#psalm zero

[that-vibe-i-cant-explain]

I normally don't buy entire series at once but those Murderbot books look like tiny, thin potato chips and you know what they say about potato chips

[justalittlesolarpunk]

I’ve teased it. You’ve waited. I’ve procrastinated. You’ve probably forgotten all about it.

But now, finally, I’m here with my solarpunk resources masterpost!

YouTube Channels:

Andrewism

The Solarpunk Scene

Solarpunk Life

Solarpunk Station

Our Changing Climate

Podcasts:

The Joy Report

How To Save A Planet

Demand Utopia

Solarpunk Presents

Outrage and Optimisim

From What If To What Next

Solarpunk Now

Idealistically

The Extinction Rebellion Podcast

The Landworkers' Radio

Wilder

What Could Possibly Go Right?

Frontiers of Commoning

The War on Cars

The Rewild Podcast

Solacene

Imagining Tomorrow

Books (Fiction):

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness The Dispossessed The Word for World is Forest

Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Phoebe Wagner: When We Hold Each Other Up

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Brenda J. Pierson: Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro: Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Justine Norton-Kertson: Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology

Sim Kern: The Free People’s Village

Ruthanna Emrys: A Half-Built Garden

Sarina Ulibarri: Glass & Gardens

Books (Non-fiction):

Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom

George Monbiot: Feral

Miles Olson: Unlearn, Rewild

Mark Shepard: Restoration Agriculture

Kristin Ohlson: The Soil Will Save Us

Rowan Hooper: How To Spend A Trillion Dollars

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: The Mushroom At The End of The World

Kimberly Nicholas: Under The Sky We Make

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass

David Miller: Solved

Ayana Johnson, Katharine Wilkinson: All We Can Save

Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are The Weather

Colin Tudge: Six Steps Back To The Land

Edward Wilson: Half-Earth

Natalie Fee: How To Save The World For Free

Kaden Hogan: Humans of Climate Change

Rebecca Huntley: How To Talk About Climate Change In A Way That Makes A Difference

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac: The Future We Choose

Jonathon Porritt: Hope In Hell

Paul Hawken: Regeneration

Mark Maslin: How To Save Our Planet

Katherine Hayhoe: Saving Us

Jimmy Dunson: Building Power While The Lights Are Out

Paul Raekstad, Sofa Saio Gradin: Prefigurative Politics

Andreas Malm: How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Almanac For The Anthropocene

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

William MacAskill: What We Owe To The Future

Mikaela Loach: It's Not That Radical

Miles Richardson: Reconnection

David Harvey: Spaces of Hope Rebel Cities

Eric Holthaus: The Future Earth

Zahra Biabani: Climate Optimism

David Ehrenfeld: Becoming Good Ancestors

Stephen Gliessman: Agroecology

Chris Carlsson: Nowtopia

Jon Alexander: Citizens

Leah Thomas: The Intersectional Environmentalist

Greta Thunberg: The Climate Book

Jen Bendell, Rupert Read: Deep Adaptation

Seth Godin: The Carbon Almanac

Jane Goodall: The Book of Hope

Vandana Shiva: Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture

Amitav Ghosh: The Great Derangement

Minouche Shafik: What We Owe To Each Other

Dieter Helm: Net Zero

Chris Goodall: What We Need To Do Now

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stephanie Foote: The Cambridge Companion To The Environmental Humanities

Bella Lack: The Children of The Anthropocene

Hannah Ritchie: Not The End of The World

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

Kim Stanley Robinson: Ministry For The Future

Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall: Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come

Lynne Jones: Sorry For The Inconvenience But This Is An Emergency

Helen Crist: Abundant Earth

Sam Bentley: Good News, Planet Earth!

Timothy Beal: When Time Is Short

Andrew Boyd: I Want A Better Catastrophe

Kristen R. Ghodsee: Everyday Utopia

Elizabeth Cripps: What Climate Justice Means & Why We Should Care

Kylie Flanagan: Climate Resilience

Chris Johnstone, Joanna Macy: Active Hope

Mark Engler: This is an Uprising

Anne Therese Gennari: The Climate Optimist Handbook

Magazines:

Solarpunk Magazine

Positive News

Resurgence & Ecologist

Ethical Consumer

Films (Fiction):

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

The End We Start From

Woman At War

Black Panther

Star Trek

Tomorrowland

Films (Documentary):

2040: How We Can Save The Planet

The People vs Big Oil

Wild Isles

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Generation Green New Deal

Planet Earth III

Video Games:

Terra Nil

Animal Crossing

Gilded Shadows

Anno 2070

Stardew Valley

RPGs:

Solarpunk Futures

Perfect Storm

Advocacy Groups:

A22 Network

Extinction Rebellion

Greenpeace

Friends of The Earth

Green New Deal Rising

Apps:

Ethy

Sojo

BackMarket

Depop

Vinted

Olio

Buy Nothing

Too Good To Go

Websites:

European Co-housing

UK Co-housing

US Co-housing

Brought By Bike (connects you with zero-carbon delivery goods)

ClimateBase (find a sustainable career)

Environmentjob (ditto)

Businesses (🤢):

Ethical Superstore

Hodmedods

Fairtransport/Sail Cargo Alliance

Let me know if you think there’s anything I’ve missed!

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

are otters or songbirds more jewish i have an argument to settle

Rating: Songbirds, but there's a makhloket

The majority opinion holds that songbirds are more Jewish than otters, as it is written, “Even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself in which to set her young near Your altar, O LORD of hosts, my Sovereign and my God” (Psalms 84:4). There are many other texts that mention songbirds throughout the Tanakh; there are zero results for “otter” as referring to the animal on Sefaria in our sacred texts.* Thus, the simple answer is that songbirds are more important in Judaism, and therefore more Jewish, than otters. Additionally, medieval Jewish illumination such as the famous Bird's Head Haggadah depicts Jews with human bodies and the heads and beaks of birds, indicating a close connection between Jews and birds:

However, as is Jewish tradition, we preserve the following minority opinions as well: 

Otters are more Jewish than songbirds: Songbirds were created on the fifth day of creation, while otters, like humans, were created on the sixth day. Therefore, otters are closer to humanity, and Jews are part of humanity, so otters are more Jewish than songbirds. (Genesis 1:20-24) Furthermore, this photo from the Cincinnati Zoo speaks for itself:

Both otters and songbirds are equally Jewish: Psalms 50:10-11 reads “For Mine is every animal of the forest, the beasts on a thousand mountains I know every bird of the mountains, the creatures of the field are subject to Me.” Clearly, this covers both otters and songbirds, so both are equally Jewish. Furthermore, otters and songbirds both look extremely cute in yarmulkes, which may not be halakhically relevant but feels important to state nonetheless.

