under the full moon, vol. 6 iss. 7
Hey there. Happy Full Buck Moon.
There's an old chestnut that gets thrown around a lot, that even I catch myself repeating from time to time: we know less about the deep sea than we do about outer space. Regardless of the statement's veracity, it's one of those sets of words that rings true strung together, like the ping of sonar on a submarine.
And it's no wonder. The deep sea is a motherfucker, a vast, undulating canvas we can (and often do!) project our existential dread upon, with no shortage of absolutely terrifying prospects for that canvas to snap into: the plain old inky darkness, the unfathomable[[1]] pressures, the animals that are as alien as anything Lovecraft could (and did) imagine... and that's just some of the stuff we know about. The ocean abounds with unknown unknowns.
Just like space, though, the unknownness of the deep sea doesn't keep us from wanting to stretch our spindly limbs out across it, or rather, down into it, and explore. Let's be real: the unknownness of it is what makes us want to do this. I'm not saying anything original here. This is Level One stuff.
Some people describe the the driving force behind this desire to explore as "colonialism," and while at least one lobe of my political brain wants to agree, my gut tells me it's so much more complicated than that. This genre of exploration involves coming face-to-face with exceptionally hostile landscapes that are just simply not meant to be lived on or in by any human beings at all.[[2]] Unlike the brutal and disgusting person-to-person violence inherent in terrestrial colonialism, the balance of violence in sea (or space) exploration is heavily skewed in favour of the landscape. And the odds of surviving a fight, should one arise, are essentially nil.
Perhaps the whole "deep sea/space exploration is colonialism" thing comes from the fact that both space and deep sea exploration are very expensive... which means that, apart from narrowly-scoped and deeply underfunded gov't programs, both realms are only available to the goofy tourism of rich motherfuckers that we abhor for many good reasons.
Alas, stepping outside of politics / economics, I would put our drive for sea/space exploration more in the category of suicidal fascination (or perhaps hubris, depending on yr perspective). The siren call of the deep[[3]] begs to be answered, as does the hypnotic lure of the stars.
///
When the Titan submersible imploded catastrophically in the deep ocean about a year ago, the number of tears shed around the world was vanishingly small. You know those mugs that say "______ tears" on them? I reckon you could not have filled one of those, even halfway, with the global tear quotient for the Titan casualties. Famously, the stepson of one of the Titan crew was so very sad about his dad being missing, that he still went to see Blink-182 and also tweeted a bunch of fire emojis to OnlyFans models.
Though some news people tried to frame this lack of public sadness — and even celebration — as ghoulish, there were many good reasons that the vast majority of people didn't care one bit, the main one being: it was a small group of relatively wealthy people on a tourist trip. A dangerous tourist trip, yes, but hey, you know what they say about bulls and horns. If five very wealthy tourists died on land doing something equally dangerous and expensive, I imagine the reaction would have a similar pitch.
Apart from their wealth (which is, admittedly, a pretty big matzoh ball to set aside), the crew was not exactly a relatable group of everyday people: Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate (which owned and operated Titan) had a long history of sea-cowboy[[4]] behaviour and flouting of rules and best practices; George Hamish Livingston Harding[[5]], a British businessman based in Dubai (siren sounds) was known for, among other things, advocating that space tourists be called "astronauts"; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani billionaire, paid an eye-watering sum to be there and brought his 19-year-old son to his demise along with him; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, seemed relatively chill apart from the corny-as-fuck nickname "Mr. Titanic."
None of these folks (especially not the young Dawood) are easily slotted into a "class villain" category the same way, say, Jeff Bezos could be... but nothing about them pulls on the heart strings, either. Nothing about their deaths makes the implosion feel like a cultural or social or political loss of great magnitude. They did something incredibly dangerous, and on several different levels, zigged when they should have zagged. In this sense, the Titan disaster is like a dictionary-level example of fucking around, and subsequently, finding out.
By contrast, the Challenger explosion[[6]] was a national, if not international tragedy — and in some respects, it was exactly because of who was on board: without getting into the details of all seven crew members, they were a downright wholesome-looking group of well-trained people (relatively diverse for the time!) rising to meet a moment. They were legit astronauts with backgrounds in science, bioengineering, and more.
Perhaps the most well-known and widely-mourned crew member was Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. She was there as the first (and, unfortunately, last) participant of NASA's Teacher In Space program, "designed to inspire students, hono[u]r teachers, and spur interest in mathematics, science, and space exploration. The project would carry teachers into space [...], who would return to their classrooms to share the experience with their students."
