Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. It's the
Speaker 2: Cool Zone Media book Club, the book club where you
Speaker 2: don't have to do the reading because I do it
Speaker 2: for you. I'm Margaret Giljoy and this week and this
Speaker 2: month on cool Zone Media book Club, we have missives
Speaker 2: from the future. That's right, it's week two of Cool
Speaker 2: Zone twenty fifty four Reports from the dinoh War. And
Speaker 2: what if we have from the future, Well, let's find out.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Cool Zone twenty fifty four Reports from the
Speaker 2: dinoh War. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and alongside the
Speaker 2: rest of the Cool Zone team, we're covering everything World
Speaker 2: War three point five. Alongside some of the rest of
Speaker 2: the team, I spent the past week in Helsinki, Finland
Speaker 2: at Dino Con four and I'm excited to share with
Speaker 2: you all what I've learned. But first, this podcast wouldn't
Speaker 2: even be here if it weren't for our biggest sponsor,
Speaker 2: the one the Old Dino Cadence. What started as an
Speaker 2: avant garde dinosaur dance troupe soon became the world's premier
Speaker 2: network of combat academies. If you're serious about dino riding,
Speaker 2: you need to get serious about dino cadence. Admission is free,
Speaker 2: but spots are limited. So apply today to save the
Speaker 2: world tomorrow. When the wheels of the ancient seven thirty
Speaker 2: seven hit the runway at Helsinki, Vanta, I wasn't the
Speaker 2: only one to breathe out a sigh of relief. We'd
Speaker 2: made it, we landed, we were on the ground, which is,
Speaker 2: from my point of view, where we belong. You will
Speaker 2: not catch me riding a pterodactyl, and not just because
Speaker 2: I'm far too old for it. And look, I wasn't
Speaker 2: worried about the plane falling apart. Ever since the cooperativization
Speaker 2: of Boeing in twenty thirty seven, when workers took over
Speaker 2: the beleaguered company, it's gone from producing the world's least
Speaker 2: reliable airplanes back to producing some of the world's best. No,
Speaker 2: I was worried about getting shot out of the sky.
Speaker 2: I just flown in from free Poland, which meant flying
Speaker 2: over three different nationalists occupied Baltic states. Every journalist is
Speaker 2: a war journalist. In World War three point five, the plane,
Speaker 2: like any post war retrofit, was equipped for non electric
Speaker 2: flight in the case of EMP. But I've been in
Speaker 2: planes hit by EMPs twice in my life already, and
Speaker 2: it is never fun. Capable of not crashing is an
Speaker 2: entirely different thing from comfortable flight. Our seven thirty seven
Speaker 2: was also equipped with its own Vishnu shield in case
Speaker 2: of incoming surface to air missiles. But for the past year,
Speaker 2: of course, nationalist forces in Estonia have had the habit
Speaker 2: of firing dummy rockets at more or less everything flying
Speaker 2: anywhere near their airspace. The whole flight, I told myself
Speaker 2: I was getting too old for this shit, and I
Speaker 2: tried to distract myself with work like I always do.
Speaker 2: I caught up on about a week's worth of email,
Speaker 2: and I figured out my dino kon itinery. Then we
Speaker 2: landed and I stepped out into the unseasonably warm Helsinki
Speaker 2: December air Can you even say unseasonably anymore? Does that
Speaker 2: even mean anything anymore? Like It's like every morning God
Speaker 2: spins a big spinny wheel with numbers from negative thirty
Speaker 2: to about one hundred and thirty to determine how hot
Speaker 2: it's going to be. I guess that only works if
Speaker 2: you're one of us weird old poor people who can't
Speaker 2: internally shift to celsius negative thirty to plus fifty. I
Speaker 2: don't know, do your own Celsius math, you metric men.
