Bullthing

I saw a post going around a few days ago explaining what it was that radicalised someone, and I did some thinking and broadly came away with "Well most of my degree radicalised me" - but the real answer is more complicated than that and there was a very specific turning point.

My degree, for those who don't know, was in 'Environmental Management & Technology'. Environmental Management (EM) is an interesting one because it's 50% knowing environmental and climate science, and 50% social science. You have to know the mechanics of a lot of natural systems, and the social workings of groups. Then you tack on the 'Technology' which boils down to knowing a bunch of engineering, specifically that relating to energy, water, and transport. The degree is a whole mishmash and I still argue that it's multi-faceted nature probably gives the best overall insight into the issue of climate change than say, just studying Environmental Sciences.

So, because it was so wide in it's coverage, a lot of what we studied was mostly "How does this change impact people, how do people react, how do governance systems respond to the change and the people's reaction?" Big systems stuff. And a result of that, is that you really quickly discover just how reluctant governments are to do anything meaningful, and how what they do commit to doing often is too little too late, or else a complete smoke screen.
(An example would be the UK committing to reduce landfill use by X% which implies increases in recycling, but in reality capped out quickly, leading to the UK exporting huge quantities of waste and just not recording that so that on paper, they'd met their obligations)

That already is enough to set in some despair, but I was already on board with a lot of that. What really got me was an event that happened, that I was only really reminded of this morning, that brought the abstract figures on sheets and articles in journals.

Grenfell. The fire at Grenfell was a huge tragedy and was entirely preventable. The forces that led to it, are the same ones that I was studying, just on a different, more granular scale. It was wilful negligence because a section of people were seen as less important than the appearance of progress. Set dressing was more important to those in charge than lives were and I think, if I had to summarise it, that's my biggest issue with a lot of the 'progressive' world - it's anything but. It's far more interested in its image than it is any meaningful action.

This contradiction shines through in so many other areas too, especially in progressive or 'liberal' politics across the world where the image of progressivism is more important than actual progressivism. It's bottling up anti-capitalist sentiments and selling it back to an audience hungry for even a smidge of accountability and when it all goes wrong, and when the whole thing falls apart, there'll be some people saying "Well at least it looked pretty for a while"

Reworking an old conlang of mine that I still occasionally use and I am getting very aggressive with the IPA.

Who needs 24 Consonant sounds when you could just have 9?

Revising this slightly - it's 11 now and no more. That's already too generous. Don't make me combine K and G

Update. It's now 10. Fuck the letter H.

Also, there are vowels, but they exist only as accents, and are merely a suggestion, not required meaning a lot of reading this script is going to be heavily based on context.

Reworking an old conlang of mine that I still occasionally use and I am getting very aggressive with the IPA.

Who needs 24 Consonant sounds when you could just have 9?

Revising this slightly - it's 11 now and no more. That's already too generous. Don't make me combine K and G