Video: Let’s talk about 8 months of change

There’s a lot of horrible stuff going on right now, particularly with the escalation of genocidal transphobia. This video’s definitely more of a feel-good story, and I think it does a good job of showing why the transphobes are so desperate. Basically, Beau of the Fifth Column got a note from a viewer who had gone from being a full-on homophobe, to dancing with trans women at a gay club, feeling worried that he wasn’t accepting enough, and wondering how to change further, all in the space of just eight months. I think the bigots are frantic, in part, because they know that their bigotry isn’t natural at all – it’s something that has to be maintained and supported constantly. Sure, there are some who’ll hate no matter what, but absent societal and group dynamics that encourage and reinforce hatred, people are just people, and we tend to take each other as we come. That’s not me saying we can end bigotry by befriending and converting bigots, to be clear, I just really appreciate how this story shows that leaving an ideological bubble can result in an astonishing amount of change. That’s why conservatives hate things like college so much, and it’s why they’re fighting so hard to eradicate trans people from public life. They know that the natural progression of humanity tends to be towards acceptance, and that’s yet another part of reality that they hate.

People can and do change for the better all the time, and it’s part of why I’m generally a fan of us, as a species.

Video: BetterHelp Shares Your Data With Facebook

I think I’ve been fairly open about this, but for those who don’t know, I have a bit of an anxiety problem. It’s mostly because of climate change, but also most of the other stuff I write about here (especially ground-hunting bats. Those things are terrifying), and I’m generally taking meds for it. I have also had a couple therapists, neither of whom helped a whole lot, but it was kind of nice to have someone to talk to I guess? I think it’s something that should be available to anyone who needs it, especially if they’re dealing with trauma of some sort. Family and friends can be very helpful, but they don’t always know how to help, and that can put pressure on any relationship.

One service that a therapist provides, supposedly, is confidentiality. A therapy session is supposed to be a place where you can share anything that’s troubling you, without worrying that it will affect your social interactions. If you have a crippling fear of small, furry creatures with wings that aren’t flying, you may not want to let other people know about that. You might worry that others will think less of you, or feel uncomfortable around you, knowing that you’re constantly on the lookout for crawling bats.

In a therapy session, at least a good one, you can feel confident that the person you’re talking to you will take you as you are, and try to help you on your terms. What I would not want, for example, is for a giant corporation to find out about my pekapekaphobia, and start giving me ads for, I dunno, t-shirts with crawling bats on them, or crawling bat phone holsters or something. Or, which is more likely, they’d sell that information to a company wanting to sell me bat-repelling boots, knowing that I would do anything to finally feel safe. It goes further than that, though, because Facebook has a record of massive data leaks, and so if, somehow, they got ahold of my information, anyone could find out!

I’m mentioning all this to you, in confidence, because one of my therapists was through the online service BetterHelp. It was cheaper than conventional therapy, and much easier, as I didn’t have to travel to the other side of town for a session – I just had to have a laptop. Unfortunately, it turns out that my sessions may not have been as private as I wanted,  because as The Illuminaughti will explain, BetterHelp shares your data with Facebook:

And jokes aside, it seems that BetterHelp also has the same problem as normal therapy – some of the therapists are callous, incompetent, or just bigots. I expect most are people who want to help, and may even be able to do so, but unfortunately, BetterHelp doesn’t treat them very well. Think of it as Uber for therapy. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s the first really nice day, so I’m writing outside!

I decided to try a slightly different process than normal for the update on the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest, so that post will be up tomorrow, and today you get something like a stream of consciousness.

Work on The Inner Tower is going well, for the most part. I think I will never understand why my brain just refuses to cooperate sometimes, for no discernible reason. Even so, I’m following the map I laid out, and discovering an interesting landscape. There are a few geographic locations in that world that were established before I began the exploration that is writing a first draft. Beyond that, it’s been mostly blank, and the landscape has been filling in as I go.

When the plot of this thing started falling into my brain like Tetris blocks last year, I decided that I was going to be deliberately formulaic with my writing, and see what sort of interesting story I could create within more conventional limits. I say “more conventional”, because my first novel, Exits and Entrances, was very much experimental. The biggest difference you’ll probably notice, should you decide to read it, is that every other chapter is a short story that’s peripheral to the main plot. I don’t recall why I thought that was a good idea, but I think it turned out decently for a first novel. I don’t think I was a particularly good writer at that point in time, but I try to remember that there are books out there that are much worse by every metric I can think of, save popularity.