Neither otters nor songbirds are Jewish; however, they are righteous gentiles under the Noahide covenant: To be Jewish means to be bound by the Abrahamic covenant in relationship with the Holy One. As animals are neither descended from Jewish parents nor have the agency to choose to be bound by the covenant made between God and Abraham, as human converts do, neither otters nor songbirds are Jewish**. However, following the great flood, God said to Noah, “I now establish My covenant with you and your offspring to come, and with every living thing that is with you—birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well—all that have come out of the ark, every living thing on earth. (Genesis 9:9-10). This covenant, symbolized by the rainbow, is God’s commitment to every living thing (clearly including both songbirds and otters) that God will never flood the Earth again-- something every one of us can support.

*(okay, there are three results: one is a typo for “utter” as in “our otter ruin” and the other two are German). 

** My cat, however, is definitely Jewish.

[ghost-popcorn-bucket]

In honor of a week's passing since the release of RITE HERE RITE NOW, here are my... unadulterated notes from the theater.

🚨WARNING🚨 Contains spoilers for RHRN!

what day is it???? FRIDAY BITCH

kaisarion -> trailer scene

rats

"never to return" sobbing

faith!!

spillways. seestor in wheelchair. psalms????? cctv screen warped

cirice. kicks rain out of the way. bat suit. eye to eye -- emeritus eye ooh

fog??? reddi whip???

absolution --literal fireworks

sodo stealing his thunder like a dickhead

ritual -- sodo continues but rain stops him / flashes yousuck at him

call me little sunshine in full gear

con clavi with tha thurible

bullfighting bro??

watcher in the sky

jumps into a box

nihil marital problems with seestor in tha box

third 7 inches song???????? holy shit???

ghost farts

if you have ghost -- 3 ghoulettes on strings, 1 vocal

vocal ghoulette has nihil face paint on?????

boxing time

twenties

skeleton dancers with weird feet shoes

thongs and nipple pasties

year zero in even more getup, intercut with old movies// pyrotechnics

he is // mortality moment, nostril shot

"so the people know you have given everything, and that you have nothing left to give"

nihil resurrection

SCOOBY DOO ASS NIHIL/SEESTOR MUSIC VID FOR MARY ON A CROSS

mummy dust

...where did you feel it

KEVIN JESUS

shoe change -- ashley also sock reveal

RESPITE ON THE SPITALFIELDS AUGH

rain doesnt get water

encore - kiss tha gogoat, danca macabre -- skellies get pants, ghost says happy pride fr, they have an orgy

SQUARE HAMMER RAAHAAAAA

one last one up the poop chute???? does split kick midair

the moon landing??? hot air balloon??

HE GOES TO SPACE WHAT THE FUCK

COPIA HAS A TWIN

SEEESTOR FUCKING DIES I CALLED IT

FATHER IMPERATOR

when it all burns down -- check if its a new track -- feels very 70s

[dmsr-art]

you know that muir quote about john having an uneasy relationship to being a biblical patriarch, but also that he falls back on these things b/c they're familiar? i think that dynamic makes jarrow SO interesting. i think there'd be a moment he'd realize that he found it very hot because he loves fucking this insanely poised young woman into total disarray, loves being the god who ravishes his sweet little st. teresa, loves watching her come undone on his cock, and he'd know a lot of it is bound up in the gender roles he seems to have deliberately erased and a lot of christian hierarchy and he'd be like "hmmm not great" but absolutely would not stop because it's making his dick harder than its been in centuries. he absolutely fucking lives to watch her gasp out prayers as he fucks her into a fourth orgasm and 10000% earnestly looks at her in missionary and thinks in bible passages about the mystic devotion between god and man. non-zero chance he's quoted psalm 46:5 as he makes Intense Eye Contact mid-missionary.

i don't really have anything to add thank u for this anon i am nodding my head and shaking ur hand

[fr0gleggs]

Ethubs and Unrequited Devotion

1. How Christianity Encourages Codependence by KC Brown 2. Building the Redstone Shop! - Hermitcraft 10 #8 by TangoTek (7:44) 3. Cop Car by Mitski 4. Psalms 121:6 5. Last Life #5 - Boogieman Business by Ethoslab (23:08) 6. This reddit post by u/DeadSpiderInPocket 7. Zero at the Bone by Jane Seville 8. Last Life: Episode 7 - BETRAYED by Grian (31:55), transcript by beacon-lamp 9. art by @panidanya

[duckprintspress]

32 of Our Favorite Sci-Fi Reads for National Science Fiction Day

Duck Prints Press LOVES kicking off the new year with one of our favorite annual recommendation lists: science fiction stories (ideally queer, but it wasn’t required) to celebrate National Science Fiction Day! For this year, 14 Duck Prints Press contributors suggested a whopping 32 awesome science fiction books. Note that there’s no overlap with last year (by design) so make sure you also check out Our Ten Favorite Science Fiction Reads of 2022 for some more titles to add to your 2024 TBR.

