’m feeling good about the outline I’ve put together for the sequel to a novella I wrote last year. Book 1 is with my editor, so let’s hope he likes it enough to buy it.

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Now, let’s get on with the show.

The Team

• Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey

• Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer, apocalypse witch, goth aunt.

• Corey J. White (CJW) - Author, podcaster, sin-eater.

• Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts. Sci-fi writer, futurology researcher and essayist. @lidiazuin

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: ‘The Grievers’ Of Climate Change - Erica Hellerstein at Noema

Traversi came across a piece of research that blew her away: a survey of 10,000 people aged 16-25 across ten countries about the mental health impacts of climate change. Nearly half of the youth surveyed said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives and functioning, and 75% described the future as “frightening.” More than half of the 10,000 youth surveyed — 5,566 — agreed with the prompt “humanity is doomed.”

For Traversi, the findings were revelatory. “It was the discovery that kids aren’t stressed because they have this irrational fear that they need to work through with a therapist. They’re stressed because there’s a genuine threat to their futures,” she said.

On climate grief and how it relates to grief more generally.

MJW: How can you treat the kind of depression that comes with these considerations? Lol jk you can’t. Maybe weed? I read an article recently that I CANNOT find again, about how psychologists basically feel completely helpless trying to treat people’s distress at what is becoming a more and more distressing world.

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MJW: ‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate by Rebecca Solnit at The Guardian

While I often hear people casually assert that our world is doomed, no reputable scientist makes such claims. Most are deeply worried, but far from hopeless. There are already profound losses, but our action or inaction determine how much more loss will occur, and whose it will be, and some repair is possible. Efforts sufficient to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could lower temperatures and reverse some aspects of climate breakdown.

Even the journalist David Wallace-Wells, who rose to fame with a deeply pessimistic book about climate a few years ago, has shifted his view. He currently describes a future somewhere between the best and worst case scenarios, a future “with the most terrifying predictions made improbable by decarbonisation and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption … yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse.”

CJW: Also references the recent Oxfam report, discussed here: The ‘1%’ are the main drivers of climate change, but it hits the poor the hardest: Oxfam report, and there’s another Oxfam report about wealth inequality discussed here: Billionaires Gobbled up 2/3s of New Wealth at $2.7 bn/ day, as 800 million go to bed Hungry: Oxfam.

Now, I’m not saying the 1% should be killed, but…

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CJW: Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows - Patrick Greenfield at The Guardian (via MKY)

The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.

I could have easily put this under “Just the headlines” but I wanted to highlight it a little. When people talk about market-based solutions to climate change, remember that the market’s first priority is generating profit.

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• Three small policy interventions—around plant-based meat alternatives, electric cars, and green fertilizers could give us plausible hope for climate action tipping points in the right direction.

Just the headlines:

• UN says ozone layer slowly healing, hole to mend by 2066 - Associated Press

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: The NIEO as Usable Past - Nils Gilman at Progressive International

I hadn’t come across the NIEO before reading this piece:

[…] the NIEO called for a dramatic restructuring of the terms of trade and finance in favor of the poorer countries of the world, and a concomitant decentering of the global economic power structure away from the industrial core of the North Atlantic.

As Gilman points out - indeed, it’s the point of this piece - the original NIEO has some strong parallels to calls from recent COPs etc for the Global North to bear more responsibility for climate change (financially, not just with some pointless mea culpas), and for a sort of global equity to be established as we move forward in addressing climate change and its effects.

It’s a piece as much about recovering lost and promising geopolitical futures from the past as it is about the potential for a resurrected NIEO specifically. Gilman argues that the shocks of the GFC and the ongoing shocks of climate change mean that people are more willing to look for possibilities beyond neoliberalism.

In retrospect, however, the defining feature of the GFC was not just that it cratered the ideological legitimacy of neoliberalism as a form of political economy, but also that nothing was done to reform the institutions of neoliberalism.

[…]

But crises have a way of accelerating change. While the dominant policymakers of the time failed to pursue any novel reform options, the scale and scope of the crisis would lead to a dramatic new generation of economic thinking, ranging from calls for renewed industrial strategy to radically overhauled tax policies. New thinking also began to emerge on international trade, one of the effects of which was to revive interest in the lost history of the NIEO.

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CJW: Repression Can’t Snuff Out West Papua’s Struggle for Freedom - an interview with Benny Wenda at Jacobin

The West Papuan people, inside and outside West Papua, have been very strong in the last five years. They have been protesting and resisting peacefully. But the Indonesian authorities have responded with a crackdown through military force. When people are protesting on the streets, they use tear gas or kill them.