Like a zillion kids of my generation in 1986, I remember watching the Challenger explode on live TV, one of those TVs that would get rolled in on a big stand-up cart. To be clear, I was 5, so the memory is mostly impressionistic. But I remember very clearly seeing this happening on a TV, and the silence that fell over the room, and then the crying — both from the teacher, who abruptly shut off the TV, and then the rest of the class.
I don't remember much of what happened after that, but if the public record is any indication... it sure did fuck people up. I would bet about $100 any day of the week that you would be hard pressed to find someone saying that the astronauts somehow deserved it because they were engaged in a colonial enterprise (at worst) or a wealthy person's stupid lark (at best).
The difference, of course, is intent. There is a vast gulf of intent between the Titan tourist trip and the Challenger space mission. Both ended catastrophically, but one was widely seen as a tragedy while the other was seen as comeuppance.
In both cases, we knew what happened. In the case of the Challenger, we saw it happen live; and in the case of the Titan, the wreckage was found not too much later. But what if we hadn't any conclusive proof in either case?
///
I'm no fan of the U.S. military,[[7]] and I'm even less of a fan of how military service people are automatically slotted into the category of "hero" just for serving out their duty, or just for catching a bullet with their faces when they put their faces in places where bullets are flying at them for very good reasons.
Gimme a break. Words have definitions and none of the definitions of "hero" apply here.[[8]]
Anyhoo, some years ago, I was working on an EP / album project called Pelagic, and the artwork, introduction, and closing song all revolved around thinking about the ocean. I quoted a JFK speech where (among other wild things) he talks about how humans evolved from the sea.[[9]] And one of the things I discovered in the process of researching the ocean and the sea was a rather strange detail about the U.S. military, and how it treats its naval officers who operated submarines in World War II.
They never really died.
All of the U.S. submarines[[10]] in World War II that went missing or otherwise lost contact with central command (52 in total) are remembered as "still on patrol."
It's hard to describe the feeling that overcame me when I learned this — a jolt of adrenaline, an uncanny creepiness, a knowing wash of static, that dead silence of the ears full of liquid.
The idea of 52 submarines from World War II being "still on patrol" is so much creepier and profoundly weird than say, assuming they suffered the usual ends of implosion, explosion, destruction by enemies, or otherwise being sunk. It felt like as soon as I read those words, my mind took the wash of emotion to its logical conclusion, in an instant. That night, I wrote the lyrics for a song of the same title.
WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT OUR BONES HAVE BEEN TURNED TO CORAL OUR BLOOD IS SALT WATER OUR LUNGS ARE FILLED GOOD THING WE HAVE GILLS
My brain jumped there, because the tribute, flipped on its head, begs the question of why. If these ships are "still on patrol," why. Why haven't they come home or tried to make contact? As far as I can tell only two options make any sense: the submarines haven't returned because they can't, or they haven't returned because they don't want to... neither of which makes the guts feel very good.
IN THE SERVICE OF SOMETHING GREATER THAN YOURSELF THAT IS WHEN YOU FIND OUT THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT HEARTBEAT THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE
IT'S A TICKING SECOND HAND HANGING OVER YOU SUSPENDED ANIMATION NO DIFFERENCE WHAT'S ON LAND NO MATTER THE INTENDED STATION
Let's suppose that they can't return, yet are still on patrol. They are out there somewhere trapped, stuck, in stasis. What is the nature of this purgatory they find themselves in? We could imagine them being prevented from returning to the surface by some kind of mechanical issue that keeps them out of contact and at depth; or perhaps they are restrained by some strange psychological or physical illness of the deep. If they can't return, it's spooky for sure, but it's also tinged with a certain hope that they could someday be retrieved. There is a strange sadness to it... however...
LET THE TEARS REACH THE OCEAN FLOOR DON'T CRY FOR ME I'M HOME IT'S CALM AND PEACEFUL DOWN HERE EXCEPT WHALE SONG RATTLING MY BONES AND
DUST IT GATHERS IN ALL THE CORNERS AND THE COBWEBS WHERE DOES IT COME FROM THE COLD SWEAT AT EVERY CREAK AND PING OF SONAR DO YOU REALLY THINK WE'D
COME WHEN WE WERE CALLED BACK TO LAND WHERE NO ONE WOULD UNDERSTAND HALF OF WHAT WE'VE SEEN DOWN BELOW IT'S DARK LIKE THE SKY ABOVE THERE IS NO NEED FOR ALL OF WHAT'S BETWEEN
The other alternative — that the ships are still on patrol because they don't want to return — is the more interesting (and frightening) option to me. That's where my mind drifts to and settles, on the sea floor alongside that knowing wash of static, with that familiar dead silence of the ears full of liquid.
