THE CASS REPORT II

Issue #2 - 15th May 2025

TYPICAL HOLLYWOOD

The Cass Report 2?!? A sequel? What, no one could come up with any original ideas? How much do these writer's rooms get paid? If we HAVE to have sequels, it should at least be for things people care about, like Red One or the Logan Paul suicide forest video.

Yes, The Cass Report is BACK - early! I knew I'd more than likely want to post one more often than quaterly here and there, but I didn't see it coming so soon. Fuck it, why not, right? I've got loads of shit to ramble about, and now you've gone and validated it, so your inboxes are going to be totally spammed with my bullshit for years to come.
There's also been a major budget increase (more on that later) so whilst things may still look fuck ugly, they should function better. A priority for this issue is to have things function on mobile, too. Towards that end, I've made two changes: things change size and get skinnier for a phone screen; and you can now tap on yellow text to see extra stuff rather than having to hover over it, which didn't work on phones. Just as a reminder: yellow text opens extra Cass Report, and orange, underlined text is some horrid little link to send you down the internet rabbit hole of my choosing.

TESTIMONIALS

you got it, random citizen

People actually responded to the last one of these, and I didn't write anything back, ha ha ha (but also oops, sorry). So I must now respond HERE, which is actually a genius humble-brag technique so you can see all the praise people have pelted me with for TCR #1. I learned this trick from this totally cool dude who also taught me about this thing called "negging" and how all women are actually agents of the devil dispersed like poison spores from hell. Hang on, I just remembered I post this on the internet where anyone can see it one sec

okay cool so that's me covered. for the record i actually love women and it's men who are probably from hell or whatever.

nice humble brag about how you went on a cool boat and i DIDN'T

the woke agenda of cass report #1 to make everyone get their five a day is WINNING. unforch i do not have a costco membership and just snuck in with a mate who did. my true thoughts on the general public must remain undisclosed.

i knew i was a photographic genius all along i'm so goated. is "The Shan Gazette" an official real title of an actual upcoming newsletter?? who knows maybe you will find out in next week's sponsored section. i mean wait what do you mean sponsored section SPOILERS for the next bit oops

absolutely criminal that you didn't cross streams

As you can see, issue #1 of The Cass Report was actually a smash hit, and one of the biggest box office successes in living memory. With a budget of fat zero, it amassed a whopping two billion dollars, and was seen by an estimated five hundred million people, and most of them bought another ticket on the way out just to say thank you. Wow.

Looking Up

Readers of The Cass Report, being of the discerning variety, will recognise a question like "who cares about algae?" for what it is: HORSESHIT! Who doesn't care about algae? Why would you not want to care about algae? Tiny plants that live in water; this combines three of the all time best things: plants, water, and being tiny.
If, however, I were to alter the parameters of the question a little, I might get a more mixed response. Take, for example, "Who cares about algae 124 light years away?"
Now you're thinking, Hm. Well I do really care about algae. But even if that algae was, say, a mile away, I might care about it just a little less than any algae right in front of me. This algae, though, this hypothetical algae you're asking me to care about, well now it's seven hundred trillion miles away. That's a considerable distance.
Chemicals produced by this hypothetical algae might be what scientists have spotted on planet K2-18b, a potentially ocean-bearing world orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. On Earth, dimethyl sulphide is only produced in nature by phytoplankton, and they've spotted an awful lot of it in the atmosphere of K2-18b.
I am obsessed by this might-be planet. It's strange enough thinking about the other side of the world basking in daylight whilst we sleep, a workplace a dozen timezones ahead opening up as yours closes down. Hell, even if there's nothing else alive out there, there are endless planets with their own geologies, dancing sand-dunes, horseshoe bends in rivers, sun-beaten layers of sediment hardening into rock faces. There's something so striking about the idea of this planet being another green world. Ceaseless waves under heady triple gravity, struggling to pick up out of the sea, and only ever sinking back into eachother with no land to heave up onto. A whole world teeming with stagnant life, sweltering in the heat of its close-by sun, the carbonated out-breaths from leagues-deep tangles of alien plants fizzing like lemonade through million year chains of unconscious evolution. Look to the murky horizon, through the near-boiling heat-haze, the steam coming off the sluggish water, and choose a direction. Any one, and it'll be the same for further than you could travel straight on Earth without treading into your own footprints. An endless living ocean, fossiling itself into submerged continents of sedimentary rock, waiting to wake up.
There might be a primordial paradise of unthinking plants just a century-and-a-quarter's light-travel away, or there might not. But I hope there is, because I care a lot about algae.

Edinburgh

Public transport infrastructure not quite able to take me to K2-18b yet, I settled for Scotland. My good pal/best mate/former flatmate/future husband(???) Edward Buckton moved there after basically divorcing me when we left Bath. For the one or two people reading this who don't know Ed, we lived together for like five years and only had ONE fight ONE time about Sticky Toffee Pudding. A true legend. He's also nothing like Sheldon Cooper but he'll be tortured forever by that image because he has the same laptop, trousers, and proportions. Bazinga.