Speaker 2: I stepped out into that pleasant air, and we took
Speaker 2: the train into town, and I looked out the window
Speaker 2: and I remembered I love Helsinki, and I love my job,
Speaker 2: and flying is just part of it, and danger is
Speaker 2: just part of it. And that's okay. It's funny how
Speaker 2: our conscious mind works to forget danger as soon as
Speaker 2: it passes. Funny how hard our unconscious mind works to
Speaker 2: hold on to the memory of fear. But unless you've
Speaker 2: got that sorrophobia, there's nothing to be afraid of at
Speaker 2: Dinocon besides having too much fun hanging out with dinosaurs
Speaker 2: and their riders. Well, I mean besides the microraptor incident
Speaker 2: at Dinocon too, but that won't happen again. Probably, when
Speaker 2: you first come in through the gates, after the security
Speaker 2: checkpoint that I'm legally required to not tell you about
Speaker 2: in detail, the first thing you see is Captain Emily
Speaker 2: Hanford Junior herself and of course her faithful Trigger, that
Speaker 2: is to say, the most decorated dinosaur and dinosaur rider respectively.
Speaker 2: Trigger was waving and smiling, hair pulled back into that
Speaker 2: don't fuck with the librarian bun that they single handedly
Speaker 2: brought back into style. Their uniform was gleaming with metals
Speaker 2: from the war and little one inch buttons from bands
Speaker 2: they listen to. Captain Emily Hanford Junior is, of course
Speaker 2: an ankliosaurus, and I've never been able to tell a
Speaker 2: reptile's mood by looking at its face, and I think
Speaker 2: people who claim they can are lying. But she seemed
Speaker 2: happy enough and occasionally nuzzled her massive head into Trigger's
Speaker 2: shoulder for scretches. I wasn't able to catch an interview
Speaker 2: with Trigger that morning, but if you listened to last
Speaker 2: April's episode why do we use medals at all? In
Speaker 2: an internationalist army? You can hear me and mi along
Speaker 2: talk to them at length. It's mostly just war stories
Speaker 2: that episode, but you know they're good stories. It's controversial
Speaker 2: for internationalist forces to have any sort of mascot soldiers
Speaker 2: at all, but whatever a claim Trigger gets, Trigger has earned.
Speaker 2: My first stop at DINOCN four was, of course the
Speaker 2: Swag Table flash, a little cool Zone media badge explain
Speaker 2: that don't worry, you're not Robert Evans, and no you
Speaker 2: haven't seen Robert Evans and know you will not be
Speaker 2: commenting on the news about Robert Evans, and you are
Speaker 2: set up with one of the coolest swag bags ever
Speaker 2: produced this year. It was a plush anchor Leosaurus backpack
Speaker 2: filled the overflowing with do dads in general promo, a
Speaker 2: little floaty pen with a pack of raptors chasing away
Speaker 2: a cartoonish Nazi. A mug that reads I survived the
Speaker 2: dinoh War so far, but death is inevitable and comes
Speaker 2: for kings and commoners alike. So really, my goal isn't
Speaker 2: to survive, but to live a full life and live
Speaker 2: free and or kill fascist for as long as I can.
Speaker 2: The type is pretty small on the mug, except that
Speaker 2: dinoh War is in big red letters. There was also
Speaker 2: an edible wristwatch made out of protein plastic. Look. I
Speaker 2: know most people say it's safe, but I am just
Speaker 2: too old to start eating plastic on purpose, plant based
Speaker 2: or not. A tiny SD card full of virtual training
Speaker 2: environments in the latest military games, as well as full
Speaker 2: scientific documentation on more or less everything on display at
Speaker 2: the con, and this year an honest to God paperback
Speaker 2: book called Heliotropum and the Egg that's going to come
Speaker 2: out early next year from Helm, that best selling anonymous,
Speaker 2: mononymous collective. I haven't had a chance to read it yet,
Speaker 2: but the back promises it's quote like nothing Helm has
Speaker 2: ever produced, and that it will quote shake the internationalist
Speaker 2: world to its core, and that it quote isn't just
Speaker 2: war propaganda, we promise, which is a funny disclaimer but
Speaker 2: necessary these days. Us at cool Zone Media, though we
Speaker 2: can't make that disclaimer. We are war propaganda. I mean,
Speaker 2: for Fock's sake, our founder is General Lichterman herself. All
Speaker 2: we can promise is that we're honest war propaganda, but
Speaker 2: frankly you shouldn't take our word for it. We may
Speaker 2: be war propaganda, but we aren't fully sponsored by any
Speaker 2: given war department. So we still have ads. Here are
Speaker 2: some of them. This podcast is brought to you by
Speaker 2: Nellie's Nasty Nutrients. Are you tired of flavorless nutritional paste?
