Also known as "eco dread" and probably a fair few other terms besides.

This is a feeling, increasingly persistent among our 8 billion strong brotherhood of man, that we are witnessing and participating in a cataclysm of ecological destruction.

This feeling of anxiety is highly prevalent among young people. I have friends for whom the topic of the environment is not considered suitable for extended conversation with their pre-teens, because it can become so upsetting. I contrast this with the wonder, awe and hope I used to feel in the 90's lying on my bedroom floor reading about nature.

This write up is focused on the feeling itself, rather than the politics, economics or science of biodiversity collapse. I could get into the phenomenology of nature itself, and maybe I will, but not here.

Ecological dread is not felt by everyone. Many people feel confident that everything is going to be alright and that the planet will survive, which of course it will.

Tho…

In Norse Mythology, found chiefly in Snorri Sturluson's 13th Century Prose Edda, specifically the tale of Þjálfi and Röskva, Hugi is the material personification of the thoughts of the playfully malicious giant Útgarða-Loki (also known as Skrýmir, and not the same person as Loki at all). Hugi takes on the appearance of a runner in a footrace, which the farm boy Þjálfi is challenged to run against him, and even when given the best two out of three opportunities to defeat…

The 2020s have featured a number of intentionally genderflipped films, such as the reboot of Ghostbusters, with mixed (and admittedly largely negative) receptions by audiences and male-dominated online review sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. We can reasonably guess that films with all-female casts, especially in media properties with nearly-all-male casts, are likely to continue prompting such negative audience reactions, for any number of reasons including simple misogyny, but this…