Some Projects to Look Forward To
Labor reporting, hypocritical terrorism, and general update.
Things have been a bit quiet here recently and that’s because I’ve been working on a few projects for publication simultaneously. One of them, this article that just went up for Current Affairs - “The Meaning of ‘Terrorism,’ According to the United States,” is an examination of how the U.S. is happy to label anyone a terrorist so long as it comports with state interests, but is unwilling to call its convenient allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, terrorist states. It’s a long piece that was a long time in the making, so head over to their site to read it, or purchase their fancy physical magazine if you can. I will be posting an expanded version of that article here on Weird Catastrophe (screw word limits) as soon as Current Affairs’ exclusivity on it ends in a couple weeks. Here’s an excerpt of its general thesis:
Over the years, the U.S. State Department has maintained multiple terrorist lists, adding or removing designees often for political expediency. The state’s definition of terror is largely provisional, certainly hypocritical, and divorced from any consistent, universal principle of justice. The U.S. tends to respond to “terror” with “anti-terror” violence of its own, which—with rare exception—tends to exacerbate the underlying problems which motivated the act of “terror” in the first place. For the U.S., anti-terrorism is a tool that perpetuates the root causes of injustice and conveniently stifles dissent at home and abroad.
I am also currently in the editing process of a reported piece about the recent unionization efforts in the video game industry. There’s some exciting labor action going on in that sphere after decades of total exploitation of its workers. I interviewed some game developers who have either been laid off recently amongst what is now a recurring cycle of mass layoffs, or who are currently engaged in the bargaining process through their newly formed union. These workers have important things to say about their industry and I’m looking forward to sharing their words of wisdom. I’m working with an outlet to get that published as soon as possible, and I will post it here for you all once it’s out there.
I try to get my work published as much as possible at other outlets (preferably ones that pay and which don’t have overly constricting exclusivity deals) so that more people can get their eyes on the ideas I want to express, and also so more people will find Weird Catastrophe. The more people read this newsletter the less pressure I feel to go through the often constricting editing process of getting things published on other sites, as much as I do think it’s important for this work to get spread as far and wide as possible. And since many outlets, even online-only ones, have strict word counts, this means that Weird Catastrophe will have all the parts that didn’t get past the edit (that I disagreed with). Consider this exclusive bonus content for subscribers.
I’m also working on some more video/audio versions of articles that were posted here. Those will be up as soon as possible (I started a new full-time job so that’s another thing to contend with) and you can watch all of the past episodes of Weird Catastrophe here on the home page or at the Weird Catastrophe Youtube Channel here.
And that’s about all for the time being! I will leave you with some stupid AI-generated images that made me laugh. Those who create things for a living are rightly deriding AI’s utter inability to create visuals with any thing even approaching a human’s ability to efficiently deliver *specifically asked for* work without being totally demented. The prompt for this was: “A dentist’s office in the style of Norman Rockwell.” As you can see, it’s more like Norman Rockwell had sex with Francis Bacon and Salvador Dali:
Ridiculous.
Ta-ta for now.