Speaker 2: Are you ready to accept that nutritional paste will never
Speaker 2: taste good? Want to impress your friends? Then you need
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Speaker 2: Nasty Nutrients, like all nutritional pastes, should be seen as
Speaker 2: a supplement to a well rounded, diverse diet. Nellie's Nasty
Speaker 2: Nutrients is required to tell consumers that it has failed
Speaker 2: quality control tests run by the International Health Department of Lagos.
Speaker 2: Like our competitors, Nellie's Nasty Nutrients is not guaranteed to
Speaker 2: be free. You've always buy products Nellie's is Nasty. This
Speaker 2: podcast brought to you by the Gambling Consortium. Are you
Speaker 2: tired of gambling your life in a global civil war?
Speaker 2: Want to try gambling for something a little less serious?
Speaker 2: Try gambling for money? Thanks to the Gambling Consortium. It's
Speaker 2: the year twenty fifty four and podcasts are still brought
Speaker 2: to you by gambling. Gambling regularly is a bad idea.
Speaker 2: You rarely meet someone who gambles regularly and think to yourself,
Speaker 2: this person has it together. Gambling problem, Call a gambling
Speaker 2: help hotline. Tired of hearing ads for gambling on your
Speaker 2: favorite podcasts, Join the World Revolution to replace capitalism with
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Speaker 2: gambling and also doesn't leave creative professionals with no other
Speaker 2: choice than to find ad partnerships with which to produce
Speaker 2: their content. And we're back anyhow. After a nice young
Speaker 2: person with a retro slicked back haircut gave me my
Speaker 2: dino backpack, they gestured me towards the mobility aids available,
Speaker 2: but instead went and got myself a Jurassic Park style
Speaker 2: cane from a bin, complete with fau amber and faux mosquito,
Speaker 2: and started off towards the biggest monsters. I know we're
Speaker 2: not supposed to call them monsters, but dear listener, I
Speaker 2: have been a trans woman for a long time now,
Speaker 2: and I think like recognizes like dinos and trans people.
Speaker 2: We've got a lot in common. There's a whole fifty
Speaker 2: percent of the world population trying to de extinct us both,
Speaker 2: but we've got too many teeth and claws and allies
Speaker 2: and uh writers, depending on what you're into for that
Speaker 2: fifty percent to succeed. It's no secret that the various
Speaker 2: dino units compete with each other for a claim and
Speaker 2: recruits alike. Terodactyl jockeys think that they're the best because
Speaker 2: they are the hardest crew to get in with, and
Speaker 2: they sharpshoot moving objects, well people, while themselves flying through
Speaker 2: the air. The Ancliosaurus brigades are certain that they're the
Speaker 2: best because they've got a real proletarian vibe and interface
Speaker 2: smoothly with infantry. It's true that the Ankliosaurus brigades have
Speaker 2: liberated more towns from fascist than any other because they're
Speaker 2: the ones who roll in like tanks to capture. The
Speaker 2: rex riders have their whole cowboy vibe whether they're mounted
Speaker 2: or not, with ten galled hats over their polymer helmets.
