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Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. It's the Cool Zone Media book Club, the book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm Margaret Giljoy and this week and this month on cool Zone Media book Club, we have missives from the future. That's right, it's week two of Cool Zone twenty fifty four Reports from the dinoh War. And what if we have from the future, Well, let's find out. Welcome to Cool Zone twenty fifty four Reports from the
dinoh War. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and alongside the rest of the Cool Zone team, we're covering everything World War three point five. Alongside some of the rest of the team, I spent the past week in Helsinki, Finland at Dino Con four and I'm excited to share with you all what I've learned. But first, this podcast wouldn't even be here if it weren't for our biggest sponsor, the one the Old Dino Cadence. What started as an avant garde dinosaur dance troupe soon became the world's premier
network of combat academies. If you're serious about dino riding, you need to get serious about dino cadence. Admission is free, but spots are limited. So apply today to save the world tomorrow. When the wheels of the ancient seven thirty seven hit the runway at Helsinki, Vanta, I wasn't the only one to breathe out a sigh of relief. We'd made it, we landed, we were on the ground, which is, from my point of view, where we belong. You will not catch me riding a pterodactyl, and not just because
I'm far too old for it. And look, I wasn't worried about the plane falling apart. Ever since the cooperativization of Boeing in twenty thirty seven, when workers took over the beleaguered company, it's gone from producing the world's least reliable airplanes back to producing some of the world's best. No, I was worried about getting shot out of the sky. I just flown in from free Poland, which meant flying over three different nationalists occupied Baltic states. Every journalist is
a war journalist. In World War three point five, the plane, like any post war retrofit, was equipped for non electric flight in the case of EMP. But I've been in planes hit by EMPs twice in my life already, and it is never fun. Capable of not crashing is an entirely different thing from comfortable flight. Our seven thirty seven was also equipped with its own Vishnu shield in case
of incoming surface to air missiles. But for the past year, of course, nationalist forces in Estonia have had the habit of firing dummy rockets at more or less everything flying anywhere near their airspace. The whole flight, I told myself I was getting too old for this shit, and I tried to distract myself with work like I always do. I caught up on about a week's worth of email, and I figured out my dino kon itinery. Then we landed and I stepped out into the unseasonably warm Helsinki
December air Can you even say unseasonably anymore? Does that even mean anything anymore? Like It's like every morning God spins a big spinny wheel with numbers from negative thirty to about one hundred and thirty to determine how hot it's going to be. I guess that only works if you're one of us weird old poor people who can't internally shift to celsius negative thirty to plus fifty. I don't know, do your own Celsius math, you metric men.
I stepped out into that pleasant air, and we took the train into town, and I looked out the window and I remembered I love Helsinki, and I love my job, and flying is just part of it, and danger is just part of it. And that's okay. It's funny how our conscious mind works to forget danger as soon as it passes. Funny how hard our unconscious mind works to
hold on to the memory of fear. But unless you've got that sorrophobia, there's nothing to be afraid of at Dinocon besides having too much fun hanging out with dinosaurs and their riders. Well, I mean besides the microraptor incident
at Dinocon too, but that won't happen again. Probably, when you first come in through the gates, after the security checkpoint that I'm legally required to not tell you about in detail, the first thing you see is Captain Emily Hanford Junior herself and of course her faithful Trigger, that is to say, the most decorated dinosaur and dinosaur rider respectively. Trigger was waving and smiling, hair pulled back into that don't fuck with the librarian bun that they single handedly
brought back into style. Their uniform was gleaming with metals from the war and little one inch buttons from bands they listen to. Captain Emily Hanford Junior is, of course an ankliosaurus, and I've never been able to tell a reptile's mood by looking at its face, and I think people who claim they can are lying. But she seemed happy enough and occasionally nuzzled her massive head into Trigger's
shoulder for scretches. I wasn't able to catch an interview with Trigger that morning, but if you listened to last April's episode why do we use medals at all? In an internationalist army? You can hear me and mi along talk to them at length. It's mostly just war stories that episode, but you know they're good stories. It's controversial for internationalist forces to have any sort of mascot soldiers at all, but whatever a claim Trigger gets, Trigger has earned.
