a-mole-of-iron - Tumblr blog

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Some thoughts on Detective Grimoire

Another post about gaming! And this one is pretty interesting: recently, I finished playing the third game in the Detective Grimoire series, Tangle Tower. Immediately after that, I got the second one (the one subtitled Secret of the Swamp; the first game in the series is an odd duck, seeing as it's an old Flash-based point-and-click, and I haven't seen it). Tangle Tower in particular looks like this:

However, the reason I'm making this post is the same reason I only completed Tangle Tower now despite getting started in 2020. Nothing prepares you for the sheer creepy factor this game, and really the whole Detective Grimoire has. And it's not the jumpscare-everywhere kind of creepy, or the chilling kind, but the playful and surreal kind; in the here and now, nearly every scene had me yelling at the characters to "just get out of there and call the Federal Bureau of Control!" There is a lot of humor in almost every scene, and a lot of interesting and sympathetic characters (as well as some blatantly unsympathetic ones who act as red herrings), but also a cartoony, imaginative sense of foreboding par excellence. And said foreboding aspects have to do with the games' strong myth arc, the worldbuilding around unusual locations, and similar "secondary" aspects that almost make you forget there's a murder to solve in every game.

And about that, by the way: all the games are fair-play mysteries (even if I am only as good as the evidence I get to work with), and the detective mechanics function rather well. There are actual deductions to make, and you have to closely examine the games' locations to find out every piece of the puzzle. So, it's all pretty good!

[a-mole-of-iron]

TUMBLR WANTS TO SELL YOUR DATA TO AN AI COMPANY

QUICK GUIDE HOW TO OPT OUT

(for the app)

1. Go to your page

2. Go to settings

3. Go to Visibility

4. Click on 'Prevent third party sharing'. It has to be blue.

Et voilà!

Share, so we can collectively tell tumblr we do not want them to collaborate with AI companies.

[a-mole-of-iron]

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Reposting this story just for the headline. It just about sums up the flaws of environmental reporting in the news. It's also true.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Recently, my best friend and I were playing a demo version of a new survival-and-crafting game, Abiotic Factor. And guess what? It's an amazing premise that's done brilliantly. Instead of a Viking warrior or an astronaut or whatnot stranded in the wilderness, you play as a scientist whose top-secret paranormal research facility (think "Half-Life 1 Black Mesa", or "SCP Foundation but funny", or "Federal Bureau of Control but incompetent") has suffered a catastrophic containment breach. The staff is dispersed, aliens are on the loose, automated systems are malfunctioning or functioning all too well, and help isn't coming. So what do you do? You put your science brain to work, raid offices and service facilities for crafting materials, and improvise all kinds of amazing(ly slapdash) items and devices, with the intention of ultimately escaping the hazardous situation you found yourself in. And of course, you can play it with friends, as it often is with survival-and-crafting games.

The demo, by the way, is not time-limited and has some really impressive early-game shenanigans. And I can recommend it; the game really nails the feeling of "you're a scientist trying to survive Half-Life 1", while bringing a bunch of its own ideas to the table.

[a-mole-of-iron]

A reminder that you can read my urban fantasy short stories - the few that there are so far - at this link:

The Many Tales of Duchowiesen

I would be really glad if people did read these stories. Even if I have to write and upload more to really get them going.

[a-mole-of-iron]

On Vault Hunters (Borderlands series)

Let's start from the outset with a controversial take: the only Borderlands game after 1 and its DLCs that was any good for me was Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - which was very similar in humor to the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC. The rest... well, I could make a ten-page rant about where they went wrong. But I won't, because this is not the point here.

And now that I have your attention, here is the actual point. Among many flaws of Borderlands 2 and onwards - the way I see them - was the tone shift around the Vault Hunters. The games started glamorizing them because they're the protagonists, but that was never a good idea - because the average Vault Hunter isn't a superhero, they are a classic example of a putz. In the first game, they weren't really saving the world, battling tyrants, or "punching out Cthulhu" as their main objective; the whole thing was a space Western, and the Vault Hunters were archetypal fictional drifters. Their standard operating procedure was to walk into town, ask if there are any bandits harassing the townspeople, dangerous wildlife giving them trouble, or items they need retrieved, and then shoot bad guys and deliver stuff for small monetary payments, while also collecting all the money, ammo, and weapons they can find in the hostile lands around the town. They did have their own agenda, sure - but that agenda was to follow up on a legend many thought wasn't real, with people around them thinking they're on a wild goose chase that'll get them killed. In short, glamorizing the Vault Hunters was a dumb idea because their profession - such as it is - is inherently unglamorous.