I will have to return to that particular laboratory, because there are two books still to write for that trilogy, but for my current project, I’ve chosen to run with a version of The Hero’s Journey, with a few other constraints and rules from bits of writing advice I’ve encountered over the years.

I guess you could say that this series just a different kind of experiment, but I think it’ll be a more familiar reading experience for regular “young adult” fantasy readers, at least for the first couple volumes. After that, things will get a little stranger, because I just can’t help myself.

Part of the reason you’re getting this particular blog post, is that I was getting tired of video posts, and I doubt I’m alone in that. The other part is that, after a cold snap in which we actually got snow, it’s the first classic Beautiful Spring Day since the sun went away. That means that I’m sitting at a folding table out in the middle of our little walled village, while His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat explores.

While there are cats and foxes that use the walls as a convenient path, His Holiness is to lazy, and too much of an indoor cat to even realize that that’s an option. This means that if I set myself up in the center of the village, I can keep an eye on both of the gates through which he might escape into the wilds of Dublin.

The birds around here are used to avoiding better hunters than he, and the only rodents I’ve seen have been invasive squirrels, so while I very much doubt he’s a threat to them, if he somehow manifests far more energy than he’s ever shown to date, and gets very lucky, Ireland will be no worse off for it. So far, though, while he occasionally looks very intently at a bird, he mainly just eats grass. Honestly, my main concern is that another cat will come in, because His Holiness is an asshole when other cats are present. I don’t know if it’s childhood trauma, lack of socialization, or some sort of territoriality, but every other cat he’s ever interacted with, has been The Enemy.

And on that note, I think I’m going to end this post and go indoors, because it looks like it’s going to rain soon. If you ever think that the weather where you live is too constant, come visit Dublin, where it really does change every hour or so.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this post, please share it around. If you read this blog regularly, please consider joining my small but wonderful group of patrons. Because of my immigration status, I’m not allowed to get a normal job, so my writing is all I have for the foreseeable future, and I’d love for it to be a viable career long-term. As part of that goal, I’m currently working on a young adult fantasy series, so if supporting this blog isn’t enough inducement by itself, for just $5/month you can work with me to name a place or character in that series!

Video: 10 Fascinating Lion Facts You Need To Know

Just a short post today. This video’s from a new channel that I might dip into again in the future. I’m not a huge fan of the clickbait-y content style, but I cannot deny that this video contains some cool facts about lions, and it also has… a certain something that I can’t quite put my finger on. Watch to the end, and let me know what you think.

 

Terrifying dive in Antarctic lake reveals bizarre, ancient life

This video follows a couple divers and their support team, as they cut through nine meters of ice (just under 30 feet, for my USian readers) to dive in the appropriately-named Lake Untersee, a large, freshwater lake on the edge of East Antarctica. It’s frozen over year-round, but there’s still plenty of liquid water, and as Jeff Goldbloom would say, life finds a way.

The picture shows fossilized stromatolites, cut into squares to show the many layers that made up the structure. The upper surface is covered with conical shapes, and you can see how the layers underneath built up to form them.

Normally when I cover research on or around Antarctica, it has to do with this planet’s climate, but Untersee is such a harsh and isolated location that the main interest, aside from studying what’s down there, is in how it might help us find life in extreme conditions on other planets.

What’s down there, it seems, is stromatolites. These are layered structures formed by microbes gluing sand and other stuff together into their microbial mat. Over many generations, they form the alien shapes you can see on the lake floor in the video below. These structures fossilize well, which is probably why stromatolites represent the oldest evidence of life we have on this planet.

The divers’ first attempt, after a few days of digging a hole in ice, was aborted after the rebreather apparatus malfunctioned and started putting chemical-tainted water into the tube one of the divers was supposed to be breathing from. Just after they got the divers out, there was a storm with 100mph/160kph winds that lasted 24 hours, after which they had to dig all the snow out of their diving hole.

I’ve never had a whole lot of interest in learning to use scuba gear. On the one hand, I think it’d be pretty cool to be able to poke around underwater for a while like that, but on the other hand, there are a lot of ways it can go wrong, not to mention that I definitely don’t have the money for a hobby like that. Even if I do take up diving someday, I can guarantee I’ll never try it in a place like Antarctica. I definitely see the appeal, but as with cave exploration, I’m afraid I may just be too much of a coward. As for diving in caves? Yeah, I’ll pass on that. Honestly, I think I’d lump Antarctic lake diving in with cave diving – it may be that there’s less of a maze, but if you’re in an enclosed bubble of water that you had to drill through 30 feet of ice to get through, that counts as a cave, to me.