My first stop at DINOCN four was, of course the Swag Table flash, a little cool Zone media badge explain that don't worry, you're not Robert Evans, and no you haven't seen Robert Evans and know you will not be commenting on the news about Robert Evans, and you are set up with one of the coolest swag bags ever produced this year. It was a plush anchor Leosaurus backpack filled the overflowing with do dads in general promo, a little floaty pen with a pack of raptors chasing away
a cartoonish Nazi. A mug that reads I survived the dinoh War so far, but death is inevitable and comes for kings and commoners alike. So really, my goal isn't to survive, but to live a full life and live free and or kill fascist for as long as I can. The type is pretty small on the mug, except that dinoh War is in big red letters. There was also
an edible wristwatch made out of protein plastic. Look. I know most people say it's safe, but I am just too old to start eating plastic on purpose, plant based or not. A tiny SD card full of virtual training environments in the latest military games, as well as full scientific documentation on more or less everything on display at the con, and this year an honest to God paperback book called Heliotropum and the Egg that's going to come out early next year from Helm, that best selling anonymous,
mononymous collective. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but the back promises it's quote like nothing Helm has ever produced, and that it will quote shake the internationalist world to its core, and that it quote isn't just war propaganda, we promise, which is a funny disclaimer but necessary these days. Us at cool Zone Media, though we can't make that disclaimer. We are war propaganda. I mean,
for Fock's sake, our founder is General Lichterman herself. All we can promise is that we're honest war propaganda, but frankly you shouldn't take our word for it. We may be war propaganda, but we aren't fully sponsored by any given war department. So we still have ads. Here are some of them. This podcast is brought to you by Nellie's Nasty Nutrients. Are you tired of flavorless nutritional paste? Are you ready to accept that nutritional paste will never
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Like our competitors, Nellie's Nasty Nutrients is not guaranteed to be free. You've always buy products Nellie's is Nasty. This podcast brought to you by the Gambling Consortium. Are you tired of gambling your life in a global civil war? Want to try gambling for something a little less serious? Try gambling for money? Thanks to the Gambling Consortium. It's the year twenty fifty four and podcasts are still brought to you by gambling. Gambling regularly is a bad idea.
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their content. And we're back anyhow. After a nice young person with a retro slicked back haircut gave me my dino backpack, they gestured me towards the mobility aids available, but instead went and got myself a Jurassic Park style cane from a bin, complete with fau amber and faux mosquito,
and started off towards the biggest monsters. I know we're not supposed to call them monsters, but dear listener, I have been a trans woman for a long time now, and I think like recognizes like dinos and trans people. We've got a lot in common. There's a whole fifty percent of the world population trying to de extinct us both, but we've got too many teeth and claws and allies and uh writers, depending on what you're into for that
fifty percent to succeed. It's no secret that the various dino units compete with each other for a claim and recruits alike. Terodactyl jockeys think that they're the best because they are the hardest crew to get in with, and they sharpshoot moving objects, well people, while themselves flying through the air. The Ancliosaurus brigades are certain that they're the best because they've got a real proletarian vibe and interface
smoothly with infantry. It's true that the Ankliosaurus brigades have liberated more towns from fascist than any other because they're the ones who roll in like tanks to capture. The rex riders have their whole cowboy vibe whether they're mounted or not, with ten galled hats over their polymer helmets. The mother Hens don't ride dinosaurs at all. Of course, they heard velociraptors the size of and attitude of overly
aggressive roosters, and the mother hens have got style. John Waters would have loved the mother Hens, every one of them, copying the quote armed drag fashion of the first six folks who formed the first velociraptor unit. Then there are the Amazons and their ceratopsian mounts, who are some of the finest and most feared units in the war. I went past recruitment booth after recruitment booth and talked politely
to the press liaisons of each of those units. You can hear those conversations themselves in the extended episodes, which are of course available to paid subscribers internationalists, soldiers and veterans, and anyone in the civilian volunteer Corps or your territory's equivalent thereof. But more than anything else, I was there to talk to the newest unit, one with a terrifying claim to fame. I was there to talk to the Dreadnoughts. Their booth was easy to find, plain black banners hung
