Don’t miss this. Absolutely essential stuff.

Well there goes my weekend!

Uh oh, the bat signal

Feminist Researcher in Residence 2026 - Victorian Women's Trust We are seeking a curious, impact-focused researcher to examine the gendered risks and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence.

This is the first year the VWT is doing its Feminist Researcher in Residence (FRiR) program, you can keep updated on the program and future research topics by signing up here: www.vwt.org.au/feminist-res...

More information on the Dugdale Trust funding this work: www.acnc.gov.au/charity/char...

The full EOI brief and more about the program is here: www.vwt.org.au/wp-content/u...

Feminist Researcher in Residence 2026 - Job in Melbourne - Victorian Women's Trust We are seeking a curious Early Career Researcher (ECR) to uncover the unique risks, harms and opportunities AI technology poses for women, girls and gender diverse people in Australia.

*EOI by April 10* Feminist early career researcher wanted: the Vic Women's Trust is commissioning independent research into the impact of AI on women and girls, funded by its harm-prevention entity, the Dugdale Trust for Women and Girls. ($25k) Apply here: www.ethicaljobs.com.au/members/Vict...

2 comments Leave a comment Dean Kiley * 7:53 PM Got engrossed by this antisentimental, evidence-marshalled, incisive, compelling, and wholly-persuasive analysis of the seductive surface-smoothing mechanics of neocon nostalgia online. LIKE • & REPLY

Starting a new project is nerve wracking and a bit lonely but today I got the first comment from someone I didn’t know, gotta take your wins where you can get ‘em!

The Internet You Miss Never Existed On the political work of digital nostalgia, and the fantasy of the Lost Internet

The internet didn’t get worse by accident.

It did what it was built to do, & when we call the early internet a golden age, we ignore all the hostility that got us here.

New Hetconned on the Lost Internet fantasy & why we should tread carefully with nostalgia: hetconned.substack.com/p/the-intern...

on the Internet we miss that never existed - republic of bob - Obsidian Publish on the Internet we miss that never existed https://hetconned.substack.com/p/the-internet-you-miss-never-existed this is brilliant and just what i needed to read. when someone alludes to, or evokes te…

brilliant post, leena. my response here: publish.obsidian.md/republicofbo...

btw (and case in point) substack is riddled with the far right; arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Oh it was very much intended to be an eye-roll! This post wasn’t intended as a dressing down about one guy, I would have gone round for round if that were the case.

No one has been more explicit about turning this medieval fantasy into a theory of modern governance than Curtis Yarvin, who also writes under the name Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin is the kind of man whose presence makes you instinctively cover your drink. His ideology is often described as "edgy" or "provocative", " despite not saying much to differentiate him from the "devil's advocate guy" from every early 2000s Bulletin forum. A gormless dork of a man seemingly intent on trying to make "The Dark Enlightenment" happen 1, Curtis Yarvin has spent years arguing that democracy should be abolished and replaced with a CEO monarchy, where the state is run more like a company, and its populace become its customers. Political disagreement can then be reclassified merely as consumer dissatisfaction, where if you don't like how things are run, you can take your business elsewhere. A (dull) child's understanding of how things should be run, where authority flows downward, and loyalty must flow upward, to him, the King. The special boy.

In his "Patchwork" writings 2, Yarvin outlines a vision of fragmented sovereignty organised through private ownership. He proposes replacing existing states with "a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries," each governed by "its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents' opinions." "A Patchwork realm is governed by a Delegate," he writes, "who is the proxy of the proprietors" He cannot resist adding an antisemitic aside in the same breath: "(The Delegate is always Jewish.)" Even when he is sketching his new clean corporate monarchy, he goes out of his way to smuggle in a tired old trope. Treating him as a cultural curiosity or eccentric blogger is another form of organised forgetting.

Hello new followers!

If you thought the most recent post went a little easy on Curtis Yarvin may I present this aperitif from my post on neo-feudalism/medieval nationalism to whet your whistle: hetconned.substack.com/p/special-li...

Let's Play Life hello - this post of mine i've been working on for the past few months! it's a sequel of sorts to last year's California Problem post and i...

"these virtual spaces were always, always hamstrung by this sort of self-imposed conformity. they were rarely very radical, and certainly not positioned to take on the dominant cultural order."

that's right, i'm quoting from Let's Play Life again ellaguro.blogspot.com/2024/03/lets...

hey - finally something on this subject i agree with

Now you’ve got me thinking about how crucial sex workers were to both westward expansion and the expansion of the internet!

This is really good, Anna makes me think nostalgia for the early internet is a lot like nostalgia for the American frontier: a lawless time and place where abuse ran rampant, but in hindsight we only remember the exhilaration of a sparse population on a landscape open for development or exploitation

Nice (and gentle) counter to "Golden Age Of The Internet" nostalgia. As always it's what (and who) they leave out that makes it gilded.

If we're too busy encouraging mourning then we're sure as shit not organising to de-privatise the network or nationalise the pipes, and if we distract ourselves with wanting to restore the internet past, we have no room for thinking about how it could have (or should have) been engineered differently. Leena van Deventer

The Internet You Miss Never Existed On the political work of digital nostalgia, and the fantasy of the Lost Internet

The internet didn’t get worse by accident.

It did what it was built to do, & when we call the early internet a golden age, we ignore all the hostility that got us here.

New Hetconned on the Lost Internet fantasy & why we should tread carefully with nostalgia: hetconned.substack.com/p/the-intern...

I love this part before I’m called out on my bullshit!

I appreciate that so much, too. I’m grateful she’s got conviction behind it and says it confidently, and doesn’t feel like she’s undermining her argument or impacting her position. It strengthens it, imo.

I hope so! I think my biggest traps will be not doing a good enough job trying to avoid psychoanalysis, and indulging in “get a load of this guy!” freakshow parades when one of them really gets my blood up.

But that’s what guide ropes and meditations on method are for right 💀

(This is a mistake I think Evans also avoids with Behind The Bastards, because he grounds it in history, usually quite a deep snapshot of a particular time. It’s the lack of having that grounding sussed out that I think makes me nervous. But affective economies *are* a network, a history)

(I think Conger’s strength lies in her ability to avoid doing “Get a load of this fucking guy” content and really focus on that long term network analysis, she gets insight into domino effects that you just can’t get from focusing on individuals and their own motivations.)

I love her work too! I think Molly is great at situating the Weird Little Guys in their networks, very red string all over the corkboard stuff, which is really important. I’m more drawn to how personal affect comes into it, the reason they get there and who is helping them/convincing them to do so.

There’s something so theatrical about it, so exaggerated and signally. They want cookies and applause from men they respect and also to be a useful recruitment tool to get more little actors in their troupe.

(The crossover with sovcits and theatre studies has been fascinating to read about!)

Any agents looking for a book on chauvinism, I’m 20% of the way there 💀

A misogynist is someone who signs up to do the dirty work of keeping women in their place, either in the wider project and/or the immediate intimate social group.

This can be anyone, in any sphere of influence, and it’s *crucial* to separate that from their personal feelings about chicks they know.

This is why Kate Manne’s work correctly defining misogyny is so crucial to understanding our current moment. Misogyny isn’t “hating women”, these guys all have exceptions to that.

Misogyny describes the *policing arm* of the patriarchy; its foot soldiers are the misogynists. It’s like ICE.

Made a field note about method to avoid finishing any of the half-written drafts I’ve got piling up. *taps forehead*