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musiclovingmoth · 3 years

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types of scientist each pkmn prof would be irl as seen by a biology major

1. professor oak

according to bulbapedia, oak concentrates on the relationships between humans and pokemon- seems like an animal behavior scientist and professor! definitely also a famous scicommer since he hosts a radio show across kanto and johto! probably the bill nye of the pokemon world at this point. what if he was this Friendly Science Man all the 90s-2000s kids knew and like 20 years later he goes on a late night show and delivers this swear-filled rant on the global biodiversity crisis and how people need to keep their meowths and liepards inside

2. professor elm

elm gives me HEAVY recent postdoc vibes. i love how his hgss artwork portrays him to be a klutz. he’s so busy and frazzled he forgets to eat. see my post about how like half the men in biology i know look like this man. it’s also fun seeing professors who have families of their own, i like hearing tidbits here and there about their spouses and children. the *lore.* i don’t think he’d be to the level of maes hughes but when he like squeezes in a tiny thing about his wife or kid during lecture or to other members of his lab people can’t help but be like aww. he just seems wholesome! since he’s credited with the discovery of pokemon eggs, he probably would study reproductive/evolutionary developmental biology (one of my fav subjects!).

3. professor birch

(disclaimer: i have not played rse/oras) the only thing i know about this guy off the top of my head is how you get to pick your starter only because he’s getting chased around by a poochyena in the field. i love this fieldwork mishap energy. look at him, he’s wearing sandals and shorts into TALL GRASS. himbo scientist vibes, even tho those things kind of conflict. according to bulbapedia, he specializes in... HABITAT AND DISTRIBUTION?? oh my god also one of my loves. one of the phd students i work with who also kinda studies distribution once fell into a >6 ft soil pit doing field work. if birch is getting chased around by wild animals as a professor, i can only imagine the shit he got himself into as a grad student.

4. professor rowan

one of the oldest professors at the school, to the degree where everyone considers him an enigma and takes his classes at least partly out of curiosity as to what he’s like. most people say the same thing, which is that he seems really scary at first but basically he’s just grandpa! has office hours that somehow work for everyone and has a huge bowl of candy at his desk. if you go, he’ll encourage you to take some and he’ll probably also take and eat one during your meeting. as per bulbapedia, literal evolutionary biologist. i feel like all the pokemon professors are somewhat of of evolutionary biologists by their trades, which may make rowan the Big one out of all of them. maybe neil shubin-level famous...

5. professor juniper

ONE OF MY FAVS!! i love her energy so much. she also gives me recent postdoc vibes but i could also see her as the weird (in a good way!) and spunky pi (principal investigator, basically the research manager) of her own lab. definitely active on scitwitter where she keeps up with the latest papers and advocates on academic issues. specializing in the origins of pokemon sounds a lot like an evolutionary biologist to me, though again i feel like all the professors are to an extent because “evolving” is pokemon’s thing. probably also works a lot with extremely old fossils, maybe from around the cambrian. if so, that definitely makes her an invertebrates person, my favorite kind of person (the lab i work with is full of them and they’re all wonderful). ohh maybe she even does research on the jump from unicellularity to multicellularity! definitely a close colleague of rowan, maybe even a former student!

6. professor sycamore

god if this man ever did a guest lecture or visiting professorship at a foreign university (like in “america” vs. “france”) everyone would go fucking nuts. his classes would fill up instantly. he teaches like. an introductory course on cell bio and there’s a not-insignificant portion of students there who are upperclassmen. i don’t really remember much from xy but that letter he leaves as a young man to his future self is very nice, i think he’d be a very supportive advisor/mentor and would be great at encouraging underclassmen to take their time and pursue their dreams. studying mega evolution, an instantaneous temporary change, reminds me of phenotypic plasticity, which is when individual organisms can change physical form in response to environmental stimuli. a really cool topic!

7. professor kukui

another professor where everyone signs up to take his classes. i feel like his chill yet enthusiastic attitude make him a good candidate to teach gen bio for freshmen, he’d be a great communicator and also probably puts actual good memes in his lectures. i feel like on the about page of his class/professional website he’d have this professionally-done photo of the masked royal, not even one some other fan took at a match, and it would be captioned “i’m a big fan of the masked royal! check out this sick picture i got of him” and he’d just do such a terrible job of hiding the fact that it’s him. i think due to the rigors of academia, it would be a retired thing he used to do, but the new students all lose their minds when they find out about it. WHAT IF HE TOLD EVERYONE A SURPRISE GUEST LECTURER WAS COMING IN AND IT WAS JUST HIM AS THE MASKED ROYAL AND HE MADE A BIG DEAL OUT OF HOW “HE AND KUKUI ARE FRIENDS” BUT EVERYONE KNEW BUT STILL WENT WILD ANYWAY. an irl analog to studying pokemon attacks... maybe the specific defense/attack mechanisms of a specific group or species. he likes rockruff and lycanroc right? maybe he’s also a behavioral biologist who studies how wolves hunt in packs and how their sociality evolved.

8. professor magnolia

(disclaimer: i have not played swsh) since she studies dynamax, she might also study phenotypic plasticity. apparently her work on it was so influential it started the trend of using it in big flashy galarian stadium battles, so she probably travels to do guest lectures a lot and it’s a BIG DEAL wherever she goes! uhhh idk what “galar particles” are? sounds like molecular or cell biology. oh maybe she studies differences in metabolism between form changes and what physiologically changes to keep up those different structures.

#pokemon #professor oak #professor sycamore #professor kukui #professor juniper #professor rowan #professor birch #professor magnolia #professor elm #rse #oras #dppt #bw #xy #sumo #swsh #sorry magnolia's was so short i really know nothing about swsh #lab notebook

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do-what-the-knight-tells-you · 3 years

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SPOILERS FOR WHAT IF: CAPTAIN CARTER

1. It is endlessly funny and that something can be so gay yet so homophobic. XD no it clearly was an attempt to like double down on the Steve Peggy Romance, but in the process of doing so all they did was parallel Steve and Bucky moments from the original run, confirming how gay THAT was. XD

2. Actually Peggy Carter had really great chemistry with Howard Stark in this, and I would very much like Tony to have to deal with the notion that Captain Carter pegged his dad at least once.

3. The hydra stronghold at the end looked like Nazi! SleepingBeautyCastle

4. Actually Howard Stark was very bi in this-- very much hoping that Steve and Peggy would make out and he could watch, specifically watch Steve.

4.5 why did Bucky steal the jeep, how did Bucky steal the jeep, and why did anyone leave Howard and Bucky unsupervised.

5. I have always appreciated that Peggy's fighting style was basically hit the thing as hard as you possibly can and then it doesn't get up again, and so the super soldier serum just allowed her to hit things even harder and that was amazing and I'm very happy for her.

6. Possibly because of the reduced facial expressions in this animation style, but the shocked look that Bucky gets on his face when Peggy rescues him at azzano is very "am I cured? All this time I've gone with these dames as cover for the fact that I am very gay, but I have never been more attracted to a woman than in this moment. Perhaps it's shell shock."

7. In an effort to be Even More Straight, Marvel/Disney has accidentally given us an alternate universe wherein Peggy follows a giant squid monster out of the picture and then Steve and Bucky get to live the rest of their lives together. So. Checkmate I guess??

8. What on Earth does the world look like in 2012, when Howard Stark got to spend the rest of his life working with the tesseract and had already built a prototype Iron Man suit before 1950???? The advancements in energy technology must be very very impressive. Do we never end up at a global climate crisis????

9. Also, Howard Stark building the suit as a giant badass mobility aid for Steve is fantastic. I wonder if he gets into medical tech following this, because he would see Steve's health problems as a challenge, want to be able to give his friend a gift like that.

10. Meaning hopefully that Bucky and Steve get to live very long happy gay lives together. I want a ficlet where they are one of the first couples to get married when it's legalized in New York as old men.

11. Oh disney. Only you would find a way to make 2012 Captain America hotter. Captain Carter would be FIRE. Darcy Lewis would see this Amazon of a woman in pin curls and be like 😳😳😳 ma'am can I help you? Can I show you the very queer future?? You look sad, can I kiss it better please??? Jane I am leaving you for someone else. "Darcy, we're not together, and she's not in astrophysics." "Maybe she needs assistance with something else. I could help. I could help her with anything..."

#mcu #what if spoilers #captain carter #stucky #peggy/darcy

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rjzimmerman · 3 years

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Excerpt from this story from Rolling Stone:

Although he was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund in the 1960s, filmmaker and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough has long focused mainly on the beauties and mysteries of nature rather than its destruction, conveying his own genuine wonderment with a dash of wry wit to entice viewers to love and conserve the planet. But in a 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday, Attenborough talked about his concerns for the planet, the destruction he’s witnessed, and how we need to act quickly to save the natural world — and ourselves.

Last fall, Attenborough released a Netflix documentary and a book both called A Life on Our Planet, which stress the risk of climate change and destruction of the natural environment as much as they celebrate it. Attenborough calls the documentary his “witness testimony,” which interviewer Anderson Cooper pointed out sounds like a crime has been committed. “Yeah, well, a crime has been committed, and it so happens that I’m of such an age that I was able to see it beginning,” Attenborough said.

Throughout his career, Attenborough has witnessed the fallout of the climate crisis firsthand, including on filming trips in recent years. “We went on this reef, which I knew, and it was like a cemetery, because all the corals had died. They died because of a rise in temperature and acidity,” he said. “We live in a finite world. Ultimately, we depend upon the natural world for every mouthful of food that we eat and indeed every lungful of air that we breathe.”

In the interview, Attenborough says he hopes the way Covid-19 has isolated people and forced them to reduce the pace of daily living has helped them recognize the value of nature. “In the course of this particular pandemic that we’re going through, I think people are discovering that they need the natural world for their very sanity,” he said. “People who have never listened to a bird song are suddenly thrilled, excited, supported, inspired by the natural world. And they realize they’re not apart from it. They are part of it.”

Attenborough sees no choice but to remain optimistic about our ability to work together globally to reverse some environmental damage we’ve wrought. “Repopulation of the oceans can happen like that, in a decade, if we had the will to do it,” he said. “But we require everybody to agree to that.”

He notes we must most urgently unite around ditching fossil fuels — fast. “We know ways in which we can get, from the sun up there, just a tiny fraction of the amount of energy that sprays on this Earth 24 hours a day…for nothing. If we can solve the problems of storage and transmission, the world is ours,” he said. “We have all the power we need. Why should we go on poisoning life on earth?”