Speaker 2: The mother Hens don't ride dinosaurs at all. Of course,
Speaker 2: they heard velociraptors the size of and attitude of overly
Speaker 2: aggressive roosters, and the mother hens have got style. John
Speaker 2: Waters would have loved the mother Hens, every one of them,
Speaker 2: copying the quote armed drag fashion of the first six
Speaker 2: folks who formed the first velociraptor unit. Then there are
Speaker 2: the Amazons and their ceratopsian mounts, who are some of
Speaker 2: the finest and most feared units in the war. I
Speaker 2: went past recruitment booth after recruitment booth and talked politely
Speaker 2: to the press liaisons of each of those units. You
Speaker 2: can hear those conversations themselves in the extended episodes, which
Speaker 2: are of course available to paid subscribers internationalists, soldiers and veterans,
Speaker 2: and anyone in the civilian volunteer Corps or your territory's
Speaker 2: equivalent thereof. But more than anything else, I was there
Speaker 2: to talk to the newest unit, one with a terrifying
Speaker 2: claim to fame. I was there to talk to the Dreadnoughts.
Speaker 2: Their booth was easy to find, plain black banners hung
Speaker 2: vertically like medieval flags. Each of the fighters please call
Speaker 2: them fighters, not soldiers, wore heavy medieval inspired armor with
Speaker 2: plain black surcoats over them. Every soldier of every unit
Speaker 2: proudly bears arms, of course, but the Dreadnought fighters they
Speaker 2: are dripping with weapons, pistols and grenades and rifles and
Speaker 2: the occasional saber or labris. Behind their booth was a Dreadnaughtus,
Speaker 2: one of the largest dinosaurs in history and one of
Speaker 2: the largest dinosaurs in Helsinki. Though they ride any sauropod,
Speaker 2: they use the Dreadnaughtis as their icon because its name
Speaker 2: means fears nothing. In the banner over their booth. It reads,
Speaker 2: joined the Dreadnoughts. We have the highest mortality rate of
Speaker 2: any unit in the Internationalist Army. Their spokesperson, a very
Speaker 2: short man with a bright pink afro and brighter pink
Speaker 2: full plate armor, wore a large pin with their slogan,
Speaker 2: live fast, kill racists, die young. That's right. Their claim
Speaker 2: to fame is that they die a lot. The average
Speaker 2: Dreadnought dies on their second engagement. Of the original thousand
Speaker 2: fighters when the unit was formed in February of this
Speaker 2: very year, only one hundred and twelve are still alive
Speaker 2: in fighting. Their unit, though now boasts more than ten
Speaker 2: thousand fighters. I swear to you World War three point
Speaker 2: five is a war unlike any other in history. I
Speaker 2: talked with their spokesperson, who introduced himself as Lord Glimmerdark,
Speaker 2: for quite some time. The crux of my questioning was
Speaker 2: quite simply, why why advertise based on a high mortality rate?
Speaker 2: Half of you listeners are probably wondering the same thing. Well,
Speaker 2: the other half of you, well, you probably know the
Speaker 2: answer in your hearts. Lord Glimmerdark, Glimm to his friends,
Speaker 2: answered honestly and at length, there's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: simple answers and also a long answer. The simple answers
Speaker 2: are things like, well, some people feel that the closer
Speaker 2: you push towards death, the more you can feel alive,
Speaker 2: or that some people just have a death wish, or
Speaker 2: that every fighter in the Dinah War lived through a
Speaker 2: war where a billion people died, and death is so
Speaker 2: inevitable and it's better for your mental health to embrace that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a mug for my swag bag
Speaker 2: that basically makes that argument. I've built my career on
Speaker 2: the idea of radical optimism strategic optimism. I can't encourage
Speaker 2: any of you to join the Dreadnaughts. But oddly, talking
Speaker 2: to Lord Glimmerdark, I realized these two positions are not
Speaker 2: a fundamentally at odds as you might think. The Dreadnoughts
Speaker 2: are not pushing despair. My position and their position are
Speaker 2: what the theory heads would call in a dialectic with
Speaker 2: each other. Radical optimism and fanatic nihilism, as the Dreadnought
Speaker 2: philosophy is called, can work hand in hand to build
Speaker 2: a better world. Glimmer Dark argues, fanatihilism is, of course
Speaker 2: the long answer to my question, Lord Glimmerdark told me
Speaker 2: about a text I hadn't read in a good thirty years,
Speaker 2: a text called We Are All Very Anxious. That piece
Speaker 2: argues that every era of capitalism has had a dominant
Speaker 2: affect that is utilized by capitalism to control its opposition.