However, nobody reports on what is happening because of the media ban, so it’s very difficult to bring it to the world’s attention. Everyday there are protests on the streets. Religious pastors are being killed and churches are being burned down. The Indonesian military even shoots children, but because of the media ban, it can act with impunity. That is the biggest problem we are facing.

A lot more to this interview, but I had to pick something for a pull quote. I would love to see the kind of government formed that Wenda talks about - especially holding extractivist corps responsible for their actions, which is especially important considering that West Papua has the world’s third-largest rainforest.

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• An interesting piece on Germany’s position (and Europe’s more broadly) vis a vis the ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington, by Nathan Gardels at Noema.

• Analyst suffered 20 years in US prison for helping Cuba, still condemns ‘suffocating’ blockade - Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report - CJW: I’m really interested to know what US plans she revealed to Cuba, but I can’t see any links to that in this piece. But knowing the CIA, it was probably a coup and death squads.

• Why the CIA attempted a ‘Maidan uprising’ in Brazil - Pepe Escobar at The Cradle - CJW: I don’t know that I buy the CIA involvement, but at the very least Escobar has convinced me that the US will be involved in future attempts to undermine Brazilian democracy.

• This piece covers the rest of the world’s reticence to join the US in its sanctions against Russia and the many reasons the US has given them not to trust their bullshit about a “rules-based order” - by Branko Marcetic at Current Affairs

• A really interesting piece summarising arguments that WW3 has already begun, and what that means for America’s failing empire, by Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report.

• Why Britain’s (Severely) Underestimating British Collapse

Just the headlines:

• China pushes de-dollarization with gold reserves, Argentina yuan currency swap deal - Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report

• US base in Syria struck as Washington loots more oil, wheat - The Cradle

Science & Space

CJW: The ‘Pillars of Creation’ Glow in Remarkable Detail in a Groundbreaking Image from NASA’s James Webb Telescope - Kate Mothes at Colossal

In a small region within the vast Eagle Nebula—a 6,500 light-year journey from our solar system in the constellation Serpens—the iconic “Pillars of Creation” appear in a ghostly formation. Made of cool hydrogen gas and dust, these incubators for new stars are dense celestial structures that have survived longer than their surroundings. Ultraviolet light from incredibly hot newborn stars gradually erodes the surrounding space and illuminates the ethereal surfaces of the pillars and the streams of gas they emit.

Just something beautiful to share. Can you experience awe looking at images of space in a newsletter? See below for context…

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• Making “making stuff” easy with 3D-printed single-atom catalysts - Ellen Phiddian at Cosmos - CJW: Some sci-fi shit here.

• Triple feature: A Cosmologist’s Case for Staying Put on Earth, Why Not Mars?, We will never be able to live on another planet. Here’s why

Tech & Design

DCH: A class action lawsuit has been brought against AI art software makers (MidJourney, Stable Diffusion) and complicit platforms like Deviant Art. In a one-two punch, Getty also filed a separate suit against Stable Diffusion. The VCs and big tech investors bankrolling these companies have lots of lawyers and deep pockets though.

The Internet being the internet and all was full of hot takes across both sides of the aisle. In the more thought-provoking ones you’ll see the debate contextualised against more recent modes of modern and contemporary art courtesy of callbacks to Roland Barthes and the like.

Matt Webb ratcheted it all up several notches by asking a more fundamental question. Is the AI sentience question useful to ask?

Yes it’s important that we know when, in 50 years or 5 years, the machines wake up and we meet the first conscious AI. But if we then vary in our treatment of that AI, we’ll then have to ask what’s different about chickens, talking dogs, the Whanganui River in New Zealand which was granted legal personhood (BBC, 2017), the first uploaded nervous system - the open source OpenWorm virtual nemotode project - the entire USA as a conscious entity, and well, each other.

Definitely useful questions to ask.

CJW: Yes! I’m going to continue talking about animal intelligence and sentience and what that means in these pages, and I already wrote a book about the personhood of AI, so I want us to ask these questions and come up with answers that fundamentally change how we share this world with the rest of its inhabitants.

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• I knew Teslas were shitty, defective, and dangerous, but apparently I didn’t realise how dangerous. This short piece by Branko Marcetic at Jacobin has details.

• An interesting piece on the possible tracks that automated farming equipment could take - pure open-source, pure closed-garden, or some hybrid of the two. By Jamie Siedel at Cosmos.