vertically like medieval flags. Each of the fighters please call them fighters, not soldiers, wore heavy medieval inspired armor with plain black surcoats over them. Every soldier of every unit proudly bears arms, of course, but the Dreadnought fighters they are dripping with weapons, pistols and grenades and rifles and the occasional saber or labris. Behind their booth was a Dreadnaughtus, one of the largest dinosaurs in history and one of
the largest dinosaurs in Helsinki. Though they ride any sauropod, they use the Dreadnaughtis as their icon because its name means fears nothing. In the banner over their booth. It reads, joined the Dreadnoughts. We have the highest mortality rate of any unit in the Internationalist Army. Their spokesperson, a very short man with a bright pink afro and brighter pink full plate armor, wore a large pin with their slogan, live fast, kill racists, die young. That's right. Their claim
to fame is that they die a lot. The average Dreadnought dies on their second engagement. Of the original thousand fighters when the unit was formed in February of this very year, only one hundred and twelve are still alive in fighting. Their unit, though now boasts more than ten thousand fighters. I swear to you World War three point five is a war unlike any other in history. I talked with their spokesperson, who introduced himself as Lord Glimmerdark,
for quite some time. The crux of my questioning was quite simply, why why advertise based on a high mortality rate? Half of you listeners are probably wondering the same thing. Well, the other half of you, well, you probably know the answer in your hearts. Lord Glimmerdark, Glimm to his friends, answered honestly and at length, there's a whole lot of
simple answers and also a long answer. The simple answers are things like, well, some people feel that the closer you push towards death, the more you can feel alive, or that some people just have a death wish, or that every fighter in the Dinah War lived through a war where a billion people died, and death is so inevitable and it's better for your mental health to embrace that. I mean, I have a mug for my swag bag that basically makes that argument. I've built my career on
the idea of radical optimism strategic optimism. I can't encourage any of you to join the Dreadnaughts. But oddly, talking to Lord Glimmerdark, I realized these two positions are not a fundamentally at odds as you might think. The Dreadnoughts are not pushing despair. My position and their position are what the theory heads would call in a dialectic with each other. Radical optimism and fanatic nihilism, as the Dreadnought philosophy is called, can work hand in hand to build
a better world. Glimmer Dark argues, fanatihilism is, of course the long answer to my question, Lord Glimmerdark told me about a text I hadn't read in a good thirty years, a text called We Are All Very Anxious. That piece argues that every era of capitalism has had a dominant affect that is utilized by capitalism to control its opposition. Before the first couple of world wars, that affect was misery,
just keep everyone too miserable to rise up. After the wars, until around the turn of the century, it was boredom. The first century when that piece was written, it was anxiety. Everyone was too anxious to do something. Then after World War III, it was as thenotonihilism proposes morbid fascination. This is now the dominant affect of our times. They call it morbidity, though obviously that's a new way of using that word. Everyone was too obsessed with death to rise up,
is the argument there. The problem for capitalism, glim argues, is that each affect of each era can be utilized as a form of resistance as well. The miserable created the French Revolution, the board created the countercultures of the sixties, the anxious started the fight for the future of the twenty thirties, and the morbid Lord Glimmer Dark said, are not afraid to kill Nazis because they're not at all afraid to die. They merely wish for their deaths. They
have some sense of purpose. Lord Glimmerdark doesn't think that everyone should become Dreadnoughts. Not everyone is going to want to dress like a medieval knight, armed with rifle and grenade, and ride a titanosaur into battle. They ride the titanosaurs like the big dinosaurs, is not specific dinosaurs a type of dinosaur. They ride them because they pack as many as five people onto each mount. No Dreadnought dies alone,
is another one of their slogans. Not everyone is going to want to join the army of the soon to die. Most people want to live. I know I want to live. I do like armor and swords, though I'm hoping a more hopeful batch of medievalists pops up soon. In the Strange Larp we call this war. When I pushed back against his points, Glimmer Dark's deep brown eyes gleamed. Indeed,
you could say they glimmered if I'm being honest. I told him my work has always been to work to accept death, but to use it to inspire a strong desire to live, to fight back against death and killing exactly exactly, he would scream excitedly from time to time, even though I was trying desperately to disagree with the man. It might all be very dialectic, but I've been at this for a very long time, and I don't really, at the end of it all, know what that means.