The character archetypes in the games speak to this. In BL1, the only character with any type of significance was Lilith, who had poorly-understood and very rare superpowers. The other three were just guys with guns; Roland a multi-talented defector from the evil Crimson Lance military, Mordecai an exceptionally good sharpshooter, and Brick a dude who just punched stuff until it keeled over. It wouldn't be too off-base to say they were just garbage collectors with a lot of firepower. By contrast, the player characters of BL3 are a super-enigmatic robot, a spec ops soldier with a mech in her back pocket, a planetwide martial arts superstar, and the single best hitman in the galaxy. No need to add anything to that, really; the facts are plain to see.

[a-mole-of-iron]

For a couple of days, I was thinking of how to introduce a blog, Sustainability by Numbers, run by one of the contributors to Our World in Data. It's a good collection of articles about the transition to green economy - how it will stop climate change if done right, how it will improve other aspects of life like getting rid of air pollution, and how it's not just achievable, but actually cheaper than digging for oil and coal.

And, all of a sudden, the author herself has written an article for it that is a perfect summation of what she does for that blog and why it's important. Just as much, it's also a great example of a broader idea I keep thinking of and talking about: that hope and recognition of progress is one of the most important things in the world.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Cobalt Core fanart

So here's a small fanart I made of Cobalt Core; a time-loop deckbuilding roguelike that's been getting good reviews lately. I actually made this before launch, since I bought the devs' previous game, Sunshine Heavy Industries. (Sunshine Heavy Industries is genuinely amazing too, by the way.) Specifically, it's the two characters who debuted in Sunshine - Selene and Garbage Girl - doing the bit from a trailer for a certain other time-loop roguelike by Arkane Studios :P

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The Many Tales of Duchowiesen

Hello everyone who might read this! After many difficulties, I finally did everything needed to put my Duchowiesen stories on Tapas for easier, more convenient reading. I'm going to see where it gets me; in addition to reposts, there will also be new stories, both already completed and those I am yet to write.

Link to the series: https://tapas.io/series/The-Many-Tales-of-Duchowiesen

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Unexpected by almost all, here is good climate news from this week! According to calculations by the International Energy Agency, global CO2 emissions may stop rising and even begin falling as soon as this year - yes, this year, 2023. All trends point towards accelerated uptake of renewable electricity, electric vehicles, and while unmentioned in the article, there are technologies like zero-carbon steel and negative-carbon concrete waiting in the wings. And while the path to no more than 1,5C warming remains narrow, there is no runaway warming prospect at 1,5C above preindustrial; in fact, runaway warming without external events is likely impossible, because a warming Earth radiates more heat than it traps (another IPCC finding). In that light, limiting warming to 1,7C (the would-be result of current pledges by all countries) would be almost as effective, and a very good thing. Besides - who's to say that uptake of renewables won't accelerate even more, like they've already beaten every growth prediction in the last few years? So - definitely good news.

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A wonderful art I commissioned! Importantly, eldritch-araneae has an established style in addition to art skill and talent - so this is their unique interpretation of my OC and his traits. And it turned out really well! Ara's ability to interpret character designs is up there with the greats, and not to be messed with :D

Sketch commission for @a-mole-of-iron who asked for his OC Kellian in national outfit for his species (yep, gas mask and coat and pentagons!) and showing the Kurbick Stare. He just a bit dark, not evil~

If you desire something like this, my commissions are open!

[a-mole-of-iron]

After yet another unscheduled break, here is a new Duchowiesen short story; this one is about one of the country's many, many railway hotels, and what it takes to renovate one when it's on the list of valuable historic buildings.