There are a lot of secrets held by the deep sea. We know more about space then we do about the oceans, right? And while there's a natural sense of foreboding that comes along with the kind of depths we're talking about, what if there was something down there that was so compelling and attractive that it would cause a crew of submariners (or perhaps 52 crews of them) to collectively decide to never return to the surface?
Yes, the deep sea is the realm of inky darkness and unfathomable pressures — certain death for human beings. And yet, so many different species call the deep sea home. We don't know for sure if there is life beyond (or even elsewhere within) our solar system, but we know with 100% certainty that the deep sea is not only home to an abundance of weird creatures, but that there are many many many many creatures down there that we've never seen, who have yet to reveal themselves to us. And maybe they never will, simply because there is no good reason for them to do so.
We feel a reflexive terror at the dark potential of the deep sea, but maybe those lost souls still on patrol know something we don't. What could they have found down there that would compel them to never return?
WE'LL NEVER DIE BUT WE'RE NOT ALIVE THERE IS PEACE BENEATH WE PLAY THE ROLE BEYOND THE SHOALS FIREWORKS HALF MAST MEDITATION SINGING BOWL
A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW WE STAY HIDDEN WITH A SONAR TOLL A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW WE'LL STILL BE ON PATROL
///
Paul Virilio said that when you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck — and alas, when you invent the space shuttle, you also invent its catastrophic failure.
There was a brief window of time between when the Titan lost contact with the surface where no one knew what happened. Most people assumed the worst, but in the absence of information, imagination filled in the blanks, and at least some of those blanks were hopeful. With the Challenger disaster, what happened (and its inevitable consequence) was so blatantly evident to anyone watching; still, there was a shockingly detailed investigation into the exact times and causes of death, to leave as few questions marks as possible floating back down to earth like ashes of American flags.
In both cases, the Window Of Not Knowing has been closed, allowing those invested emotionally and otherwise to move on. But the classification of "still on patrol" has the opposite, unsettling effect for me — by using this term, we prop open the Window Of Not Knowing with a stick, to let a very strange breeze come in. Maybe forever.
Beyond the intense weirdness of what being "still on patrol" implies, I appreciate the humility embedded in the statement: we don't know what happened to those 52 boats. We can assume a lot, but we ultimately have no information, and our imaginations will always have blanks to fill in. Realistically, everyone assumes the worst case scenario: they're probably all dead and gone...
But what if they're not?
we've been told all our lives that the night is for sleeping, and it's not just a narrative: there is a cataract-silver disc you can see through the pines; antlers etch invisible messages into the fog. a wound once open closes itself. night holds still to let it happen.
what I’ve been listening to:
Metallica - S/T The Black Album — this was the first ever cassette that i bought with my own money (birthday money, which my dad took me to the mall to spend when i turned 10). having already been primed by a mixtape that my friend's brother gave me, i was all in right away. in hindsight, i've come to understand this album as a right turn (figuratively and literally), but at the time, i just thought it fucking rocked. it remains a great example of “this music sucks, i love it.”
Chang-A-Lang - No Clean Rock N' Roll — there's nothing really remarkable about this record, and there's not supposed to be. Chang-A-Lang were a tight, competent band of young people from Toronto, who made tight, competent music about being young people in Toronto. when i hear this, i just wish they had stayed a band for a little bit longer — i think they would've gotten better, made even better records, and probably done something remarkable once they got past their 20s.
Leikeli47 - Shape Up — back in the early/mid-90s when i was discovering Nine Inch Nails, one of the things that i discovered while poring over liner notes for both The Downward Spiral and The Fragile was people credited for "continuity." eventually i found out that essentially, this meant the person/people who worked on the heads and tails of each song, gluing them together so that tracks flow into each other. i've always been obsessed with this kind of approach, but rarely hear it done well. anyhoo, this Leikeli47 record has GREAT continuity, and each song fucking slaps, besides.
Tatsuya Nakatani - Gong (2015) — even though i've been fortunate enough to see Tatsuya play live several times, i've always avoided listening to the records of his that i've bought — i just couldn't imagine how it would compare to the live experience. i can't seem to find the Gong (2015) recording online anywhere, but it's really solid. check him out if he comes to yr town!