The Dreadnought seemed to have it figured out, though, or they've got something figured out. What I figured out, though, is that it's time for another ad break. This podcast is brought to you by our sister podcast on cool Zone Media, Under the Pants and Under the Ground, your guide to everything sex, geology and folklore in the twenty first century. Join us this spring for our fifth season as your hosts take you deep inside the Cobalt sex
caulton Zurich. This podcast is brought to you by our enemy podcast, who paid an awful lot of money to get me to do an ad read for them. Good People Love Leaders is the premier podcast that argues for a hierarchical structuring of the internationalist cause. I agreed to read the ad because I secretly think that their podcast proves my point, not theirs. Since each episode is yet another person who claims that they would be the best person to lead the internationalist cause, and most of those
people hate each other. They agreed to let me write this ad in the way that I want because they think that my podcast does the same thing for anarchist arguments as I think their podcast does for theirs. This podcast brought to you by the Toothbrushing Council. Just because there's a war on doesn't mean you shouldn't brush your teeth. Join the war on plaque. Go to the dentist more often.
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After my time talking with the Dino US, I decided to head over to the little out of the way forgotten drone fighter corner. Everyone likes to think the war on drones is over and done, but that ignores the endless work put in by those unsung heroes, the engineers under the big war, the Dino War. There's another war, the drone war, the secret War. It's still going on.
There's an arms race still happening. The other side builds new EMP shielding and gets some murder drone in past a vish new shield So engineers on our side rush to upgrade their EMPs, and then our side builds new shielding and gets murder drones past their shields, and so on and so on, forever without the drone fighters, the people fighting against the drones, we'd be back into the horrors of World War three instead of I suppose living
in the horrors of World War three point five. Still, I had a nice visit with the engineers of the California Cooperative, many of whom traveled all the way from Silicon Valley to show off some of the products they've been developing for the rank and file soldiers of the Dino War this year. The latest trend is single use wearables most likely to save the most lives. There's the
Crab with two bees. It's a belt mounted Vishnu shield that automatically activates when it detects any autonomous drone within its range, which is currently ten meters, but they're expecting to get it out to fifty meters by next summer. That difference matters, of course, With a ten meter shield you need just about one for every soldier. With a fifty meters shield, you could get away with one per squad.
I asked the spokesperson for California Cooperative why the product was called the Crab, and, with usual gen bean's attitude, they told me, yeah, well, I guess it sounds cool. Which look, I know, I'm old and groucy, but that's sort of what you'd expect to hear from someone from a generation that decided to call itself Jen Beans. That's the most get off my lawn thing I'll probably say all podcast I managed to always do at least one get off my lawn, you dang kids, every podcast I
try not to. I want you to know that, I want you to know how hard I try. Besides the Crab, the new hot item is the Goosey. It's spelled like goose but with two of every letter. I did not bother to ask why it's called the Goosey, nor why it's spelled that way. It's a wristwatch basically, and it even functions as one until it detects incoming drones, at which point it activates a two meters shield. Like the Crab,
it's single use. Also like the Crab, though, the Goosey saves data about the attack, and if you return to the California Cooperative, they'll extract the data to build better systems in the future and return it to you recharged and ready to save your life again. If you don't bother to return it. It's still an analog wristwatch after
it's used up its single charge. They gave me one, which is sweet because even though I'll never actually be on the front lines at my age, the thing is is that kind of everywhere is the front lines now, and it's even more useful than my new edible wristwatch that I will never eat. Maybe I'll give the edible one to someone from jen Beans. I'm skeptical about these single use personal shields. Drone fighters have struggled with the same problem for ten years now. Everyone thinks that drones
are over nothing to be worried about. Why log around a wristwatch or a belt mounted object you assume you'll never use. Soldiers are famous for ditching everything they see as dead weight. But still the drone fight goes on, and the unsung heroes keep building new machines. It was mid afternoon by that point, and the day was coming to a close for me. I was grateful for my John Hammond Kane, but one I'd prefer to pretend I
don't need, but I quite obviously do. I'd say the sun was setting if I'd been anywhere further south than fucking Helsinki. The sun had gone down hours prior.
