nothing here but uranium enriched Mecha Hitlers

issue 295 - 3rd August, 2025

DCH: Corey’s afk today so I’m in the editorial hot seat this issue. In this edition we’ve got the usual bumper crop of fortnightly news you can use to navigate the end of the world.

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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. Meme collector.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, better on mute.

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

Climate Change & The Environment

DCH: Where and When (and How Much) to Fix the Climate by ADH

I think it would be supremely helpful if everyone involved in conversations about CDR siting could just say, out loud, which emissions they care about. Otherwise, we’ll all just keep talking past each other, each side unclear on why the other is so reticent or, alternatively, so eager. We’ll never be able to agree on where or when to do carbon removal if we can’t talk clearly about “how much.”

Andrew Dana Hudson, friend of and occasional contributor to the newsletter, on the intersections of environmental justice and carbon dioxide removal.

DCH: Billionaire Peter Thiel backing first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility in Paducah by Derek Operle at wkms

A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.

I’m sure it goes without saying that I, for one, am not thrilled that Peter Fucking Thiel has his hands on one of the building blocks for nuclear weapons.

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: Israel’s new measures do nothing to stop the starvation crisis in Gaza, say aid workers - The Guardian

The humanitarian said dates and olives were consistently thrown out by Israeli customs official without explanation. After pooling their experiences with other aid groups, they realised the common denominator was fruits or vegetables with pits or seeds that could be planted.
Later shipments that contained date paste and pitted olives were let in the territory successfully.

Israel is literally denying Gazans the ability to grow their own food during a famine that they (Israel) created. There is no limits to the depths of evil they will go to. This genocide is not ending. It is not being ended by Western governments finally recognising it. It is continuing in a slightly different form and at a different pace. That is all. Unless someone steps in and pushes Israel back to pre-existing borders, there will not be a recognisable Gaza left.

It’s too late, politicians of Australia, Canada, France, the UK, etc. You had your chance to do something about this 20 months ago and you did nothing. Be glad hell isn’t real because it’s all you deserve.

Tech & Design

CJW: Age verification is coming to search engines in Australia – with huge implications for privacy and inclusion - Samantha Floreani

The age verification policy development process has been littered with blunders that make a mockery of meaningful consultation and evidence-based policy development. It is particularly striking that these codes were drafted before the completion of the government’s $6.5m trial into the efficacy of age assurance. Later, the trial’s preliminary findings conceded the technology is not guaranteed to be effective, and noted “concerning evidence” that some technology providers were seeking to collect too much personal information.

The incoming age verification bullshit in Australia is ridiculously overbearing in a Big Brother sort of way, being pushed through entirely undemocratically, and technologically fraught. Exactly what I would expect from our nanny state.

DCH: Preach. The UK’s Online Safety Act went into effect recently and VPN adoption skyrocketed by 1400% percent. Oh and people are also bypassing the age verification process by pretending to be Norman Reedus. The UK outsource all that stuff to largely US-based third party services. We’re one data breach away from everyone losing their shit (and rightly so!). This is a privacy nightmare.

DCH: Trump's AI Action Plan is a blueprint for dystopia by Brian Merchant

More specifically, the plan aims to further deregulate the tech industry, penalize US states that pass AI laws, speed adoption of AI in the federal government and beyond, fast-track data center development, fast-track nuclear and fossil fuel power to run them, move to limit China’s influence in AI, and restrict speech in AI and the frameworks governing them by making terms like diversity, inclusion, misinformation, and climate change forbidden.

Your tax dollars are hard at work building Mecha Hitler.

DCH: This Silicon Valley Stuff'll Get You Killed by Edward Ongweso Jr

Some believe the sacrifices will give birth to a stillborn god that will save the world. They insist, as Google’s former chief executive Eric Schmidt does, that “we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway” so now is the time to double down on overbuilding AI infrastructure. Climate change will be staved off only by accelerating the very developments bringing about the collapse of our ecological niche—so consume the water, foul the air, enrich fossil fuel firms, do whatever you must and do it with quick if there is going to be any hope of creating an “infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful” entity capable of saving the world.