If you’re interested, here’s the 2020 interview with Sir David from 60 Minutes. It’s thirteen and half minutes long:

youtube

#Sir David Attendorough #climate change #environmentalism

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hrodvitnon · 3 years

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Post-Abraxas timeline GvK scenario - Continuity and thoughts

Continuing from my review of ‘Abraxas’ new chapter on FF .net; I thought I’d just contribute some thoughts I’ve had about how 'Abraxas’ would affect events, mythos and continuity (ways in which Abraxasverse has already deviated and diverged from Monsterverse’s post-KOTM canon and how that would impact on GvK, that sort of thing), if the GvK crisis DOES occur in some form or another canonically in Abraxasverse. Sorry it’s late, it took a lot longer to write this than I thought it would. ^^’)

This post by me is for making pointers for consideration about diverges from Monsterverse canon that the main 'Abraxas’ story has already made and how they’ll impact if a GvK scenario occurred in Abraxasverse, though I’ll also take this opportunity to share some of my own thoughts and ideas about it beyond that. :)

So, down to it:

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(1) Where/How/Would a Ghidorah skull come in in regards to Mechagodzilla? It’s been established in 'Abraxas’ that Abraxasverse Ghidorah’s severed heads will fight off necrosis with their healing factor and will just slowly regrow the rest of Ghidorah; that severed heads can suck the power out of any electrical systems they come in contact with to feed themselves; and that humans being too close to Ghidorah heads’ telepathy for too long is a bit like mixing lead poisoning with an over-winter stay in the Overlook even if you don’t actually sit in the head’s skull. All three of which are divergent to the implications of the Ghidorah-skull in GvK. Maybe there’s adaptation deviation in the Abraxasverse GvK scenario, where Apex use the Children of Zmei instead of a Ghidorah skull to pilot Mechagodzilla and it’s them that makes the Mecha become a sentient psychopath?

(1.5) This is just my thoughts and ideas: if it’s still a Ghidorah skull piloting MechaG instead of some of the Children of Zmei: maybe in the four years after 'Abraxas’, Ghidorah comes back again and is killed again and the skull comes from this most recent defeat, with Apex using a chemical to suppress the skull’s healing factor and assuming that was enough for them to control the evil triple-mind inside the bone. (Although after how big and dramatic that climax chapter was, I like to think that Ghidorah is now either gone for good or it’ll be a very long time, as in at least a decade in-universe, before Ghidorah ever resurges directly.) Or, maybe there’s a creepier origin story for Apex’s Ghidorah skull: Apex unearthed the skull in a dig which reveals it to be thousands of years old, and when Monarch find out after everything, they’re puzzled about why a decapitated Ghidorah head just decomposed and became a semi-sentient hunk of bone, instead of regrowing the rest of Ghidorah like San’s old head did or re-attaching itself to other severed pieces to speed up Ghidorah’s resurrection from a pre-Antarctica ancient battle. Godzilla doesn’t know anything about the skull, and neither does San. What’s creepier, Monarch’s analysis of Apex’s Ghidorah skull indicates that while the skull’s structure is the same, its DNA actually isn’t entirely identical to Ghidorah’s, as if the skull encountered something which changed its genetic makeup. A thought occurs to Viv 'n’ San: San’s decapitation at Isla de Mara probably wasn’t the first time a shed skin got split off from Ghidorah, in fact San remembers that when there was more than one shed skin each time Ghidorah died in the past, they would usually signal each-other and combine to speed up Ghidorah’s resurrection… but there were times, on alien worlds that Ghidorah conquered, when it just wouldn’t care for these shed skins before returning to space since it wouldn’t be around on the planet for them to challenge it. What if more Ghidorah clones grew from the severed pieces it left littered on the dead alien worlds once the main Ghidorah left? Godzilla, San or other Titans would surely know if a Ghidorah-clone ever set foot on Earth while they were alive - does that mean the Ghidorah skull’s owner came to Earth and died before the still-living Titans were born and before the main Ghidorah that San came from arrived on Earth? And what killed the skull’s owner? Why is it’s DNA altered: did it encounter something, on ancient Earth or in space, that changed its genetic makeup? :o Does this mean there are more creatures like it, born from Ghidorah’s remains littered on dead alien worlds, who are still amongst the stars and who might one day find their way to Earth?

(2) I’m wondering who will be in charge of Monarch when Godzilla starts rampaging. If Mark rejoins Monarch and it’s still him who’s in charge, hopefully his character development during 'Abraxas’ will mean that even if his role doesn’t change much, he’ll be a lot less of an ass now than he was in GvK, and he won’t be the same fantasy-forbidding father that he apparently was to Madison in the GvK novelisation.

(3) One major thing that’s on my mind every time I think about this: in GvK, a lot of the conflict came from the humans not understanding why Godzilla’s attacking; and Viv 'n’ San as a Titan with EVP can communicate with both humans and Godzilla. So the only way I can imagine the whole Mechagodzilla crisis wouldn’t be over in time to prevent MechaG’s activation with Maia never getting near the Hollow Earth energy source, (unless there’s more adaptation deviation) is if Viv 'n’ San are on vacay in the Hollow Earth when the Titan rampage kicks off, and therefore aren’t topside to explain to Monarch and the world that Godzilla can hear Ghidorah’s call at every place he attacks. (Who knows, maybe in Abraxasverse, Viv 'n’ San will run into Kong and Team Kong in the Hollow Earth, then follow them topside in time for Mechagodzilla’s emergence - heh, I can imagine Viv 'n’ San’s “Oh, for fuck’s sake!!” reaction to a big, cybernetic Godzilla-Terminator bursting out of a mountain with Ghidorah’s bio-acoustics howling out of it.) And on top of this, there’s also the main 'Abraxas’ story hinting that the old Bone Singers’ ways of communicating with Titans are going to start coming back soon in Abraxasverse among the human population, making it less likely humanity will be as completely in the dark about Godzilla’s rampage as they were in GvK…

(4) I’m not sure where the internet rumour that Godzilla in Monsterverse canon sent the Titans back into hibernation because he sensed the Ghidorah skull came from - from what I’ve read, in 'Godzilla Dominion’ and the GvK novelisation, Godzilla explicitly sent all the Titans back to stasis because keeping them in line while they were awake was too much for canon-Godzilla to keep managing in the long-term, unlike with Abraxas-Godzilla. Maybe the other Titans will globally participate in Godzilla’s rampage looking for the Ghidorah-piece that’s calling out to any Titan listening, and the fact it’s every benevolent Titan that’s rampaging instead of just Godzilla will proportionately fan the flames of public panic and enable Apex’s role to go unnoticed. This could actually go quite a long way to make it understandable why the public are so blind to the pattern with Apex-facilities that Godzilla is attacking; if over a dozen Titans rampaging on humanity’s cities has the public too whipped up into a panic to think straight - especially since from what we’ve seen in 'Abraxas’ so far and from what TVTropes says about the GvK novelisation’s expansion, it looks like the public generally in Abraxasverse are a bit more humbled and concerned about the Titans’ environmental importance and a bit more common-sensed after KOTM’s events than they were in GvK’s continuation. Anyway, frankly I’m hoping an Abraxasverse GvK scenario will retcon or at the very least downplay the KOTM Titans going back into hibernation - I’m in agreement with TVTropes that turning KOTM’s humans-coexisting-with-awakened-Titans setup into an aborted arc and largely letting the Titans-environmentalism thing fade into obscurity was a crappy move on the Monsterverse writers’ part.

(5) Mechagodzilla’s pilot. With how Abraxas-Ren has already interacted with the Titans and shown his father’s respect for nature, I can’t see that character going down the same path as the Monsterverse-canon Ren did. There’s that idea a Nonnie suggested that Ren could get mind-raped by Ghidorah if it comes back (or maybe by another psychic evil Titan like Gigan ;)) so Ren becomes like canon-Ren - but after Chapter 17, I feel it would be better if canon-Ren, who’s stood apart from his canon counterpart and become his own endearing character in 'Abraxas’ already, goes down his own unique path. There’s also the possibility that Abraxas-Ren could be an unwitting pawn to Apex who doesn’t know what they’re really up to, but I doubt Simmons, if he’s anything like in Monsterverse canon, could ever fully pull the wool over nature-respecting Abraxas-Ren’s eyes. If MechaG still has a pilot with a relevant role, I think the pilot should be someone else. Maybe it’s Maia, who has a bit more brains in Abraxasverse than she did in GvK. Or maybe it’s an OC.

(5.5). An idea in the latter camp I had: maybe, as a mirror-world like flip to canon-Ren; whereas in Monsterverse canon it was Serizawa’s son who was MechaG’s pilot, in Abraxasverse it’s instead the OC son of Admiral Stenz - the son who agrees with his late father about killing the Titans to prevent human casualties, but who is much more willing to murder thousands for the so-called greater good and is crossing lines that his father never would’ve crossed. Or alternatively, maybe Stenz Jr. is a bitch-in-sheep’s-clothing; he expressly disagrees with his late father’s approach to handling the Titans which almost handed the world to Ghidorah on a silver platter in 2019, and he believes humans and Titans should live together… but instead of seeking a fair coexistence, Stenz Jr. thinks the Titans should be humanity’s slaves and Sentient Batteries, replenishing the world to benefit human civilisation whilst being penned by humans who dominate them with MechaG and being harvested for any resource goodies their bodies hold.

(6) Continuing from my pointer about how the human public in Abraxasverse seem to be a bit more common-sensed generally in Abraxasverse: I’m guessing this means Apex probably won’t have the military’s under-the-table support that they had in the GvK novelisation (according to TVTropes), and instead Apex’s corporate conspiracy will rely more on underground paramilitaries and other illegal groups - including groups with anti-Titan sympathies - to get the materials and resources they need to build Mechagodzilla. OR: maybe in Abraxasverse, MechaG wasn’t built in secret by Apex; maybe in reference to your old Tumblr shenanigans about Vivienne and Serizawa using MechaG, Monarch started building MechaG so humanity could contribute in a fair and meaningful way to fate-of-the-world Titan brawls alongside Godzilla and Mothra, but Apex stole MechaG (maybe Apex used the havoc and confusion of a Titan rampage instigated by Ghidorah-remains or the Children of Zmei calling out) and they installed the Ghidorah/C.O.Z.-parts into the Mecha thinking they could control it.

(7) If this scenario does occur, considering how awesome Monsterverse-MechaG was; maybe in an Abraxasverse scenario, instead of being killed fifteen minutes after he’s born, MechaG will have the smarts to flee once Kong and Godzilla team up and the odds turn against MechaG, leading to MechaG being a longer-lived threat? Maybe he’ll even recognise Viv 'n’ San are part-Ghidorah and take an interest in the Ghidorah half of them, in contrast to Ghidorah’s interest in the human half during 'Abraxas’?