Nash The Slash - Dreams & Nightmares — in addition to reading Cut-Throat (more below), i've been listening to some old Nash records again... as the documentary about him gets closer, i have a lot of feelings about it that i'll discuss some other time. this record, a collection of live film soundtracks and other experiments, pretty shockingly weird stuff for 1978, remains great.
Rage Against The Machine - S/T & Evil Empire — recently i saw some interview clip floating around where Adam Friedland says something about how RATM's music is dumb and not very politically astute. and don't get me wrong, i know his whole thing is being an irony-poisoned douche, but i was like... huh?!??!!?! i cannot even imagine ironically holding that opinion. he also said something about how if you loved RATM it was likely yr parents were divorced, which i actually did LOL at.
Shellac - Terraform — nobody does an angular dirge like Shellac does... er... did. fuck. i hadn't really been able to listen to Shellac since Albini died, and when this came up randomly in a shuffle, it felt okay again. small blessings.
Fear - The Record — there aren't many records that i would rank among my favourites, but that i would also want to add a whole bunch of extra context up front about. this is one of them. i always thought Fear was from NYC — because they sounded like what i imagine NYC felt like in the late 70s / early 80s, and because they referenced NYC so much in their music — but they were actually from Los Angeles. unlike a lot of punk bands at the time though, these motherfuckers could play REALLY well, and they walked the line of irony in a way that made it impossible to tell what the fuck they actually thought. this album remains as nihilistic as it was in 1982, and somehow seems like it would piss off just as many people.
RUN D.M.C. - King Of Rock — when i hear albums like this, i wish i could travel back in time to hear what it sounded like back then. i can just imagine the way that those big ass cars in 1985 would be rattled by the massive drum machines all through this record... wall-to-wall big tunes (except for the weird and ill-advised "Roots, Rap, Reggae"... i guess even RUN D.M.C. did a fake patois).
Giant Swan - Fantasy Food — deep and heavy tech from a duo based out of... somewhere? honestly, it's hard to find much out about these two, but they're fucking excellent.
cub - Brave New Waves Session — brent bambury's interviewing at the tail end of this is insufferable, but cub remains one of my favourite 90s punk treats.
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — this album still crushes me, 20+ years later. i shout out to Pitchfork dot com in the early 2000s for rating this highly and convincing me to stretch out of my comfort zone and buy the CD. you were right about this one!
Bad Religion - Against The Grain — god i love this band. how can lyrics be SO corny and also SO good? ain't life a mysteryyyyyy yeahhhh.
what I’ve been reading:
it’s dangerous to go alone… take this, and this…
Cut-Throat: How to get started in the music business - and Survive! — originally written in 1996/1997 and never published, much of this music business advice is very much out of date... and much of it isn't! a lot of this book feels like a time capsule, but the stuff that remains true about relationships, legalities, looking after yrself, and being thoughtful about every aspect of what you do, is still very, very relevant.
The Quiet Unraveling of the Man Who Almost Killed Trump — the remarkable thing to me about this NYT profile isn't that it reveals anything new... it's that it precisely reveals basically nothing new compared to what we knew about Thomas Crooks within a week of the shooting.
The Man Who Trapped Us in Databases — this is an old-ish (2023) article that i recently revisited as i've been doing some writing about the Internet and the commercial importance of "persistent identifiers" — something Hank Asher pioneered.
On the Origin of the Pork Taboo — this is a good medium-dive into a topic that most people misunderstand in various ways and in various directions.
How ‘Jaws’ Made a Template for the Modern Blockbuster — once you start noticing the narrative templates and patterns used in film and literature, the idea of genre starts to make a LOT more sense, and feels comforting.
Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3 million peers — speaking of being still on patrol… fucking fascinating.
A receipt printer cured my procrastination — i run into these kind of life hack blogs all the time, and i do like them… less because i want to apply these things to my own life and more because it’s fascinating to hear about how other people’s brains work. what annoys me about these kinds of things is when the authors write like their advice will help EVERYONE. just cause it works for you, doesn’t mean shit for me!
Televangelism Gets it Together — another banger from evangeline (who has been on a fucking tear recently). a long read and a hell of a ride.
Artists Can't Fix the Music Industry on Their Own — all war is spiritual war.
The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies at 82 — RIP to the GOAT.
Our Most Impact Yet — if you want to know why i give money to 404 Media every month, check out this very short list of some of their recent journalism, and its impact.
and now for some AI things...