Speaker 2: Before the first couple of world wars, that affect was misery,
Speaker 2: just keep everyone too miserable to rise up. After the wars,
Speaker 2: until around the turn of the century, it was boredom.
Speaker 2: The first century when that piece was written, it was anxiety.
Speaker 2: Everyone was too anxious to do something. Then after World
Speaker 2: War III, it was as thenotonihilism proposes morbid fascination. This
Speaker 2: is now the dominant affect of our times. They call
Speaker 2: it morbidity, though obviously that's a new way of using
Speaker 2: that word. Everyone was too obsessed with death to rise up,
Speaker 2: is the argument there. The problem for capitalism, glim argues,
Speaker 2: is that each affect of each era can be utilized
Speaker 2: as a form of resistance as well. The miserable created
Speaker 2: the French Revolution, the board created the countercultures of the sixties,
Speaker 2: the anxious started the fight for the future of the
Speaker 2: twenty thirties, and the morbid Lord Glimmer Dark said, are
Speaker 2: not afraid to kill Nazis because they're not at all
Speaker 2: afraid to die. They merely wish for their deaths. They
Speaker 2: have some sense of purpose. Lord Glimmerdark doesn't think that
Speaker 2: everyone should become Dreadnoughts. Not everyone is going to want
Speaker 2: to dress like a medieval knight, armed with rifle and grenade,
Speaker 2: and ride a titanosaur into battle. They ride the titanosaurs
Speaker 2: like the big dinosaurs, is not specific dinosaurs a type
Speaker 2: of dinosaur. They ride them because they pack as many
Speaker 2: as five people onto each mount. No Dreadnought dies alone,
Speaker 2: is another one of their slogans. Not everyone is going
Speaker 2: to want to join the army of the soon to die.
Speaker 2: Most people want to live. I know I want to live.
Speaker 2: I do like armor and swords, though I'm hoping a
Speaker 2: more hopeful batch of medievalists pops up soon. In the
Speaker 2: Strange Larp we call this war. When I pushed back
Speaker 2: against his points, Glimmer Dark's deep brown eyes gleamed. Indeed,
Speaker 2: you could say they glimmered if I'm being honest. I
Speaker 2: told him my work has always been to work to
Speaker 2: accept death, but to use it to inspire a strong
Speaker 2: desire to live, to fight back against death and killing
Speaker 2: exactly exactly, he would scream excitedly from time to time,
Speaker 2: even though I was trying desperately to disagree with the man.
Speaker 2: It might all be very dialectic, but I've been at
Speaker 2: this for a very long time, and I don't really,
Speaker 2: at the end of it all, know what that means.
Speaker 2: The Dreadnought seemed to have it figured out, though, or
Speaker 2: they've got something figured out. What I figured out, though,
Speaker 2: is that it's time for another ad break. This podcast
Speaker 2: is brought to you by our sister podcast on cool
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Speaker 2: caulton Zurich. This podcast is brought to you by our
Speaker 2: enemy podcast, who paid an awful lot of money to
Speaker 2: get me to do an ad read for them. Good
Speaker 2: People Love Leaders is the premier podcast that argues for
Speaker 2: a hierarchical structuring of the internationalist cause. I agreed to
Speaker 2: read the ad because I secretly think that their podcast
Speaker 2: proves my point, not theirs. Since each episode is yet
Speaker 2: another person who claims that they would be the best
Speaker 2: person to lead the internationalist cause, and most of those
Speaker 2: people hate each other. They agreed to let me write
Speaker 2: this ad in the way that I want because they
Speaker 2: think that my podcast does the same thing for anarchist
Speaker 2: arguments as I think their podcast does for theirs. This
Speaker 2: podcast brought to you by the Toothbrushing Council. Just because
Speaker 2: there's a war on doesn't mean you shouldn't brush your teeth.