Our 2024 Science Fiction Recs:

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

Little Mushroom by Shisi

Always Human by Ari North

More Than We Deserve by Nicola Kapron

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

CrashCourse by Wilhelmina Baird

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen

Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden

Victories Greater than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Fever King by Victoria Lee

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Infomocracy by Malka Older

Zero Sum Game by S. L. Huang

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Trigun and Trigun Maximum by Yasuhiro Nightow

Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka & Katsumi Michihara

In the Lives of Puppets by T. J. Klune

Mega Man by Ian Flynn & Pat Spaz Spaziante

Mega Man Megamix by Hitoshi Ariga

Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow

Once & Future by A. R. Capetta & Cory McCarthy

Five-Twelfths of Heaven by Melissa Scott

The Big Sigma by Joseph R. Lallo

Want to come read some of these books with us? Join our 2024 Queer Book Challenge on Storygraph! One of our challenges there is to read a queer science fiction book, and there’s a lot on this list that’d count!

You can check out all our sci-fi recs on this Goodreads shelf.

Wish you could contribute to these lists? Back our Patreon, join our Discord, and you can!

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 17 – A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

Okay, I have officially finally read a solarpunk thing I unreservedly enjoyed! Which means my opinion about all the other examples of the genre is no longer entirely just me being a hater.

...I joke (mostly), but I was sold this as basically ‘Psalm for the Wild Built but with actual conflict and an attempt to seriously think through its ideas”, and it absolutely lived up to that! Plus it’s a fun read with a few actually meaty characters, too. I mean, I do have complaints. Which I will go on about below. At length. But in the loving way, not the ‘actively resent having read this’ way. As proof of this, I offer the fact that this thing is well over two three four thousand words long, and for readability I’m breaking it into subheadings.

Summary

Anyway, the basics are that it’s the late 21st century, and the world’s been through a bit of a ringer in terms of climate change-induced disaster. At some point in the previous generation, a lot of political-economic power was seized by the Dandelion Networks, cyber-eco-anarchist collectives organized around the watersheds of major river networks, and dedicated to trying to unfuck the planet some. The actual plot revolves around First Contact, as an alien ship lands in the Chesapeake, offering evacuation and relocation to what they fully expect to be the desperate and grateful inhabitants of a dying planet. This leads to some awkwardness, given the Networks civilizational commitment to the mission of restoring the earth and lack of interest in eventually pulling it apart to make a dyson sphere, and the paternalistic (well, maternalistic) condescension of a decent chunk of the aliens about whether humans are competent to make that choice. Made even more tense because representatives of the vestigial United States and the much-reduced-but-still-important former globe-spanning megacorporations are much more enthusiastic about what the aliens have to offer.

So yeah, book full of cultural confusion, high stakes diplomacy, intrigue and ideology. I adored it.

General Discussion

The aliens were fun, in that they were absolutely and entirely nonhumanoid – two species, and neither of them mammalian or bipedal, and one of them not even having anything we’d really recognize as a face. It made the descriptions of conversations and physical interactions pretty funny to visualize at points, honestly; though it did also take me something like a hundred pages to get a real proper image of what both of the species in question actually looked like.

It was kind of interesting how so much effort was spent on making the alien’s appearance so, well, alien, but everything else worked on maximally convenient space opera rules? They can breathe the same air as humans with only minimal discomfort (and vice versa), and even enjoy each other’s food. Plus the story starts with the aliens having already created translation software that does its job perfectly with zero meaningful confusion or plot-relavent loss of meaning. Which all makes sense in terms of making the plot works, but still – no matter how important sharing food is as a thematic expression of shared intimacy and cultural exchange, still wounds my suspension of disbelief in this First Contact story when the 2 meter furry tree-spider can even digest human cuisine, let alone enjoy it.

The alien’s culture was both fascinating and kind of frustrating – I did love how the whole common sense of ‘of course a species will advance enough to leave their homeworld behind, or else die on it’ was so bone deep that most of them kind of floundered trying to actually try and convince someone who didn’t already agree with them. And likewise our protagonist and her compatriots were basically totally unable to make a convincing argument that didn’t take the value of Earth and a natural ecosystem as a given. That felt very true to life.

But frustrating because, like – the aliens have a sort of matriarchal social organization where nursing mothers (especially/specifically of one of the two species?) are taken as the natural authority figures in the extended cross-species households that seem to be the atomic units of economic production and political participation. But there’s a massive amount of gestured at nuances and references to wider institutions that are just never followed up on, which I’d normally consider just generally good worldbuilding except for that the fact that writing the Xenology 101 handbook should literally be the main character’s job here. Third act of the book, and she’s still never gotten around to asking for the precise mechanics of how authority is divided among the crew of the interstellar spaceship/first contact team/extended family she’s been dealing with!

The Dandelion Networks have to be by far the most thought out ‘solarpunk’ society I’ve ever really seen in a story, though that’s admittedly an incredibly low bar. I’ve still got some qualms and quibbles and bits that annoyed me about the portrayal, but insofar as it’s kind of unfair to expect every sci fi book to come free with an extra utopian manifesto, they did pass the sniff test as seeming, well, real? If not exactly as a socio-political/economic structure, then at least as a culture and civilization with its own traditions and minor hangups and celebrations and day-to-day routines. I also very much do appreciate the fact that even if they’re clearly portrayed as much, much better than the alternatives, they’re not an outright utopia.

The fact that, legally speaking, the United States government never gave up any territory or jurisdiction, it just chose of its own accord to merge and massively expand several national parks and subcontract their administration to these revolutionary anarchist networks with absolutely zero coercion involved nosiree, was also great. Or made me laugh, anyway.

The vestigial USA – here also our only representative of the entire class of still-extant nation states – gets comparatively little attention compared to the other players involved. On the one hand that’s kind of a shame because it’s legitimately unclear the degree to its the government and not the watershed networks putting on delusions on grandeur (which, to be clear, I kind of loved). And I did adore the fact that NASA...well, it didn’t actually do a coup, but just selectively read the legislation defining its responsibilities to just jump in and start handling everything about First Contact negotiations without really bothering to wait for permission first. But on the other hand they do very much seem the most normal – which is to say archaic, from the rest of the setting’s perspective, with Congress and the federal bureaucracy being characterized as ineffectual deadlocked quagmires where ideas go to die. Also the only people for whom monogamous long-term relationships or ‘most people being cis’ seems to be at all the norm, which I think makes them the closest thing the book has to on-screen social conservatives.