(8) The destruction of Skull Island. It was caused in Monsterverse-canon by Camazotz manipulating Ghidorah’s storm. Assuming this still happens in Abraxasverse, wouldn’t Monarch contact Viv 'n’ San and make them aware of what’s happened (if Viv 'n’ San don’t find out on their own) so they can use their Ghidorah-derived, storm-harnessing powers to try to reverse what Camazotz did? After all, Monarch would probably be thinking, since the storm will kill all non-protected life on the island if it stays that way, even if Viv 'n’ San’s attempt to change the change goes wrong, it can’t be any worse for the island than if they didn’t try. Of course, there’s still the real possibility Viv 'n’ San’s attempt could make no difference or even end up making the storm worse for the climate of places beyond the island.

So, yeah, those are just my thoughts on how a GvK scenario could occur in Abraxasverse, and the mythos and continuity considerations involved. :)

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JAYSUS CHRIST LOOK AT THIS GOLDMINE!

Whew! So many possibilities and great ideas, thanks for sharing them! Who knows what the future brings, but what I can say is that, whenever the hell I start working on it, Chapter 18/Epilogue won’t be nearly as huge as 17 was (which was over 22 THOUSAND WORDS HOW THE FUCK), so if it’s okay maybe I’d like to leave one or two nods to this list for the AbraxasVerse take on GvK…

#zerm1v0hg #fic: abraxas #submission #thanks for the submission!

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rmftjin · 3 years

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ugh the people who keep being like "I want bts to have more of a dark concept!" are really annoying me ever since butter was announced like A. at least wait until the song is actually out to complain about it B. did you not listen to like half of the songs from mots7 and be??? hello? and C. wow I wonder why in the middle of a global crisis that has affected bts's ability to see their fans and perform and has left everyone in the world including the members (as they have been very open about sharing) a bit down to say the least it might be nice to focus some of their energy into producing art that is fun and uplifting

Someone said this on twitter too like if you have read the lyrics you should know that so many of these songs ARE dark concepts ??? We are in the middle of a global pandemic and they are making music about it how much darker do you want it to be do you want them to wear black clothes or put on some fake blood makeup and turn the lights off and film an mv or what 😭

And yes ?? Again we are in the middle of a pangea why on earth do you want a war or zombie or whatever type of concept so bad is the real life not dark enough for you rn 😭 the only thing getting me through this pandemic is oh my my my and all fifty versions of dyna na na na eh so yes idk about anyone else but i will be very happy if we get another serotonin booster !!!!! I hope it has like twenty remixes too breakfast remix butter chicken remix slow jam remix unsalted remix melted remix shea butter remix cocoa butter remix there is SO much potential 😋

#the damn song isnt even out yet pls sjhdkd 😭😭#asks

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architectnews · 3 years

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"Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony"

Architecture firm Perkins&Will has gone too far with claims that a luxury timber home on a Canadian mountain removes more atmospheric carbon than it emits, argues Fred A Bernstein.

For much of last winter, Perkins&Will, an architecture firm with 25 offices from San Francisco to Singapore to Sao Paulo, used a photo of a wooden house in British Columbia as one of the "hero images" on its website.

The house, which sits alone on a mountaintop overlooking the Soo Valley 90 miles north of Vancouver, is certainly beautiful, but the firm had other reasons for splashing it across its homepage. The 321-square-metre dwelling, known as the SoLo House, is meant to be a model of sustainability.

Entirely off the grid, it is designed to operate with power from 103 solar panels on its south facade, a 96-kilowatt-hour battery pack to store electricity for nights and cloudy days (both of which are frequent in British Columbia), and a hydrogen fuel cell for winter.

With all that equipment, the house may well be able to function without utility hook-ups. But Perkins&Will has made a far more surprising and audacious claim: that the building's structure is "beyond carbon neutral," meaning that it will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emitted in the first place.

It seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis

In a slickly produced video on the firm's website, Perkins&Will architect Alysia Baldwin says the house "proves that buildings can counteract their negative consequences and act as a source of repair."

People listen to Perkins&Will, a firm that has positioned itself as a leader in green building. "For nearly a quarter of a century, we've been at the vanguard of the sustainability movement," its website declares. Journalists have tended to repeat its claims.

But this time it had gone too far. By constructing a showplace of a house on an otherwise pristine mountaintop, and claiming it had helped the environment by doing so, it seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis.

Looking at SoLo House, with its cathedral ceilings, its comfortable sectional sofas and its giant picture windows, then listening to Perkins&Will claim that its structure reduces atmospheric carbon, I'm reminded of the old punchline: "Who are you going to believe – me, or your lying eyes?"

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small, keeping it simple, building it near existing infrastructure, avoiding the need for heavy equipment such as batteries and fuel cells and using the lowest-embodied-energy building materials.

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small

Perkins&Will, normally an excellent firm, has done those things on other projects. But with SoLo House, it seems not to have even tried.

According to experts, 40 per cent of atmospheric greenhouse gases come from buildings. Some emissions are attributable to running appliances and systems – so-called operational energy. The rest comes from the power needed to produce the building in the first place, known as embodied energy.

Incredibly, Perkins&Will is claiming there is "no embodied energy" in the house's structure (by which it means the elements that keep the building standing). To its credit, the firm answered requests for information promptly, providing facts, figures and charts prepared by Baldwin and her colleague Cillian Collins, a senior architect.

Here's how Baldwin and Collins arrived at their no-embodied-energy claim: First they estimated the amount of structural wood, steel and concrete in SoLo House. And then they turned to Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, an app that approximates the amount of energy needed to produce given amounts of each building material and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of that energy use.

Athena told them that producing the steel and concrete, harvesting the wood and so on in SoLo House released 122 tonnes of CO2 (sometimes called CO2e, for CO2 and its equivalents) into the atmosphere.

That should have been the beginning – not the end – of the process of calculating the building's embodied energy. There are hundreds of other items that needed to be counted. Start with the roof. The walls. The windows (a massive item, given the need for triple glazing). The solar panels, the batteries, the hydrogen fuel cells. The furniture. The appliances. The plumbing. The heating and cooling systems. Lots and lots of insulation.

The list goes on. Each of those items has significant embodied energy. Transporting all of those materials to a remote mountaintop site adds more.

Perkins&Will failed to account for those sources of embodied energy. Baldwin was clear, in a letter to me, that the calculations were limited to the structure. But why would anyone stop there? According to Baldwin, it's because structure "represents the largest contribution to a typical building's embodied carbon impacts."

It may also be because Athena only applies to structure. (Athena is meant primarily for comparing how the choice of a structural material affects a building's embodied energy. An architect might enter plans for the same building, once with a concrete frame and once with a steel frame, and see how the embodied carbon figures differ.)

Of course, there are other ways to estimate the house's total embodied energy; one method is to use an online tool called Tally, which provides information on the embodied energy of numerous building components. Counting everything isn't easy, but other firms have done it.

Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet

Even so, according to Athena, the house emitted 122 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. That sounds like a lot of carbon, but Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet.

Much of SoLo House is made of wood. Wood, like all plants, is produced by photosynthesis from ingredients that include carbon dioxide. Thus trees are said to store (or sequester) carbon. They do, but probably not as much as people think, as I learned by studying the question at length.

Here's Perkins&Will's theory: If you cut down a tree and use the wood as a building material, that carbon sequestered in that tree becomes part of the building. Then, if you plant a new tree in place of the one you cut down, the new tree will sequester additional carbon as it grows. Thus the process (cutting down one tree, planting another) results, net-net, in carbon being removed from the atmosphere.

There are so many problems with that theory it's hard to know where to begin. To name a few:

1) You have to be sure a new tree will be planted in place of the one you cut down; will get to be as big as the one you cut down; and will live a long, healthy life. (If a tree burns, or decomposes, as billions of trees do every year, its embodied carbon is released right into the atmosphere.)

2) You can't waste any of the wood. That's a problem because converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips, which could end up being burnt or allowed to decompose. This problem alone suggests carbon sequestration figures should be cut in half.

3) The wood has to stay in or on the building for a very long time. If the building needs repairs, and lumber is removed, it may be recycled, but it may also be burnt or allowed to decompose. And who'll be watching in 20 or 50 years?

4) Let's be honest: You could have planted the new tree somewhere else, and not cut down the first tree to begin with. For that reason, no number of trees excuses a wasteful building.

5) Even if the new trees do sequester carbon, the process will take decades. Scientists who study global warming warn of tipping points and thresholds, some of which could be reached within the next ten years. If new buildings help push atmospheric carbon levels to a point of no return, the sequestration accomplished by newly planted trees will be too little, too late.

6) It's a logical impossibility. If you really believe SoLo House repairs the atmosphere, all you have to do is build enough SoLo Houses and climate change will go away. Now for our next trick ...

No number of trees excuses a wasteful building

No wonder the theory is highly controversial. A whole lot of things have to happen just right for it to become a reality. As Baldwin wrote in an email: "We acknowledge that not all timber sources perform equally in the realm of embodied carbon reduction."

"Much of the embodied carbon reduction achieved by timber is directly attributed to sustainable forestry management practices that ensure forestry operations are carried out in a way that allows forests to remain healthy and viable for future generations," she added. "These practices include conservation and protection, land use planning, regulation of timber harvesting, establishing practices to ensure forest regrow, and continuous monitoring and reporting to government."

She went on to admit that the tool used to determine the building's sequestered carbon, WoodWorks Carbon Calculator, a product of the Washington-based Wood Products Council, considers "much of this storage to be temporary and therefore [does] not give the building a carbon credit for the carbon dioxide that will eventually be released from this wood some time down the road, through decay or incineration."

But that didn't stop the firm from banking on the theory when it performed its embodied energy calculation. Using the Carbon Calculator, it determined that the amount of lumber in the building would result in the removal – through the planting of new trees – of 145 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. That's a bit more than the 122 tonnes the firm says the building's timber, concrete, and steel released into the atmosphere.

Converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips

So in this case, reducing E (embodied carbon) by S (sequestered carbon) produces a negative number – minus 22 tonnes, meaning that building the house decreased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (Indeed, the house's owner, Delta Land Development, refers to it as "climate positive.")

Perkins & Will firm produced a chart to make this clear:

As Baldwin puts it, SoLo House "is able to store more carbon in its structure than was released during the production, manufacturing, and construction of the project."

That's a highly suspect statement. Based on everything I've learned, E (embodied energy) may be much greater than Perkins&Will says it is, and S (sequestered carbon) much lower.

In a letter responding to points in this article prior to publication, Perkins&Will wrote the following (the client, Delta Land Development, did not respond to requests for comment):

"Through careful selection of low embodied carbon and locally sourced materials, the project prioritized a mass timber structure. The design team used industry-accepted LCA [life cycle assessment] tools to quantify the carbon sequestration potential of the structure, and the timber structure is modelled to sequester 145 tonnes of CO2e as biogenic carbon."

Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy

"Structural elements typically represent the largest embodied carbon profile of [a] project, and as such, the structure was prioritized from an embodied carbon perspective."