That said, I’m very glad that there are people who want to take on challenges like that, because I love being able to see this footage.

 

 

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The fossil fuel industry is pouring methane into the sky

A little while back, I shared the good news that the so-called “clathrate gun” was apparently no longer a serious cause for concern. I remain happy about that, but unfortunately there are other big sources of methane – all tied to fossil fuel extraction – that are contributing to climate change in a major way.

More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.

This is why the focus on individual lifestyle choices has always been a massive red herring, and why I focus more on systemic/societal change. I haven’t owned a car since late 2009, and any decrease in humanity’s emissions from that choice was more than wiped out by the methane coming from any one of those facilities. Do what you can on the individual level, but if we don’t chance society, that won’t end up mattering. That’s doubly true, because fossil fuel corporations fully intend to extract every drop they can, no matter the harm done to everyone else:

Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

I guarantee you that there are more than 55 places around the world where new extraction is planned, and from which a horrifying amount of methane will leak. These 55 are just the really exceptional ones. Regardless, these findings support the long-standing view that we need to act a lot faster than we have been. The upside is that eliminating or dramatically reducing these emissions should, technically, be pretty easy:

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to preventing methane-driven disaster, as tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions. Some leaks are deliberate, venting the unwanted gas released from underground while drilling for oil into the air, and some are accidental, from badly maintained or poorly regulated equipment.

Fast action would dramatically slow global heating as methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. An emissions cut of 45% by 2030, which the UN says is possible, would prevent 0.3C of temperature rise. Methane emissions therefore present both a grave threat to humanity, but also a golden opportunity to decisively act on the climate crisis.

“The current rise in methane looks very scary indeed,” said Prof Euan Nisbet, at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK. “Methane acceleration is perhaps the largest factor challenging our Paris agreement goals. So removing the super-emitters is a no-brainer to slow the rise – you get a lot of bang for your buck.”

“Methane emissions are still far too high, especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming,” said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency. “There is just no excuse.”

I believe the excuse is that solving these problems might slightly slow the rate at which fossil fuel executives keep getting richer. The world has been blessed with a great abundance of “low-hanging fruit” with regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and for the most part, those have been ignored. I full believe that this will also be ignored, unless there is real, scary pressure from the bottom.

It may be that as a movement rises, rooted in collective power, direct action, and the common good, the capitalists will begin making more dramatic changes in an effort to appease the masses, head off real change, and hold on to their power. I’ll celebrate those changes when they come, but given the past behavior of these people, I think it’s safe to say that they will not be enough. Not for dealing with the climate, and not for the goal of freedom, self-governance, and justice.

Methane leakage from the fossil fuel industry is not a new problem, and it’s already a crime against humanity that it hasn’t been dealt with. The longer this is allowed to continue, the more harm it does to all of us, and to future generations. They’ve shown that they will not voluntarily cease their campaign of destruction so they must be made to stop.

Edit: Someone on Mastodon pointed out that when methane reaches the end of its “life” in the atmosphere, it doesn’t just disappear – it largely turns into carbon dioxide, and keeps warming the earth that way.

 

Video: New Zealand’s ground-hunting bat

If bats are known for anything, it’s for being the only mammals to evolve flight. Some eat fruit, nectar from flowers, or even fish, but a great many make a living snatching bugs out of the air. It turns out, however, that even with the ability to fly, sometimes it’s easier to just walk. Met the pekapeka – the New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat. It’s the only bat I’m aware of that hunts on the ground, scuttling around on the forest floor looking for insects and other things to eat. The males also apparently sing to attract mates.

They’ve had a rough time of it, but apparently conservation efforts are ongoing, and there may be cause for cautious optimism. This video is a couple years old, but they little critters seem to be holding on:

Video: Rebecca Watson on mask science (they work!)

Both Tegan and I decided to start masking early on in the pandemic, well before anyone was requiring it. Sometimes, it was something close to useless like a bandanna, but since Tegan had a customer service job in Glasgow, she made herself a couple multi-layer masks, and I eventually bought a neck gaiter with disposable filter inserts. I’ve always viewed the mask question from something of a gamer’s perspective on odds. Back when I was an avid World of Warcraft player, I had to pay close attention to cumulative percentages. Any one piece of gear, while helpful, wasn’t as useful as all of it together, whether it came to your chance of landing a critical strike, or your chance of blocking or dodging an enemy’s attack.