So to Edinburgh I went. What a cool place! We saw loads of shit. Cool pub with dog. Museum with stuff. Big park with bigger hill. See below.

immediately sold on this city because we met Iroh in the second pub we went in

day two we popped briefly into the very cool national museum which had rockets and fish which is more than you could reasonably expect, isn't it?

every day, I was taunted by Arthur's Seat, the peak of Holyrood Park. Where other cities have flat, scultped parks like London's Hyde or New York's Central, Edinburgh has Holyrood with the remains of a volcano jutting out of it. Exploring it was my #2 priority, after getting a pint.

the view from the top is fantastic, but I don't have any photos of it because the best view in Edinburgh is the park itself.

however, Ed remembered that since we were in the park there was definitely stunning beauty worth photographing.

we climbed up a shallow path, ignoring a scary-steep-looking one marked as CLOSED by an angry red sign, and clambered our way to the very top. of course, me being a perennial (yes, i had to google to double check the meaning of that one) stoner, i did smoke a fat fucking j (read: had two puffs on a squat skinny thing) at the top. then we went down a path that we weren't sure about and ended up bouldering down this bullshit. at the bottom it was the one marked "CLOSED". it was epic, would climb down (but not up) again. sober, though. oops.

Food £200
Data £150
Rent £800
Vinyl £943,846.05
Utility £150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

Met a lot of Ed's cool uni mates, had lots of great food and drink, saw cool shit. Went paddling in the North Sea. Watched Sinners for a third time and Poltergeist for a second so I could bully Ed into calling them the best films ever made. Anyway if you haven't met Ed yet, just know it is my life goal to introduce him to everyone I know. You will meet him. That day approaches as a part of your destiny.

Writing

Did you know that's what I'm supposed to be doing? I definitely forgot for a bit. Well I HAVE been working on a thing, which I can't tell you about, because if I talk to much about it I'll end up not finishing it. The most I can say is that it's a sort-of satire about generative AI and the risks of overusing it, set in a world where no new art has been produced for twenty years. If you're thinking that sounds boring and cringe, yeah sure whatever, but you don't know about all the secret tricks i have up my sleeve to make it actually COOL. I'm currently at 18,000 words and it'll probably end up around 60k so maybe you'll be able to read it come newsletter 3 or 4. Oh why not, if you want a little sneak peek, click here.

and also Reading

Thinking is like a compost heap, and in order to get anything out, you need to put things in. I learn and relearn this the hard way whenever I stop reading and suddenly find myself unable to write. This year I've tried to read more than just youtube comments, so here are some books:

DRACULA - Bram Stoker

Who knew the classics were good?!? It took me months to read this for no reason I could discern. Good book!

THE SPARROW - Mary Doria Russel

Picked up at random from Cardiff's fantastic second hand bookshop Troutmark.A group of very endearing characters just so happen to be the first people to detect alien life, and just so happen to be selected by the Catholic church to crew a secret mission to visit them. Is it God's plan? Is it all just a coincidence? Awesome stuff, planning to read the sequel shortly.

THE LATHE OF HEAVEN - Ursula K Le Guin

A man dreams and those dreams effect reality in unpredictable scale. Masterful worldbuilding around a protagonist who wishes he wasn't. The way the world changes in gut-punch single sentences! The sole influence behind what I'm currently writing. Only 150 pages, must read!!!

EDEN - Tim Lebbon

I picked this up in Bristol's Last Bookshop, remembering that my Aunt had recommended it. It was a bit... nothing. Some adventurers explore an ecological paradise and it goes all Annihilation on them. Nothing new to say and it bounced off me. Luckily my memory is awful and it wasn't the book my Aunt recommended.

DARK EDEN - Chris Beckett

This was the book my Aunt had recommended. I hope you can see why I was confused. This one's great. Stranded on a rogue planet with no star, a colony of humans inbred from their very own adam and eve try to do more than just survive. Fantastically written and incredibly compelling.

THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers

Now reading. Borrowed from Raphi and Diana, thank youuu! Really good so far, still in the character-anthology introduction bit. Really well written, and the pages speed by. Can't believe the author is called Dick Powers.

Skeleton of the Month

Oh shit oh fuck oh shit, I say as I realise that I've come to regret the skeleton section a month early. Luckily Zach, previously featured in the testimonials section, has SAVED MY LIFE (and therefore saved ME from becoming, ironically, a skeleton) by just randomly chucking some bones at me.

So thank you very much for this CLUTCH skeleton-inclusive artwork Zach. Insert prayer emoji here. I have a feeling I've seen this, or one similar in a museum, because I definitely remember seeing a painting which had a skull you could only see by looking at it from the right angle.

And funilly enough, whilst I was in Edinburgh I popped into their fantastic (if a little overpriced) all-music Oxfam , and picked up a £943,846.05 copy of Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat, which uses the same technique on its cover.

And then a few days after bringing that home my sister sent me this.

and finally...

Album of the Month

THAT'S RIGHT! It's Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. I've been really digging this one all month. If that isn't enough for you, I suppose you can check out Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians . I heard the opening section, "Pulses", as the soundtrack for an experimental short film by Bart Vegter, at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam. Steve Reich is one of the major pioneers of *checks notes* minimalism, which seems like a very interesting area of music, even if I only like it because it sounds cool and not because I understand any of the reasons why it actually is cool. I'd also recommend his Drumming , too, where you can really here the phasing technique that makes his music tick.

with a final thanks to our sponsors...