Story genre: comfy urban fantasy

Renovating the Hotel

Wolfgang was rapidly strolling down the corridor of The Everyman's Excelsior (formerly The Kaiser's First Choice), a three-gemstone railway hotel temporarily closed for renovations. His rumpled suit and tie, his "mad scientist" haircut, and his gaunt yet lively features were a match to the place - chaotic, confusing, and yet businesslike. He was flanked by his two associates dressed in the same manner, Liv and Bakhtiyar, the two listening and Liv writing down important points on a clipboard, with Wolfgang and Bakhtiyar gesticulating wildly as they discussed the improvements to be done. They passed bags of cement, buckets of paint, stepladders, and boxes full of tools, then went upstairs to check the next floor of ten in total. As they emerged from the stairwell into another corridor that wasn't yet filled with tools and supplies, Bakhtiyar turned to Wolfgang and asked:

"So let me get this straight. This place has been standing since the 10180s, and we're going to get reprimanded if we throw out even one historically important part of it?"

"Yes!" Wolfgang responded. "That's some work for us, eh? This place was only renovated once, after the War was stopped and the people took over, and that was decades ago!..."

"Well, let's get it up to the standards of '268 then!" Bakhtiyar said as the three entered a two-bed hotel room to inspect it. "Liv, are you still writing this down?"

"Yes, I am!" Liv responded, waving her clipboard at the two. "I can already see a bunch of stuff we're going to have to change for better accessibility! We might want to start with wheelchair access, and we're also going to need tactile plaques for anyone who's visually impaired... I'mma just note down the important parts of the room real quick!"

"Great, great..." Wolfgang told her. He looked over the room again, evaluating its decor. It was definitely fraying by this point, despite cosmetic repairs done every so often. The thick drapes and baroque wallpaper would need replacements that'd be at least 85% identical, as the character of the hotel had to be preserved, but what really needed a do-over was electric and telephone wiring. Perhaps a different design for the chandelier was in order - the current ones were a "temporary" batch that was installed seven years ago and not changed since, with their overly gaudy character clashing with the hotel's restrained opulence. For a moment, Wolfgang thought to himself it was strange to see the Overcast Era produce something so tasteful... but then, this is why the hotel ended up on a register of historic buildings in the first place.

"Hey Wolfgang?" Bakhtiyar asked, roping Wolfgang's attention back to the matters at hand.

"Yes?" Wolfgang responded.

"I just remembered I forgot to tell you," Bakhtiyar said. "The solar power company called while you were away around 13 AM. They wanted to know the specifics; are we going to use solar heating, photovoltaics, or both?"

"That depends," Wolfgang said. "Photovoltaics are still more expensive than I'd like... is their asking price below average?"

"I think they're willing to give us a discount if we install both," Bakhtiyar told Wolfgang. "And then there are subsidies to consider..."

"Hmmmf," Wolfgang grumbled. "We definitely need to discuss this with the hotel administration. But I haven't even done the numbers... Liv?"

"Yes, we may be able to break even if we apply for subsidies!" Liv said. "And my understanding of PV economics is that they might be the cheapest form of energy in... about 10 to 15 years! We've got to keep 'em in mind, that much is certain. Solar power isn't gonna disappear into the ether and leave us hanging."

"Yes, yes, good..." Wolfgang said as the three left the hotel room, went back out into the corridor, and checked several more rooms, discussing the improvements as they went. After this was done, they hoofed it further upstairs - entering into the hotel's winter garden. They looked up into the glasshouse ceiling that has seen better days, then around the place, with medium-height spruce trees growing right inside, six floors off the ground. Around the garden, there were soft chairs and ornate metal tables, placed with the intention of reading or dining, as well as smaller bushes, ivy on the walls, and boxy flower planters.

"Alright, the garden." Wolfgang said. "What's our minimum here?"

"A pass by an expert horticulturalist, a new coat of paint for the planters, anti-corrosive burnish for the tables, tempered glass tiles for the ceiling just in case," Liv rattled off without as much as slowing down.

"What about the winter heating?" Bakhtiyar asked.

"Good point!" Liv responded. "I think the optimal variant would be either a district heating tap, or a gas-fired boiler. Possibly biogas? Oh, oh! We might want to add a biogas production digester to the maintenance area!" she shouted in excitement.

"Alright, that's a great idea," Bakhtiyar said. "This is a hotel, there might be plenty of unfinished meals around here... and if there's a space for an anaerobic digester, this might cut down on garbage pick-ups... that's brilliant!"

"Thank you, I'm trying," Liv smirked.

"So what else is on the list?" Wolfgang asked. "The rest of the floors? The attic? The ballroom?"