The Corps – the remnants of the formerly globe-spanning and world-burning megacorporations, now in the main restricted to the artificial island city-states they fled to when the world really started going to shit and the revolutions started – are the actual main ideological foils to the Dandelion Networks presented through by the book. And – look, I’ll be honest, the culture and politics feels like a natural (if incredibly optimistic) outgrowth of certain trends in modern American culture. The Corpos feel like an alien civilization invented whole cloth for a space opera because it seemed interesting and fun. Which, to be clear, they absolutely are – but, like, this book theoretically takes place sixty years in the future. ‘Specifically the corporate oligarchs and their most loyal guards, technicians and toadies have in one post-revolutionary-exile generation developed a stable entirely presentation based normatively genderfluid 7-gender system” seems like, how to put this, a bit of a stretch?

Still, they’re definitely fun, and I do really appreciate that Emrys gave them a real ideology and mythology instead of just making them self-consciously evil (a carefully nurtured bitterness that the Watershed Networks and their carbon budgets and sustainability mandates essentially stole the future from them, combined with a real belief in meritocracy and just deserts). Though, like, even moreso than the USA, I’m legitimately not sure the degree to which Judy and the other Watersheders common sense about them being slowly decaying relics losing people with every year is supposed to be taken as correct? Because, like, city-states in the middle of the ocean capable of sustaining themselves in the style we’ve seen implies either vast hinterlands or sufficient productivity to import all the raw materials they need from abroad in exchange for finished goods or access to truly immense amounts of energy or some combination of all three, and none of those really scream ‘archaic relic’. All to say that I might have come out viewing the Watershed Networks as more full of triumphalism and groupthink than was intended – though honestly if so, I like them better that way. It’s an entirely natural flaw for their system to create, honestly. Look at reddit.

Speaking of flaws the protagonist’s society had – I found it immensely charming how Judy was just, so utterly and completely terrible at being a spy? On a cinemasins level you do have to wonder how the corps weren’t already ruling the world again if the Network’s best and brightest are all this easy to entrap and blackmail, but on a thematic level it does work as emphasizing how the networks, well, work through the wisdom of crowds and constructive debate, and trying to fly off on your own in little self-appointed conspiracies rarely ends well for anyone involved.

The Eponymous Garden

The question of what humanity is for – whether we have a destiny to reach for the stars, or if there’s something vital about the planet earth (about a living ecology, about one’s ancestral home writ large, about having a place in a natural order) – is, if not the book’s overriding theme, certainly the one it spends the most time consciously thinking about. (I mean, it’s literally the title). And the book really does try to make the conflict genuinely difficult and nuanced; our heroine is a voracious and vitriolic partisan of the Earth-is-special side of things, but the text pretty clearly doesn’t agree with her about that as much as it does some of her other positions.

The entire debate was honestly fairly reminiscent of some debates you see floating around Tumblr every so often. The Ringers have created a curated toy ecology to keep their habitats pleasant and livable, and that done see their abandoned homeworlds as containing nothing really worth mourning in fact they’ve literally pulled them apart as raw materials for their orbital habitats and megaengineering projects. Judy views the idea of humanity doing the same – even to Mercury or Mars, let alone Earth - as both horrifying and, well, not quite profane (her Judaism is definitely an important part of her character, but she never directly uses theology as explanation for her politics) but certainly ontologically, fundamentally wrong.

The Ringer’s teleology is pretty simple – technological advancement gives a species the ability to care for itself and free itself from the various tyrannies of nature, at the cost of expending scarce resources on a dozen different fronts and eventually leaving their planet uninhabitable. The only question is whether they’ll escape the world or die with it. Humanity is the first species they’ve encountered that hadn’t already gone with option B. More fundamentally – and here’s where the human corporates jump enthusiastically on board – leaving the planet behind means refusing the limits of ecology, and to an extent of scarcity. Populations in the trillions, a dyson swarm, mega-engineering projects with millennia-long schedules. Not to mention the whole romance of endless new horizons, novelty and exploration and a consciously arranged world.

Which is all, of course, exactly the dream the Watershed Networks spent their revolution fighting against. The Chesapeake Network is from every indication a very nice place to live, but it’s also very much defined by the necessary scarcity that comes with trying to live sustainably, and in harmony with the horrible damaged biome you’re also in the middle of a massive, civilizational infrastructure project to restore. International travel and imported goods strictly limited by carbon budget, international communication strictly limited by the need to limit potential infection vectors for malware, apparent societally normative coparenting and/or polyamory as a labour-saving thing – abstracted away from the specifics of space travel, it’s basically the perennial degrowth argument on here.

Though as far as space colonization qua space colonization goes, it’s kind of fascinating to compare Garden’s take on it to how it’s presented in Terra Ignota? Which is to say, Ada Palmer presents spreading through space as a heroic endeavour – something worth doing for its own sake, because it is in some sense humanity’s purpose, but a great and arduous project that will strain every available resource and lead to a lot of impoverishment and scarcity for the doing. Which comes amusingly close to mirroring exactly how Emrys characterizes staying on Earth.

A few trillion aliens willing to handle the capital expenditure for relocation and infrastructure do change the math a bit, I suppose.

...and It’s Gardeners

Which is to say, the Watershed Networks. As I said above, they’re clearly intended to be something of a flawed or incomplete utopia, generally heroic and praiseworthy but with major blindspots and issues. I’ve got qualms about what those issues are and their severity, but I’ll save that for the petty bitching section below. Besides, given that they’re decently thought out and detailed, it’s honestly more interesting to examine them as an incomplete utopia and the principles underlying them.

So, the networks are a high tech cybernetically-organized federation of green anarchists, organized around the watershed of a major river and with the civilizational mission to protect and restore that watershed’s ecology; coordination between watershed’s seems to be limited to small scale trade or else matters which affect multiple watersheds.

‘High tech’ isn’t a joke, either – augmented reality interfaces seem totally normative and almost necessary given their government, not to mention the ten thousand different monitoring systems used to keep track of the status of each part of the whole ‘unfuck the ecosystem’ project. Robotic drones and prosthetic limbs with full haptic feedback were both totally unremarkable – anprims they really aren’t.

