CZM Book Club: Cool Zone 2054: Live From DinoCon 4 in Helsinki

Margaret and Jamie report back from DinoCon in the year 2054.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
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

(00:27):
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

(00:48):
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,

(01:11):
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

(01:31):
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

(01:53):
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

(02:16):
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,

(02:37):
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,

(02:57):
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

(03:18):
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

(03:40):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:47):
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

(05:07):
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

(05:29):
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

(05:50):
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

(06:13):
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

(06:34):
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

(06:58):
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

(07:21):
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

(07:42):
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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(08:05):
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(08:27):
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

(08:51):
the year twenty fifty four and podcasts are still brought
to you by gambling. Gambling regularly is a bad idea.
You rarely meet someone who gambles regularly and think to yourself,
this person has it together. Gambling problem, Call a gambling
help hotline. Tired of hearing ads for gambling on your
favorite podcasts, Join the World Revolution to replace capitalism with
an economic system that doesn't leave people so desperate for
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(09:12):
gambling and also doesn't leave creative professionals with no other
choice than to find ad partnerships with which to produce
their content. And we're back anyhow. After a nice young

(09:43):
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,

(10:05):
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

(10:29):
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

(10:50):
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,

(11:11):
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

(11:31):
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,

(11:53):
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

(12:17):
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,

(12:38):
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

(13:02):
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

(13:22):
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

(13:43):
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

(14:03):
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

(14:27):
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

(14:51):
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

(15:11):
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,

(15:33):
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,

(15:55):
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

(16:16):
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

(16:36):
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

(16:58):
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

(17:20):
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

(17:42):
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

(18:04):
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.

(18:26):
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

(18:48):
first century. Join us this spring for our fifth season
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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

(19:10):
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

(19:34):
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.
It's free now, and how else butdental records? Are they
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up your house. This podcast brought to you by Danny's
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(19:57):
the ones your grandparents used to complain about. Remember if
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This podcast brought to you by Mighty Mackno's Machete and Mortar.
If you need a blade or a bomb, look no
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(20:19):
Macnovia project in its aim of creating a non state,
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legal ties to Robert Evans for reasons that are obvious
to anyone to us. Read the news and we're back.

(20:58):
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,

(21:19):
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

(21:41):
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

(22:01):
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

(22:23):
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

(22:43):
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

(23:04):
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

(23:25):
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

(23:46):
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

(24:06):
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

(24:27):
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

(24:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
At that point.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
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

(25:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
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

(26:08):
on every time someone hears the name Dino D, well,
then you don't.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Know modern activists too well.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
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

(26:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Besides the ubiquitous.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
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

(27:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
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

(27:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
In the process.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
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,

(28:35):
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

(28:56):
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

(29:18):
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

(29:40):
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

(30:01):
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

(30:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Thanks for listening.