Written by Here’s the text version!
August 23 2026
Yesterday was a blur.
20:50
I’ve been working on my Bachelor Thesis. To what end I do not know. I am using it to organize the theory behind the game making I will do to then make the game stories. But in terms of getting a Bachelor out of it, I don’t know how I’m going to make that happen I will just have to try my best.
August 24 2026
It’s been a good workday. I am losing momentum on the thesis but gaining on the other projects and I am reattempting a game jam with lessons learned from the first. I hope it works!
August 25 2026
9:57
I am working on another story to send to a magazine as this seems the most immediate way towards a payout.
12:29
I’m at 2699 words including the document title. The story has no name as yet. I wonder how my character will get out of trouble?
15:22
I’m at 5,123 words. Now my character has to solve inequality.
16:39
I don’t have cancer. It’s just an infection. I’m all gross inside but not dying! Nice!
19:32
I finished the story! 7910 words including the temporary title. Think I have a proper title in mind now.
21:42
I found a huge plothole in the story after dinner and am up to 9,993 words now that I fixed it. So plothole fixed and more money in the bank if I get published!
Ha!
21:55
A first edit brings the word count to exactly 10,000 lol. But at least the story is complete.
August 26 2026
My computer is being suuuuper slow. I have a lot of windows open cause I’m working on all of them but I’ll see if there are any processor saving features to toggle on.
Aha. Turned on memory saver. Rivetting stuff, I’m sure. Bet you had bated breath whatever that means. What’s bate and how do you breath it?
August 27 2026
Today has been a great work day even if these are sad times.
I wanted to share a section of my bachelor thesis which is an analysis of the data gathered from Carbon Neutral Striking, covering update chunks 1 to 30, April 22, 2025 to August 20, 2026. What’s really great is that after the literature review, because there is so much Carbon Neutral Strike material, it doesn’t make sense to be making reference to anything, I have too much to focus on, so I don’t have to cite anything else, it’s all based on the material itself and discussing the surfaced themes. Lol. Less work mercifully but also a lot of work at the same time.
The words that I use the most in these updates are: “Just”, “People” and “Think.”
Just think, people! The gist of the carbon neutral strike and its answer.
Here’s what I had to say about the ‘just’ part.
Thesis Excerpt:
‘Just’
The use of ‘just’ as often as it is used is very surprising, and implies that I believe that a transition is a simple matter, you ‘just’ do it. Could this be a misperception or ‘just’ a deeper wisdom that all it takes to make a change is to make the change.
I have used the example of smoking as a metaphor for fossil fuel use. Detailed March 15, 2026, Carbon Neutral Strike Update 21, I sit down and do an experiment to see if smoking is muscular or whether I can control it. I smoked very heavily up until that point. I kept the joint in my hand, as though ready to smoke it and busied myself with other work. Climate work, Fastfrwrd work. I found it surprisingly easy to not smoke or think about smoke while I had this work to do, this very important but also joyful work to do that let me use all my best skills. I got through the afternoon until sunset because I knew, if I did not smoke then, I would have more left for later to enjoy all I wanted.
The next step came the day after or so. I thought about the day I had had, with so many seemingly significant cars with license plates that I interpreted and assigned meaning to, cars in a colour I responded to personally and identified with a person and symbolized meaning around. There had been an astonishing fluidity of meaning as though I were is discussion with the very world through pure symbolism in a way that I could not ignore. That and some natural phenomena inspired a flame of faith in a power larger than the human realm and I realised, if I were to believe in this larger power, I would have to stop smoking in order to be of sober mind and enjoy my present as it was intended to be enjoyed. In that case, I decided I would have to stop smoking. I did not want to, it felt as though I were losing my identity. But at the same time, there was this new mystery of a life with a higher power that brought its own kind of ‘magic’ to the world and mystery which meant a new adventure, one in which I would be in discussion with the world, and a part of a cosmic battle of care versus lack of care. It was not a loss. There was so much to gain.
There were also legal things to think about. I wanted to create a powdered dissolvable THC and Nicotine powder but in order to do so I would have had to get a prohibitively expensive permit and the Scientific Research Council of Jamaica knew how to make it but did not have the equipment. I knew this powder could save lives but I could not afford it and I did not want to carry on smoking but I did not want to give up weed either, because:
Finally, one of the driving factors for quitting was that my left lymph node had been swollen for nearly a year and if it was cancer, I would have caused it myself (although we can and should argue that the amount of smoking was not only due to reckless abandon but also because I had an oral fixation that went this far due to unprobed psychological factors like a fear of boredom and what one might think without distraction for example). I was worried for my health too.
And so in looking at the metaphor of smoking and how I was able to quit so astonishingly that I was able to sit amongst smokers and not even think about how nice it would be to smoke… I only think about smoking faintly when I need something to pass the time and I remember how fun it was to pass the time rolling up a joint. I was able to quit all at once. I ‘just’ quit. In the same way, our fossil fuel dependence can be cut ‘just’ like that and with only a few withdrawal symptoms.