"The ballroom was converted to a movie theater about 10 years after the War," Liv responded. "This might need a bunch of technical updates, and the decor there is definitely... an interesting addition. It's more Art Deco than baroque of the other places in here."

"Okay, let's just keep going," Bakhtiyar said. "We can just about do everything to best standard if we really try!"

"Agreed!" Wolfgang said. "Let's go!" He set off, and the trio continued into the other parts of the hotel, surveying the aspects of work to be done in the coming weeks.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Mole Writes - story masterpost

This is a masterpost with easy links to all the short stories I wrote so far; it'll be updated in the future, of course, and improved as time goes along. For now, you can enjoy what is already here.

Link to the main masterpost for my blog HERE.

Solarpunk!

In Broad Daylight: A practical example of how to write a solarpunk thriller, with a detective who finds the power to stop a group of arms dealers by turning to the community and society.

Peacekeeper's Journals

Sci-fi short stories that borrow equal parts from Charles Dickens, and stories like Ratchet & Clank. These may get sentimental or preachy quite often - but this is my blog and no-one can stop me.

Airborne Welfare: See the protagonist, Kellian Korfal Aamvek, get out there and battle poverty and social decay! With empathy, kindness, and improbable piloting skills.

Duchowiesen story series

Now these are somewhat different. The Duchowiesen stories, written by rationing energy and inspiration, have nonetheless turned out fairly well. These are bite-sized looks into a joyful urban fantasy world of Duchowiesen, with its enormous modernist cities, quaint villages, mystical woods, and more, hiding vast amounts of mysteries and adventures.

Liftoff: Ever wondered how a space program in a fantasy world might look like? Wonder no further!

The Dragon and the TV Tower: Dragons! And TV towers!

Renovating The Hotel: An insight into the upkeep of Duchowiesen's railway hotels. Less boring than it sounds.

The Duchowiesen series is also available on Tapas, readable on desktop and mobile - including some fresh stories that I haven't put out on Tumblr.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Yes, we can stop climate change - and solve ecological problems in general

In the last few years, I have seen again and again a particular social response to climate change that can leave human civilization just as devastated as denying or ignoring climate change: and that is doomism, and fellow-traveler ideas of eco-fascism and eco-austerity. Make no mistake: climate change is a very serious issue that can cause noticeable damage to Earth and a hell of a lot of damage to humanity, but people absolutely love to take it to lurid extremes, like "Mad Max hellworld" and "Earth becoming the second Venus by 2100". In this post, I'm just going to lay out numerous reasons why the situation is far from hopeless, why sensationalized narratives of climate change are just a petty excuse for inaction, why "we'd better start taking mud baths to get used to being in the ground" rhetoric is incredibly dangerous (not to mention a betrayal of the weak and vulnerable by the strong and well-off), and why, ultimately, things aren't as dire as "the common wisdom" proclaims - so that people can stop feeling crushed by hopelessness, and start solving all of the very, very real environmental problems the way they're already being solved. All my examples will be sourced from the IPCC reports and real-world accomplishments in eco-restoration, via an extremely helpful blog called Doomsday Debunked, which just reprints all the IPCC and IPBES findings that doomist media and activism deliberately omits.

Most of this post is adapted from one I already made before elsewhere - but perhaps on Tumblr it's going to become more popular and widespread. I'm going to split it into three different sections: climate change mitigation, biodiversity recovery, and why "green austerity" is not a brilliant idea, will not save anything, and is ultimately an outdated falsehood that emerged from a place of insufficient knowledge and understanding. Almost all paragraphs contain links to sources/more info, but they may be hard to see in some custom Tumblr themes - be sure to mouse over if you want to find the links.

CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND YOU: how renewable energy really can save the world!

Here's the biggest thing first: Climate Action Tracker, which is a pretty damn respectable source, has slashed off 1.1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius off its average warming projections since 2010, according to their own records. Hell, in 2018, three degrees of warming was a pledge, and four degrees was the expected upper limit; now three degrees is expected if the current level of fossil fuel consumption continues without any reduction - and two degrees is the policy target, while optimistic projections are inching closer to 1.5 degrees. And to "achieve" 5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is misleadingly described by journalists as "business as usual" when by our current day it's anything but, we would need an economic mobilization from now to 2100 to burn all the coal that we can possibly burn. With coal plants shutting down in reality simply due to being unprofitable, I don't have to tell you how "realistic" and "plausible" that is. The takeaway from this is simple: the Paris Agreement and environmental activism work, and I really don't see them winding down unless we let doomism reign supreme.

