Ruins in Reverse: A Teaser

A massive new essay about Evergrande, Nomadland, and fail ghosts drops in two days!

In order to maintain some sort of ‘regular’ schedule, the decision was made to publish every new ‘a secret plot’ entry on Mondays at 11:11 in the morning. I hope this is going to bring some sort of order to this, thus far disorderly newsletter and make things more predictable for all you amazing subscribers. As time permits I will also publish occasional teasers to get you all juiced up for what is coming. This is a work in progress, so let me know if you like the changes I am making, if you prefer things the way they were or if you’d like to just pass on general words of praise! All will be appreciated.

Without further ado, here is what is coming soon to an inbox near you!

……‘Nomadland’ is about ghosts and the empty landscapes they occupy. While it is about the slow depopulation of the American hinterlands, it is an imagination of the existential emptiness at the heart of a slowly dying civilization and the specters replacing the living. These are ghosts 2.0, the newly undead who have not yet passed over to the other side. Kept barely alive by Amazon they are mirroring themselves into existence through their technological extremities. Most of them are still in some way ‘connected’ to the digital realm via phones and their jobs. Their former homes are not yet haunted, because they are themselves doing the haunting. They are ghosts because they have not yet realized it. To paraphrase Adorno, these ghosts must go on living because the chance they got at an afterlife was effectively missed…..