nothing here but ways of being chuck tingle

issue 218 - 30th April, 2023

CJW: Welcome to another edition of nothing here. A long one today, so let's get to it.

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I wrote the latest bonus: Experiments in Expectation 2: ChatGPT Hours.

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, sin-eater, future sweetie-pie.

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 Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics - Andrew Nikiforuk (via Sentiers)

Murphy is far from alone in that assessment. After the U.S. renewables skeptic Alice Friedemann tabulated the mining costs of rare earth mineral mining needed for renewables, including enormous tailing ponds, poisoned groundwater, radioactive waste and volatile geopolitics, she flatly concluded, “Our quest for a more ecological growth model has resulted in intensified mining of the Earth’s crust to extract the core ingredient — rare metals — with an environmental impact that could prove far more severe than that of oil extraction.”
Years ago, the U.S. historian and technology critic Lewis Mumford argued civilization’s dependence on intense mining had dramatically changed its values. As the extraction business became more important to empires, it contaminated economic thinking with an ethos dedicated to making a killing as opposed to a living. In mining the ends always justify the means. And in a technological society everything is now mined, from soils to people’s behaviour on the internet.

This piece offers a thorough breakdown of the various costs of a full renewable transition. It's a great essay to follow on from last issue's article about the way CC coverage has changed recently. Anyone who thinks we're in the clear (or on the path to it) really isn't paying attention to the complexities involved.

I've discussed this before in these pages - that we can't consume our way out of this mess. The problem isn't fossil fuels per se, it's the West's endless appetite for stuff (and treats), fueled of course by capitalism. We need to reimagine our society, our politics, and our economics, and we need to be content with having less because there are still countless people around the world who need to be brought out of poverty and hunger, and they are the last people who should have to suffer for the West's insatiability.

But, fuck, I don't know how that's going to happen, as we are deep, deep, down a pit of entitlement…

Climate Fiction Won't Save Us - a fantastic piece on climate fiction by Jeff Vandermeer
In 'Fire / Flood,' Gideon Mendel Photographs Those Who Remain Amid Climate Disaster - Click through for the photos.
A Critical Arctic Organism Is Now Infested With Microplastics - "The algae Melosira arctica is the foundation of the food chain, and its contamination could have major consequences for ecosystems and the climate." - Matt Simon at Wired

Just the headlines:

Geopolitics & Empire

DCH: The West Is Preparing for Russia’s Disintegration by Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former CEO of Yukos Oil Company and then a political prisoner in Russia, dismissed a peaceful disintegration of Russia and warned of regional wars. “First, Russia is tied into a single transport and economic mechanism,” Khodorkovsky said. He added that most of the resource rich regions don’t have access to the sea. “This sets up a potential conflict, between regions that have fewer people but vast resources and those that have a large population and ways of transporting resources.” These different regions will fight over borders and try to take control of nuclear weapons—a nightmare for the West.
Khodorkovsky added that another dictator will spring in Moscow in place of Putin to reclaim lost territories. “Will the West cope with 15 to 20 new states that are at war with each other and possess nuclear weapons and their means of delivery?” he asked. “Will the West cope with the dictator who will unite the country again, at the request of the army and the impoverished [Russian] population?”

The West consistently reads Russia wrong. If Putin’s regime does collapse and if a Federation does (once again) emerge–both big ifs–I can’t shake the feeling it's all just going to end up as another repeat of 90s era post-Soviet Russian history. Money will flee the regions to UK-enabled (and other) tax havens, Mafiosos and oligarchs will find new ways to take advantage of the chaos and cement their own power, and people will suffer.

But hey that means Adam Curtis will have a shot at a TraumaZone sequel a few decades down the road.

CJW: Russia’s War Is a Failed Answer to Its Demographic Crisis - Sasha Talaver at Jacobin

In the last year, Russian imperialism has uprooted millions of Ukrainians: it took away their houses, ways of life, and community — a “devaluation and destruction of previously viable livelihoods” — to transform Ukrainians from the occupied territories into an even more precarious workforce. As a result, the Kremlin accumulates cheap labor power, appropriating Ukrainian state investment in the birth, care, and education of its former citizens; their reproductive labor; and even their personal relations that allow them to survive in Russia without state support. This — together with the appropriation of companies and the devastation of territories now to be redeveloped — is a typical process of imperialist accumulation by dispossession. However, it is essential to emphasize that the new citizens themselves become the main asset in question, albeit one tremendously devalued through the war with its litany of daily shellings, murders, death, and injuries. Indeed, human life is never as cheap as during wartime.