At that point.
I went outside, passed the protests and got into a pedicab to take me back to my hotel where I wrote this, and now I'm recording it because the podcast minds never stop. And now I'll pass it over to my comrade, coworker and friend, Jamie loft as Per for
what she saw and did today. And before you write cool Zone Media complaining about the airhorn noises, please take note that Jamie formally changed her name to include the airhorn noises or the party popper emoji when written ten years ago now, and you can stop writing us to complain about it, take it up with her, or just you know, accept it.
Well, I don't know what the rest of you were doing inside the convention, because there was clearly plenty going on just outside the gates. And I don't mean the street vendors, though their food was better than the food court anyway, I mean the protest organized Dino d Denizen's interested in not oppressing dinosaurs. And if you think they didn't know, there's a little wink in a nudge going on every time someone hears the name Dino D, well, then you don't.
Know modern activists too well.
And look, the name is a little problematic considering the allegations of impropriety currently levied against Dino D's discredited director, David dorson Jen Bean's love of alliteration is just too cashy and I'm not sorry, But the thing is, David wasn't there. About forty protesters have been camped outside dinocon for the past two weeks, passing out leaflets and holding signs, and continuing the anemic chanting that has plagued certain social
movements since basically forever. I wanted to like the signs, but they weren't much better than the chanting.
Besides the ubiquitous.
Friends don't take friends to die in war. There was Dino War equals Dino's No More and Free the Dinos. And then there was one gal, maybe forty years old, with one of those beanies with a tail that went down to her knees, you know the kind I'm talking about, whose sign read I think dinosaurs are cute, and I don't like when they get shot, and so they shouldn't
be in war. I spent most of the morning talking with the activists, most of whom expressed a disinterest in being conflated with Dino D. Despite admitting Dino D called for the protest, kind of like how vegans didn't want to be associated with peta back when.
I was young and the world was new. The protesters outside Dinocon have a pretty diverse range of opinions, from the dinosaurs are our friend's angle to the new fangled nihilist philosophical critique that using dinosaurs as the modern mascot of war undermines our strategic efficacy. I couldn't tell you if that's true or not. A woman who only gave her name as Bethbert told me that, well, let's see, she wouldn't let me record her voice, but she did let me write a down word for word, so she
told me quote. The moral crux of the internationalist cause is that you cannot make a better or even more stable world by resorting to evil.
In the process.
You cannot resort to the evils of nationalism. You cannot resort to the evils resurrecting dead tissue or synthesizing human and animal. Then why should we bring animals back from extinction just to use them on the field of battle. These are living creatures with complex emotions and complex social structures, and we use them as living tanks. We use them as bullet sponges. It's not right unquote. There were only
two conflicts I saw the whole morning. First, a man, I kid you not, he was wearing a fedora, came over holding a re extinctionist sign that read let the dead Stay dead. Dinos are fuel not friends with that little re extinctionist logo at the bottom, the one with the upside down stegosaurus. He tried to join the crowd and was roundly kicked out. Then less than twenty minutes later, a unit of new Amazons came out of the convention, easily distinguishable by having only one breast each, some with
breast removed, some with breast added. Depending. There's a video you can watch if you'd like. But the whole thing just makes me sad. Two women at the front started shouting the names of their centrosauruses that had fallen in battle, whom they mourned, and whose contributions to the internationalist cause they thought were being erased by the protesters. And while I'm on the subject of the food court, was I
on the subject of the food court. If I were on the subject of the food court, I would tell you that the Helsinki Street fair is rockin' and by that I mean the Somali finish food. For anyone who didn't know, and how could you not. Somali immigrants make up the largest African group in Finland and have been embedded into finish culture for generations, and that means you can get Sam Bossa's pretty much everywhere, and that includes right outside of Dinocon. It could Happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.