Clear Line Docs
These are notes on important things to help keep my thinking in a logical, clear line. Normally these notes will revolve around politics and ideas around how life should be lived. Expect my thoughts on Ego, Automation, Political Change, Gender and anything else I feel is important. The format generally follows a topic and then points relating to that topic I want to be able to confidently hold.
For a less structured set of views, see the Scribbled Line
Climate change is a genuine issue and it needs large scale action from world governments immediately
We're seeing the effects of climate change right now
The Guardian - Large-scale and intense wildfires carrying smoke across northern hemisphere
The Guardian - Firefighters try to save Jasper as fast-moving wildfire hits Canadian resort town --- Mastodon thread of photos from same wild fires
Spanish floods 2024 late october, years rain in less than a day, 200+ died
Climate change is an actual issue that will kill millions if not billions
To paraphrase "The Uninhabitable Earth" by David Wallace Wells (well respected climate journalist)
Global warming is not an arctic saga unfolding remotely. It is not exclusively a matter of sea level and coastlines, it is an enveloping crisis sparing no place and no life un-deformed.
There is no analogue to the scale or scope in human history.
It will involve:
- Heat Death
- Mass Starvation
- Mass dehydration/mass clean water shortages
- Poisoned, un-farmable top soil
- Drowning
- Wildfires
- Unbreathable air
- Economic collapse from resource shortages and lack of healthy workers
At 2 degrees, 400 million more people will suffer from water scarcity. Major cities in the equatorial band will become un-livably hot. Even in northern latitudes, heatwaves will kill thousands each summer. There would be 32 times as many extreme heatwaves in India, each 5 times as long, exposing 93 times more people.
This is our best case scenario
At 3 degrees, Southern Europe would be in permanent drought, the average drought in central America would last 19 months longer and in the Caribbean 21 months longer. In northern Africa the figure is 60 months longer (5 years). The areas burnt each year by wild fires would double in the Mediterranean and sextuple or more in the US.
At 4 degrees, there would be 8 million more cases of Dengue fever (tropic mosquito virus) each year in Latin America alone and close to annual global flooding crises. There could be 9% more heat-related deaths. Damages from river flooding would grow 30 fold in Bangladesh, 20 fold in India and as much as 60 fold in the uk.
Globally damages could pass $600 trillion - more than twice the wealth that exists in the world today. Conflict and warfare could double.
You cannot rely on tech as a magic fix all to solve these issues, some of them are inherently political issues. Even if the tech does exist, we literally do not have the time to develop it. Stop treating tech as an endings machine that will solve all our issues. You just use it as an excuse to emotionally avoid the issue. Accept this is an issue, feel that dread, hold it and let it drive you to make positive change both within your community and outside of it.
We don't need oil to maintain our economy
- We aren't slowly scaling down, we are increasing out oil usages. More than half of the co2 exhaled in the the atmosphere has come from the last 3 decades. We have done as much to damage the earth since Al Gore published his first book on climate change than in all of history before it was published.
Climate activism helps
For me personally, climate activism mostly helps my anxieties. But outside of that, it can legitimately cause change. Just Stop Oil recently released this.
UBI has benefits and is doable
What is UBI spent on?
OpenResearch - Key Findings: Spending (alternatively, this is also evidence that UBI is good for the economy as it shows money given is spent)
Capitalism needs altering, if not replacing
Capitalism isn't the default
Trade has existed for a very long time but generally until the industrial revolution in the 17-1800s a lot of people basically didn't use money for anything other than large acts. They'd use common land and their gardens to graze cows harvest wood for fires and grow food. Only during enclosure did people get forced out of this and made reliant on money and work.
A good book for this would be Jeanette Wintersons essay "A loom with a view". A whole book about the idea of capitalism being the default is Mark Fishers "Capitalist Realism"
Transgenderism is good
Anyone anti-trans is likely also bigoted in other manners
James Finn via Medium - LGB is a hate group
Gender is a social construct
I can argue this on my own without external backup but something to send people if I don't have time or they arn't worth the effort. Prioritize in person explanation though.
Transgenderism has been around since we've had the concept of gender roles
- the roman emperor elagabalus tried to find a doctor who would give him a vagina
- Even Bochan, Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, a jewish poem where the writer expresses their deep desires to be a woman
- the priests of Inanna took women's names and dressed in women's clothing trans writings from From the cuneiform translations interpreted in Blossom of Bone by Randy Connor
- just this whole wiki page
- Hermaphroditus Hermaphrodite greek god. And Aphroditus Cross-dressing male version of Aphrodite who was known to be nuturing. Small image with references and info
The Cass Review is not only bigoted but incredibly flawed
Points taken from TrashFutures "The Devon Report" episode and transactually's Cass Review Analysis
- Included no trans people in its review, did however include conversion therapy advocates in its advisory board, these people previously fought against the conversion therapy ban in england. Also includes interviews and data from catholic extremists from the US who helped florida's board of healthcare dismantle trans-rights. The author is a known friend of a number of trans hate groups.
- The paper refused to take into account any research not written in english, anything not written in the last two years apart from one that was disproven and used statistical fiddling to argue against HRT treatment. She also referenced right-wing youtube videos. One paper was used to argue points that its own author has specifically said it shouldn't be used to argue. It holds an obvious bias in the standards it holds pro-trans points to vs anti-trans points.
- It contains a large number of un-sourced and un-substantiated points. Out of 103 studies on puberty blockers mentioned, only 2 were considered valid enough to be used, these were unsurprisingly the two that supported Cass' claims. The British Medical Association has disavowed it and some of its suggestions have previously been disavowed by essentially all trans health-care bodies (WPATH, asiaPATH, EPATH, PATHA) as "un-evidenced, ludicrous and dangerous"
Issues with what it says
- The Cass Review suggests no one below 25 should be allowed to make decisions around their transition, people can drive, get a large number of cosmetic surgeries and literally join the army and go to war way before this. It implies that purely by being trans you lose a certain cognitive function to make decisions for yourself. It also robs trans teens of any chance of a pleasant youth.
- The review suggests punishing trans people who get help privately by refusing to interact with them around trans care ever again, this includes things like getting your child on puberty blockers.
- It suggests banning social transition for children without clinical oversight, this is insane and unenforcable. By this it means stopping them dressing how they want, growing or cutting their hair, changing their name or pronouns. Some of these things are so subjective, what's a girls haircut?? This is what was disavowed by all global trans health groups.
Extra details
- At one point the review mentions that its suspicious that there are no double blind studies on trans peoples transitions, something which is literally impossible as someone cant transition or not transition without knowing it.
- It complains that Gender Identity Clinics refused to share information on their patients with Cass without their patients consent. Cass is someone who is a individual unaffiliated with the NHS and legally cannot be given the data under GDPR
- Cass claims there's an epidemic of children being mis-diagnosed, the NHS gets through about 100 children a year in terms of gender therapy
Transgenderism has given me a unique worldview
Before my transition I lived for 5 years thinking about gender almost every day, I noticed it everywhere and came out of it with my own views I developed from my experiences, whether thats gender and what it is, gender and how people relate to it, aesthetic and capitalism's exploitation of it, identity and belonging, the buzz word "woke" and why it's developed in people's consciousness or just flat out the concept of femininity