Speaker 2: Join the war on plaque. Go to the dentist more often.
Speaker 2: It's free now, and how else butdental records? Are they
Speaker 2: going to recognize your body after a nationalist mourner blows
Speaker 2: up your house. This podcast brought to you by Danny's
Speaker 2: Delicious Din Din Diner, the slow food diner just like
Speaker 2: the ones your grandparents used to complain about. Remember if
Speaker 2: it doesn't have five DS, you're only playing four dhs.
Speaker 2: This podcast brought to you by Mighty Mackno's Machete and Mortar.
Speaker 2: If you need a blade or a bomb, look no
Speaker 2: further than Mighty Macknose chain of military armament stores. A
Speaker 2: portion of all proceeds goes directly towards funding the new
Speaker 2: Macnovia project in its aim of creating a non state,
Speaker 2: anti capitalist region in Ukraine. We are required to disclose
Speaker 2: that Makno's Machetian mortar was found by Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: podcast Robert Evans, though no longer has any economic or
Speaker 2: legal ties to Robert Evans for reasons that are obvious
Speaker 2: to anyone to us. Read the news and we're back.
Speaker 2: After my time talking with the Dino US, I decided
Speaker 2: to head over to the little out of the way
Speaker 2: forgotten drone fighter corner. Everyone likes to think the war
Speaker 2: on drones is over and done, but that ignores the
Speaker 2: endless work put in by those unsung heroes, the engineers
Speaker 2: under the big war, the Dino War. There's another war,
Speaker 2: the drone war, the secret War. It's still going on.
Speaker 2: There's an arms race still happening. The other side builds
Speaker 2: new EMP shielding and gets some murder drone in past
Speaker 2: a vish new shield So engineers on our side rush
Speaker 2: to upgrade their EMPs, and then our side builds new
Speaker 2: shielding and gets murder drones past their shields, and so
Speaker 2: on and so on, forever without the drone fighters, the
Speaker 2: people fighting against the drones, we'd be back into the
Speaker 2: horrors of World War three instead of I suppose living
Speaker 2: in the horrors of World War three point five. Still,
Speaker 2: I had a nice visit with the engineers of the
Speaker 2: California Cooperative, many of whom traveled all the way from
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley to show off some of the products they've
Speaker 2: been developing for the rank and file soldiers of the
Speaker 2: Dino War this year. The latest trend is single use
Speaker 2: wearables most likely to save the most lives. There's the
Speaker 2: Crab with two bees. It's a belt mounted Vishnu shield
Speaker 2: that automatically activates when it detects any autonomous drone within
Speaker 2: its range, which is currently ten meters, but they're expecting
Speaker 2: to get it out to fifty meters by next summer.
Speaker 2: That difference matters, of course, With a ten meter shield
Speaker 2: you need just about one for every soldier. With a
Speaker 2: fifty meters shield, you could get away with one per squad.
Speaker 2: I asked the spokesperson for California Cooperative why the product
Speaker 2: was called the Crab, and, with usual gen bean's attitude,
Speaker 2: they told me, yeah, well, I guess it sounds cool.
