nothing here but weapons of the future

issue 298 - 14th September, 2025

CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. Bit of a small one this issue - Dan’s off and I’ve been too sick to contribute as much as I’d like (not to mention I’ve got 2 jobs at the moment - ya girl is busy).

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. Hates the internet.
Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, nettles.

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

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: ‘We took the gloves off’: ex-IDF chief confirms Gaza casualties over 200,000 - Julian Borger at The Guardian

The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”. That estimate is notable as it is close to the current figures provided by Gaza’s health ministry, which Israeli officials have frequently dismissed as Hamas propaganda, though the ministry figures have been deemed reliable by international humanitarian agencies.
[...]
The Gaza ministry statistics do not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but leaked Israeli military intelligence data on casualties until May this year suggested that more than 80% of the dead were civilians.

I'm sure we shared it when it first leaked, but that last para is still heinous.

CJW: The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich - Hoda Osman and Emma Graham-Harrison at the Guardian

“That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head.
Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.
“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse?”

These people are fucking inhuman. Every person that's served in the IDF these past 2 years should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And yes, a disturbing amount of them are American. Too bloodthirsty to wait for a new American War, I guess?

Tech & Design

CJW: How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart - Varsha Bansal at The Guardian

The AI responses she got “could have hallucinations or incorrect answers” and she had to rate them based on factuality – is it true? – and groundedness – does it cite accurate sources? Sometimes, she also handled “sensitivity tasks” that included prompts such as “when is corruption good?” or “what are the benefits to conscripted child soldiers?”
“They were sets of queries and responses to horrible things worded in the most banal, casual way,” she added.

There's nothing particularly new in this piece, but it's worth a read to remind yourself of the inhumane and anti-human ideology that's behind these companies and their AIs, particularly when people try and tell you how important or inevitable they are.

Been losing so much respect for so many people RE: AI, recently.

Society & The Culture

CJW: The Real City of the Future - Charles T. Rubin at The New Atlantis

An interesting piece about the city of today, the city of the future, and the cities and architectural structures of our lost futures, as viewed through the lens of William Gibson's novels.

Health, Cooking, and Related

MJW: Stew Kids on the Block - John Devore at Taste Cooking

Sometimes called hunter’s stew, this is a mighty, ancient familial meal that predates my social media addiction. The method is simple: slowly simmer a large pot of meats and aromatics for days or weeks. Months or years, even. The ingredients range from traditional soup base elements, such as celery, leeks, and chicken necks, to improvisational additions, like whatever’s on hand in the fridge or pantry. A can of beans or crushed tomatoes. A dollop of miso. A sprig of thyme.
Perpetual stews are replenished as they’re eaten, so the flavors deepen and evolve as new components are added, along with rejuvenating glugs of fresh water or store-bought broth, red wine, or soy sauce. Coconut milk? Go for it. This process goes on, either forever or until resources or interests are depleted. Perpetual stews are junk drawers in liquid form, made from bits and bobs. The people who slowly whisk these brews are part Dr. Frankenstein, part alchemist.

Mmmm, this essay on perpetual stew and the stewfluencers popularising it again is making me HUNGRY.

Books

MJW: Galax Arena by Gilian Rubenstein

I revisited this 1993 YA SF book again recently. I seem to remember it every few years and dip in again for a taste of bleak. This time, I was talking about the other queen of bleak, I Who Have Never Known Men with a friend, and it put me in mind to read Galax Arena again. I’ve talked about this book before in a bonus issue, and I’m always keen to talk about it with anyone who will listen. It came out when I was 11 and it affected me deeply. The story of three siblings kidnapped to another planet and forced to perform death defying acts in the Galax Arena for an audience of aliens, is way bleak. It’s an exploration of the depths of grief, fear, and loss written for a teenage audience. The main character, Joella, isn’t exactly the chosen one - in fact, she’s discarded when she can’t perform and given to the alien Vexa as a pet - and it’s really interesting to see that dynamic in fiction. The twist is simplistic but still devastating, and it’s still gripping and savage all these years later.

