Hot Take, But Cis People Have Gender Identities. They Aren't The Gender They Identify As Because Of Their

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

Real talk time.

Colonialism still exists. The effects of original colonization still exist.

Native Hawaiians cannot afford to live on our own land. Everyday tourism kills us.

We are fined for using our water. We are screamed at by tourists. We are stacked in concrete apartments the size of shoe boxes. Waiting lists for apartments are decades long. The government never provides aid. The money that belongs to us is wasted on half finished monorails and hotels. Tourist take pictures of us like we’re an attraction.

In 2018, the UN acknowledged the present day occupation of Hawai’i. And they did nothing.

“The Living Wage Calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says that one adult in Honolulu needs to make $16.59 per hour for a living wage. If that is a couple with 2 children, each adult needs to make $17.70 per hour.”

-RealHawaii.Co

My culture, my people, are sexualized, ignored and stepped on.

We cannot live. And everyday more of us die.

And no one even notices. So notice. Notice. Notice.

If you are a British/UK citizen, there is currently a petition running (with only 125 signatures) that ends in June 2025. The petition calls for the government to make it so that you do not need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to change your gender.

If you are a British/UK citizen, and would like to sign:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/701159

If you're not a British/ UK citizen it'd be much appreciated if you could share this post !! :)

Completely agree with all of this. I just finished a truly abysmal SF novel which seem to assume that the audience was deeply, deeply interested in the most pointless details of how the spaceships worked, up to the point where there was a multi-chapter arc where the main species switched between two different power sources for their craft.

There was even a section where they explained how the 3D printers that built the ships worked -- we don’t need to know that, 3D printers ACTUALLY EXIST.

There was at least one point where I shouted “I don’t care how the spaceships work! I care THAT they work!” Because I live in a world where space travel is complicated and expensive and practically unheard of, whereas this wacky bunch of genocidal flesh-eating aliens live in a world where it’s relatively easy to travel between solar systems in their thousands.

So then what does that lead to? What STORY results from this, how do the CHARACTERS respond to this? (Answer: the writer’s word count did not seem to stretch to any conversation that was not two characters explaining technology to each other, much less anything approaching a narrative. Honestly, it was like reading a very, very dull history book about a place that didn’t exist.)

So yes. Explain some things. There are some things you don’t need to.

I think an important instinct you have to build up when you read/watch sci-fi is discerning which things are givens. If Arrival tells you that the alien language is atemporal, it is, that's not a puzzle for you to pick apart, it's a prerequisite to getting the rest of the story. When I talk sci-fi with people who don't consume a lot of it this seems to be a thing they get hung up on.

My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work! 

The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here.  They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps. If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece! 

instagram / patreon / portfolio / the nib / etsy

Tag yourself I’m the “Overdressed and Underappreciated”. Artist : http://www.mattadrian.com/ 

happy glorious 25th of may

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?