• A recent EuroParl briefing on the state of surveillance capitalism focusing on Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

• The Cult of Musk is creaking

• How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy

• ChatGPT Should Not Exist

Just the headlines:

• ‘My AI Is Sexually Harassing Me’: Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny 🤖 🍆

• Elon Musk breaks world record for largest loss of personal fortune in history

Society & The Culture

CJW: How E-girl influencers are trying to get Gen Z into the military - Günseli Yalcinkaya at Dazed

We’ve entered an era of military-funded E-girl warfare. In what would’ve felt unimaginable only a few years back, influencers are the hottest new weapon in the government’s arsenal. Here, cosplay commandos post nationalist thirst traps to mobilise the SIMPs, attracting the sort of impressionable reply guys and 4chan lostbois who message “OMG DM me🔥” on every post. Sanitising the harsh realities of US imperialism with cute E-girl-isms, it promotes the sort of hypersexualised militarism that reframes violence as something cute, goofy and unthreatening – a subversion of the beefy special forces stereotype in the mainstream.

It’s such a strange phenomenon because the psy-op nature of these accounts/influencers is recognised and even openly avowed. Will it work though? The imagery alone probably wouldn’t be enough, but combined with parasocial dynamics and the sigma/grindset/hustle culture bullshit peddled alongside it (and in so many other places online), maybe it’d work. Also, don’t discount a generation of young people becoming increasingly aware of the foreclosure of possibilities in their lives thanks to the ratchet of capitalism and the effects of climate change. The military will always be waiting there to accept them.

Related: “Because Physical Wounds Heal” - Jak Ritger

The above piece links to this one, which is a much more in-depth exploration of this new form of psy-op and the idea of Psy-Op Realism (after Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism), where everything is a psy-op and everyone is a fed. There’s a lot here (as evidenced by the pull quote below), and it’s well worth the (long) read.

As the window of possibility to long-term survival of life on earth contracts, the scale of possibility for life support systems exponentially dilates. The wildly improbable becomes seriously considered. In the past four years, China has begun Cloud Seeding and Solar-Radiation Management tests. The era of Geoengineering on earth is here (or always has been since the rise of industry). In 2021, The Pentagon declared climate change to be a top national security threat. Is it possible to mobilize the full might of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful force towards a “Green New Deal” mission? People’s Policy Project’s plan for a “Green Tennessee Valley Authority” could be implemented tomorrow and began the cascade towards a carbon negative country. As incentives align, perhaps what is needed are Psy-Op campaigns targeted from within the military structure itself to change course away from the current necropolitics of weapons manufactures and security contractors and towards industrial scale carbon capture.

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CJW: Nowhere Fast: What Happened to Accelerationism? (Part One) - Matt Colquhoun

We can accept that the name “accelerationism” is now tainted beyond any hope of redemption, but we can still insist upon the post-capitalist futures that accelerationism first sought to welcome with open arms, by utilising the strategies and provocations that accelerationist discourses first introduced to a new generation of political thinkers.

Part One of a history of accelerationism. The above pull quote could act as a sort of mission statement for this piece (at least as I read it), but it also goes into detail on Nick Land (boo, hiss) and far-right accelerationism. Long read, but you already know if you want to read it…

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CJW: The Unbearable Lightness of Solarpunk - Paul Graham Raven at FoAM

Solarpunk’s popularity as an aesthetic has far exceeded its viability as a subgeneric literature—as a basis for believable story. This is partly because it is based on an understandable but nonetheless naive hope that petroculture is a synonym for extractivism (rather than its most recent costume change), and that “innovation” will (finally! eventually! somehow!) rescue us from the compound consequences of the last two centuries or so of “innovation”.

Here PGR succinctly outlines what are also my main problems with the solarpunk subgenre, and correctly points put that an imagined future free of fossil fuels isn’t necessarily free of extractivism. But that’s not to say that solarpunk is pointless, but rather that one must go further than simply imagining solar cells on every surface - you also need to consider other ways of organising society, industry, the economy, etc. I think the Phase Change anthology that ADH and I have a story in definitely goes in this direction.

And a blogpost also from PGR on solarpunk and the dichotomy between optimism and hope: simply imagining better things isn’t enough

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• The research into awe and its effects are really interesting, but more than that I was drawn to the idea of cultivating awe - awe as active practice. By Henry Wismayer at Noema.