I don’t expect the vaccine to protect me entirely, just to improve my odds. Masks are the same – they might only stop a small percent of particles I’d otherwise inhale, but that still improves my odds of staying healthy. I wouldn’t expect my masks to do anything to stop the fine particulate air pollution I’ve mentioned in the past, but yeah – they provide one very imperfect physical barrier between myself in the world. How could it not be better than nothing? After the last couple years, it just feels like common courtesy to mask.

Still, some people adamantly oppose masking, and will insist that the science shows no clear benefit. Obviously I disagree, but I think it’s fair to be doubtful, especially with so many contradictory messages out there. Rebecca Watson takes on that uncertainty, and a recent report on the efficacy of masks. The TL:DR is that masks do help with COVID, at least a little, but also that the people who put the report together did so in such a way as to give the impression that they don’t.

As always, you can find the video’s transcript and sources on Skepchick, but I just wanted to highlight one thing:

“But wait,” you may be saying, “my MAGA uncle says that Cochrane Review says masks don’t work. What’s going on?”

[..]

The review is titled “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses,” and it is available in full online and as always I link to all my sources in the transcript which you can find linked below or at patreon.com/rebecca. This review did conclude that “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks.”

Immediately, you might note that this is about “respiratory viruses,” and not specifically COVID-19. That’s important, because they lumped in a few studies on the effectiveness of masks versus COVID along with a whole bunch of studies on non-epidemic influenza, which is way less contagious and rarer to contract, meaning that of course you’re going to need way more data to show any result, compared to looking at masks in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz decided to remove the data for influenza to see what would happen, and sure enough, the random controlled trials for masking DURING A PANDEMIC showed a clear, modest benefit. He points out that the review is perfectly fine otherwise, but personally I think it’s a pretty big deal that Cochrane released this during a pandemic, knowing that people would assume that the conclusion would be applied during a pandemic. It’s like releasing a review concluding there’s no benefit to wearing a seat belt, without mentioning that most of the data I examined was from a survey of people sitting in parked cars in the grocery store parking lot. It turns out that context is very important!

This frustrates me. Scientists ought to know how important context is, and I find it hard to believe that they don’t know how much confusion there is on this particular topic. I suppose I’ll never know for sure whether the way they structured their report was deliberate, but I feel like the responsible thing to do would have been to write a paper that wouldn’t create this kind of confusion. Still, it’s nice to have a bit more support for my position. As I said before, I think masking in indoor public spaces is just a matter of courtesy.

Now, I’m not always the most courteous guy – sometimes I forget a mask when I go out, or I don’t have one that’s clean. I also eat at restaurants on rare occasions, and if you’re in some form of eatery, wearing a mask seems a bit like spitting in the wind. I’m also aware that my opinion on “common” courtesy isn’t particularly common – the vast majority of folks in Dublin don’t wear masks anymore, and based on the consistently low COVID numbers, that doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot of harm. It helps that we’ve got a pretty high vaccination rate. The Kraken may have originated here, but it didn’t turn out to be much of a monster.

Masks work, in that they improve your odds. That’s a limited and uncertain benefit, but the reality is that we are beset by uncertainties at every moment in our lives. Accepting that is – or ought to be – a natural process of growing up and maturing, but obviously it’s not a comfortable process, and most people are trained, to some degree, to reject uncertainty. The distressing truth is that this world is messy and complicated, and sometimes when you’re dealing with a mess, it’s better to just wear a mask.

Good news from Spain!

I cover a lot of fairly grim topics on this blog, not least of which is a rise in fascism that seems to be happening all over the globe sometimes. I believe it’s important to talk about problems, as one part of trying to fix them, but that can get a bit grim from time to time. The good news is that the aforementioned fascism is, in many ways, part of a reactionary backlash against real progress that has been made in the area of civil rights. Even as some people are trying to roll back advances, others are pushing ahead, fighting for more advances, and winning.

In particular, Spain has just passed a couple laws that I think are worth celebrating. First, they’ve made it radically easier for people to change their gender on their national identity card:

The law, which passed by 191 votes in favour, 60 against with 91 abstentions, makes Spain one of the few nations to allow people to change their gender on their national identity card with a simple declaration.