They govern themselves by – okay, I said ‘by reddit’ above and that’s mostly a joke. But like, only mostly. By infinetly flowering nested chats and discussion fora dedicated to any topic of public interest, to which any citizen can contribute to the debate or propose action items through that AR interface, with ones weight on any given issue being determined by the algorithm’s approximation of the community’s trust in your wisdom and expertise on topics like what’s being discussed (‘Utopia’ means taking as read that this works).

Beyond just weighting and being an automod, the Dandelion algorithm also encode the Network’s values, amplifying the voices that live up to them and de-emphasizing those that don’t. And most of all, they act as phantom votes representing the Watershed’s nonhuman constituents, boosting suggestions and action items based on the interests of the wider ecology, wildlife, etc.(again, accepting that this works is basically the price of admission).

So far so Eclipse Phase-but-green. But there’s a couple specifically interesting things about the whole setup that I do want to focus on.

First, the whole theory of politics and decision making underlying the Networks (and the book) is something like a wholehearted belief in the wisdom of crowds – that everyone involved cooperating and trying to come up with a crowdsourced solution through moderated debate will lead to better ideas and better solutions than a small group of experts or conspirators or operatives. And the book does actually commit to this – basically every time anyone from the Watershed goes off on their own and assumes they need to make an important decision on their own/in a small group it blows up right in their face.

You know the one line from Men In Black? ‘A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals”? The book basically commits to the exact opposite of that.

More minor but it did just strike me as interesting – Judy (and, I think, other networers) never refer to each other by their job title, and in fact object to it. Judy is not an environment engineer, she just does some environmental engineering work, as well as jam making, gardening, child-raising, and a dozen other things. On the one hand, almost everything about the life of someone in the networks pretty much has to be pretty legible – basically everything seems to be public, the community is tight knit and expected to host each other as needed, everyone wears pronoun pins, the entire labour-allocation and weighting system must require immense amounts of information on each individual participant – but on the other, none of them are ever reducable down to their jobs or roles. Reminds me of that one Heinlein quote, honestly. ‘Specialization is for insects’ and all that.

Cultural Exchange

I don’t really have much to say here, but it’s a prominent enough theme I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention it, so. Aside from the high politics and idealogue-ing, Garden is really concerned with what the worm’s-eye-view of cultural exchange following First Contact might look like, and just demonstrating different ways that culture can be shared.

Which is why I really can’t be too annoyed at the implications of both species of Ringers and humans being able to both consume and appreciate each others cuisine – Emrys has clearly some of those ultra-viral tumblr posts about how sacred sharing food is, and the sharing of meals and ways of eating is a pretty key way the book both characterizes cultures (e.g. corporate culture ‘feast food’ being a way of showing off artifice and competing to make novel designs its impossible to guess the taste of is just one more way they’re shown to be obsessed with appearances and artificiality and general decadence) and demonstrates trust or sharing between them.

Beyond meals (or as part of them), there’s also religion and ritual used for much the same purpose. And sex, of course – it takes like a week and a half for Judy to go from being introduced to intelligent alien life to asking one of them if he wants to try a threesome – and, probably more importantly, family and children. There’s a whole gimmick about how Ringer matriarchs always bring their children with them to negotiations as (among other things, roughly) a show of good faith, and expect humans to do the same. The book seems slightly unsure of itself about how much it thinks this is a good idea (also about Ringer family structure/matriarchal authority more broadly, to a less degree), but the different species of children bonding and playing together while their parents is pretty clearly shown as an unambiguous good.

And finally-

Complaining

Because if I’m going to think about literally any piece of media for this long, I end up with annoyances I need to vent about. So! In no particular order, narrative issues, worldbuilding issues, and random nitpicking.

The whole final arc of the plot – basically everything after they leave Earth – felt incredibly rushed for how much it was trying to introduce. Now, getting a little glimpse of how the Ringers lived and worked and bickered was absolutely necessary, but there just was not enough wordcount devoted to it to really be anything more than a glimpse. The politiking just felt broad and clumsy, and the way Ringer politics worked a bit half-baked. Beyond which, there’s all these hints of interesting power dynamics and inequalities among the Ringers but then the book never really expands on or does anything with them (beyond, like, spending half a page introducing the concept of pronouns pins and...okay ‘being trans’ is wrong because one of the species’ seems to be entirely genderfluid as a rule, but determining ones own gender? To them. And then never following up on that either!).

But beyond all that, there’s just the more significant issue is just that the entire climactic confrontation is resolved by...a tertiary character whose spoken on a single-digit number of pages being overcome by conscience and admitting the whole corporate conspiracy and sabotage which is responsible for every wrong thing the Networks have done so far. Not even under prodding or courting from the protagonists, either – if that one fashion designer hadn’t been a slightly more important secondary character’s sibling and just been left with the luggage, the Networks would have been fucked. Instead, the one bit of testimony sways the assembled aliens and saves the day. Just felt too neat and easy and unearned.

More annoying still is the specifics of how the Networks failings are portrayed. Now, as I said above, they aren’t portrayed as perfect, but the book does a thing I really, truly despise in fictional worldbuilding (in large part because of how common it is in nonfiction too) where essentially every thing the networkers get wrong and every stupid mistake they make is the result of nefarious Outside Agitators corrupting and sabotaging the system – like the evil corporate spies and hackers are literally responsible for everything wrong with Networker politics, and if they hadn’t sabotaged the Dandelion Network there’s no way people would ever get anything wrong. Puts a bad taste in my mouth, like the people who never shut up about any stupid mistake done by ‘their’ side being a false flag.

Beyond that, like – okay, so if I’m going to take the book on its own terms I just have to accept that this anarchist network is capable of coordinating labour on a vast and detailed enough scale to handle ecological restoration efforts that are halfway to terraforming at this point, and capable of mustering and deploying coercive force with enough strength to actually cow and keep in line numerous polities with more centralized social organizations that historically really do win at that sort of thing. Sure, okay, not exactly fair to ask Emrys to Solve Anarchism, even if I’d have really loved some acknowledgement of where exactly all the metal and rare earths for all these robots and prosthetic and IT infrastructure is coming from (sure, carbon budgets, but like – where’s the Chesepeak’s sacrifice zone that got designated to hold all the mining and heavy industry?).

