Go for it, Mobei Jun!

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

1. The Wens ransack the Cloud Recesses and this is particularly devastating for that sect because they are not an economic centre of their own, but rely on drawing in nighthunting jobs and students to 'pay the bills'. Without their centuries of collected knowledge and natural cultivation-enhancing spaces, they don't have a practical method of day-to-day sect survival available. Caiyi town, their lifeline (waterways are EVERYTHING in economics it does not matter that they can fly) is crippled before the story even starts. While the Lans aren't outright killed as the Jiang are, the Wens clearly intended to starve them out.

2. This strategy WOULD NOT work in Yunmeng, which is not geographically or economically isolated, and in which the cultivation clan is shown to participate in agriculture and acts as a trade interface. Because of its position, it also makes an excellent hub for the further control of surrounding regions (again, WATERWAYS.) So of course it has to be physically 'taken over', necessitating the extermination of the entire clan + anyone else unlucky enough to have been at Lotus Pier that day. With YMJ under their control, none of the minor sects can do much, so they're 'left alone' (have their weapons stolen but not exterminated). The Wens now control the region's trade. Even cultivators need to eat, to repair clothing and armor, to get access to medicine. This is also why Wen Qing running a supervisory office *is not morally neutral* even if she isn't actively fighting non-Wens. Her presence and oversight are part of ensuring an economic chokehold on a region that directly supplies and bolsters the Wens efforts elsewhere.

3. The fact that the Jiang sect was even 'allowed' to rebuild after the war instead of being forcefully taken over/administrated by another clan (the Jin, it would have been the Jin. They had marriage ties to justify it socially and legally, and the manpower from their late entry into the war to enforce it) reads to me as a combination of a couple interesting factors:

3.1 The fear of Wei Wuxian/demonic cultivation - which further contextualises WWX's exit as him not just abandoning JC as an individual but jeopardizing his clan as well. Which I think is obvious but people do forget at times.

3.2 The degree to which the Jin are committed to their benevolent self-image and how much political sway that lends them.

3.3 The continued capitulation and overtures from the Jiang sect towards their nearby allies and the great sects who stand to benefit from having such an economically-rich region well-managed without having to sacrifice their own manpower, but still be something they greatly benefit from. This is JYL's marriage, the grace of having one of YZY's greatest friends as the mother-in-law; unfavourable trade deals, giving up salvaged artifacts and stretching their people thin attempting to both regain wealth and trust from citizenry through nighthunting.

3.4 Nie Mingjue (and SL Yao) - really the only sect leaders who consider honor foremost in their political decisions, and therefore the most likely to support the continuation of YMJ ideologically, as the rightful recapturing of stolen land/act of rightful revenge. This remains contingent on YMJ's continued adherence *to that regime of revenge*.

4. The rebuilding of Cloud Recesses is similarly rife with complicated politics, chief of which is Lan Xichen's need to please Jin Guangyao, through which the Jin offer financial aid to help physically rebuild infrastructure. (Not that they aren't genuine friends, but their political relationship is very much part of things). Recall also that, in order to draw in students, Gusu Lan has to present themselves as righteous as per the societal definition of righteousness, internal moral reasoning aside.

5. The Wens' destructive/disruptive path through cultivator society was so widespread and thorough and well-planned, that it's little wonder literally no one has any goodwill towards people surnamed Wen in the post-war. Consider this: there were servants/merchants/visiting families/fishermen/ordinary folk who were killed or had their livelihoods ruined by the Wens during their regional takeovers. Does the blood of only the cultivator Wens make up for these lives too? Were they not themselves innocents who just so happened to be around Yunmeng/Caiyi Town/the Cloud Recesses/delivering food to the Clan hubs/weaving cloth to sell to the cultivators/picking their herbs/excitedly showing their children the cultivators flying by? Just think about this, and come to your own conclusions, on the difficulty of assigning blame and innocence.

『War Paint』

““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.

Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.

Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.

The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.

GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.

It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…

Biologist Rebecca Helm is one of the leading proponents AGAINST this effort, which she describes as “seeing a meadow polluted by plastic bags and bulldozing it to fix the problem,” and she’s one of the major players in the marine biology world. She’s currently one of the people helping negotiate the High Seas Treaty with the United Nations to protect our oceans. She knows what she’s talking about, so when she says this project will do irreparable harm to the fragile ecosystem that the garbage patch is located in, she’s correct.

I spoke to her personally a few years back about the Pacific Garbage Patch and she was so nice to answer my layman’s questions. The high seas really don’t have much life just swimming around out there, for one thing. Those videos of seals getting stuck in fishing nets are from near shorelines, not from the garbage patch. The majority of the trash is not nets or entire spotless water coolers, like the ocean cleanup likes to post flashy videos of themselves removing. The “trash islands” that I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of aren’t the garbage patch. They’re from plastic accumulation near shorelines (~99% of plastic in the oceans is near the shore) and the mouths of rivers, which is where we should focus more of our efforts rather than trying to scoop particles out of the open ocean.

The marine organisms that are most directly affected by the “garbage patch” are neustons: free floating organisms that live on the surface of the water and are pushed by the wind and the currents, same as the trash. These animals live in and among and even on the trash in the ocean. And unfortunately, the trash as it exists now is replacing part of their natural ecosystem. Where organisms like molluscs used to latch onto wood and float into the open ocean, they’re now latching onto plastic. This complicates the cleanup even more.

All the Ocean Cleanup does is send overly expensive boats with overly expensive trawling nets out onto the ocean, where they scoop up horrendous amounts of bycatch (say goodbye to those sea turtles that you wanna save!) and consider the collateral damage a worthwhile tradeoff for… Extremely paltry results. A 2024 report estimated it would cost 7.5 billion euros to remove <0.1% of ocean plastic. And this is AFTER the supposed “improved” model, with their even larger (2.2km!!) barrier and trawling net.

So please, have some hesitancy when it comes to big, easy promises by rich men for big, complex problems. If every company in the world throws money at it instead of simply reducing ANY of their plastic usage, you can be pretty sure that it’s not an actual solution.

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