"As designers, we rely on reputable industry tools to estimate the impact of projects. We used the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings to complete this assessment. Athena uses ongoing research by the Athena Institute and complies with ISO 14040 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and principles and framework) and ISO 14044 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and requirements and guidelines)."

"Per our previous correspondence, we shared the Athena Institute's definition of biogenic sequestered carbon, which considers the whole life cycle of the material, including extraction, manufacturing, forms of transportation, installation, repair and maintenance, and end of life (assuming reuse of the wood)."

However, if Perkins and Will had really wanted to reduce embodied carbon, it would have thought about some of these strategies:

1) Putting the house in an easily accessible location, thus cutting out hundreds or thousands of trips by delivery people and construction workers. (Perkins&Will points out "that the wood was sourced from within British Columbia, and the building panels were manufactured in Pemberton, BC, which is located 30 minutes from the site.")

2) Renovating an existing house. Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy. Renovation typically generates 50 to 75 per cent less atmospheric carbon than new construction.

3) Choosing a site where there are no trees to cut down. According to Perkins&Will, "A clearing was required for a driveway, solar access, and fire protection. It required harvesting 180m³ of second-growth hemlock timber. This wood was put into the BC forestry chain, becoming useful lumber." Taking credit for sequestration by trees that may have been planted elsewhere, while cutting down enough trees on site to fill a five-meter by six-meter by six-meter container, is a whole lot of embodied irony.

4) Making the house a lot smaller. When it comes to saving energy, less is definitely more.

5) Choosing versions of steel and concrete with the lowest embodied energy (a lot of research is being done on ways of making those materials less "carbon-intensive").

Perkins&Will appears not to have done these things — the actual work required to reduce carbon emissions. The danger is that people will believe its claims.

Fred A Bernstein studied architecture at Princeton and law at NYU and writes about both subjects. He has published articles about embodied energy – a significant component of the climate crisis – in Oculus (a primer), in Architect Magazine (an admonition to architecture critics) and in the Architect's Newspaper (a warning that efforts to make buildings resilient are often detrimental from an embodied energy standpoint).

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post "Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony" appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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the-cyberpunk-zeitgeist · 4 years

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The Cyberpunk Zeitgeist

>>>𝕄𝕜𝕕𝕚𝕣 "𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕥𝕪"...

>>>ℂ𝕕 "𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕥𝕪"

>>>𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟𝕝𝕠��𝕕 𝕙𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕕.𝕖𝕩𝕖...

>>>𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕜𝕝𝕖𝕡𝕥.𝕖𝕩𝕖...

>>>ℝ𝕦𝕟 𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕥𝕪.𝕖𝕩𝕖...

>>>𝕄𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 <𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘-𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕝𝕖𝕕:

"𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪.𝕙" 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕗𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕>

>>>𝔼𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕣 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕒𝕘𝕖: "ℂ𝕒𝕟𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕗𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕤𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕥𝕪.𝕖𝕩𝕖. 𝕎𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕚𝕥."

>>>...

Flash into the past and look into the future. Recall the early stages of the digital age—the new millennium—and how, at the precipice of a thousand transformations, civilization was defined by its endless climbing innovation. In the 80’s and 90’s, when consumer use of the personal computer was infecting society like a virus, our entire idea of communication changed. The net became a pivotal point in shaping what it meant to be human. Through an ever-expanding web of information, human innovation seemed to spiral until promising “authorship over reality itself”. Those who felt constrained by the world, escaped into a fractal space with infinite possibilities of connecting with others.

Douglas Rushkoff termed it ‘Cyberia’—a dreamlike place offering “a way to crack open our civilization’s closed-mindedness, and to allow for a millennial transition that offered something a lot better than apocalypse: consciously driven evolution”, but the mesmerizing unity in this newfound cyberscape didn’t last. What followed—what we see around us now—may lead us to believe that all is lost, but perhaps there’s something more than war, corporate politics, espionage. Perhaps, there still exist some humans among us interested in a higher cause: unlocking the mysteries.

While the net was first adopted solely by military personnel and groups of scientists across academia who saw fit to interconnect themselves for research and communication purposes, it soon fell into the hands of the geeks using hypertext forums to discuss niche hobbies or send pictures to one another. The net became a mystic place of interlocking minds, where interconnected collections of data contributed to the neural network of humans that composed a global brain. As this paradise aged, however, the desire of investors to monetize and capitalize from the cyberscape arose alongside it. Advertisements flooded the web; businesses sprung up in every forum, website, and chat client. It wasn’t long into the 21st century that the nature of the web was forever molded by a greed to optimize its use for social credit, capital, and leverage for everything from corporate intelligence, to data harvesting, to control and censorship of media. The symbol of freedom and exploration was thus transformed into a stratified market and a subversive survival game. It’s all so… Cyberpunk.

In the 80’s and 90’s, alongside the rise of computers and the net, came the rise of Cyberpunk literature—a sci-fi subgenre defined by its retro aesthetics intermixed with contrasting commentary that showed us the wonders of new technology while simultaneously revealing the deep divide that emerged as a result of inequality. Pioneers like William Gibson in Neuromancer, Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash, and Katsuhiro Otomo in Akira revealed the true impact of this divide. In a world where everyone in the streets is chromed up with augmented cybernetic prostheses, but can still hardly afford to eat—a world where cities have been replaced by endlessly sprawling megalopoli—we’re left immersed in the aesthetics of ‘high tech-low life’ people struggling to get by.

Cyberpunk showed sci-fi fans what it might look like if kleptocratic corporations spiralled further and further into the power vacuum created by advancing technology. If caution and regulation aren’t put in place to protect the people from marvelous creations that humanity could hardly predict outside of science fiction, the people are further exploited and economic classes are further stratified. When this is combined with life-threatening dangers around every corner, the difference between economic class can mean life and death.

While the additional flourishes of weapons-grade cyborgs, sentient and sentimental artificial intelligence, and laser guns can make Cyberpunk seem like a farfetched reach into a future that will never come, I am here to tell you that this is Society, and we are living in it. Around the world, rising sea levels begin to swallow more of the coastline, and megafires consume any shred of nature or infrastructure in their path. Both of these events are spurred by human-driven climate change which is created in large part by first-world corporations churning out fossil fuels or slicing up rainforests for profit. The global hivemind that is the internet has become the limitless communications apparatus we wanted it to be, but it is covered in adverts and subverts its users attempts to harness its power with misinformation, propaganda, and profit-driven exclusive content. Riots over authoritarian state measures have propped up not only in the United States, but in Hong Kong, Belarus, and all across the globe. Pandemic disease and refugee crises displace hundreds of thousands of humans each year, and the rich keep getting richer by the billions.

In more recent Cyberpunk writing like William Gibson’s The Peripheral, Gibson describes the Jackpot:

And first of all that it was no one thing. That is was multicausal, with no particular beginning and no end. More a climate than an event, so not the way apocalypse stories liked to have a big event, after which everybody ran around with guns… or else were eaten alive by something that caused the big event. Not like that.

It was androgenic… that meant because of people. Not that they’d known what they were doing, had meant to make problems, but they’d caused it anyway. And in fact the actual climate, the weather, caused by there being too much carbon, had been the driver for a lot of other things. How that got worse and never better, and was just expected to, ongoing. Because people in the past, clueless as to how that worked, had fucked it all up, then not been able to get it together to do anything about it, even after they knew, and now it was too late.

...it killed 80 percent of every last person alive, over about forty years.

Jackpot. The repercussions of humanity’s actions finally catch up, and those bits of humanity that do remain are saved by an extreme surge in innovation that manages to save society’s elites. As Douglas Rushkoff puts it in his recent essay The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods, more and more of those who have the capital to do so have already begun their plans, whether those plans are to escape to Mars or to set themselves up with a cushy work-from-home job while the lower class workers are forced into the public during the pandemic crisis. The need to automate away positions for the safety of our species is becoming even more prevalent than it once was in the minds of corporate conglomerates, but the cancerous overgrowth of our bureaucracy has become so bloated and tripped up in its own processes that we can no longer look to our political systems to keep up with the exploitation of innovation. Lo and behold, the world’s looking pretty CPAF to me.

Where have the visions of Cyberia gone? What happened to the early stages of internet punks, pushed aside in their desire to surf the datasphere purely for the rush of uncovering swathes of data? Where did visions of “authorship over reality itself” twist to become ‘authorship over reality by those with the capital to control’? It may seem that this explosive spiral of technological innovation in the new millennium is driving us towards extinction and only saving those with enough coins in their pockets to buy a ticket on the ark, but perhaps it’s not too late to change course and save ourselves from the ultimate Jackpot.

United by the global nature of the net, every one of us is connected as a single living entity that is the Earth—a Technogaia. Developments in artificial intelligence promises us exponential increase in information processing capabilities across all fields. Breakthroughs in genetic engineering could allow us to delete diseases from our genomes, and have already shown minor success in the de-extinction of species. With the first cyborg part already installed in each of our pockets, every citizen can extend their minds beyond capacity; each one of us becomes a journalist at a moment’s notice when injustice needs to be documented and challenged. Nuclear, hydrogen, solar, and wind energy lead us towards a cleaner and greener future. The rise of urban ecology shows a path to optimize the use of space to lower humanity’s carbon impact while providing more space for habitat rehabilitation and the reintroduction of lost biodiversity.

In the palm of our hands, humanity has taken control of the world. With science and technology, we’ve become the manipulators, but if we do not recognize what our impact is on the Dao of Earth, we may tip the scales too far into the Chaos. I’ll be honest in saying things look grim, but these same innovations that have paved the way for flying killbots and smoke stacks spewing gases into the sky have given us the power to reshape the world in a beneficial image. Futurist politicians call for universal basic income in a world increasingly run by machines. Transhumanists pave the way for the radical extension of the human lifespan. Technogaians design solarpunk arcologies to house a society ready to save their Earth rather than one intent on consuming it. Cyberians fight for our rights to privacy and the freedom of information. Just as the visions of grim dystopias in the 80's and 90’s saw themselves transformed into modern realities, we can use humanity’s greatest tool—this near-deific domain over innovation—to mold this fractal reality into our vision. But is it chaos, order, or some harmonious Dao in between that we seek?

No matter our choice, it’s going to take a lot of united high tech-low life cyberpunks to get there. This is the Cyberpunk Zeitgeist, and we’re living it.

For more works by The Cyberpunk Zeitgeist, see our Twitter page @CyborgZeitgeist

#cyberpunk #sci-fi #science #environment #technology

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lemondzest · 3 years

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Understanding Obesity (Part 2): Whose responsibility for obesity?

Now that we know obesity is a public health crisis requiring urgent action, we may wonder - what causes it? After all, effective solutions require tackling the root causes of the problem. This part therefore aims to shed light on five of the many contributing factors to obesity.