More importantly, though, I can still wish the book had dug into the guts of the system and, like, pproblematized it a bit? The fact that public debate and the weighting of people’s votes is controlled by these opaque algorithms seems like it requires investing your programmers (not even just programmers, specifically the ones working to maintain this incredibly intricate system) incredible amounts of trust and power they could abuse without people really noticing! Or take the fact that political debate is structured and influenced by the consciously determined ethical and political principles built into the system; okay, so the system’s a full generation old now, yes? Is there no controversy, no generational divide, no resentment among the younger cohort about their speech and opinions being weighed according to their parents ideals? The whole setup seems like it’s built to exemplify that one Marx quote, traditions of the dead weighing like a nightmare on the brains of the living &c. There are multi generational households, and the family is clearly an important socio-economic unit, with some being much more prestigious and influential than others, so how does inheritance work in this anarchist utopia? There’s some interesting drama to dig into, here!

Beyond that, everyone in the Networks is just too...nice? Like, the final epilogue involves the corporae programmer who literally created the malware that almost destroyed everything – and did get people killed – defecting. And absolutely no one holds any sort of grudge? She’s just given a house and told to start helping when she can? Which I found pretty hard to swallow on like three or four different levels (‘do they just keep spare houses lying around to give away whenever someone needs’, not least. If you’re deeply concerned with living sustainably and in harmony with nature, immigration and land/resource use are actually major issues that are going to run into a lot of resource constraints, especially if you’re trying to rewild or diversify what had been industrial farmland).

And significantly less important but – the fact that everyone who appeared on screen (anarchists, corporate executives, federal bureaucrats, random Network programmers and partygoers and corpro interns and-) is basically a queer feminist with only a vague historical understanding of being oppressed on the basis of gender or sexuality (and the only exception is one of Judy’s coparents being raised in an oppressive ‘Purist’ cult he eventually escaped from) is probably necessary to keep all sides at least potentially sympathetic to the expected audience, but it did hurt the verisimilitude of the worldbuilding some, for me. Though hey, maybe that’s just me being unduly pessimistic, fuck knows there’s been plenty of progress on those fronts between 1960 and now, so hey!

Anyway yes, good read!

[thequietabsolute]

December

"No, don't stop writing your grievous poetry. It will do you good, this work of your grief. Keep writing until there is nothing left. It will take time, and the years will go by." Ours was a gentle generation, pacific, In love with music, art and restaurants, And he with she, strolling among the canvases, And she with him, at concerts, coats on their laps. Almost all of us were shy when we were young. No friend of ours had ever been to war. So many telephone numbers, remembered addresses; So many things to remember. The red sun hangs in a black tree, a moist Exploded zero, bleeding into the trees Praying from the earth upward, a psalm In wood and light, in sky, earth and water. These bars of birdsong come from another world; They ring in the air like little doorbells. They go by quickly, our best florescent selves As good as summer and in love with being. Reality, I remember you as her soft kiss At morning. You were her presence beside me. The red sun drips its molten dusk. Wet fires Embrace the barren orchards, these gardens in A city of cold slumbers. I am trapped in it. It is December. The town is part of my mourning And I, too, am part of whatever it grieves for. Whose tears are these, pooled on this cellophane?

— Douglas Dunn, from Elegies

1985, Faber & Faber.

[slutdge]

whats your eyehategod collection like?

Idk if you mean merch or records or both but I'll use this ask as an excuse to infodump abt it all. As far as shirts go, I've got the Charles Manson slit wrist one, the old school Children of God shirt in green, and their TANFP 30th anniversary shirt I got when I saw them last year. I've also got the 2024 Southern Nihilism Front hoodie, and the NOLA Jesus shirt and The Power Of Dirt Weed mini patch which I sadly lost but at least I added it to Tshirtslayer before I lost it and I chatted w the dude that made the original run of those patches so that was cool and their 2024 patch pack that had the slit wrists, guns and giant logo patches. I've also got their NOLA snapback and 4 flyers I picked up from the show I went to. As far as physical media goes, I've got their first 3 albums on both cassette and vinyl, TANFP is a cool pukey pink/blue color mix, Dopesick is on white vinyl and ITNOS my fave EHG album is a dark green colored vinyl (my fave color) so thats neat, I've also got 10 Years and their self titled album on vinyl, their Sabbath split 7 inch, and the New Orleans is the New Vietnam 7 inch thats cool cause its got the phoenix engraved on the flipside and its orange and black, also a promo flexidisc I got in an issue of Decibel magazine for their song The Liar's Psalm. Also I've got a bunch of their side project shit, I have NOLA by Down on vinyl, I have NOLA on cassette too along w/ Over The Under. Mike's harsh noise tape thats covered in broken glass from Auris Apothecary, I adore them, they're the reason I got into harsh noise, and also Mike's spoken word 7 inch That's What The Obituary Said/Ten Suicides thats cool cause its black vinyl w/ streaks of green and yellow, I found it at a record store in Memphis when I was down there for my grandma's funeral. I've got Outlaw Orders' Legalize Crime 7 inch. I've got Last City Zero by Corrections House on vinyl, I've got a bunch of The Guilt Øf... on vinyl, their 10 inch split w IVs Primae Noctis, their self titled record, Arson Anthem's EP on super sexy red and black vinyl, En Minor's full length on vinyl, and to top it all off I've got Jimmy's guitar pedal he released recently with Does It Doom, and again, I was happy cause it was my favorite color. Oh and Mike's book! I think that's it. I should take a pic of it all together. Can they get me on the payroll for how much I promote their music or what??

[rippersz]

Hello! Rhubarb here :3 hey it’s Rhub and Rip! ^^

On that note, Sappho would’ve loved your fic…it’s like poetry and reads like a psalm with all the notes and details of a well constructed sonnet. Anyways, how are you? 🥰

I do believe everything u write eats and leaves zero crumbs 😊👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

Many affections extended to u with my warmest regards!!