Speaker 2: Which look, I know, I'm old and groucy, but that's
Speaker 2: sort of what you'd expect to hear from someone from
Speaker 2: a generation that decided to call itself Jen Beans. That's
Speaker 2: the most get off my lawn thing I'll probably say
Speaker 2: all podcast I managed to always do at least one
Speaker 2: get off my lawn, you dang kids, every podcast I
Speaker 2: try not to. I want you to know that, I
Speaker 2: want you to know how hard I try. Besides the Crab,
Speaker 2: the new hot item is the Goosey. It's spelled like
Speaker 2: goose but with two of every letter. I did not
Speaker 2: bother to ask why it's called the Goosey, nor why
Speaker 2: it's spelled that way. It's a wristwatch basically, and it
Speaker 2: even functions as one until it detects incoming drones, at
Speaker 2: which point it activates a two meters shield. Like the Crab,
Speaker 2: it's single use. Also like the Crab, though, the Goosey
Speaker 2: saves data about the attack, and if you return to
Speaker 2: the California Cooperative, they'll extract the data to build better
Speaker 2: systems in the future and return it to you recharged
Speaker 2: and ready to save your life again. If you don't
Speaker 2: bother to return it. It's still an analog wristwatch after
Speaker 2: it's used up its single charge. They gave me one,
Speaker 2: which is sweet because even though I'll never actually be
Speaker 2: on the front lines at my age, the thing is
Speaker 2: is that kind of everywhere is the front lines now,
Speaker 2: and it's even more useful than my new edible wristwatch
Speaker 2: that I will never eat. Maybe I'll give the edible
Speaker 2: one to someone from jen Beans. I'm skeptical about these
Speaker 2: single use personal shields. Drone fighters have struggled with the
Speaker 2: same problem for ten years now. Everyone thinks that drones
Speaker 2: are over nothing to be worried about. Why log around
Speaker 2: a wristwatch or a belt mounted object you assume you'll
Speaker 2: never use. Soldiers are famous for ditching everything they see
Speaker 2: as dead weight. But still the drone fight goes on,
Speaker 2: and the unsung heroes keep building new machines. It was
Speaker 2: mid afternoon by that point, and the day was coming
Speaker 2: to a close for me. I was grateful for my
Speaker 2: John Hammond Kane, but one I'd prefer to pretend I
Speaker 2: don't need, but I quite obviously do. I'd say the
Speaker 2: sun was setting if I'd been anywhere further south than
Speaker 2: fucking Helsinki. The sun had gone down hours prior.
Speaker 3: At that point.
Speaker 2: I went outside, passed the protests and got into a
Speaker 2: pedicab to take me back to my hotel where I
Speaker 2: wrote this, and now I'm recording it because the podcast
Speaker 2: minds never stop. And now I'll pass it over to
Speaker 2: my comrade, coworker and friend, Jamie loft as Per for
Speaker 2: what she saw and did today. And before you write
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media complaining about the airhorn noises, please take
Speaker 2: note that Jamie formally changed her name to include the
Speaker 2: airhorn noises or the party popper emoji when written ten
Speaker 2: years ago now, and you can stop writing us to
Speaker 2: complain about it, take it up with her, or just
Speaker 2: you know, accept it.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what the rest of you were
Speaker 3: doing inside the convention, because there was clearly plenty going
Speaker 3: on just outside the gates. And I don't mean the
Speaker 3: street vendors, though their food was better than the food
Speaker 3: court anyway, I mean the protest organized Dino d Denizen's
Speaker 3: interested in not oppressing dinosaurs. And if you think they
Speaker 3: didn't know, there's a little wink in a nudge going
Speaker 3: on every time someone hears the name Dino D, well,
Speaker 3: then you don't.
Speaker 1: Know modern activists too well.
Speaker 3: And look, the name is a little problematic considering the
Speaker 3: allegations of impropriety currently levied against Dino D's discredited director,
Speaker 3: David dorson Jen Bean's love of alliteration is just too
Speaker 3: cashy and I'm not sorry, But the thing is, David
Speaker 3: wasn't there. About forty protesters have been camped outside dinocon
Speaker 3: for the past two weeks, passing out leaflets and holding signs,
Speaker 3: and continuing the anemic chanting that has plagued certain social
Speaker 3: movements since basically forever. I wanted to like the signs,
Speaker 3: but they weren't much better than the chanting.