In Europe, Denmark was the first country to grant such a right in 2014.

Thursday’s vote was the last hurdle for legislation that has caused a major rift within Spain’s fractious left-wing coalition, as the country gears up for a general election later this year.

The legislation is a flagship project of the equality ministry, which is held by Podemos, the radical left-wing junior partner in the Socialist-led coalition.

“This is one of the most important laws of this legislature… we have taken a giant step forward,” Equality Minister Irene Montero told lawmakers ahead of the vote.

“This law recognises the right of trans people to self-determine their gender identity, it depathologises trans people. Trans people are not sick people, they are just people.”

Until now, adults in Spain could only request the change with a medical report attesting to gender dysphoria and proof of hormone treatment for two years. Minors needed judicial authorisation.

The new law drops all such requirements, with those aged 14 and 15 allowed to apply if their parents or legal guardians agree.

Those aged 12 and 13 will also require a judge’s permission to make the move.

‘We are not ill’

The vote was hailed by campaigners who said Spain was setting an example that would encourage others to follow suit.

“We’re celebrating the fact this law has passed after eight years of tireless work to obtain rights for the trans community,” Uge Sangil, head of FELGBTI+, Spain’s largest LGBTQ organisation, told AFP outside parliament.

“We’re winning human rights with the free determination of gender… From today, our lives will change because we are not ill.”

This is a clear win. The article notes, as I’ve done in the past, the ways in which trans rights are under assault, as well as the way England’s right-wing government overrode Scotland’s decision to enact a similar law. I’ve honestly not paid much attention Spain, but this is not the first time I’ve felt I should change that.

The other change that I think is worth celebrating is the decision to provide paid menstrual leave, with a doctor’s note, covered by the public healthcare system. Periods can be debilitating. For some people they’re not much of a problem, but at the other end of the spectrum you get cramps, migraines, vomiting, stiffness, and probably other problems I’m forgetting. It is not reasonable to demand that people just work through that, especially since, as I keep saying, there’s no actual scarcity to justify depriving people. As a USian, the requirement of a doctor’s note gave me pause, but in a good public healthcare system, that’s far less of a burden than it would be in the States.

The bill approved by Parliament on Thursday is part of a broader package on sexual and reproductive rights that includes allowing anyone 16 and over to get an abortion or freely change the gender on their ID card.

The law gives the right to a three-day “menstrual” leave of absence – with the possibility of extending it to five days – for those with disabling periods, which can cause severe cramps, nausea, dizziness and even vomiting.

The leave requires a doctor’s note, and the public social security system will foot the bill.

The law states that the new policy will help combat the stereotypes and myths that still surround periods and hinder women’s lives.

Equality Minister Irene Montero, an outspoken feminist in the leftwing government, hailed “a historic day of progress for feminist rights”.

“There will be resistance to its application, just as there has been and there will be resistance to the application of all feminist laws,” she told parliament.

“So we have to work (…) to guarantee that when this law enters into force, it will be enforced”.

“The days of (women) going to work in pain are over,” Montero said last year when she unveiled her government’s proposal.

But the road to Spain’s menstrual leave has been rocky. Politicians – including those within the ruling coalition – and trade unions have been divided over the policy, which some fear could backfire and stigmatise women in the workplace.

Worldwide, menstrual leave is currently offered only in a small number of countries including Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and Zambia.

I get why there’s a fear of stigma there, but I think that’s a problem with a capitalist society that demands work (for the interests of capital) to justify dignity or survival. I prefer a societal norm that accepts humans as we are, and doesn’t make unreasonable demands of people, especially for them to have basic rights. This kind of law is only really a problem when you’re forcing people to compete with each other for a “good” life.

I’m hopeful that this will be a step not only towards a more just world, but also towards destigmatizing disability in general, whatever the cause. We’ve got a long way to go, still, but we have made progress, as a species, and that’s worth celebrating. The activists who made these laws a reality have my full respect and appreciation, and I look forward to other countries following this example.

Video: Daily life in a Swedish moose park

I’ve always had a fondness for moose. I saw them on rare occasions growing up, and it was always a cool experience. They’re very much a relic of the age of megafauna, and I like having creatures like that around. I also find them to be more than a little terrifying, on account of being huge, so I have to say that I wasn’t expecting to see a video of cuddly moose!