R 🌱

Hello Rhubarb - I quite like your name :) I am doing well, thank you; I hope you’re faring the same. I’ll admit I enjoy the thought of Sappho’s approval; we’d have great fun she and I. Its only a shame we’ve lived in different times.

Anyway! Hopefully I continue to “eat” and bring you some joy. Stop by again soon - and thank you once more for your dear appreciation.

With piping hot regards, Ripley x

[secretariatess]

OC Question Tag Game!!

Tagged by @o-lei-o-lai-o-lord (thanks!)! Will answer her questions with Kylin, and then ask three of my own and tag a couple of people. ^_^

Does your OC have a favorite holiday/festival/celebration? If so, what’s their favorite aspect of it?

When he has a chance, he likes to attend the Elves' celebrations of the seasons, which take place at the peak of the season. While he enjoys Ranger festivities and celebrations, the Elven seasonal festivals are more mild and focused on really taking in the beauty of the season and the things they bring. There are things like dancing, singing, feasting of course, and activities based on the season, but they do not have a habit of getting very wild like Ranger celebrations. He also gets a chance to catch up with family on his father's side, and spend more time with Marwick, one of his older brothers.

It's a bit of a stretch to say they're his favorite, but they certainly hold a higher spot than most other festivals because of their nature.

2. What’s your OC’s favorite aspect of each season?

So in Kaotack, the world where Harlofelp exists, only three seasons are recognized: Summer, autumn, and winter.

In summer, Kylin's favorite aspect is the sound of crickets at night, and other bugs in the day that create a white noise effect. It gives a lazy feel to the day and night, as well as a sense of peace.

In autumn, he likes the apples at his sister Amelia's. She usually recruits him to help with her fall chores -as winter is coming- and she does all sorts of things with apples, from making treats to making vinegar, and even making a special apple mead. It's basically tradition at this point.

In winter, it's the more community feel at the headquarters, or in the Ranger cabins. While there are Rangers who wander when off duty or do not have anything pressing, many are inside soaking up the warmth before having to patrol or follow other directions to keep the forest in order. It can lead to some chaos, given some of the rowdier Rangers, but it's almost like a reunion, where companions who do not get to see each other too often can just sit back and hang out with the others. Kylin enjoys this, as snow makes his duties difficult, and being able to fellowship with others he does not see often helps this.

3. Does your OC have any Weirdly Strong Opinions on any hobbies or interests they have? What could they ramble about for thirty minutes with zero preparation time?

Kylin has strong opinions about which feathers are for fletching for arrows. He swears up and down that shooting is better with arrows fletched with peryton feathers.

He could ramble on for thirty minutes over just about anything beast of the forest. He would need a timer to stop him, because he might go on longer.

I'm tagging @secret--psalms--saturn and @larissa-the-scribe!

How would your OC decorate their home? What kind of house would they like to have?

How good is your OC with keeping up with chores? Which are their favorite and which do they like the least?

What would test their patience?

[ijamestv]

My favorite male CC Tattoos and Accessories!

Looking for some tattoos and accessories for your male Sims? I have a list with over 100 links! Check them out below. 

You can take a look at my YT video here-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdC1-z5lqJE

                                          Important Stuff

1. Always be careful when downloading CC! I am not responsible for any viruses or damages to your computer. Download at your own risk. 

2. Click on the bolded text (links) to be taken to the CC.

Accessories

1.  Archivefaction Spur Earings

2.  Archivefaction Latch Earings

3. (unisex) plugs by Tea-Wurst

4. Pralinesims Libellule glasses  [these glasses are part of a set and comes with the glasses below this link (N5)]

5. Pralinesims Papillon glasses

6. Pralinesims Zero glasses

7. Pralinesims  EXOV Sunglasses

8. Bandana

9. Constant Necklace

10. Alexander Necklace

11. Ball Chain & Coin Necklace

12. Kitsch Necklace

13. Reid Necklace

14. Mads Necklace

15. mochizen cc necklace with tag [this necklace belongs to a set and comes with the necklace below this link (N16)]

16. mochizen cc chain necklace

17. Rowan Necklace

18.  White Wolf Necklace

19. Mika Chain Necklace

20. Guitar Necklace

21. DS Danger Tag Necklace

22. Darte77 P&L Necklace

23. Emission Necklace

24. Mens metal beads cord necklace

25. King necklace

26. Layered Necklace

27.Chain Necklace

28. Strife Necklace

29. Spear Pendant Necklace

30. Key Pendant Cord Necklace

31. Regal Necklace

32. Mission Necklace

33. Eternia Watch

34.  S-Club WM ts4 bracelet 201704

35. Can’t find this bracelet by Darte77.  Feel free to message me and let me know where I can find it and I will update this post!

36. JAKE Bracelet

37. Lava Stone Bracelet

38. Can’t find bracelet by KK’s Sims. Don’t know if it’s been removed or I’m just overlooking it.

39. mochizen cc - layered leather bracelet male

40. mochizen bracelet with tag  [this bracelet comes in a set so you should already have it if you downloaded numbers 15 or 16 from this list]

41.This bracelet is a patreon exclusive. Sorry!!! I get A LOT of my CC from there so it’s sometimes hard to remember what is free and what isn’t. 

42. Mathcope Neil Bracelet

43. Vintage beaded bracelet

44. Goth Pearls Bracelet v2

45. Bracelet 04 (Bandana)

46. Knotaclat Bracelet

47. S-Club ts4 3D EYELASHES I M V1 These are the eyelashes that I used on my Sim in the video. These are my favorite eyelashes for my male Sims! Don’t know why I didn’t think to include them in the video. lol

Tattoos

1. Geometric Tattoos

2. Tattoo from Remaron

3.  Male Tattoo V1

4.  Cornelius Tattoo

5.   Arakan Tattoo

6. Mateus Left Sleeve

7. I can’t find this tattoo. It’s by Overkillsimmer though! Feel free to message me and let me know where I can find it and I will update this post!