Speaker 2: Besides the ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: Friends don't take friends to die in war. There was
Speaker 1: Dino War equals Dino's No More and Free the Dinos.
Speaker 1: And then there was one gal, maybe forty years old,
Speaker 1: with one of those beanies with a tail that went
Speaker 1: down to her knees, you know the kind I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: whose sign read I think dinosaurs are cute, and I
Speaker 1: don't like when they get shot, and so they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in war. I spent most of the morning talking
Speaker 1: with the activists, most of whom expressed a disinterest in
Speaker 1: being conflated with Dino D. Despite admitting Dino D called
Speaker 1: for the protest, kind of like how vegans didn't want
Speaker 1: to be associated with peta back when.
Speaker 3: I was young and the world was new. The protesters
Speaker 3: outside Dinocon have a pretty diverse range of opinions, from
Speaker 3: the dinosaurs are our friend's angle to the new fangled
Speaker 3: nihilist philosophical critique that using dinosaurs as the modern mascot
Speaker 3: of war undermines our strategic efficacy. I couldn't tell you
Speaker 3: if that's true or not. A woman who only gave
Speaker 3: her name as Bethbert told me that, well, let's see,
Speaker 3: she wouldn't let me record her voice, but she did
Speaker 3: let me write a down word for word, so she
Speaker 3: told me quote. The moral crux of the internationalist cause
Speaker 3: is that you cannot make a better or even more
Speaker 3: stable world by resorting to evil.
Speaker 1: In the process.
Speaker 3: You cannot resort to the evils of nationalism. You cannot
Speaker 3: resort to the evils resurrecting dead tissue or synthesizing human
Speaker 3: and animal. Then why should we bring animals back from
Speaker 3: extinction just to use them on the field of battle.
Speaker 3: These are living creatures with complex emotions and complex social structures,
Speaker 3: and we use them as living tanks. We use them
Speaker 3: as bullet sponges. It's not right unquote. There were only
Speaker 3: two conflicts I saw the whole morning. First, a man,
Speaker 3: I kid you not, he was wearing a fedora, came
Speaker 3: over holding a re extinctionist sign that read let the
Speaker 3: dead Stay dead. Dinos are fuel not friends with that
Speaker 3: little re extinctionist logo at the bottom, the one with
Speaker 3: the upside down stegosaurus. He tried to join the crowd
Speaker 3: and was roundly kicked out. Then less than twenty minutes later,
Speaker 3: a unit of new Amazons came out of the convention,
Speaker 3: easily distinguishable by having only one breast each, some with
Speaker 3: breast removed, some with breast added. Depending. There's a video
Speaker 3: you can watch if you'd like. But the whole thing
Speaker 3: just makes me sad. Two women at the front started
Speaker 3: shouting the names of their centrosauruses that had fallen in battle,
Speaker 3: whom they mourned, and whose contributions to the internationalist cause
Speaker 3: they thought were being erased by the protesters. And while
Speaker 3: I'm on the subject of the food court, was I
Speaker 3: on the subject of the food court. If I were
Speaker 3: on the subject of the food court, I would tell
Speaker 3: you that the Helsinki Street fair is rockin' and by
Speaker 3: that I mean the Somali finish food. For anyone who
Speaker 3: didn't know, and how could you not. Somali immigrants make
Speaker 3: up the largest African group in Finland and have been
Speaker 3: embedded into finish culture for generations, and that means you
Speaker 3: can get Sam Bossa's pretty much everywhere, and that includes
Speaker 3: right outside of Dinocon. It could Happen here as a
Speaker 3: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 3: Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check
Speaker 3: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 3: you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It
Speaker 3: could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.