1. Choices

Nothing much to elaborate here; choosing to eat more and moving less will result in weight gain. More calories in, less calories out - basic law of thermodynamics. Boring. However, many people are quick to go down the reductionist route by placing ALL the blame on the individual’s personal choices. If it’s just a matter of people needing to make the right choices, if it’s really that simple, we would have tackled obesity long ago. Blaming obesity solely on individual choices does not answer WHY we are increasingly eating more and moving less. Take a look at this timeline of adult obesity in the U.S below by the CDC, similarly reported in other countries across the globe.

The rate of obesity has tripled worldwide since the late 1970s. If obesity is simply caused by a lack of personal responsibility, what happened in the late 1970s? Did everyone collectively lose their rationale - maybe everyone got together, decided to YOLO and go buffet in life? Definitely possible (cue the entrance of conspiracy theorists), but highly unlikely. Did some form of transcendent power strike the DNA of humans collectively that made us evolve into a bunch of lazier and much more ravenous creatures? Scientists have studied evolutionary changes during this period and concluded that nope, our gene pool has remained constant; any changes in the gene pool would take hundreds of years to produce an obvious effect across a global population anyway. This means that:

the global rise in obesity is not because of any significant genetic changes,

people did not willingly choose to eat more and move less,

there are other external factors that mainly drives the obesity epidemic.

Consider a class of 10 pupils. When only one pupil gets very low grades in an exam and the other nine got full marks, the one pupil is considered mainly at fault. Perhaps they need to study more and work harder to get a good mark. But when six out of ten got very low grades, is it still the pupils’ fault? Would we then tell the children to study more, while everyone else (i.e the teacher, parents, education system) just remain in inertia, or goyang kaki?

Similarly, when 63% of the people in Brunei are living with overweight and obesity -- is it still entirely their fault?

2. Environment

(Please bear with me, I’m trying my best not to turn this section into a whole thesis).

The environment is one of the largest contributors of the rise in the obesity epidemic. This is based on rigorous academic evidence and decades of research. Essentially, the environment has generally promoted the increased consumption of unhealthier food through a rapid increase in its:

availability : since the 1970s, the food environment underwent a shift from predominantly fresh produce to a more ultra processed diet. Food are being processed to the point where they look nothing like what they originally look like, stuffing them with cheap ingredients such as sugar, salt, trans-fats and flavourings to enable mass production to be sold at cheap prices and for easy consumption. These products are called ultra processed food, and examples include soda, sausages, nuggets, sugary cereals, instant noodles, crisps, chocolates and so on. Because of its poor nutritional profile, ultra processed food has confidently been associated with higher risks of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, depression, asthma, etc. And we, especially young people, are consuming more of this than ever.

exposure : we're talking about the aggressive marketing strategies that has been employed especially by the fast food industry and beyond. I remember going back home from the airport after my 14-day COVID quarantine being bombarded by roughly 10 billboard ads, majority of which are advertising for fast food. As I went out and about for the next few months, I realised that we are exposed to food companies constantly fighting for our attention through their advertisements, whether in the form of billboard ads, physical outlets, leaflets, newspaper ads, TV ads, social media ads, social media influencers, event sponsorships, - the list just goes on! In fact, 46% of the annual advertising budget in the UK goes to soda, confectionery and snacks, while only 2.5% goes to fruits and vegetables. Imagine if it was the other way around.. One can only dream... The point is, we as humans are constantly being tempted with unhealthier food rather than healthier food, which in turn, drives up our purchase and consumption of unhealthier food products. I also particularly like this photo taken in the UK that just showcases the pedestal unhealthier food ads are being placed on, i.e. same level as public health ads. Oh, the irony! (Good news for Bruneians - a code of conduct on responsible food marketing has been implemented recently to shield our children from these ads! Just what we need, priority on children’s health > anything else.)

portion sizes : certain food such as pizza and soft drinks underwent a significant increase in portion sizes from the 1970s to 2000s. Just a few days ago I went to to a fast food outlet and noticed that, as usual, the default drink choice is soda, but the default size is now the large one as compared to the smaller one that I remember seeing 3 years ago before I left the country. I was also informed that some other outlets have been asking customers to upsize their drinks by default. Just how necessary is this? We may think this is not a problem because people supposedly eat according to their physiological needs and can simply stop when they’re full, and so they wouldn’t need to finish the whole portion. But research leading to the discovery of what is known as the portion size effect (PSE) has suggested otherwise; the more energy-dense food people are served, the more they tend to eat.

The 21st century environment is also promoting physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle compared to the past centuries. Opportunities for physical activity especially in high-income countries have declined possibly due to the rapid urbanisation, rise in 9-5 jobs and more people relying on motorised transportation methods. Although research has shown that physical activity (PA) among adults done during free time have increased in the past ~30 years, a simultaneous decrease was found in physical activity done while working in the past ~50 years. Young people are also observed to be more physical inactive levels throughout the years, though locally... I like to think that our younger people are getting more physical-activity-conscious nowadays since applaudable efforts to widen opportunities for PA such as the launch of Bandarku Ceria and the opening of numerous hiking sites and gyms booming in 2019-2020. But this could just be my skewed perception looking at a small and specific demographic of the population - more formal research needs to be done.

So, we know that the environment is the main factor that drives up the obesity pandemic. But if we are all living in an environment which predisposes us to develop obesity, why don't we ALL have obesity? This tells us that there are other factors that makes an individual more likely to act on the environment's impulses - such as their socioeconomic status (income, education) and especially their genes.

3. Income

Research among developed countries such as the UK, Australia, Germany and Singapore has shown that people who are from lower income level are significantly associated with a higher risk of obesity. This graph below just shows how stark the inequality is between the most and least deprived areas of the UK. Note also how rapidly-widening the gap is over the years!

Why are poorer families in developed countries more likely to live with obesity?

Food that are more nutritious are often less affordable than nutritious food. I particularly love this infographic showing how in order to meet the general recommendation of a healthy diet in the UK, the poorer families would have to spend 39% of their income on food alone, while this percentage steadily decreases as your income increases, to as low as 8% for the richer families. The same pattern is reflected in many other countries including the USA, Australia and

This inequality is not just seen within countries, but also across countries. One study across 18 countries identified that in order to meet the recommended guideline of 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, families in lower income countries would need to spend 52% of their income on them, those in middle income countries would need to spend 17% while those in higher income countries would need to spend a mere 2% of their income.

The price gap between healthier and unhealthier food can then affect people's purchasing behaviour, where families from lower income are forced to prioritise quantity of food over quality. For some of us, we are privileged enough to be able to choose food that are delicious, nutritious, and of different variety each time. But for some others, especially among families with poorer background battling food insecurity, they can only afford to eat in order to feel full and get through the day. Research has shown how poorer families always have to 1) balance out their choices of food with the utilisation of scarce resources, and 2) make judgment of food prices relative to other food prices. Combining this with the known fact discussed above that unhealthier food are FAR more aggressively marketed (almost 20 times more) than healthier food - we are left with a group of the population who are predisposed to choosing food that are mainly satiating, and less nutritious than the recommended guideline.

In fact, we know that even more factors than those discussed above can contribute to people from poorer families having an unhealthier diet. One of them is, on top of the price gap of groceries, we have the price gap of fast food. Parents who are busy and don't have much time to cook nutritious and homemade food often resort to fast food to sustain their family. Sure, we have a plethora of fast food options to choose from (and they just keep increasing - don't get me started). But what kind of fast food is both affordable and nutritious? Nasi katok costs $1 while a balanced meal costs $5 (minimum), and this disparity is seen all around the world.

Given all this, we still have the audacity to say that obesity is simply caused by a lack of willpower?

Gimme a break. It is clear that people who are not as financially privileged requires additional support in order to maintain a healthy weight. If not through finance, through education (further explained in Cause 4), or even better - both!

Side note: Despite the overwhelming evidence that having low income is associated with higher risk of obesity, there is also emerging evidence showing the possibility of the opposite (reverse causality); living with obesity is ALSO associated with having low income due to stigmatisation and discrimination. So basically... living with low income may cause people to live with obesity, and likewise living with obesity may cause people to live with low income. This syndemic is similar to the that of obesity and mental health issues discussed in Part 1.

4. Education

Health is not formally taught in most schools. Health starts at home. Because of this varying education level and awareness about health across the population, each family has very different approaches of ensuring how their family can grow up adopting healthy behaviours.

Generally, the likelihood of having obesity increases with decreasing level of education. This was observed in many countries including Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The trend is similarly reported in OECD countries such as Australia, Canada, England and Korea as shown below.

This may be because more educated families tend to have healthier lifestyles and are more aware of what the causes and consequences are of obesity. If a family is lacking awareness and knowledge on certain aspects of health, such as in nutrition - eg: what the importance of consuming enough fibre is, what exactly constitutes a balanced diet, how to cook nutritious meals under time constraint etc - then their family will be less likely to adopt healthy (protective) behaviours.

Awareness on the causes and consequences of obesity indeed remain low within many communities. In one study, 76% of young people surveyed believe that "obesity has a genetic cause and that there is nothing much one can do to prevent obesity". Almost 30% of them also believe that even when substantial changes were made to one's lifestyle, obesity cannot be prevented. In the UK, around 3 in 4 people didn't know that obesity can cause cancer - the leading cause of death worldwide.

Not only are people unaware of the causes and consequences of obesity, many people even show a general lack of understanding of obesity itself. It was found that among 401 Malaysians surveyed, 92% of those with obesity underperceive their weight, thinking that their weight is at a normal range or lower than it actually is. This is particularly concerning, because any intervention efforts to reduce obesity rate within a community will just bounce back by the majority of the target group who think the messages are 'not for them because they don't have obesity' when they actually do.

All in all, if you come from an educated family background - good for you. If you have the opportunity to study more about health, or human/medical sciences - good for you. But what about those who do not have all these privileges?

Side note: There is also evidence showing how having lower education level is not just associated with higher level of obesity in a direct manner, but also indirectly where having a low education level may contribute to households having a lower income, and as discussed above in No.3 -> may result in a stacked effect on obesity. This is called the mediation effect and more explanation can be found here (pg 133).

5. Genetics

Over 200 genes influence our body shape and size. This include genes that affects how frequently we feel hungry, the rate that we burn calories, our metabolism rate, and many more! Some of these individual genes can increase our likelihood of becoming heavier while some other genes tend to make us lighter depending on whether it is 'switched on or off'. And this mix of 'on and offs' for EACH gene is always going to be different between individuals (polymorphism).

Because of our own 'mixed bag' of ~200 obesity-related genes interacting with each other, some people will find it much harder to resist that bar of Kinder Bueno sitting on the cashier till, while some others wouldn't even bat an eye. Some people naturally feels full after a bowl of rice, while some others would need three bowls. Some people can store a large amount of fats while some others can store only half of that amount before those fats (lipids) seep into other tissues instead such as muscles and potentially cause diseases (lipotoxicity).