8. Angel Wing Half Sleeve Tattoo

9. Jason Brody tattoo

10. Gizem left arm tattoo

11. Konala Tattoo

12. coupel tattoo

13. man crazy tattoo

14. Tomahawk Tattoo

15. Lazaro Tattoo

16. Herald Tattoo

17. Dikard Tattoo

18. Anthony Tattoo

19. LAX Tattoo

20. Furtado Tattoo

21. Mundane Tattoo

22. Santiago Tattoo

23. Stone Boy Tattoo

24. Fracture Tattoo

25. Unknown No.1 tattoo

26. Halibird Tattoo

27. Grady Tattoo

28. This tattoo is from descargassims but I’m not going to link it because of linkvertise. I recommend just skipping this one!

29. Chuck Tattoo

30. Hallowed Tattoo

31. Virtues Tattoo

32. Trogon Tattoo

33. Roth Tattoo

34. Bodhi Tattoo

35. Dire Tattoo

36. Sorrento Tattoo

37. Victus Tattoo

38. Zion Tattoo

39. Psalm Tattoo

40. Marquis Tattoo

41. Centaurus Tattoo

42. Beck Tattoo

43. Akasa Tattoo

44. Mori Tattoo

45. Sleeve Tattoos N01

46. Horizon Tattoo

47. Theo right sleeve

48. Mr Creeps V2 Tattoo

49. Tattoo 1804

50. Pack Tattoo Male. Part 01 [This tattoo is part of a set]

51. Another tattoo I couldn’t find. Not sure who the creator is.

52. Tattoo Kenji

53. Angel Wings Back Tattoo N03

54. man tattoo v1

55. 50's tattoo

56. space tattoo

57. men tattoo v2

58. Ornate Wings tattoos

59. Blackwork Tattoo

60. Tattoo by Besh

61. SSBBadBoyTattoo

62. Tattoo by Besh

63. Black Lungs Tattoo

64. Chest Tattoo N05

65. Melissasims Bird Tat

66. This tattoo is from Melissasims but unfortunately, it’s a Patreon exclusive. Sorry about this!

67.This tattoo is from Melissasims but unfortunately, it’s a Patreon exclusive. Sorry about this!

68. This tattoo is from Melissasims but unfortunately, it’s a Patreon exclusive. Sorry about this!

69. This tattoo is also from Melissasims. 

70. helen max tattoo 03

[scienceclubofficial]

Viola Villes Vile Venture into the Vast and Violent caVern V

The poem that started it all

Viola Ville of her well will, stepped in, stood still, she felt so ill, at this unholy sight, that unruly blight, on all we hold dear, and they came near. Moved close, appear, their eyes did leer, they sound a cheer, for they have no fear, of how they look, of how they seem. "You there girl that we have seen, the look on your face is not pristine. We try not to appear so mean, yet you see us as the obscene. Faces aren't meant for that shape, eyes be wide, mouth agape. Hairs were not meant to turn grey, yet you throw your looks away. Happiness is in each other, "peace on earth, and love your brother"." She stayed and stutter, wordless mutter, mind in gutter, heart does flutter, nails cut her callous palm. "Human minds were meant for calm, so we see say in our here psalm! Heaven on Earth, godly pleasure, that of which you cannot measure, localized here within this tomb, like a baby in the womb. No sight, no sounds, no aggravations, just his love, his clean filtration of all the ugly on this earth, for the unseemly, a second birth. For the rotten, trodden, lead astray, for the un-dreamers, their soul decay. For the gens that cry away, their lost and wasted yesterday. For the ones with no tomorrow, sunk and drowned in their deep sorrow, they can borrow, our good intention, our endless love, it need no mention. Just look at our face, now hers, now his, now theirs, now this, nothing amiss, in this abyss, an endless kiss. A warm embrace, your heart will race. A tender fall into this hall, the love of all at your beck and call. Orgasmic leisure, but do be sure, that you are ready, feet stay steady. My advice is, check your vices. Unholy banes leave bad stains in our palace of zero pains. No refrains. No abstains. Come into our court without your reins. Do you think your ideal sustains? Or are you just one of those bad brains?" She remains…

[mightymightymain-o]

Sometime, somewhere…

The theme song to The Sopranos

Plays in the key of life on my mental piano

Got a strange way of seeing life, like

I'm Stevie Wonder with beads under the do-rag

Intuition is there, even when my vision's impaired, yeah

Knowing I can go just switching a spare

On the highway of life, nigga, it's sharp in my sight, oh!

Keen senses ever since I was a teen on the benches

Every time somebody like Ennis was mentioned

I would turn green—me, being in the trenches

Him, living adventurous, not worrying about expenditures

I'm braving temperatures below zero, no hero

No father figure; you gotta pardon a nigga

But I'm starving, my niggas, and the weight loss in my figure

Is starting to darken my heart, 'bout to get to my liver

Watch it, my niggas; I'm trying to be calm but I'm gon' get richer

Through any means with that thing that Malcolm palmed in the picture

Never read the Quran or Islamic scriptures

Only Psalms I read was on the arms of my niggas

Tattooed, so I carry on like I'm nonreligious

Clap whoever stand between Shawn and figures

Niggas say it's the dawn, but I'm superstitious

Shit is as dark as it's been, nothing has gone as you predicted

I move with biscuits, stop the heart of niggas acting too suspicious

This is food for thought—you do the dishes!

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00FpFuMhM1Y

Psalm 95 is the first Psalm of Kabbalat Shabbat, the service that kicks off Friday night.  Kabbalat Shabbat is meant to be welcoming, it’s meant to help you leave the week behind and warm you up for the prayers of Shabbat.  So, while you could slip into the old Jewish sound world of nusach and chant Psalm 95, you could also choose to sing something bright and warm and upbeat, like Elana Arian’s melody here.

The thing is, music isn’t a zero-sum game.  One week, you might be feeling the chant.  The next week, you might need this melody.  The week after, you might be in the mood for something else entirely.  That’s what I love about the Jewish liturgical repertoire.  There are so many variations on how you can say or sing these prayers and Psalms that almost everyone can find the music that they need to bring them into a space of prayer.  And if they can’t . . . you can always compose more music.