• This is the sort of Southern Gothic true crime story you’d say was over the top if you saw it on TV but yeah here’s Woodbine, GA for you.

Health, Cooking, and Related

MJW: Billionaires at Davos Don’t Think COVID Is a Cold by Julia Doubleday at Slate

In photos of 2023’s World Economic Forum—or Davos as it is commonly called, after the Swiss resort town where it annually occurs—you might not notice the HEPA filters. They’re in the background, unobtrusive and unremarked upon, quietly cleansing the air of viruses and bacteria. You wouldn’t know—not unless you asked—that every attendee was PCR tested before entering the forum, or that in the case of a positive test, access was automatically, electronically, revoked. The folks on stage aren’t sporting masks (mostly), so unless you looked at the official Davos Health & Safety protocol, you wouldn’t be aware that their on-site drivers are required to wear them. You also might be surprised to learn that if, at any point, you start to feel ill at Davos, you can go collect a free rapid test, or even call their dedicated COVID hotline.

It’s hard to square this information with the public narrative about COVID, isn’t it? President Joe Biden has called the pandemic “over.” The New York Times recently claimed that “the risk of Covid is similar to that of the flu” in an article about “hold outs” that are annoyingly refusing to accept continual reinfection as their “new normal.” Yet, this week the richest people in the world are taking common sense, easy—but strict—precautions to ensure they don’t catch COVID-19 at Davos.

Because heaven forbid the 1% have to deal with the utter destruction of their health that covid causes. Reinfection is for the plebs.

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• We’ve shared something previously on the eugenics horror show that is Canadian MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying), but in case you missed that, here’s a great summation of the situation, by Jeremy Appel at Jacobin.

• Excess deaths in the UK are at a 50 year high. And Covid barely factors into the reasons why. The real culprit? 12 years of Tory governments. As George Monbiot says, “Thanks to systemic and deliberate underfunding, NHS Emergency departments are now a vision of hell.”

Labour & Economics

LZ: “The Californian Ideology” by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (1995)

I believe I have at some point recommended reads about the Californian Ideology or the Californian turn. Here’s an article written in 1995, but which pretty much describes our present days. Except for a few advancements in technology, society, and politics, this lengthy paper describes a lot of what we are seeing both in the US and in the EU. That is, the crazy, paradoxical marriage between yuppies and hippies into the so-called Californian Ideology, this idea of an “autistic libertarianism” which also culminated into the “anarchic capitalism” – something that apparently wasn’t still being discussed back then, but which is pretty much real for us these days. While the text is mostly descriptive and critical, it ends with a propositive message which I think that still resonates, despite of a few disturbances like NFT and metaverse properties.

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Just the headlines:

• Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need

• Fewer than 40% of New Yorkers earn a living wage

Books

LZ: The Castle of Otranto (1764)

I’ve been doing my homework reading the classics of gothic fiction, and this one was part of the plan. Though it is a short book, with less than 200 pages, it is exhaustingly boring. I know the importance of it to gothic fiction etc etc, but it’s horrendous. It has many gaps, absolutely dramatic turning points and exaggerated reactions coming from the characters. At some point I felt like it was almost a comedy, especially during some dialogues between servants and Manfred, the prince of Otranto. Should I be less anachronistic and expect what was acceptable at the time? Possibly, but fuck this. Better just reading the summary and knowing the historical importance of the book.

Movies + TV

LZ: Pearl (2022)

While I don’t think X is a must watch before you check Pearl, it gives you more context. That said, Pearl is much better than X too. It feels like Ti West wanted to make something more cliche (like a typical slasher with porn, because what else engages more than violence and sex?) so that he could be allowed to tell a story that is at least a little bit deeper. Not that Pearl is super deep, no, but at least it’s a bit more “substantial” than X. Worth the time, in my opinion, and a great performance by Mia Goth, as always.

Comics

CJW: The Secret History of The Pinkertons - Sam Wallman at The Nib (via Ryan K. Lindsay)

A comix history of the Pinkerton’s. Be sure to read this to inoculate yourself against the forthcoming Pinkerton propaganda in the form of a likely-terrible film starring Emily Blunt and The Rock.

Music

LZ: Mavradoxa - Nightmarrow

Some nice, atmospheric black metal for you featuring a great cover art.

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LZ: Downfall of Nur - Umbras de Barbagia

And some more great bm by some hermanos from Argentina.

Art

CJW: The Strange, Wonderful Creations of Spencer Hansen

More of his works at the link.

The Memes