Our genetic differences within the population explains why some people respond differently to the obesogenic environment we live in. It is not as simple as our genes determining whether we develop obesity or not. We simply can't be saying "Oh it's in my genes, got it from my parents~" to justify our lack of effort to address obesity. There's no single gene that makes people develop obesity. But rather, our mixed bag of genes determine our susceptibility to obesity. For people with many of those genes that makes it likely for them to gain weight easily 'switched on' -> they will be more susceptible to obesity because their own biology makes it much harder for them to fight back the temptations of the obesogenic environment.

Because this concept is so difficult to be understood by people who have always had a healthy weight all their life, privileged with not having the genes raising the likelihood of obesity 'switched on' -> they tend to blame obesity solely on the individual's personal choice. Because their own biology makes it easier for them to resist the temptations of the obesogenic environment.

As Joslin - an American doctor - described almost a century ago which pretty much summarises the role of genetics in obesity:

Genetics probably loads the gun, while lifestyle in our obesogenic environment pulls the trigger for the spreading of the obesity epidemic.

Does this mean that people who have genes that makes it more susceptible to develop obesity can simply blame their genes for their weight?

No! Not entirely. They can and should apply the same general concept of weight loss to counteract the risk of obesity, i.e. - eating balanced meals, doing plenty of physical activity (going back to the boring law of thermodynamics: more calories out than in = weight loss). However, it will be especially harder for these people to achieve it due to their obesity-encouraging genes. They have to put in more effort to lose 1kg than someone with less of the obesity-encouraging genes.

What this means for those with obesity: Your own genes and biology is one of the factors why your BMI is considered high at the moment and why it feels so difficult to lose weight. It is important for you to understand this, so that you don't beat yourself up too often! It is not entirely your fault. It will be hard, and in fact it will be harder than many people, but what matters is for you stay focused in putting in the work to get there!

What this means for those with healthy weight: It's about time for you to stop blaming everything on the individual's personal choice when you don't even know how difficult they have it and how much they have been trying to fight their own biology. Don't act like you know their struggles just to shame and stigmatise them because you don't and neither do I. Leave it to their close family and personal doctor to consult them.

What this means for policymakers: We have a duty in making sure that 1) the environment is as conducive as possible to live a healthy lifestyle to avoid 'triggering the gun', and 2) people are aware that genes play a big factor too (of around 40-70%) in determining someone's weight and its not just entirely down to the individual.

Side note: The genetic explanation above which acknowledges the role of hundreds of different genes in the development of obesity is applicable to the majority of people living with obesity (polygenic obesity). However, there are also the minority of people who develop obesity due to mutation in single genes (monogenic obesity / syndromic obesity) which warrants a separate and more technical explanation.

Bottom Line

To summarise the cause of obesity:

As mentioned in Cause 1, how we develop obesity is always down to the individual eating more and moving less. But as explained in Cause 2, 3, 4 & 5, the complex interaction between the environment, the individual's socioeconomic conditions, and their own biology explains why it is so difficult for some people to eat less and move more.

To summarise the cause of the obesity pandemic:

Personal choice explains why one individual may develop obesity, but the environment explains why more people across the whole world is developing obesity. Our socioeconomic conditions and especially our genetics then explains why not ALL people develop obesity as a response to the change in environment.

So what should I do with all these information?

That's entirely up to you and how much you understood! But the reason why I brought this topic up is because I'm personally sick and tired of hearing people living with obesity being blamed for their "poor choices in life", "lack of self-control", for "being gluttonous", "lazy", etc.

As I have hopefully explained, obesity is undoubtedly very complex and a result of so many factors. These five things I mentioned above? There's. So. Much. More.

Click here for a clearer view.

So the next time we blame it all on people with obesity - check your privileges. You're rich? You're naturally slim? You're educated? You don't have as much obesity-encouraging genes? Good for you. Perhaps that tends to make you feel entitled to say that people who are living with obesity just needs to make "better choices".

But understand that you have it easier in maintaining your healthy weight, while people with obesity most likely have it harder. The least you could do is really be sympathetic and understanding, acknowledge their struggles, and certainly avoid shaming and stigmatising them. Make it easier for them by providing healthier choices and support them physically and emotionally in their goals of achieving a healthy weight!

Aren't you just giving an excuse for people to live with obesity?

Disclaimer: My BMI sits quite well on the healthy range at 23 kg/m^2. I am nowhere close to having obesity, nor do I have any family members, partners or close friends living with obesity. I literally gain NOTHING to be making up an excuse for people to live with obesity. Quite on the contrary, I understand its dire consequences as I have outlined in Part 1, and I have even mentioned personal choice as one of the causes above. It's not about giving excuses, but simply an effort to give voice and justice to those who has been silenced.

I hope I have gotten my point across through this post and the previous one in my Obesity Series! Let's all be more-informed members of the society and support each other in achieving our health goals :)

*Note: For simplicity purposes, ‘unhealthier food’ in this post refers generally to food lower in nutritional profile, and food high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS). In reality, we should understand that food does not exist in a binary manner.

Unlinked References:

Gene Eating by Giles Yeo (Book)

CMO Independent Report: Time to Solve Childhood Obesity by Professor Dame Sally Davies

#obesity #brunei #child obesity #childhood obesity #causes of obesity #obesogenic environment #health #healthy lifestyle

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blackwoolncrown · 5 years

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As we’re moving into ‘scramble for solutions’ stage of Climate Crisis I want everyone to keep in mind that all solutions have a real, tangible footprint.

Rare earth metals are used in computer chips and the development of higher level tech- so all these smart energy solutions? They require mining. They are also rare, so there isn’t that much and they don’t replenish.

Need I remind you, this is what the mines look like:

These are places where no plants or trees grow. These are places where no animals can live. These are places where the rule of ‘humans get to extract whatever they want from the earth, as much as they want’ still apply.

When you hear about wind farms being proposed as a solution for energy, they are often being built ‘offshore’ as if that keeps them from disturbing life. But remember-- the ocean is home to beings, and the amount of disturbance we’ve already caused the ocean is killing the ecosystem. Unless it’s a floating farm too, it requires construction equipment drilling into and disturbing the seafloor. There’s a limit as to how many times and how many places we can do that without disturbing sealife- and I’d argue that technically we’ve already passed it.

Tangentially, if you’re not paying attention to this issue and would much rather look starward, I’m sure news of what new proposed telescopes can help us discover about the universe always seems great to you! Wonderful! Advancement! Discovery! Except every telescope has to be physically built somewhere, usually on mountains, which involves destroying a relatively undisturbed ecosystem for construction- in some cases it involves building on sacred land, as is the case with the current protests to refuse construction of YET ANOTHER telescope (larger this time) on Mauna Kea.

This is what Mauna Kea already looks like- mind you this mountain is sacred to the people of Hawaii:

Everything goes somewhere. Everything affects something. Our desires for energy or advancement or the next new big thing don’t come out of nowhere- we live on the earth, they happen to the earth.

We LIVE here. We cannot continue to think that endless excess and advancement is logical or sustainable- it always happens to destroy what we already have. If we have to destroy the Earth to get there, it’s not worth it.

What humanity needs is to recognize that the Earth is precious. Global warming increases the more we destroy the environment and continue with unsustainable, non-replenishing practices. We must focus on planting more trees and siphoning less energy from the earth, because again, it all comes from somewhere.

Doing our best to return the Earth to its natural balance is the only solution; more new tech will never save us when it is just about trying to ‘clean’ our unsustainable energy consumption. There is NO good way to continue ‘life as usual’.

We must commit to no longer bleeding the Earth dry.

#environmentalism #mauna kea #astronomy #wind farm #tech #smart energy #clean energy #solar energy

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authorgeek · 3 years

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...Well, at least I’m Vaccinated, right?

The American Healthcare System is deadly. This is another health/life update.

As I write this, my mother is making phone calls on my behalf, just as she has my whole life. I got out of the ER yesterday and from picking up my medications at the pharmacy, to canceling my counselor today because of a sudden drop in coverage - the reason I didn’t want to/hesitate to pursue mental healthcare in the first place - every moment for the last four years have been overshadowed by my chronic illness. The last year more so than ever as I continuously say no to gatherings and meetings and leaving my home. A constant reminder of what we’ve been through, about how it impacts me specifically, and another round of the negative energy that comes from having those same conversations in an endless cycle.

1) I am flaring and very much tied to my own home and our restroom. This last trip to the ER a few days ago put me on yet another round of steroids and soon enough I should be feeling physically better in a while after rest (hahaha), gentle diet, and time. Goodbye spring break, hello IVs and 3am blood draws. My nurses were angels btw. Thank you to all the healthcare providers who stepped in to begin getting me back on track.

2) Scheduling my last classes of Zoom Uni and drs is still hell. I have Zoom calls on top of Zoom calls between class and therapy (at least up until now) and trying to establish and create relationships with new Dr.s, a process that has made my and my family’s life a living hell since moving from campus and back, insurance battles, address and paperwork changes, prescription and test orders - something has been overly complicated, slowed down, held back...etc at every step of the way.

3) My mother - bless her - to sainthood - has been fighting on all our behalf at EVERY MOMENT. But she should NEVER have to put herself through this. I hate watching her do this, sit on calls, listen and watch as we get juggled from one department to another over and over like a carnival ride because no one will stop and help us. It is so painful to watch, and it is so endlessly frustrating to pick up and begin again and again day in and day out. She constantly tells me its her job and that she’s going to keep it up as long as I need - but I still know she never should have to go to bat for me like this and I hate it. I really really hate it.

4) Stuck at home, hospitalized, med changes, this all feels like I’ve time traveled a bit back to the very first days while being diagnosed. I feel a lot of old emotions coming back, a lot of unhealed childhood trauma I was never allowed to properly work through because life, and all its other crisis got in the way one at a time. As far as my mental health has been going, I haven’t felt this way since I was a young teenager, just entering high school after being housebound for 7th grade because I was too sick for a conventional school setting. It’s been crushing, and heavy, and I just feel...guilty...that other people have had to put up with me while I fight through this fog and watch. There is very little they can do, and it’s always awful to know the people who care about me feel as helpless to be there for me as I feel in general. Of course, these are the kinds of things I’ve been talking to my therapist about. Even while I am writing this, we are in the process of leaping over that particular hurdle on the long racetrack we’ve been running. I wanted therapy. I need mental health assistance. And we’re going to fight to keep this same provider and keep jumping through all the right hoops.

5) All this to say - I’m not the only one dealing with this and that makes it worse because NO ONE should. And if something doesn’t break? If something isn’t radically changed, it’s going to result in loss of even more lives of people like me. Possibly me. I know people hate to hear this and I hate to say it - but “COVID only impacts the elderly and those with preexisting conditions” is complete and utter Bull. All you’ve said is that you don’t care about those communities of people. About my community. About me. These clerical errors, working from out of office, communication breakdowns, have ALL been exacerbated by a global pandemic that was so horribly mismanaged it’s resulted in this mess. I wonder how much higher the death toll would be if we calculated the lack of mental health resources, errors made on the admin. side due to these circumstances - how much bigger a number would we be looking at, and what do we do to change it - and to put in preventative measures against it ever happening again.