An interesting piece about Russian demographics and the falling population figures being one of Putin's bigger reasons behind invading Ukraine, and other recent annexations.

MJW: Adrift by Renata Brito and Felipe Dana at The Associated Press

Around 6:30 a.m. on May 28, 2021, a couple of miles from Belle Garden Beach on the Caribbean island of Tobago, a narrow white-and-blue boat drifted onto the horizon. As it wobbled back and forth, fish gathered, feeding on the barnacles that had grown below the surface. From a distance, it seemed no one was aboard. But as fishermen approached, they smelled death. Inside were the decomposing bodies of more than a dozen Black men. No one knew where they were from, what brought them there, why they were aboard — and how or why they died. No one knew their names. What is clear now, but wasn’t then, is this: 135 days earlier, 43 people were believed to have left a port city across the ocean in Africa. They were trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands. But they never arrived. Instead, they ended up here, on the other side of the Atlantic. They weren’t the only ones.

An investigation into the plight of missing migrants and the lives they've left behind.

Some great context and commentary on US sanctions and global dedollarisation. Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report.
"The more time you spend thinking and talking about the leaker and whether or not he’s a good person, the less you’re devoting to the substance of the leaks and the official deception and misbehavior they have shed light on." - After the Ukraine Documents Leak, Mainstream Media Is Missing the Story - Branko Marcetic at Jacobin

Just the headlines:

Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost Putin's war effort in Ukraine (in part by proxy through the Wagner Group)

Science & Space

Maybe corporate rockets wouldn’t go boom and spread particulate matter for miles if their dank CEOs wouldn't insist on launching them on 4/20 despite protests from their engineers. Space X’s ongoing gaffs are going to cause a lot more damage and harm than anyone thinks.

Tech & Design

CJW: ChatGPT Is an Ideology Machine - Leif Weatherby

When you write a philosophical treatise, or a scholarly work of intellectual history, you’re working against the grain of this averaging effect. But the semantic packages that get revealed when you query GPT systems are highly informative, if not themselves insightful. This is because these packages bring ideology to the surface, and they do it quantitatively. This has never happened before.

I don't agree with everything in this piece, but it's interesting enough to share. The main point in particular is worth thinking on - that because LLMs are using a sort of average of the available corpus of text, its answers can reveal underlying ideologies much by accident. Considering the slant of so much text online, those ideologies tend toward the long-running patriarchal and white supremacist status quo that many are desperately (and verbosely) trying to defend.

MJW: ‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT To Take On Even More Full-Time Jobs

Fuck hustle culture. Capitalism ruins everything.

DCH: How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking by Katie McQue, Mei-Ling McNamara The Guardian

But over the past two years, through interviews, survivor testimonies, US court documents and human trafficking reporting data, we have heard repeated claims that Facebook and Instagram have become major sales platforms for child trafficking. We have interviewed more than 70 sources, including survivors and their relatives, prosecutors, child protection professionals and content moderators across the US in order to understand how sex traffickers are using Facebook and Instagram, and why Meta is able to deny legal responsibility for the trafficking that takes place on its platforms.
While Meta says it is doing all it can, we have seen evidence that suggests it is failing to report or even detect the full extent of what is happening, and many of those we interviewed said they felt powerless to get the company to act.

An appalling read. Do so with care.

MJW: Its so frustrating to know that while Meta is fast and furious to restrict and delete the profiles of legitimate, of-age sex workers, they are so resistant to shutting down this bullshit, ie: THE REAL FUCKING PROBLEM.

AI Art Sites Censor Prompts About Abortion - Debbie Nathan at The Intercept, on lazy censorship practices reinforcing sexist, racist, and conservative biases in AI image generating systems.
Here’s a brilliant report from the AI Now Institute on confronting tech power. Does a very good job at laying out structural targets we need to attack to break this shit up. From geopolitics to abuses and advantages of big data, and sheer computing power. Coverage here at This Machine Kills podcast

Just the headlines:

Society & The Culture

CJW: Holographic Media at Outland by New Models (via Sentiers)

As cybercrime explodes and AI-enabled bots multiply the already dominant average, we anticipate a voiding of the Mid, especially on social media. Younger generations are already suffering from Mid-exhaustion as endless culture-warring and grandstanding didacticism have made “??using ??your??voice” on social media seem extremely cringe. And if you think the spam and scams are already bad, just wait.

A really interesting rundown of online cultural trends of the 21st Century, describing the way the "physics" of a media platform define the ways in which the media/platform functions and the way people respond to that.

