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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta, where I continue to be sick as a dog and not sleeping at all. I haven’t had a cold/man-flu/plague/batfucker-virus this bad in years.

Remember when in 2020 Tom Hanks got Covid and the whole world was like OH NO PROTECT TOM HANKS AT ALL COSTS? If Covid happened today, then the day after that story there would have been a hundred AI news bots pumping out TOM HANKS IS COVID PATIENT ZERO: SECRET BAT-FUCKING VACATIONS IN WUHAN REVEALED

Because you know what else is unclean this week? The internet. I am assailed by articles about people getting off the internet. Some of them are by people who are literally writing on the internet about getting off the internet and posting shots of apps they’re using to log exactly how Off The Internet they are.

This comes around every few years. Last time it was “digital detox.” Funny how all the digital detoxers found time to write online about it. I remember a friend calling out one of the more prominent digital detox voices as “overly yoga’d.”

Someone decided late last year that time is the new luxury, so people are now performing Time In The Real World. “Unplugging is luxury’s most valuable currency.” Ever notice how the people who say “touch grass” the most are people who very obviously do not actually touch any grass? 

Right now, it seems to be all about the Brick, a small plastic square that uses a linked app to kill a bunch of your other apps.  How Brick Became a Status Symbol for the Aspirationally Offline.

A lot of it is performative and intended to signal status either real or desired. But I suspect a bunch of it is also about the internet having become television and almost everyone on it presenting as being fucking mad now. I opened X last year because I wanted to check a local news account and was faced with sports, ads and posts from a great many people I do not know or follow, including two AI “news” accounts and some poor bastard proclaiming his “semen retention journey.” I gave up on Instagram when I opened it and was served not a single post by anyone I was following. 

Imagine if, 25+ years ago, I’d written something about people broadcasting their semen retention journeys to the entire world as ad-supported entertainment. Imagine the eye rolling and the letters explaining how I had clearly developed an extremely banal version of early onset dementia. JG Ballard always used to say the future will be banal. 

Anyway. In 2026, just go offline if you want to. You don’t need to tell anyone. If “going offline” even means anything anymore. Given that watching a film, listening to music or reading a book can all count as being online now. I think the better point is that the doomscroll and the infinite portal of things like TikTok and Reels can just eat hours without you even noticing. And you should notice. 

• I love this shit: a guy called Dee is making one-page zines you can download, print out and fold for yourself. I’ve featured projects like this a few times on the newsletter, and this one looks really fun.

• Keith Giles writes in to let me know about “a brand new SF imprint coming in August of 2026 called PINK BEAM PRESS. PINK BEAM PRESS will launch as part of the PKD FESTIVAL in August at Cal State Fullerton, August 20-23, 2026.”

• Comrade of the newsletter Kek-W has a new chapbook out: “Meet the Shrivelwoods - Vermont's strangest, most eccentric denizens! A once-powerful dynasty that grew wealthy and decadent through their control of the state maple syrup monopoly. Now their freakish inbred descendants have retreated to Shrivelwood House, a crumbling Gothic mansion where chaos and bedlam hold court. Contains two darkly humorous yarns for fans of Gothic Romance, The Addams Family, Dark Shadows, Gormenghast and Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End.” Anyone who invokes Viv Stanshall and Rawlinson’s end gets my vote.

• I should probably do a whole bit about Stanshall at some point, one of the great English eccentric artists. He grew up out here on the Thames Delta.

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This week I've got a wild factoid from my recent research for the Christmas story I recently wrote for my series. In the story, my main character goes to Turkmenistan, to visit the eldest of the vampires, who has an ancient stronghold there.

During research into what getting around Turkmenistan is like, I discovered that only white cars are allowed on the streets of Ashgabat. Non-white vehicles are forbidden. Apparently non-white cars are forcibly repainted white — and you must keep your white car spotlessly clean as well!

This law has been in place since 2018, driven (no pun intended) by former President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow’s somewhat immoderate preference for the color white.

I would make jokes about how this is where one can really have fun as a dictator, and how I’d personally love to impose my aesthetic sensibilities upon the world...but with the current resident of the White House compelling his fool’s gold Midas touch wherever he goes, I just don't have those jokes in me right now…

But I really do appreciate dictatorial whims that are purely on the aesthetic level, and do not tear democracy into shreds or cause massive suffering on a national and global level, and I hope you also enjoy this week’s bizarrerie. (And for those of you who demand more, here’s some more weird shit about Turkmenistan.

Raven Belasco is the author of the BLOOD & ANCIENT SCROLLS series of novels and the novelette THAT LESBIAN VAMPIRE PIRATE STORY. Her website is at ravenbelas.co and her regular newsletter is at https://ancientscrolls.beehiiv.com/ .

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

SETTLE THIS FOR ME:

This one is a matter of personal curiosity, brought on by reading somewhere that Olivia Nuzzi wrote an entire book on her phone.

Do you use paper notebooks, or use your phone or some other device as your notebook?

Last week’s poll was - TENET: yes or no?

TENET: yes or no?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes, good film (499)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No, bad film (129)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ WTF even was that film (139)
767 Votes

via @beehiiv polls

Someone sent me a note regarding this that mirrors my own take on TENET: it’s Christopher Nolan’s James Bond film. It is so obvious to me. The film even ends with the villain’s base exploding.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder. This week I have been too sick to keep up but I usually do one big daily post these days - click through on any of those and you’ll see an option at the bottom to have those emailed to you if you like.

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv and is sponsored by:

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I’m off to eat another bucket of painkillers. See you next week, probably. Be safe.

W