Just One of Those Things

From there the political aspect of it got picked up by climate doomerist types who pushed it as an antidote to the impending apocalypse. Alas, being fanatically worried about climate change seems to have fallen out of fashion since COVID for whatever reason. I believe a lot of these people have moved on to walkable urbanism and anti-AI movements.

And the aesthetic side of it started off with a particularly influential Tumblr post from 2014 that had quite a few neat ideas. All of those were sanded down over time into a vision of skyscrapers with moss and solar panels, coupled with some recycled cottagecore material and a bunch of Ghibli screencaps.

And then Chobani comes in and makes a yogurt commercial that's just futurist luxury automated cottagecore in a Ghibli aesthetic, complete with some vague handwaves at a spunky DIY attitude and a whole bunch of small-scale renewable electric generators. And from there the movement, whatever it was, merged with "Frutiger Aero" and completely fell apart into bland nothingness.

Praxis itself? It looks like disability activism. It looks like attending local town council meetings. It looks like diving into super specific debate on local law requirements on water-permeable surfaces percentage. It looks like keeping in contact with local priest to snoothly distribute furniture from well-off middle class finishing renovation to 18yo orphans ageing out of the system. It looks like negotating with local cultural activity center how to organise half-illegal craft workshops because paperwork for fully legal ones excludes the most neglected demographic. It looks like lobbying for health insurance to put "replacing batteries in the implant surgery" on the list of covered medical services, so people don't need to surgically replace whole implants. It looks like million other specific things.

People who got inspired by solarpunk tend to spend some time looking at art, then turn around, ask "okay but what can be done now that I can engage with" and then go do it. And then what they do stops looking like solarpunk aesthetic.

Of course there's also that thing that before Covid, lots of climate collapse containment issues were literally "we know that business-as-usual is cheapest short-term but can we focus on how it's killing us long-term". Covid era showed that business-as-usual is unsustainable now, mid-term and short-term and today and yesterday; and also that goverments can simply decide to act and it create tangible effects. Suddenly, it wasn't "solar would be better if your gas import was ever endangered", it's "we build all the solar for yesterday because we cannot afford keeping to gas". Creating inspiring narratives is optional when cost of business-as-usual is visible to naked eye. Lots of people who used to share inspiring pictures of solar on background of green hills either went to install solar and negotiate specifics of grid inclusion, or moved on to the next issue.

Central idea of solarpunk aesthetic was to give people tools to imagine sustainable future; to create visual and narrative shorthands allowing people to engage with vision of non-apocalyptic future.

Central idea of solarpunk philosophy is that apocalypse is anything but inevitable and the main challenge isn't lack of means and tools, but widespread cultural pessimism. You cannot change anything if you believe change is impossible. Therefore, for change to be possible, you need to envision the world that can be changed.

Basically, if solarpunk art convinced anyone that there is achievable alternative to doom, it have already succeeded.

You absolutely can merge in one all the issues ever discussed in context of exploring how sustainable climate-proofed non-capitalistic world can work and how it can be achieved, with the attempt to design a distinctive and consistent visual language for it.

And you absolutely can blame whichever aspect of that merged entity for the fact that detailed fact-based solutions are difficult to derive from visual language or using visual design tools.

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Then maybe...

Maybe...

that these women weren’t forced into this work

that these women are of age

that these women were treated properly on set

that these women are okay with it being released in the format it has been released(onto which website/etc)

if you are doing any creative project with someone else in which money will be involved, make a contract. Doesn't need to be super formal. Get something laid out in writing that very clearly indicates what the person you are asking to do something is responsible for, the timeline in which they're expected to complete it, and the compensation they'll get for doing so.

"oh but we've been best friends since eighth grade" make a fucking contract.

"oh but this probably won't make much money anyway" make a fucking contract.

"oh but I don't know all that legalese" there are tons of pretty accessible templates available online if you research, just make sure it's one that suits your needs and you understand what's in it (it can be written in normal language without legalese, as long as it's clear), and make a fucking contract.

as well as this other poem inspired by giovanni's

and this beautiful tweet