Give it a read because it offers interesting ways to think about online culture, especially as we're in the midst of a big change away from social media attention economy bullshit being the dominant paradigm.

MJW: The case for hanging out by Dan Kios at Slate

I can’t be the only one for whom memories of ages 16 to, say, 25 consist mostly of sitting around bedrooms, crappy dorm rooms, and crappier apartments, doing nothing much at all. I had jobs that didn’t pay a lot, so I didn’t have a ton of money to go out to bars or clubs, which is why instead I hung out for hours with groups of friends: telling jokes, venting about life, talking earnestly about politics and sarcastically about art (or vice versa). Those years, as Liming writes, were “almost effortlessly social.” But nowadays, though hanging out with friends still happens—around living rooms and fire pits, on scheduled and rescheduled college-friend weekends—it’s an effortful pastime that requires coordination of calendars and a flurry of planning texts.

I love hanging out. Just being with someone, chatting, drinking cups of tea. I don't want to spend 40 bucks on breakfast at a Cafe once a month to see a friend. Come over to my house, and chill with me and my cats. I have sought it out recently, and now I have a few friends who do come over to shoot the shit. And it's so so valuable.

DCH: The Strange Death of the Twin Gynecologists by Linda Wolfe Vulture

Like so many other people I spoke with this summer, I found myself uncharacteristically haunted by the deaths of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, the twin gynecologists found gaunt and already partially decayed in their East 63rd Street apartment amidst a litter of garbage and pharmaceuticals. The story of their deaths had, for me, even in its barest bones, that element of stupefying reality that Philip Roth calls an “embarrassment” to the writer’s imagination; here was a reality that could make the capabilities of even the most imaginative writer seem meager.

I for one I had no fucking clue that Dead Ringers was loosely based on a real-life story from the 70s. Holy fuck.

MJW: Chuck Tingle Goes Mainstream...ish by Phoebe Cramer at Publishers Weekly

While Tingle admits to cultivating an air of secrecy and surrealism around his pseudonymous author persona, he also asserts that all of his work to date—and by extension its mission to “prove love”—has been entirely in earnest…In conversation, he comes across as kind, idiosyncratic, and utterly genuine—burlap bag and all. There’s a distinct halting prosody to his twangy speech, and he has a vernacular all his own: people in general are “buds” while Tingle fans are “buckaroos.” Discussing speculation that he may be a troll, Tingle says, “Sometimes buckaroos cock an eyebrow and say, ‘How sincere is this way?’ I understand that, but I can’t be bothered by it. As a buckaroo on the autism spectrum, I’ve come to a place where I’m fine being a sort of outsider.”

I've got so much time for Chuck Tingle, who has taken the notoriety forced onto him by conservative SFF fans intent on trolling, and run with it to a wild, wacky and loving conclusion. I'm really looking forward to reading Camp Damascus.

Conservatives Need a Safe Space From the Imaginary Threat of “Woke Capitalism” - Luke Savage at Jacobin - an obvious point I've seen made on social media and heard made on podcasts, but this is still a good summation.
"By hijacking the message of ecological renewal and using it to persecute the powerless, [ecofascists] could, at a minimum, make it far more difficult for this country to act boldly in the future when it comes to the climate crisis and environmental justice. That’s why the message of such ecofascists has to be verbally shredded wherever and whenever they try to spread it." - Stan Cox at Tom's Dispatch (via Foreign Exchanges)
“Issues around consent and freedom of will are why the Bambi Sleep files are so controversial in the wider erotic hypnosis community, as they are seemingly set up to erode consent in a way in which the listener may not realize. The recordings are set up to make listeners respond to “triggers,” otherwise known as “post-hypnotic suggestions,” or words that are supposed to have an impact on them outside of hypnosis. In the beginning, these triggers are harmless, offering up a soothing, saccharine form of escape from reality: “Every time she hears the word ‘giggle time,’ [...] she feels my strong, comforting hand reach into her head through the heavy pink fluff and press that wonderful button firmly down with the pleasurable clonk [...] she descends instantly into an uncontrollable fit of deep, feminine giggles that make her feel so happy.”” Buzzfeed News (before they went bust) on erotic hypnosis and bimboification.

Just the headlines:

Health, Cooking, and Related

DCH: Why Silicon Valley is bringing eugenics back by Paris Marx disconnect

Eugenics has a long history in Silicon Valley, and Musk is arguably the most visible face of its resurgence. These racist ideas pervade the tech industry, as a growing institutional foundation has been built — with the funding of prominent industry figures, like Musk — to spread them. These organizations exist to ensure today’s tech billionaires keep the power they’ve amassed and are seen not just as people who lucked into vast fortunes, but as inherently — even genetically — superior to everyone else. They want us to believe they deserve their positions at the top of the hierarchy.