A specific example of policy and technology that can seriously reduce climate change is the amazing growth of solar power over the last 10 years. I am old enough to remember the early 2000s, when solar photovoltaics (the panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity) were an unproven, esoteric, and expensive technology, and people meant solar water heaters when they said "solar power"… but nowadays? There is literally predictions that if solar energy keeps growing at current rates, and considering it already beats fossil fuels on price, it might simply price out gas, coal, and oil before 2050, rendering them entirely obsolete. Even now, investment into coal or gas power plants is seen as an incredibly stupid thing to do, because they might become "stranded assets" - too expensive to run, and unable to even recoup their initial cost.

The clathrate gun/Arctic methane bomb hypothesis has been effectively disproven at the current time. The release of methane from clathrates is endothermic, meaning it takes in more heating than it releases; a direct opposite of a gunshot/explosion, which is an exothermic reaction. More modern research also turned up the fact that methane has been seeping upwards at a constant rate for millennia now - we just didn't monitor it. Seabed disturbance could possibly upturn some of the clathrates, but ocean warming alone simply can't do it - it would take thousands of years of warming for the temperature change to propagate to the kind of depth that methane clathrates are found at.

The hypothesis of runaway greenhouse effect has effectively been disproven too: with a more powerful greenhouse effect, Earth's albedo grows just as fast as the heat-trapping capacity, meaning runaway warming is highly unlikely and the only cause are human industry CO2 emissions, which can be obsoleted by renewables and thus stopped.

The biggest threat from climate change as it is now appear to be extreme weather events; for example physically straining heatwaves, or severe floods from large amounts of rainfall. And those are serious problems. But heatwaves can be deal with by adapting our environments - the most obvious example being to plant some trees instead of layering our cities in concrete. Similarly, flood management isn't some arcane art; we know how to do it. It's just been ignored due to complacency and budgetary stinginess.

The expectations of social collapse from climate change are… overstated, let's say. The IPCC's own worst-case scenario is NOT "Earth as a lifeless desert" or "collapse of human society"; the situation IPCC associated with three-degree warming is that hundreds of millions risk being displaced by sea level rise and temperatures in the tropics getting too hot for comfortable life with no weather difficulties (NOT THE SAME as "you go out at any point during the summer, you die in ten minutes"), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be left in ruins. In other words, the poor people of the world will go back to starving and suffering, and the rich, especially in the West, will for the most part retain their quality of life. And so to me, as a non-Western, not-ultra-rich person, doomism is a personal affront, and doomism from solarpunks and environmentalists is a grave betrayal.

Speaking of the IPCC reports: the last one states with decent confidence that as soon as we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, temperatures will begin to drop. Just think on this for a minute.

The "1970s MIT supercomputer that predicted the collapse of civilization by 2040"? That computer was not just less powerful than a smartphone from five years ago - it modeled the world as a single pixel, primitive even by the standards of the day. (Link to article that features actual model comparisons, via browser-based Javascript emulation. 'Nuff said.)

The so-called "deep adaptation" paper that managed to put people into therapy by its sheer grimness? Junk science that was rebuffed by Michael Mann - the author of the "hockey stick graph" of global temperatures, so not a climate denier by any means - in a four-letter tweet.

Earth turning into a second Venus by 2100? Yeah. That's… not gonna happen. We literally don't have enough fossil fuels to induce a greenhouse effect this bad, at any timescale, and I don't know if we could do it even if we started importing dry ice from space and cracking carbonate minerals for their carbon content to deliberately destroy the planet for some stupid reason.

And just because I feel like mentioning it: no, Earth can't run out of oxygen for us to breathe, barring an invasion of Galactus or some other planet-devouring alien.

BIODIVERSITY + CONSERVATION: lies, damned lies, and statistics

The infamous notion that we are heading for a world without insects was based on a study where half the map was blank, and some countries only counted the domestic honeybee (which relies on humans to thrive). Not all plants need insects to pollinate them, either. But at the same time, overuse of insecticides in agriculture is a serious issue with many adverse effects, and it has to be fought against. There is currently a campaign in Europe with this aim. Native grass lawns in cities help a lot too, more than you would think at first.