A fantastic way you guys can support me right now - if you’re wondering after reading all of this - is through my redbubble shop, even just sharing the link to the page means a lot. I’ll hopefully have some new designs up to share with you all soon. I’m going to try my best to go a bit radio silent for a while. I’m going to continue reading, painting, gardening, and doing classwork because that’s my current capacity. That’s me running at MAX, and while that may not sound like much it’s all I’ve got right now. I’m tired beyond words, I don’t really even want to keep writing about this any more. So, if you guys are messaging/trying to get a hold of me, thank you in advance for your patience. I may not be able to respond right away. The new term just started and I spent most of my break in the hospital so I gently ask that I take some time alone, for me. Thank you all - for your encouragement and love you’ve sent my way during this year, and for forever. I love you all for it.

#Authorgeek #personal #long blog #medical update

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shuttershocky · 4 years

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I haven’t been able to write lately due to a mix of personal stuff and *waves hands* the current global situation which sucks, but I still feel like writing something down so I guess I’m just gonna be cringy and self-indulgent and blather on about Aozaki Adoption in bullet points

Of course, I’m still going to include Rin, but in the original one-shots, I just skipped over how she got added to the Hollow Shrine. Now that I’m trying to actually string a plot together, I have to do it right. That part I’m still working on, Rin’s upbringing and personality make it difficult.

If I could do this fanfic in a visual medium I’d show Touko being unable to properly see her reflection in mirrors, like she’s looking at herself through broken glass. A huge part of why I would think Touko would be taken with Sakura is because of the former’s ability to come back from the dead. it’s a noted thing in the Nasuverse that a soul changing bodies is an imperfect process and eventually a soul gets corrupted like data being copied too many times (which is what happened to Roa), but Touko got around this somehow without using True Magic. I want to make it so that the price she pays instead is a quiet existential crisis, that after so many puppet bodies, even if she knows that it technically doesn’t matter if she’s truly Touko Aozaki or not if she has all the memories and skills, she still wonders whether she IS still that young girl that got booted from her family.

The intention is that Touko grows attached to Sakura because she sees a bit of herself in the younger girl, at least, after some projecting. By helping Sakura, Touko would be able to emotionally connect to the young girl she used to be, before all the puppet bodies and people she’s killed. Touko needs that connection because no matter what her knowledge of logic and philosophy tells her, she still can’t shake off the existential dread of feeling like she’s basically an object only carrying on the function of Touko Aozaki. Looking at Sakura makes her feel... human. It doesn’t matter if Touko can’t see herself through a mirror, she can look at Sakura and go “That was me”, if that makes any sense.

I’ve been trying to figure out if I want them to visit Misaki Town or not. The setting of 2000-2001 means there’s no events from kara No Kyoukai nor Fate/Stay Night to use, but there is Melty Blood. I’ve been thinking of using the Tatari’s power to make nightmares come alive to write a few horror chapters in the vein of Silent Hill (I ADORE how it does psychological horror), but also I’m questioning if I really want to go there and do that. While Silent Hill portrays the horrors of sexual abuse (the loneliness, the self-blame, the terror of seeing your own bed) better than 90% of anything, that’s not really something I want to do, but that’s where an encounter with the Night of Wallachia would go given Sakura’s backstory.

I was seesawing between using Zouken (he doesn’t die that easily) or somehow getting Kirei and Gilgamesh involved to act as the main antagonists, but I decided against both. I know the one enemy Touko and the Hollow Shrine stand no chance of beating in a fight: Barthomeloi Lorelei. She’s eventually going to be the main antagonist, I plan to get her involved later on by having Touko recklessly rob the Clocktower for an artifact in an attempt to treat Sakura’s conditions (and thus make her lose face as the Clock Tower’s vice director) then have Zouken sell them out by using the worms still hiding inside Sakura to locate the Hollow Shrine, either that or get Shiki Tohno involved somehow since she hates his guts.

The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception present a really big writing problem where basically any monster threat I can throw in while waiting for the antagonists to arrive can be instantly solved by Shiki Ryougi. In fact, I’m still struggling to come up with a better reason for why Shiki doesn’t just destroy the grail fragments and worms inside Sakura other than the worms having changed Sakura’s physiology so thoroughly their death lines are too closely entwined with hers and Ryougi refuses to attempt to cut them out because of the risk.

I’m definitely doing the Shadow, but I need 1.) A power source that’s not the grail 2.) A reason to draw it out this early and a way to fight it back into dormancy since I currently can’t think of any other way to sever it from Sakura without Rule Breaker.

To differentiate it from Heaven’s Feel, I wanna take a different approach where the Shadow is something Sakura willingly indulges and indeed has full control over its powers. It’s gonna be vastly nerfed since no grail with infinite mana, but I think with a large enough mana source Sakura could massacre say, a bunch of Clock Tower Sealing Enforcers.

Specifically, I want that choice to stem from a conversation Sakura has with Shiki. By this point, the Clock Tower is closing in and Sakura’s been conversing with the Shadow in her dreams, and though her better life in the hollow Shrine means she’s not in the same desperate situation she is in HF, she’s also willing to do whatever it takes to protect this new life she obtained through a miracle. So Sakura is going to ask Shiki “Shiki-san... have you ever killed before?” and Shiki would say yes. then Sakura asks “Would you kill again?” and Shiki solemnly answers “if I have to, yes.” which makes Sakura make up her mind that the Shadow would be something she needs to be able to use and control as a trump card.

As to what makes Sakura use it, I’m obviously going to kill Touko in front of her. I just need to have a strong excuse to have Sakura NOT know that dying is not that big of a problem for Touko. Currently, my idea is lifting from Fate/Stay Night and having Touko keep that a secret because adult mages can attempt to read Sakura’s mind, and Touko needs the surprise factor of her death immunity so that her enemies will try to kill her instead of imprisoning or sealing her.

My current outline is almost all rather dark plot points, but I tend to gravitate towards jokes and fluffy writing so I’m expecting the tone to lighten up a lot when I get around to actually writing them. It’s worked that way in the first few chapters.

Dealing with Sakura’s psyche is a little difficult since I have no idea how much of her anger and resentment should stay after she’s found this better life. I’m using Fujino as a reference, where there’s this simmering rage beneath Fujino, even as she speaks kindly and talks girls out of suicide.

It’s especially difficult when I’m trying to flesh out her relationship with Rin. I know for sure I want Rin to be taken in by the Hollow Shrine only because Sakura wants her there, I want to use Sakura thinking of Rin as her hero in this fic, and how she’ll drag Rin back to the Hollow Shrine to reunite them. but I also want there to be that resentment. That anger. Rin would be someone who’s reluctant to give up on the ideals of a mage, and even more reluctant to give up the Tohsaka name and legacy, which Sakura would despise. I want there to be this torrent of conflicting feelings where Sakura thinks the world of her older sister who’s so beautiful and talented and perfect, and yet still feels resentment over Rin being kept by the family over her, and how Rin doesn’t really want to give up on being a Tohsaka. Meanwhile I’m putting Rin on the guilt trip train. It wasn’t her fault of course (remember in this fic Rin and Sakura are only 13 and 12 years old), mage culture is a bitch and she was just a child, but still. I want Rin to be just as conflicted, where she’s happy they’re back together (even if Sakura had to force it to happen) and massively guilty over what happened to her younger sister AND even more guilty that she knows the Tohsaka treated Sakura cruelly, but the Tohsaka ways are so deeply ingrained into her that she doesn’t want to give up such an enormous part of her identity.

Rin and Sakura are going to fight a couple of times. Sometimes physically. But at the end of the day I still want a lot of positives to come from giving them a relationship again. I want their sibling relationship to be one of the core focuses of the fic, and specifically I want them to contrast Touko and Aoko’s relationship. Touko is not going to like Rin at first and is only having her onboard because it’s what Sakura wants, but also I kinda want to use Rin and Sakura as a way for Touko to see how things between her and Aoko might have been different.

Speaking of which, I really need a translation of Mahoyo to come out so I can do that last bullet point more effectively.

Currently most of the interactions Sakura’s had with the Hollow Shrine have been with Touko and mikiya, but I want her to have fleshed out relationships with the others too. Azaka could be her senpai in magecraft and she in turn would be the most protective of Sakura. Shiki would have Sakura babysit Mana a lot as she’s still in college and has to study (and Shiki would grow fond of her cooking), while Fujino would have the quietest and yet most comfortable relationship with Sakura.

I’m doing this thing where Sakura’s fine control over her magical energy isn’t very good because of her altered circuits, so I’m making that the main motivation for how she discovers and wants to train in archery (she was vice-captain and then captain of the archery club in FSN and FHA after all), she loves the feeling of control and precision, of firing an arrow and knowing it will hit bullseye before it lands, as opposed to having to constantly struggle to keep a spell active or it crumbles before it finishes its process.

I’m still keeping the story of Rin and Sakura meeting Shirou by chucking him into a river, just need to figure out how to organically insert it back into the plot. it’s too funny to let go.

I don’t know if I want to do Taiga and Shiki as rival yakuza, but it’s definitely something I’m considering. it’s just too fun. I want to make something like how Taiga’s nickname of “Tiger of Fuyuki” is actually a serious yakuza nickname for her (that her students then caught on without context), so her rival Shiki becomes the “Dragon of Mifune”

Thanks to Case Files I know mages having deadly car chases actually isn’t all that uncommon which opens up a ton of new avenues for how I could get Sakura to be in a car with Touko in a car chase. i’d have Sakura follow Touko’s instructions and overturn the cars chasing them. Sakura’s worried and asks if they’re hurt, and Touko goes “Don’t worry, they’re Clock Tower mages, they’ll be fine.” and then one of the overturned cars explodes and when Sakura turns to look Touko gently points sakura’s face forward and says “Eyes on the road,” Later that night, the news reveals no one was killed. Somehow.

I want to do the Jewel Sword of Zelretch but I don’t know how just yet.

I’m going to poke a lot of fun at the fact that Touko says she has no issues but one of her main puppets that she battles with is literally modeled to look like Aoko. I might even have Touko talk to the puppet once in a while when she’s bored.

Still debating on when exactly Sakura is going to start calling Touko “Mom” and what she would have to do to earn that. Also, do we know when Aoi Tohsaka died? I can’t recall a specific year and I’m trying to get all the dates straight.

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ill-will-editions · 4 years

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QUARANTINE LETTER #4

A fourth letter in our quarantine series, from our friend Icarus.