A short, sharp read on how Musk has become the face for the new resurgence of eugenics. Marx threads the needle on how effective altruism, longtermism, and pro-natalism are all predicated on the same deeply racist, sexist, heteronormative, and transphobic thinking.

Innovative treatment using tilapia skin as a xenograft for partial thickness burns after a gunpowder explosion - PMC - Click through for the gnarly images (in both senses of the word). (via Jörg Colberg)

Just the headlines:

Labour & Economics

A couple of pieces courtesy of Patrick Tenguay at Sentiers on AI and its possible labor impacts: Goodbye to the fat middle - Darrell Etherington at Tech Crunch and The one about AI by Tom MacWright

Just the headlines:

Books

CJW: Ways of Being, James Bridle

The notion of a more-than-human world further intimates that these things are beings: not passive props in the drama of our own preoccupations, but active participants in our collective becoming. And because that becoming, that potential flourishing, is collective, it demands that we recognize the beingness, the personhood of others. The world is made up of subjects, not objects. Everything is really everyone, and all those beings have their own agency, points of view and forms of life. The more-than-human world demands our recognition, for without we are nothing. 'Life and Reality', wrote the Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts, 'are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.'

When I finally got around to reading New Dark Age a couple of years after publication, I found that the book felt very familiar. That’s because I'd just spent 2 years reading articles that covered the same territory as chapters or sections of the book - with some referencing Bridle specifically, but many not. That book seemed to set the zeitgeist that other writers would follow, where Ways of Being seems to reinforce one that is already extant, with many of the researchers, scientific studies, and anecdotes already familiar to me as someone who finds hope and inspiration in thinking (and reading) about a more-than-human world.

That doesn't mean I don't recommend the book, though. On the contrary, it collects so many strands across ecology and technology, with a leftist slant and an underlying sense of hope in the potentials of this new way of thinking that goes beyond anthropocentrism, and is definitely worth reading, whether or not that sounds immediately interesting. It is, I daresay, an important way of thinking to embrace in this current moment.

LZ: Haunted Media, by Jeffrey Sconce

This is a book published in 2000, which could be something bad and great at the same time. Bad because this was like 23 years ago, but great because that was a time when writers liked to delve into the more magic, sci-fiesque aspects of technology. This book is about how new technologies, from telegraphy to television and a bit of the internet, have prompted an esoteric connection. For the author, it is no coincidence that Spiritualism appeared so close to the advent of telegraphy and that same trend would continue with radio, television and the internet. I loved it and the way Sconce writes is delightful. So many beautiful and well written statements that I ended up highlighting most of the pages in the book. Check the Self-Promotion section to see my new essay which addresses this book.

LZ: Becoming the Forest

This is actually a fanzine, not a book, but I highly recommend it. I bought volume III as they had an interview with Botanist, one of my favorite bands, but the content is super interesting. This publication is very niched, it’s about black metal and forests, the intersections between the music genre and nature, folklore, mysticism, all with a dark turn. The first volume is sold out but available online.

LZ: Monster, She Wrote

This is that kind of book that you read so you make your reading list bigger and never-ending. It presents the work and a brief history of the many women writers that created and took part in horror literature in the West. It goes back to even before Mary Shelley and reaches our present days, including references of contemporary takes on old tropes such as haunted houses, ghost stories, vampires etc. It includes a bit of science fiction as well, but unfortunately you won’t find Ursula Le Guin here. Also, I’m pretty sure that the author didn’t list any trans woman authors, which is really a shame.

Movies + TV

LZ: Poltergeist

After reading Haunted Media (see the Books section for more), I decided to (re)watch Poltergeist as it was a clear example in pop culture that combined new technology and ghosts. Turns out that the movie was much different from what I expected. It's funny to think that people thought it was scary, because watching it in 2023 makes you see how much fun the characters were having with their own uncanny situation. I mean, even though the couple lost their child to the ghosts on TV, they behave like they know this is stupid but it is what it is. That is even clearer when the medium character appears and how she gives all the Lynchian weirdness with a funny touch that even the characters cannot avoid. The special effects are also pretty funny, almost like you're watching Roger Rabbit's film at some point as they look like cartoon. By that I mean that even classics like Poltergeist possibly never took themselves too seriously and that's what makes some horror movies so much fun.