It is remarkably similar in nature to this microcosmic example. There is a health aspect, there are permits that are prohibitively priced to deal with it through simply going through the legalese and trying to negotiate the further use of fossil fuels, ‘just’ ‘less bad’. There is a natural mystery world that exists to be explored if we cut the fuel and stay put for a while and try to work with our surrounding to overcome the fossil fuel dependency. We have climate work to do to keep us busy and it can be joyful and highly rewarding if we do it in community (if the community is not hostile) or solo if needs be.
We have to ensure we have the mystery and wonder present to make the new world attractive and an adventure that you get to star in. And for that, we have Solarpunk.
Solarpunk is hopeful, optimistic, inclusive and self aware. It knows that utopian outcomes are hard to reach but it reaches towards them anyway because we are ‘just’ too good at imagining bad futures to the point where, when the world starts to look like that future, with A.I. robots coming online soon, with rockets to other places attempting their climb, where interstellar life and travel is being workshopped, what future are we approaching and have we really spent time imagining a good one? That brainwork is necessary.
The other interpretation of ‘just’ is that of ‘justice’. I spend a great deal of time speaking about and negotiating my marginalizations in these updates, where I share my vulnerabilities and life story.
In Update 2, Day 18, I speak about the injustice of wealth inequality. Update 17, November 2, 2025 I speak about how I came to lose my home the first time in France. Update 18, December 22, 2025 I speak about the injustices of mental health for the ‘unsexy’ neurodiversities like schizo affective bipolar. Update 19, January 2, 2026 I speak about my sexuality, liking a girl, and not being bold enough to ask if she liked girls because I was afraid past injustices against LGBTQIA+ individuals would make me vulnerable if I asked, that I would get a bad reaction. Update 20, Early February, 2026 I speak about the injustice of how the Arts are underpaid and undervalued and have a large murky gap between hobby and profession where you earn next to nothing for something that is definitely work and is definitely used and admired but not appropriately valued unless the creative is also popular.
Update 22, March 12, 2026 I speak about the injustice of how overpriced the permits to handle and sell cannabis are which leads to the injustice of most cannabis vendors on the island technically being criminals, therefore making me someone who is aiding and abetting and creating demand for a crime. Update 24, July 7, 2026 I speak about the injustice of an island where there are two major telecommunications monopolies and one of them runs on Starlink from Elon Musk whom I am boycotting. When the data plan from one of the monopolies did not work for me to join a radio interview, I had no option but to let the opportunity pass because I could not use the Starlink. Update 26, July 23, 2026 I spoke out against the injustice of homophobia through song. Update 28, August 1, 2026 I am excited to provide the justice of low literacy friendly accessibility options to my website which makes it more suitable to the Jamaican setting where some people were unjustly left behind in the classroom.
In Update 29, August 10, 2026 I speak about the injustice of life on an island with a high murder rate. Paul Bourne, 2025 in “Fifty-Four Years of Violence: A Meta-Analysis of Homicide Trends, Drivers, and Interventions in Jamaica, 1970-2024” finds the roots of gun violence in the 1970s where it started due to political violence between the Capitalist friendly Jamaica Labour Party and the Socialist People’s National Party. Bourne finds that “majority of homicide victims are males aged between 15 and 44 years”. The paper outlines the fact that political rivalries and gangs took root on the island in the 1970s and the murder rate has increased steadily since.
We speak of a ‘just’ climate transition in Solarpunk because it is necessary. When Hurricane Melissa hit the island of Jamaica in October 2025, I was unable to leave not just because I had vowed to leave the island carbon neutrally. If I had a job that did not pay less than $3 USD per hour I would have been able to hire a sailboat perhaps at around $1500 USD to take me to Mexico, give me a short vacation, and then bring me back when the hurricane was over. I could have taken a plane to Mexico for about $500 USD and triple compensate the flight at about $100 USD extra, have a short holiday and then fly back. I did not have the option. This is climate injustice. I was vulnerable due to being underpaid. And so were all of my coworkers. This is what we mean when we talk about a ‘just’ climate transition.
It was incredibly simple to finally quit smoking after many false attempts. When my life was threatened, a gun to my neck in the form of a swollen lymph node (which happily is not cancerous), when there was no affordable legal compromise, no real way out, and a desire to pursue a new life, I ‘just’ stopped. No cravings, no longing, no regret. I ‘just’ stopped. I am not that much stronger than anyone else. We can ‘just’ stop fossil fuels, is the belief I arrived upon towards the end of this study.
End of Excerpt
I finish saying these things just have to rest, marinate, digest and then poop out. 🙂 Cause I’m a charmer like that.
Lata!
- Wikipedia Article on Jamaican Political Violence and the C.I.A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_political_conflict
- Research paper about Jamaica’s homicide rate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393663222_Structural_Violence_and_Homicide_in_Jamaica_19702024A_Systematic_Review_and_Meta-Analysis_of_Socioeconomic_and_Institutional_Determinants