Mammon will kill us all.

Just the headlines:

The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble by Edward Zitron (DCH: an even longer than usual one from Ed. Carve out some time during your morning wake up ritual to read it)
How big tech is force-feeding us AI by Brian Merchant (DCH: Brian Merchant gives us a rundown on recent research into the deceptive design practices being used to shove half-baked AI crap down her gullets.)
GPT might be an information virus by jbetker at Non_Interactive (DCH: From a few months back but just hit my radar.)

Society & The Culture

CJW: My Fellow Americans - Charlotte Shane

Everyone using citizenship or innocence as a ward against mistreatment, I think to myself, has not learned one thing about American prisons or policing—not learned one thing about America. There’s no staking a fence in the lava of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism. I wish it were not possible for anyone grown and living in the United States to maintain such a degree of apparent naivety about what this country is willing to do to any person, at any time, anywhere on the planet, if it serves the twin Gods of enrichment and domination.

Charlotte Shane writing with as much insight and care as ever about, I guess, what it's like to be a (non-fascist) American at this point in time.

Subconsciously or consciously, I think those of us in anguish over our country’s condition are well aware of how much company we keep. We know that our fellow Americans care about each other and that they hate what’s happening to their neighbors, to people in other states, to Palestinians. But feeling is not power, and a large part of our stymying pain is the knowledge that powerlessness persists despite our mass. “People know that collective action is the only way forward, but we’re in a time when some people feel/are alone and also lack trust in others,” writes Mariame Kaba. “Yet as humans, we crave connection. All of this is a recipe for resignation and also sometimes for impotent rage.”

It ends on sort of a challenging note (not the above, that's from about halfway through). Well worth reading. The Mariame Kaba piece she mentions is also really interesting: The Struggle is Permanent: Keep Fighting

“At a time when extending a dead musician's output — or at least attempting to — can be as easy as typing prompts into an AI system, a group of artists and scientists in Australia are bringing one deceased composer "back to life" in a different way: by rebuilding some of his brain.” An American composer's biological matter creates new music from beyond the grave by Chloe Veltman at NPR

Health, Cooking, and Related

DCH: The Future Of Health Data In The Age Of AI by Júlia Keserű at noema

And so it was no longer just health professionals who had access to sensitive information about my health. By collecting troves of data about my health, Silicon Valley companies did too — and so did whoever they decided to share that information with. This rapidly expanding shadow industry, as I came to learn in the years after my illness, is wielding increasing influence over our bodies and futures.

You’re dreaming if you think your health data isn’t already in the wind to some degree or another.

Labour & Economics

DCH: Why Are We Pretending AI Is Going to Take All the Jobs? by Matt Stoller

All of which is to say that we really should pay careful attention to generative AI. If it can cure cancer or automate driving, awesome. At the same time, companies like Meta and Anthropic, who steal en masse, should be held accountable for doing so. But in terms of policy, we have to distinguish between “AI as a technology” and generalized Wall Street-friendly choices causing the problems ascribed to AI, aka lower wages, less job stability, and people without power getting screwed.

Matt Stoller brings receipts on why it’s not AI coming for your job but instead, as ever, it’s Wall Street.

Books

LZ - The city of incurable women - Maud Casey

This is a short book that I finished in about 2 or 3 hours. It’s not a joyful read as it is the novelisation of accounts of women diagnosed with hysteria who were hospitalised in France. It blends historical accounts with fiction and poetry, which gives the book a feeling that reminded me of The Bell Jar. It’s about feminism, but it’s also about sadness and suffering, neglect and yearning. It’s a bleak world where women were born, raised, and died in terrible conditions, barely ever receiving love or being seen. Not by their families, doctors, partners, no one ever. The story that will stay with me forever is the one about this girl who works day and night as a seamstress and keeps saving to make a beautiful dress for her mother. I won’t tell what happens, as this would be a spoiler, but it left a hole in me that is probably going to stay forever because it resonated quite a lot.