Similarly, there is a general notion that we are "in the middle of a sixth mass extinction", except we're not "in the middle". We're in the beginning of one. Now, if we all start/keep behaving like the Glukkons from the Oddworld series of games, or the Blargs from the first Ratchet & Clank game, for a few hundred more years - then we're totally going to face an impoverished biosphere with half or more known species dead. But if we do that, I'd say extinction of species would be far from our only problem.

The number one agricultural land use that drives deforestation is grazing cattle and growing crops to feed them; cropland and cities simply don't compare. Ergo, just by shifting to plant-based diets supplemented by lab-grown meat cultures and sustainable fish, we can rewild nearly 30% of Earth. And climate impacts there can be reduced too, if you simply buy local.

For a reforestation success story on a massive scale, look no further than the Loess Plateau.

Conservation success stories are actually plentiful; however, they do not get aired on the news because good news does not draw in views, clicks, and outrage. You can just go through this article on Doomsday Debunked to see how successful nature conservation can actually be.

The only two biomes that are most endangered by climate change are coral reefs (which would be replaced by the more resilient sponge reefs at 3 degrees of warming or around that), and the mountain glaciers, which will take thousands of years to recover, unlike the polar ice caps that'll be back in a couple of decades. But even corals have shown more resilience than expected before, so the scale of devastation is not nearly as huge as people might imagine.

GREEN AUSTERITY: "Friendly fire! Stop shooting, you pointy-eared leaf lover!"

A common, in fact extremely common, idea is that the only way to save the planet is accepting massive reductions to our quality of life - and by "massive" I mean "living in dugouts and doing subsistence agriculture while literally billions of people die for lack of warmth and medicine". Not only is this unacceptable, it's also a complete lie. The best way for someone living in the car-dependent, fossil-fuel-hungry sprawl of North America to reduce their carbon footprint is actually moving to a country with walkable, bikeable cities and good public transportation, like the Netherlands… or preferably, reforming and rebuilding their own local environment to this standard that used to exist in NA before its suburbanization that included zero public transport due to auto industry lobbying. NotJustBikes is an entire YouTube channel that explains this better than I ever could.

Another common idea is that building enough renewable generation capacity is just not possible with existing resources here on Earth. But consider this for a moment: when we mine metals and make them into electric engines or batteries, they don't go anywhere, with the only possible exception being metal flaking off due to corrosion. The metals composing wind turbine generators, electric vehicle motors, and batteries, or silicon composing the solar panels, remain in place and can be recycled several times, if not infinitely. Oil and coal that our current civilization burns for fuel EMPHATICALLY CANNOT be recycled - the entire problem we have is that they turn into carbon dioxide and clog our atmosphere, while soot and other exhaust fumes damage the health of people living in cities. Getting rid of 99% or more of fossil fuel infrastructure doesn't seem like that hard of a choice when you remember that feeding a renewables-based infrastructure requires a far more modest production capacity.

The issue of soil depletion from intensive agriculture is not only exaggerated by the negative/doomist framing (no, we are NOT going to run out of topsoil in 60 years!) - it's also a problem of mismanagement rather than an inherent agricultural problem. Stop oversaturating fields with fertilizer, introduce polyculture and crop rotation, and you'll see how much better things can get.

Similar to the above: the production of fertilizer does not require fossil fuels, no matter what some people might be saying. The three types of fertilizer are nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. All of those are abundant chemical elements on Earth, and circulate through the biosphere freely; nitrogen is the 70% of our atmosphere and cannot possibly run out, and phosphate with potassium are abundant in the Earth's crust. The only direct use of fossil fuels in fertilizer production is the Haber-Bosch process that condenses nitrogen from the air into ammonia, and guess what molecule it needs for that? Hydrogen, which is the stronger half of the elements composing hydrocarbon fuels and which we could have in abundance by simple electrolysis of water!

Related to the above: it is beyond ridiculous how cow manure is dumped into rivers or similar by most modern farmers, when with right subsidies it could be transformed into cheap-as-free fertilizer to be used in agriculture. Someone should go create subsidies for large-scale composting...

Surprisingly enough, even consistent economic growth - which I am not a fan of by any means - can be achieved on a finite planet, because economic growth is all in what you count and how you count it. If we calculate economic growth not by production, but by improvements in human condition and condition of ecosystems (i.e. an economy that grows with the growth of trees), then we'll see that right now some world regions (like, again, North America) are failing as much as countries poor in money, but also that there is an enormous space for growth measured in sustainable prosperity.

