The Heist and After
Extending Act 2 of Cyberpunk 2077
It's an axiom of this essay and the essays in this sub-collection that Cyberpunk 2077 is a flawed masterpiece. It's further an axiom that a major reason that it is flawed is that the actual story was rushed, and that what was delivered is unfinished and substantially less than the original vision. I personally believe these two things, although the first more strongly than the second; but unless you provisionally accept them these essays will not make much sense to you.
Manifesto for a good society
This essay grows out of a quite minor Twitter thread, which is here.
Scotland now provides period products for free, to everyone who needs them.
That's an incredibly powerful thing. The fact that Scotland does it — the fact that Scotland is the first nation in the world to do it — makes me proud to be Scots. It is a seed from which the good society can grow.
Modular electric farm traction
Currently, farm tractors almost all burn diesel, and (with very few exceptions) burn fossil fuel. To reduce the carbon cost of farming, either electric or hydrogen powered tractors are necessary. This document considers electric power.
Battery weight, and modularity
The Storm
I did not expect the storm of the night of Friday 26th November to be exceptionally severe. I was aware that there was going to be a storm, and aware that the wind was expected to peak at a strength which rates as 'violent storm' on the Beaufort Scale. But such events are not actually that rare here. I made some preparations — I did close the cattle shed doors, for example, and fully fastened down the last new panel on the north side of the roof.
I thought of moving the stack of panels for the south side of the roof, that had not yet been installed, into the wood for safekeeping, but it would have been a lot of work and I very fortunately did not do it.
The Everyone Dies Event Class
The climate, globally, is warming. Everyone acknowledges that. It’s not warming equally, or consistently, or evenly; I think everyone acknowledges that as well. Rather, the atmosphere is a heat engine: as you put more energy into it in the form of heat, you get more work out of it, in the form of turbulence. Winds get stronger, precipitation more intense, and heat waves hotter.
Human beings function in a fairly constrained temperature band. The healthy body temperature is 37° Celsius, plus or minus about one degree. The human body cools itself by evaporation. If water can’t evaporate from your skin, you can no longer cool yourself. Rather, you take on heat from the environment. Body temperature above 40° Celsius is a life threatening emergency, and above 42.3° denaturing of proteins, especially in the brain, may occur rapidly. This is not survivable.