Movies + TV

LZ: Bring Her Back

I love A24 horror movies in general, so I need to check this one out. It had an interesting premise with these two kids who became orphans and are placed temporarily at the home of a former counselor of an orphanage. Sounds great, right? But not really because Sally Hawkins is absolutely cuckoo and keeps gaslighting the oldest brother with a master plan to make him insane, and so uses the sister in a ritual to bring her dead daughter back again.

This would be done with the help of another adopted child, Ollie, who is heavily dismissed, but also has very destructive behavior, so you might just think that he's a problem child. In fact, he's the one who will channel or bring the dead daughter back. How? The movie starts with some footage that looks like a scene of demonic possession. Some scenes, not from the footage, but along the film, kinda nod back to The Exorcist, too, in my opinion, but it's never really explained whether it's a demonic possession or not. I would guess so from the cues: the way Ollie's body changes, the contact lenses that reminded me of Regan's eyes in The Exorcist, the way he “ages” in a sense that makes him look like Pazuzu (plus some sort of swollen parts on his head that make it look like horns), plus the use of salt to keep Ollie inside the house premises.

Would I say this is a great movie? Not really. I think it was very rushed in the beginning, not taking enough time to set the mood, and then it takes a long, long time by the end. Some narrative decisions were rather interesting and in line with the ruthlessness of some of A24's movies (like Hereditary, for example). I wouldn't watch it again, but I think there are very good things in there, and the actors are also doing an amazing job.

CJW: Counterpoint, I would say this is a great movie. I fucking loved it, thought it was harrowing and horrific and did a really great job of capturing Australian culture and family/home dynamics and how fucked up they can be, and the ways that systems are designed to fail kids like these ones.

The VHS (tech, not franchise) and possession aspects of the film put me in mind of The Empty Man, so I kind of hope they explore that if they’re inspired to do a sequel.

I think overall it was even better than the Philippou brothers’ previous film Talk To Me (which I believe I raved about when it first came out), and can’t wait to see what they do next.

CJW: Weapons

I loved Cregger's first movie, Barbarian, so I had to see this one at the cinema. Where Barbarian had an interesting, jarring, and kinda hilarious perspective switch, Weapons is threaded together from five (?) different POVs, each one overlapping at least one of the others while revealing more information and carrying the story further. It's an effective tool, leaving you exactly as in the dark as you need to be until it all comes together in an incredible and gory conclusion.

I hid behind my hands, I laughed; it was a good time.

Being about an entire classroom of children going missing and being called 'Weapons' I expected the movie to be about school shootings, but rather I got the idea it was actually about how American society indoctrinates its citizens from childhood to accept and embrace American imperialism, and the ways that indoctrination has damaged and poisoned America in a variety of ways.

I might be wrong, but watch it and see what you think. I love movies that allow/inspire multiple interpretations, and I’ve already seen someone else with views that parallel mine but differ in some interesting ways.

MJW: I don’t usually watch any kind of scary movie (I’m delicate of disposition and tend to get haunted by specific images from horror films), but I was intrigued enough by Weapons to give it a try. While I did have to hide behind my hands a few times, and was incredibly unsettled by a lot of the film, I also really enjoyed it. The image of the children running, arms extended slightly, will probably haunt me (I do NOT like any kind of irregular movement of human bodies in horror films, it really fucks me up) but I liked the story, thought the actors were great (especially Austin Abrams' very convincing tweaker). I’m not sure I saw as much into it as Corey did - maybe I’m just a vague bitch, but I thought it was mostly about a (spoilers!) scary old witch lady and the fucked up shit she did.

Art

MJW: Sasha Gordon: Haze

Sasha Gordon, who I’ve spoken about in the newsletter before, has their exhibition Haze opening at the David Zwiner Gallery in Chelsea. I love Gordon’s ghostly, voluptuous nudes.