The much-touted problem of water wars is an actual problem only for regions way, way inland. Any coastal countries have access to efficient desalination; it's not 1850 anymore. Water doesn't disappear from the world after people use it in cities and industries, it goes right back into the soil/atmosphere/rivers and oceans, so we can't "run out of water".

Interesting fact: we don't actually require any particularly specialized carbon capture technology to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and will not require us to divert society's resources to expensive machinery. The old adage about the best carbon capture technology that's called "planting trees" still holds - and what's even more interesting is that there actually are even better methods that are not much more complex… and produce other things for the environment and for civilization in the process.

CONCLUSION

To sum things up: yes, the situation is serious, and "already bad enough" as Michael Mann put it (admittedly, he's been leaning into negative framing himself… but it can't be all positive, the problems of climate change really are dangerous, especially to the world's poor), and there's been a lot of environmental damage due to industries and rich consumers deliberately ignoring the externalities/knock-on effects of their resource use - but it's not nearly as horrifically bleak as some people presume. Right now there is great momentum behind climate action - which, yes, is partially propelled by increasingly hostile weather, but also by an understanding that social progress, democracy, and collective action are vital to build any form of a decent society, as well as by seeing new opportunities rise from cheaper renewable energy, better cities, and other innovations that will both stop climate change and make life actually worth living no matter where you might be. And in these conditions, throwing in the towel or surrendering to eco-austerity or even eco-fascist thinking is the worst possible action any one person can take. The green, sustainable, egalitarian future is not merely a dream or flight of fancy - it's eminently attainable if only we keep pushing for it and help eachother achieve it. But of course, there are people who stay up nights thinking how to take that future away from us, and now that climate change denial is no longer tenable, with more and more people believing their own eyes, the doomism and inactivism have become their primary, perhaps only, means of holding onto their power…

I hope this post will be helpful to people here who find themselves in the grip of doomism and hopelessness. I expect some people to disagree, but I prefer to believe the sources like the IPCC, IPBES, Climate Action Tracker, and all the climatologists behind these organizations' reporting - who've been closely watching both the worsening extreme weather from climate change, and the emergence of all the simple, usable, life-improving technologies and social practices to combat it. If we don't believe these people, then really, who can we believe? And if you do trust their reports on all the positive things being done and planned for environmental needs, it is not simply an idea that we can deal with climate change and restore, then protect our environment - it's objective reality, it's respectable science, and thus, it's good hard common sense.

More information: Doomsday Debunked (layman explanations and positive framing, also covering a ton of other "not actually the end of the world" topics for scared people), Carbon Brief (more technical and a bit less brazenly optimistic, but showing things like the absolutely crazy speed of renewable energy development), Not Just Bikes (an urbanist YouTube channel showing how cities can be improved, not made poorer, in the process of reducing fossil fuel use and car dependency).

[a-mole-of-iron]

Agree with every word, tbh. And there are in fact things we could do. Like give human-made art and stories a certificate of authenticity, so that shady people can't label their spray cheese for $5 a can with "Original Authentic Italian Parmesan - Accept No Substitute". Or like regulating generative AI so that it doesn't just leech off people's work and then direct profits to big companies and the gigawealthy. But that would require poor folks and workers actually having a say, now wouldn't it? (This means, organize. If we had unions everywhere, all this crap would be way less likely, and the "dumb AI" everyone's building now would work for us, not for 1%.)

Tbh seeing this shit happening just reconfirmed what was feeling about the media industry for a long time.

I noticed this long ago when they stopped hiring juniors and even entry jobs required 3-5 years of experience. So seeing them replacing ppl with algorithms is a culmination of all this crap. That's what they always wanted.

I'm sure something can be done about it, but I'm too exhausted to think of solutions.

For me, the course still remains the same: create my art and stories and gather my own audience who wants to support me, both morally and monetary.

Sure ppl say its super hard to achieve, but I know I will never be hired anyways bc I tried to get into industry for years. I guess Im just too alien for them and my arts reflects it.

Plus no one will tell my stories except me.

I wanna make niche stories, bc they almost disappeared from the media bc every big company wants all the money, creating the same stories generalised over and over with no nuance.