LZ: Swarm

I’ve seen many people talking about this series, but I wasn’t sure if it would be my cup of tea. But, in the end, I stumbled upon this article “How the horror genre subverts toxic ideas around women and food” which really convinced me I should be watching it. And I loved it. I binge watched it in one afternoon and I don’t even know how long each episode was, because I was in love with everything there.

The series is a blatant parody of pop fandoms, more specifically targeted to Beyoncé, who seems to be the director Donald Glover’s friend, so it’s probably not criticism against her herself – even though all the narrative and magic around her is, well, under her responsibility. Anyways, the thing is that the main character puts this celebrity as her mother, goddess, whatever higher figure she follows religiously and does whatever it takes to protect her – including killing Twitter trolls.

Many things happening in the series would never make sense in the real world and there’s even a very meta episode where the lore is told from a true crime documentary perspective. But it’s all for the benefit of telling the story of this young black woman who is a serial killer and also a multifaceted person: she changes from a shy virgin girl to a stripper and a trans man, but it’s all about her obsession and the hole that her foster sister’s death leaves in her. Can’t recommend more.

DCH: Spot on. Everything Lidia said plus so many sly scenes highlighting black women’s invisibility and interchangeability in the gaze of cis white American men. The narrative structure of it all and its sheer refusal to tell the story the audience and critics likely wanted… just aces all around.

I fucking loved this show.

LZ: The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

Ah how beautiful are giallo horror movies! So colorful, so fashionable, so vivid, so corny, so much fun. I didn’t know it was starring Mimsy Farmer, so when I saw her pretty face I was more than excited to go on with this story of a young chemist who starts hallucinating with the vision of a lady in black. It turns out it’s her mother and there’s a bunch of black magic stuff going on there. It’s notable that one of the characters says that black magic works ultimately by making the victim crazy if not killing them right away. So this is about the descent into madness with touches of Alice in Wonderland – of course, what’s the best source for madness if not Carroll’s classic book?

LZ: Madres

Found this movie on Amazon Prime. It has no famous actors whatsoever, but it’s an interesting tale of a Latin American couple moving from LA to a town closer to the Mexican border during the 1970s. Diane is pregnant and looking forward to starting her family on a new house, but even though she has a Latin ethnicity, she never learned how to speak Spanish and that makes it harder for her to interact with locals and take part of the community. But she’s willing to learn the language and uses a diary she found in her new house as an inspiration. S finds in this diary some information about pesticides that could be killing women in the town, but being a place surrounded with mysticism and religiosity, there’s no clear answer whether those deaths are really caused by the chemical product or by a curse. It’s based on true facts or more specifically some eugenic politics in the US that forced women to be sterilised without their consent.

Video

DCH: The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

Music

LZ: Vauruvã

Brazilian atmospheric black metal with indigenous themes as inspiration. Lovely vocals and melodies!

Lugubrious Cult

Another Latin American band, from Colombia. This one plays suicidal black metal and it's pretty dark, which proves that no tropical sun can make us latinos less dark! >:D

PS: The duo relocated to the US, but still!

The Self-Promotion

LZ: How advanced technology feeds us with magic thoughts and religious hopes

Here’s the essay that I mentioned above, inspired by Sconce’s Haunted Media book. I speak a little bit about ChatGPT too, but basically this is a historical compilation of how new technologies prompted us with supernatural ideas – like using the telegraph or the radio to contact the dead and ultimately extraterrestrial beings. If that sounds too weird and outdated, you will be surprised to see that shows like Ghost Hunters are still on air and maybe that the idea of uploading our consciousness to a machine is ultimately the evolution of séances.

April 30, 2023, 12:06 p.m.

nothing here but ways of being chuck tingle - issue 218 - 30th April, 2023

nothing here but ways of being chuck tingle

issue 218 - 30th April, 2023

The Team

Climate Change & The Environment

Geopolitics & Empire

Science & Space

Tech & Design

Society & The Culture

Health, Cooking, and Related

Labour & Economics

Books

Movies + TV

Video

Music

The Self-Promotion

The Memes

April 30, 2023, 12:06 p.m.

nothing here but ways of being chuck tingle - issue 218 - 30th April, 2023

Nothing Here

nothing here but ways of being chuck tingle

issue 218 - 30th April, 2023

The Team

Climate Change & The Environment

Geopolitics & Empire

Science & Space

Tech & Design

Society & The Culture

Health, Cooking, and Related

Labour & Economics

Books

Movies + TV

Video

Music

The Self-Promotion

The Memes