Movies + TV

LZ - Lily Wachowski is producing a ‘trans-coded take’ on The Stepford Wives

Excited about this! I hope she gives some Cloud Nine/Sense8 + Bound vibes to this one.

CJW: It’s only a short film, but I’m still excited to check it out. Love to see Lily using her clout (and no doubt money) to make things happen for other trans folks.

Podcasts

LZ - The Piskie Trap

I don’t like podcasts, in general, but I gave it a go with this one that focuses on legends and folklore of Cornwall and Devon in England. Some episodes are also about ghost stories, paranormal accounts, others are historical narratives about witch trials or specific places like Jamaica Inn, which inspired Du Marier’s book (and she was from that region too). The host Keith Wallis always has a guest in all episodes — historians, people who work at the places he’s talking about in that episode, academics etc. It has an interesting balance between the willingness to believe and skepticism. I’ve been binge-listening it for the past week and it’s been fun!

Music

LZ - Mariah - Analemma

I found this female-fronted screamo band recently. It's a shame they're no longer active, but it's great that there are a few albums to listen to. I don't think it's very common to find female vocalists in screamo, possibly because of the fact that it's a genre that is defined by guttural vocals and all… but it's kinda funny to me how it's a male-dominated genre and it's all about emotions. I mean, it's obvious, culturally, men are taught to repress their emotions, so of course, when they have the chance to express, it's in explosive ways. I can relate to that, thus my appreciation for screamo and metal. Highlights to the songs VIII, IX, and X.

LZ - Trauma, abuse and Lingua Ignota - The Ole Razzle Dazzle

Very interesting video essay about Lingua Ignota aka Kristin Hayter’s story of abusive relationships and the creation of the albums Caligula and SINNER GET READY, and how she exposed the abuse she suffered from Alexis Marshall of Daughters. It’s a long video (over 1h) and there are trigger warnings and time stamps for when the author talks about sexual assault and domestic violence. I love Lingua Ignota and I listen to Caligula almost every day. It’s interesting though how Angus sees the lyrics of DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR as a dialectics between abuser and abused, whereas I always took it as the very same person overcoming pain and responding violently, or avenging, if you like. Angus does suggest that it could be a dialogue between the Id and the Superego, so it’s there too. Anyway. He calls out Marshall very clearly and that was really brave of him, especially in his final words about using nihilism as an excuse to be abusive and violent towards others. Yes, we are all going to die, but life is still precious and no one has the right to harm no one. I didn’t know this channel until today and it pleased me to see how he creates a more or less similar rationale as Contrapoints does, and I really like her, so I hope you like this video essay too.

LZ - Oldest Sea - All shall love me and despair

I learned about Oldest Sea after this song which is a collab with Have a Nice Life, one of my favorite bands ever and one I’m finally going to see live next month in Berlin! But Oldest Sea or Samantha and Andrew Marandola seem to be a couple who is creating this very eerie, spooky atmospheric music with lamenting, whining vocals that are definitely distinct from anything else I listen to. It’s beautiful, sad, and like the title says, despairing. The addition of Dan Barrett’s voice is definitely a plus but Samantha is definitely the main star here. I recommend listening to their other songs too, such a great finding!

Art

LZ - Frightening Fragments: The Representation of the Corpse in Baroque Sculpture: Illustrated Article by Art Historian Regina Deckers - The Morbid Anatomy Online Journal

I’ve been following Morbid Anatomy for a while and joined a session they hosted with Payton McCarty-Simas in which she talked about her new book That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film. They also have this mailing and Patreon journal where they post brilliant content about art, history, and, of course, morbid stuff. This is a very interesting piece that I came across, and it's fitting to my latest acquisition, the book Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages by Jack Hartnell.