-----

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED

“They’ve already destroyed everything, all the structures we believed in, trusted. Maybe we’re in a transitional phase, you know? There’s some sort of substitution going on. Meanwhile, we’re navigating in a tremendous vacuum, vaguely oriented by the stars but with no true reference point. Our compasses have gone wild, spinning madly, attracted by thousands of magnetic poles. We might as well throw them out the window, they’re obsolete. It’s just us and the night sky, like it was for the early explorers, while we wait for new, more advanced navigational devices to be invented. My only fear is that the stars have somehow gotten out of place and will be no help as references either.”

- Ignacio de Loyola Brandao, “And Still the Earth”

Dear friends,

It can be strange to intervene in someone else’s debate, but I don’t believe you’ll hold it against me if I do. Over the past weeks, I’ve rather enjoyed the commentary and exchange of letters between my friends, August, Kora, and Orion. Something about the reflections of my friends is missing for me still, so I’ll chime in without wasting too much time, I hope.

QUARANTINE: INCOMPLETE—WHAT WE THINK IS HAPPENING IS ONLY SOMEWHAT ACCURATE

Today, millions of people are working. In warehouses, in offices, in fields, kitchens and storerooms; from the computer, the sorting room and at construction sites, millions of Americans are sharing the coronavirus with each other and with their neighbors. Many of them are asymptomatic, a portion are not sick yet, and certainly some of them are still hiding their symptoms from their families, employers, and coworkers. No zombie apocalypse is complete without the inconsiderate hot-head who insists, deceptively, that his injury is “nothing, it’s fine, let’s keep moving”. Orion wrote that the virus imposes “its own temporality, which immobilizes everything.” If only.

Logistics, shipping, freight, warehousing: these are some of the largest sectors of the 21st century workforce, and they are all on overtime. From Whole Foods to Old Dominion, these disposable workers are simultaneously killable - insofar as the market facilitates their endangerment via assured contact with the virus - and indispensable, insofar as they must not be allowed to strike, unionize, or cease working that this society may minimally function. In these industries, overwhelmingly, black men and immigrants are crammed into job sites without any protective equipment. In other words, they are proletarians in the classical sense, and they are still at work. A true quarantine, a dignified exodus from the commodity society and its extensive productive apparatus, would halt all forms of labor and toil, a circumstance as yet unrealized. If we can say we are living in a quarantine, we must say that it is still incomplete.

AUTONOMY OR AUTOMATA?—THE PANDEMIC AFFECTS ALL OF HUMANITY—WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AS SUCH

What we once called "society" (an entity which now insists it can survive unity and distance simultaneously, even distance for the sake of unity), has been replaced by billions of apparatuses. These apparatuses constitute a vast ACEPHALOGRAM - a system of machines designed to trace and retrace the consciousness of a world that has definitively lost its head.

The period of real domination opened by the aggressive economic and political restructuring in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - “globalization” - has pushed a vast quantity of workers out of manufacturing and into service related industries. Services being overall less profitable then commodity manufacturing and heavy industry, other technological implements such as we see emerge from Silicon Valley have filled the gap, so to speak, of lost profits for the economy by allowing large advertising and analysis firms to mine directly the collective human ambitions in art, sex, politics, culture, and society. To open up this mine, which has produced an existential ruin comparable to the environmental ruin associated with mineral mining, the internet has developed as a global network of pseudo participatory information systems. The data thirst of these industries cannot be sated by the administration of facts from the center or top, they must be produced by the masses directly. But technology does not simply catch data falling naturally from the sky or running off the gutters of consciousness. It produces data by arranging relations such that they produce content that can be bought and sold. Under such conditions, the medical, political, technological and ontological crisis of a pandemic cannot help but be experienced as a video, a collection of tweets, graphs, memes, as background noise, as a conspiracy theory, as a genre in the endless relay of notifications.

THE MIDDLE OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END—WHAT MAKES INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION POSSIBLE, MAKES COMMON UNDERSTANDING IMPOSSIBLE.

The truth is that social media has allowed billions of people to coordinate themselves into large and small containers of meaning and virtual energy. These containers, ecosystems of signs and signifiers, by dint of their polycentralized arrangement, function as an epistemological subversion of established truth-making infrastructures that require a certain amount of hegemony or global purchase: the scientific method, fact-checking, and debate. Occasionally, the understanding produced in these containers, theory-fictions more than anything else, incidentally conform to an intensity with physical correlatives capable of overpowering police infrastructures and seizing public space, as we saw across the world in 2019. More often, the echo chambers, as they are often called, curtail feelings of common dialogue and the perception of shared futurity that would be seemingly embedded in such a “global” sharing of information. This curtailing allows people of all “types” to be bundled together as data sets, insulated from the experience of true diversity of thought, of experience, of analysis. The polycentralized arrangement of the internet today may be even less participatory than previous eras of information sharing, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Commentators and critics have used the ongoing crisis to delay the moment of our collective education with unwavering ideological entrenchment. At work, it is not uncommon for me to hear small business owners and day traders talk about the failures of socialized medicine in Italy, implicitly endorsing greater privatization in the US. Among activists, liberals, and leftists, it is impossible to imagine a greater indictment on the privatized, decentralized, healthcare system than what is taking place. Apocalyptic Christian sects believe the government is going to repress churches for gathering, and social justice advocates believe the coronavirus crisis will be “the same, but worse” on every oppressive axis. It’s hard to imagine another reflex.

While they recognize that the internet has plunged billions of people into a pulverized simulacrum, some of my comrades would have us devote ourselves to the dissemination of real news, of verified and sober analysis, of scientific rigor, in order to combat the prevailing disarray. This warms my heart just as it saddens my intellect. We have always been machine-breakers, in a way, revolting against the forward and crushing movement of industry to preserve a less alienated experience of reality, labor, and community. We aren’t wrong for that. We should be reliable sources of information, but not because we will convince people with our reports — which may no longer be so possible online — rather because we believe it is the right thing to do, and because we can at least proceed on a clear and shared basis with each other. But what other strategies could we utilize for analyzing the world that would allow us to act within the protracted vertigo, without trapping ourselves or others in ideological camps, and without losing revolutionary aspirations in a world where global verification of facts seems impossible, but where universal need for a transformation, fascistic or revolutionary, feels like common sense?

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED—THE SYSTEM REDUCES ITSELF TO A PURE FLUX OF DYNAMICS

“We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming

A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder”

-Roberto Bolano, “Leave Everything, Again”

For millennia, the administration of public facts was the cornerstone of political power, and stamping out alternative readings the chief objective of the repressive machinery. The ruling bureaucracy has organized itself to prevent any global loss of control. They’ve always done that. What is surprising is how readily, since 9/11 at least, perhaps much earlier, they have abandoned many important methods for doing so. As the possibility of imagining its own future became increasingly stamped-out, the reigning order abandoned any pretense of pursuing the ideals it propped itself up on, its sole promise being to ward-off unforeseen eventualities. Without embarrassing myself with long-winded arguments about things I am ill-equipped to discuss - certainly less knowledgeable than my dear friends are on such matters as philosophy and critical works - I’d prefer to refer to an argument advanced by Brian Massumi in his essay “National Emergency Enterprise”. In this piece, he argues that a primary strategy of governance is to identify all possible causes of a scenario. The market refashions environments that submit the living tissue of relations one and all to technological “dataveillance”, information which, in principle, allows the administrators of such a system to model its every possible outcome, translating every action into a trans-action, while ensuring that every aberration meets a form of control. He utilizes the example of a forest fire, but we can just look at the pandemic and it’s consequences.

The ruling class everywhere, has argued and governed as if the coronavirus is "merely the flu", justifying late responses and insufficient care, while also closing borders and taking emergency measures as if we are living in a veritable plague. There are strategies attached to every discourse, interests silently advanced with each interpretation, and powers produced and mobilized by every kind of theory and operation. Anyway, we have been living in the fall out of multiple convergent strategies for controlling and responding to this situation. The governors of the world, at least of the democratic countries, are basically throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks. We can imagine that modeling and predictions are conducted endlessly based on analytics produced through data mining and network analysis purchased from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. As technocratic governments subordinate welfare states to the "science" of neoliberalism, the nihilism of the powerful today subordinates everything to the "science" of control.

Anyway, who organizes oblivion today acts with no principles and can only speak in lies. What does this mean for the rest of us?

NOTHING IS EVERYTHING, TRUE IS PERMITTED—TRUTH DOES NOT REQUIRE A SUBJECT ONLY LIES DO. LET'S KEEP IT REAL, WHATEVER THAT IS.

We can and are responding to this situation. The most important thing, from my perspective, is that we develop a vibrant enough ecosystem of strategies, corresponding to the largest possible interpretation of facts, without dividing our sympathies and concerns into rival fiefdoms and ideological sects. There are benefits to arguing that nothing of the situation is unique, that in fact the worst off before are the worst off now, that today simply represents an opportunity for us, etc. I am not among the comrades advancing this position, but I want to see the results of that framework as soon as possible, if it does not in fact raise the threshold for meaningful interventions. There are benefits to arguing that the quarantine is not deep enough, that the politics of mobilization have failed utterly to devastate the economy, but that a true lock down of the world could resemble the worlds first ever international wildcat general strike. I want to hear advocates of this position contend with the possibility of carceral interpretations of this argument. For those planting survival gardens, for those running autonomous rent strike hotlines, for those training in firearms, I want us to develop a shared enough perspective to see that there is a simple unity in our strategies, which is what is precisely, and incorrectly, attacked in Kora’s most recent letter to Orion: our autonomy. Beyond any individualistic misinterpretations, it is my perspective that the ability of human beings to self-authorize our activity, to determine our shared destinies, to control supply chains, vital infrastructures, and means of subsistence without the mediating factors of the market, are necessary prerequisites for a dignified life on earth. This is not to say, as Kora has intelligently argued, that anyone could come to control the unfolding course of history - a delusion that preppers, governors, and revolutionaries have all held - but precisely that autonomous, self-organized, structures are the only structures capable of responding quickly enough to the destabilizing, frightening, and uncertain futures lying in wait regardless of what we or anyone else do. We must utilize the current situation to repolarize the circumstances to the best of our ability around foundational concerns of power: on the one hand, there are all of the people of the world, some of them bastards we would not live with, and our shared need for dignified healthcare, housing, sustenance, and livelihood; and on the other hand there are all of the bastards waiting this out on yachts, manipulating public data for the sake of a geopolitical PR battle, utilizing the pandemic to pursue totalitarian power fantasies and clampdowns. We don’t need to steer the ship forward, we need to be able to swim in the wreckage.

Sorry, I wrote too much. Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading what others think soon.

-- Icarus

04.11.2020

STATE OF EMERGENCY, DAY 40

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

#Quarantine letters #COVID19 #USA #articles

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