At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work — insert JT voice… cry me a riveeeerrrrrr... the lack of privilege-awareness these codepushers display in this interview is… kind of impressive, to be honest! i mean, wtf do you expect, mang? you fucking work for amazon dot com. as soon as they can liquidate yr body and pour yr remains into the fuel tank of a robot coder to save a few dollars, they fucking will. grow up. find a new job. fix yr hearts or die.
Manfred: MLB will propose automated ball-strike challenge system for 2026 — the robots are coming for the umpires. :(
OpenAI wins $200 million U.S. defense contract — cool stuff. i mean, this was/is inevitable, and if you think OpenAI is going to be unique in this regard, you are sorely mistaken.
How we’re responding to The New York Times’ data demands in order to protect user privacy — let me translate OpenAI's statement in brief: the NYT is asking us to retain data so that instances of mass plagiarism can be appropriately investigated. we don't want to retain data in the way they want because that would be massively incriminating. however, we're definitely still going to collect user data by default and use it for things like model training. byeeeeeeee.
AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums — i truly, truly hate this. i am working on a longer piece about the effect AI is having / going to have on education, and this is sort of related.
Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored — all of those research papers that talk about how AI can discover 1,000,000 new molecules of _____ (or similar claims of AI doing gargantuan amounts of processing work) largely ignore the fact that all of that work means nothing until its verified... and that, of course, is Brandolini's Law in action.
SnitchBench — in case you needed more reasons to be cautious around AI, just a heads up that various models will proactively snitch you out.
‘FuckLAPD.com’ Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops — but you know, AI snitching can mean many things.
what I’ve been watching:
Jess Bowen Hears Rage Against The Machine For The First Time — i always love these videos. a couple of things to remark on here: 1) she nails it. like. fucking nails it. and, 2) i enjoy the way that everyone refers to the first take as "honest" — it tickles me to think of what that implies for subsequent takes.
I bought an AUTHENTIC 90s Dance Music Setup — making live electronic music is a tough exercise in 2025, but i always remind myself it's never been easier. back in the 90s, it was a much tougher nut to crack... and the pioneers still slayed. this was a fun watch (as are all of AudioPilz's videos).
Asteroid City — as much as i love many Wes Anderson movies, this one left me feeling rather... empty. there's some interesting 4th wall interplay, but mostly it felt far too perfectly constructed, devoid of any real moments.
Tucker Confronts Ted Cruz on His Support for Regime Change in Iran — liberal commentators made so much hay about the "confrontational" moments of this interview, that i just had to watch it for myself... and those "confrontational moments" amounted to about 5% of the whole thing. the rest of the time, these ghouls faithfully wank each other off like old frat buddies. disgraceful. liberal media is cooked lol bbq.
miscellany:
If The Moon Were Only 1 Pixel — there’s just… so much space out there.
Mechanical Watch: Exploded View — so damn cool. people do cool ass stuff sometimes.
Don't use "click here" as link text — preach!
I made my VM think it has a CPU fan — brilliant.
Apple introduces a delightful and elegant new software design — i’ve read this several times and… i am still not sure if this is a joke or not. is this a joke?
extras:
LYRIC REFERENCE GUIDE: ENANTIODROMIA — this won't explain everything. but it will explain a lot of things.
Thanks for reading. I hope this full moon fills you with the energy you need to get to the next one.
garbageface.
[[1]]: no pun intended? no, pun intended!
[[2]]: yes yes, i know we've already discussed how the world wants us dead in these pages, but these landscapes operate at a different level of hostility than the terrestrial world.
[[3]]: yes, i fucking know the Sirens didn't lure people to the deep, they lured boats to the rocky shore so they would shipwreck, but whatever bud. go write yr own newsletter and use the metaphor correctly.
[[4]]: perhaps not coincidentally, Rush initially wanted to be an astronaut... but you know what they say: those who can't do, teach, and those who can't go to space, go to the deep sea.
[[5]]: what a name, what a name.
[[6]]: there are, as yet, no space tourism disasters i can point to, so this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, and it's not meant to be — in fact, i'm trying to underline how intent of exploration matters. if you want to imagine how a space tourism disaster might be received, look no further than the recent Blue Origin flight that was "much derided"... and they landed safely!
[[7]]: or most militaries, tbh, with very, very few exceptions.
[[8]]: coincidentally (?), the definition of "hero" also includes "submarine" (sandwich). words are great, huh?
[[9]]: incidentally (or not?), this EP also included a song called "like the goddamn fucking challenger explosion."
[[10]]: i have researched whether what I'm about to describe is unique to the U.S. or exists across other nations, and so far haven't found anything. if i do, i'll add it to the web archive of this newsletter.
